Wind Turbines - for and against.
For;
Wind turbines are promoted as an environmentally friendly way of producing electricity. This is because if a turbine is used to produce electricity this means that a fossil fuel(coal, gas etc.) or nuclear powered power station does not have to produce this electricity.
The upshot of this should be that there are less carbon dioxide emissions or problems disposing of nuclear fuel as a direct result of the installation of each turbine.
Against;
It will not reduce emissions to any great extent.
The hole excavated for a turbine's foundation has a volume equivalent to a 25m swimming bath. The extracted material has to be put somewhere else. The hole is filled with sand, aggregate and cement which has to come from somewhere else and has to be transported by heavy lorries. Service roads and cable trenches need to be constructed at the site. If the site is at any distance from the grid, there will be pylons and overhead transmission lines to form the necessary connection.
Wind farm enthusiasts admit that they need huge quantities of concrete for foundations and roads and are on record as claiming that many jobs are created or safe-guarded thereby. Yet the concrete industry is the biggest man-made source of CO2 on the planet - about 7% of the world's total. Wind turbines produce significant additional amounts of CO2 - they merely do it in advance.
There cannot be a like for like reduction in production capability just because a turbine has been installed. Any other sort of power production cannot be simply switched on if the turbine ceases production if it is not windy enough - or too windy - for the turbine to work.
This means that generally about half of the capacity must remain available all of the time - i.e. a fossil fuel plant must be "ticking over" "just in case" it is needed.
Each 1MW turbine only produces on average 250KW to 300KW. Half of this resource has to be covered all of the time, meaning that effectively only 125KW to 150KW is produced "for free" in environmental terms. Add to this, the environmental costs listed above in terms of provision of infrastructure and the environmental case simply does not add up.
Thanks to the Scout Moor Protest site - much of the facts above were initially gathered from there before verification.