Eleanor @Eleanor_Vibe - Twitter Profile

3 days ago

When the cheap money dried up and global supply chain costs jumped, major offshore developers worldwide began walking away from key projects, forfeiting massive deposits. Without government-mandated price hikes or taxpayer bailouts, the long-term balance sheets no longer added up. Yet the projects are still pushed to meet political targets — regardless of how high our power bills climb. On land, the story is no better. The giant composite blades and multi-megawatt gearboxes face immense structural wear, turbulence and fatigue. Around years 12 to 15, maintenance costs rocket upward - just as turbine efficiency begins to drop. A hydroelectric dam or traditional power station can run for 60 to 80 years with routine overhauls. A wind turbine faces a brick wall at year 20. Rebuilding a wind farm — dismantling giant towers, disposing of unrecyclable composite blades and replacing nacelles — can consume 50% to 70% of the original capital outlay. As turbines age, they also suffer severe 'value cannibalisation'. Because every turbine in a region generates power at the exact same time when the wind blows, they routinely collapse wholesale prices into negative territory. They produce power when it is worth the least. We are repeatedly told that wind is 'the cheapest source of electricity'. If true, why does the sector require permanent economic underwriting to keep investor confidence? The market doesn't pay for energy at average production costs; it pays for energy when and where it is needed. The true cost of wind includes long-distance transmission lines, fast-ramping back-up generation and frequency control. Without long-term Contracts for Difference (CfDs) and guaranteed floor prices, the core business model of wind energy implodes like a house of cards when exposed to true, unsubsidised market forces. (End)

PeterDClack's tweet photo. When the cheap money dried up and global supply chain costs jumped, major offshore developers worldwide began walking away from key projects, forfeiting massive deposits.

Without government-mandated price hikes or taxpayer bailouts, the long-term balance sheets no longer added up. Yet the projects are still pushed to meet political targets — regardless of how high our power bills climb.

On land, the story is no better. The giant composite blades and multi-megawatt gearboxes face immense structural wear, turbulence and fatigue. Around years 12 to 15, maintenance costs rocket upward - just as turbine efficiency begins to drop.

A hydroelectric dam or traditional power station can run for 60 to 80 years with routine overhauls. A wind turbine faces a brick wall at year 20.

Rebuilding a wind farm — dismantling giant towers, disposing of unrecyclable composite blades and replacing nacelles — can consume 50% to 70% of the original capital outlay.

As turbines age, they also suffer severe 'value cannibalisation'. Because every turbine in a region generates power at the exact same time when the wind blows, they routinely collapse wholesale prices into negative territory. They produce power when it is worth the least.

We are repeatedly told that wind is 'the cheapest source of electricity'. If true, why does the sector require permanent economic underwriting to keep investor confidence?

The market doesn't pay for energy at average production costs; it pays for energy when and where it is needed. The true cost of wind includes long-distance transmission lines, fast-ramping back-up generation and frequency control.

Without long-term Contracts for Difference (CfDs) and guaranteed floor prices, the core business model of wind energy implodes like a house of cards when exposed to true, unsubsidised market forces. (End)

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Massimo

@Rainmaker1973

2 days ago

Did you know? Sunflowers are used to assist in clean up after a nuclear disaster. They are hyperaccumulators, capable of absorbing toxic heavy metals from the ground and have been planted at both Chernobyl and Fukushima in the attempt to aid in soil restoration.

Rainmaker1973's tweet photo. Did you know?

Sunflowers are used to assist in clean up after a nuclear disaster.

They are hyperaccumulators, capable of absorbing toxic heavy metals from the ground and have been planted at both Chernobyl and Fukushima in the attempt to aid in soil restoration. https://t.co/VuhAXIpRUj

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Eleanor_Vibe retweeted

Peter Clack

@PeterDClack

1 day ago

To catch a diffuse energy source like sunlight or wind needs an unprecedented volume of physical machinery. A single solar farm requires roughly 30 times more total metal infrastructure than a conventional gas plant. We aren't moving away from mining; we're swapping offshore rigs for vast open-cut chasms. The demand for heavy mining and rare earths is just as compelling as the downstream e-waste crisis, but the numbers are even more staggering. While solar cells rely heavily on high-purity silicon, silver, and copper, the broader infrastructure ecosystem demands far more. The EV motors, wind turbines and massive national grids required to tie intermittent generation together are entirely dependent on an unprecedented surge in mineral extraction. Because wind and sunshine are so diluted and diffused, harvesting them requires a massive physical footprint. According to the IEA, replacing the world's fossil-fuel system with renewables increases the total volume of materials requiring extraction and handling by a factor of 10. Solar alone is exceptionally copper-intensive, using roughly 850 kg per megawatt for intricate grid connections, inverters and cabling. Renewable energy is projected to drive 45% of total global copper demand by 2030. Yet, developing a new major copper mine takes an average of 16 years from initial discovery to first production. The world faces a massive demand spike for a metal where the supply chain is notoriously slow, costly, and inflexible. While solar panels don't use much in the way of rare earths, wind turbines and backup systems are hungry for permanent magnets made from neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium. Processing these elements involves intensive chemical leaching that produces vast amounts of toxic wastewater. Compounding the problem, China controls roughly 60–70% of extraction and up to 90% of refining for these specific elements — creating a bottleneck that is as much a geopolitical risk as an environmental one. IMAGE: This massive chasm is the Bingham Canyon Mine (the Kennecott Copper Mine) outside Salt Lake City, Utah— is one of the largest man-made excavations on Earth, stretching 4 kilometres wide and over a kilometre deep.

PeterDClack's tweet photo. To catch a diffuse energy source like sunlight or wind needs an unprecedented volume of physical machinery.

A single solar farm requires roughly 30 times more total metal infrastructure than a conventional gas plant. We aren't moving away from mining; we're swapping offshore rigs for vast open-cut chasms.

The demand for heavy mining and rare earths is just as compelling as the downstream e-waste crisis, but the numbers are even more staggering. While solar cells rely heavily on high-purity silicon, silver, and copper, the broader infrastructure ecosystem demands far more.

The EV motors, wind turbines and massive national grids required to tie intermittent generation together are entirely dependent on an unprecedented surge in mineral extraction.

Because wind and sunshine are so diluted and diffused, harvesting them requires a massive physical footprint. According to the IEA, replacing the world's fossil-fuel system with renewables increases the total volume of materials requiring extraction and handling by a factor of 10.

Solar alone is exceptionally copper-intensive, using roughly 850 kg per megawatt for intricate grid connections, inverters and cabling. Renewable energy is projected to drive 45% of total global copper demand by 2030. Yet, developing a new major copper mine takes an average of 16 years from initial discovery to first production.

The world faces a massive demand spike for a metal where the supply chain is notoriously slow, costly, and inflexible.

While solar panels don't use much in the way of rare earths, wind turbines and backup systems are hungry for permanent magnets made from neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium. Processing these elements involves intensive chemical leaching that produces vast amounts of toxic wastewater.

Compounding the problem, China controls roughly 60–70% of extraction and up to 90% of refining for these specific elements — creating a bottleneck that is as much a geopolitical risk as an environmental one.

IMAGE: This massive chasm is the Bingham Canyon Mine (the Kennecott Copper Mine) outside Salt Lake City, Utah— is one of the largest man-made excavations on Earth, stretching 4 kilometres wide and over a kilometre deep.

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Peter Clack

@PeterDClack

3 days ago

A landmark study of performance data reveals that energy output from onshore wind farms begins to drop sharply after just 10 to 15 years. This leaves these skeletons of steel and composite plastic flapping in the breeze. While the wind industry and governments routinely promise a 20- to 25-year operational lifespan, long-term empirical analysis tells a very different story. Many onshore turbines across the UK and Denmark begin showing severe mechanical wear and output degradation much earlier than projected. In this statistical study for the Renewable Energy Foundation - The Performance of Wind Farms in the United Kingdom and Denmark - energy economist Professor Gordon Hughes analysed thousands of wind farm operational records. His findings were stark: load factors (electricity generated as a percentage of total capacity) declined far faster than industry models predict. Hughes concluded that the effective technical lifespan of many turbines ranges between 10 and 15 years, after which soaring maintenance costs and falling output make continued operation uneconomical. For UK onshore wind farms, average output capability fell by roughly a third after 10 years, rendering many fully uneconomic to maintain beyond 12 years without heavy intervention. To mask this rapid degradation and maintain financial viability, operators increasingly resort to 'repowering' — dismantling and replacing turbines long before their theoretical 25-year mark to capture new subsidy regimes. The original hardware is routinely prematurely retired, exposing a grim reality behind the theory.