From the text:
The total cumulative Scope 1 and 3 emissions from the project are estimated at 1.37 billion tonnes of GHG emissions from 2021-2055 of which close to 20% is projected to be emitted in Western Australia. These emissions are equivalent to 18 (sic?) and 3.6 years respectively of WA’s 2005 emissions.
Of course, having dangerous natural gas available does allow for one to install wind turbines as a fig leaf for the operation, which could certainly
slow these emissions, albeit not prevent them.
The calculation includes the cost of constructing infrastructure to engineer the systems, something usually missing from discussions of so called "renewable energy."
Most of the embodied energy for wind turbines comes from coal, and is related to the steel therein. Australia has lots of coal, so in theory they could certainly use their coal to keep manufacturing new wind turbines every twenty years to put lipstick on their gas pig.
The gas will also be useful for manufacturing the fiberglass for wind turbine blades, which involves the reduction of silicon dioxide with carbon usually using natural gas fired furnaces.
Vaclav Smil has a nice accounting of how this project could help us go "renewable by 'such and such a year.'"
To make the steel required for wind turbines that might operate by 2030, you’d need fossil fuels equivalent to more than 600 million metric tons of coal.
A 5-MW turbine has three roughly 60-meter-long airfoils, each weighing about 15 metric tons. They have light balsa or foam cores and outer laminations made mostly from glass-fiber-reinforced epoxy or polyester resins. The glass is made by melting silicon dioxide and other mineral oxides in furnaces fired by natural gas. The resins begin with ethylene derived from light hydrocarbons, most commonly the products of naphtha cracking, liquefied petroleum gas, or the ethane in natural gas. The final fiber-reinforced composite embodies on the order of 170 GJ/t. Therefore, to get 2.5 TW of installed wind power by 2030, we would need an aggregate rotor mass of about 23 million metric tons, incorporating the equivalent of about 90 million metric tons of crude oil. And when all is in place, the entire structure must be waterproofed with resins whose synthesis starts with ethylene. Another required oil product is lubricant, for the turbine gearboxes, which has to be changed periodically during the machine’s two-decade lifetime...
What I see when I see a wind turbine.
The Scarborough announcement is simply bad marketing bad marketing. They should simply announce that they need all that gas and coal to make wind turbines, and then everybody will cheer. This is the usual marketing that other fossil fuel dependent countries use. It's very successful. Ask the Germans.
Australia has huge reserves of uranium, and their lanthanide mines plan to dump the thorium residuals in Malaysia. Of course, most people are perfectly satisfied that nuclear energy is far more dangerous than climate change, just as they are sure that fossil fuels are "green" whenever they support wind turbines, solar cells and electric cars.
I think "most people," so defined, are idiots, but that's just my opinion. I'm a dissident.
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