General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Trump Attacks Windmills in Speech to Conservative Group: 'I Never Understood Wind' [View all]teach1st
(5,934 posts)I am guessing that the president's "fumes spewing" garble is in reference to the manufacturing of wind turbines, which inevitably produce carbon emissions. But so do the production infrastructures for solar, gas, and coal-generated power. Nuclear power uses less.
Onshore wind power is relatively inexpensive (cheaper than coal and gas). Offshore wind power is about three times more costly than onshore.
The largest wind turbine manufacturer (Vestas) is in Denmark, but Germany and China do have skin in the game.
The president's insistence that wind power is killing birds is true. But, as far as I can tell, wind power doesn't kill nearly as many bald eagles as he has claimed previously. It's also true that wind energy manufactures are building new technologies that hopefully will mitigate bird deaths. Anyway, here's the part that President Trump leaves out. We do need more data, but it looks like wind turbines kill far less birds than nuclear and fossil fuel power generation does, and less than cell towers. Cats are the major cause of bird mortality, though: Using high end bird death estimates caused by wind turbines compared to low end estimates of bird death estimates caused by domestic and feral cats, cats kill way over 300 times more birds. Of course, there are more cats than wind turbines (and far more coal and nuclear generators, transmission lines, and cell towers). We need more data.
(Not the only source I used) Wikipedia - Environmental Impact of Wind Power