Thursday, November 13, 2008

Wind Power Environmental Impact

Taking a look at a wind power plant it can be pretty easy to see why people argue that Nuclear, and Geothermal power both are better for the environment. Sure the wind turbines themselves are fairly small, but it actually takes quite a lot of roads to build a wind farm.


View Larger Map


View Larger Map


This is a very old wind plant, more modern ones use less turbines and are unlikely to be as bad. Also since you can put them on farm land, often you won't be building nearly as many roads to maintain the plant. Those roads probably exist already for other purposes.

Solar plants are far worse. They are the environmental equivalent of putting a parking lot on a piece of land. I am not sure I can support the use of solar panels when they are not on the roof of a pre-existing structure. It is simply too land intensive. Biofuels make even solar look good however as they are essentially 0.1% efficiency solar cells.

No comments: