Contrary to Wide Awake Media’s misleading claims, wind turbines are greener than fossil fuels by multiple measures

You’ll frequently see critics of renewable energy claim that wind turbines ‘aren’t so green’. Critics might point to the materials and energy that go into building the turbines, or they might warn that wind turbine blades are unrecyclable and will end up in piles of waste at the end of their lives.

An example of both claims at once is a recent post on X from Wide Awake Media (which has more than 650,000 followers and which, despite its name, appears to be operated by one person). Here, Wide Awake Media reposts a video demonstrating how a wind turbine is built, adding claims that the video doesn’t explicitly make – that wind turbines need “staggering” amounts of energy, resources, and CO2 emissions to build and that their blades will wind up in landfill. Readers might leave with the impression that wind turbines cast an excessive environmental footprint. 

But Wide Awake Media’s claim ignores crucial context. Every power source leaves some footprint. Rather than looking at a power source in isolation, it’s more useful to compare and contrast different sources. When we compare wind turbines to the largest sources of electricity today – fossil fuel plants – research shows that wind turbines leave behind orders of magnitude less of both greenhouse gas and waste.

Below, we explain in more detail.

Wind turbines generate less CO2 than other fuel sources

Research from around the world shows that, no matter what goes into a wind turbine’s construction, wind-generated electricity has a smaller greenhouse gas footprint than fossil-fuel-generated electricity^[1,2]. 

Wind turbines obviously don’t burn anything in order to generate electricity, unlike fossil fuel plants. But wind energy’s footprint is still smaller when we account for other parts of a power plant’s life cycle, like construction (emissions from manufacturing a turbine’s parts, transporting them to the site, and assembling them), operation (for example, emissions associated with maintaining a power plant or, in the case of fossil fuels, extracting the fuels and bringing them to the site), and end-of-life (emissions from decommissioning and dismantling a power plant). 

The U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) estimates that, over each source’s entire life cycle, gas power is responsible for over 35 times and coal power over 75 times more emissions than wind power for the same amount of electricity; only other renewables and nuclear power are in the same range as wind turbines^[1]. The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) gives similar numbers showing that fossil fuel plants are tens of times more greenhouse-gas-intensive on average, no matter where in the world they’re built (Figure 1)^[2].

Wide Awake Media zeroes in on the “CO2 emissions […] required to erect a single wind turbine”. When we break down each power source’s footprint, we do find that wind turbines are more emissions-intensive to build than fossil fuel plants, but this is a misleading comparison to judge a plant’s entire lifecycle, because turbines and fossil fuel plants do not operate in the same way. Again, fossil fuel plants must burn fuel in order to operate; wind turbines don’t. 

A wind turbine’s upstream greenhouse gas emissions, accrued before it starts operating, are 2 to 15 times greater than those of gas and coal power plants for the same amount of electrical energy^[1]. But a wind turbine’s upstream emissions make up almost all (in some cases, as much as 99%) of its life cycle emissions. On the other hand, a coal or gas power plant’s operating emissions are typically hundreds of times greater than their upstream emissions (see Figure 2)^[1,2].

Solar panels also have a significantly smaller footprint than fossil fuel burning; you can read more in our Insight.

The world produces far less wind turbine waste than fossil fuel waste

As we’ve shown in a past review, it’s also misleading to claim that wind turbines produce excessive amounts of waste while ignoring context: the predicted mass of disposed blades is relatively small compared to the world’s total waste, and fossil fuel energy sources often produce waste of their own.

A 2017 study estimated that the world would produce 43 million tonnes’ worth of used wind turbine blades between 2016 and 2050^[3]. If that seems high, humans produce billions of tonnes of waste each and every year. A 2023 Nature Physics paper estimated that over the same time period, 2016 to 2050 (see Figure 3): around 1,876 million tonnes of discarded electronics, around 12,355 million tonnes of plastic waste, and around 70,350 million tonnes of municipal waste (other rubbish binned by homes, shops, office buildings, and the like)^[4].

Put differently, over 34 years, that 43-million-tonne figure is considerably less than U.S. households produce in a single year. 

Fossil fuel energy also produces waste in volumes that dwarf the estimated amount of blade waste. The Nature Physics paper also predicted that, if current rates of waste generation continue, the world would generate 249 million tonnes of oily sludge (solid gunk that builds up whenever crude oil is pumped, treated, or transported) and 45,500 million tonnes of coal ash (a toxic byproduct of burning the fuel) between 2016 and 2050 (again, see Figure 3)^[4]. In fact, one estimate suggests that the world’s coal power plants alone produce 780 million tonnes of coal ash every year: more than 18 times as much as the predicted amount of blade waste over 34 years^[5].

As for a wind turbine itself? 90% of a wind turbine’s mass can be recycled, but it is true that the blades – made from hardy composite materials like fiberglass – are expensive to recycle and generally go to the landfill or the incinerator. Nonetheless  it’s not completely accurate to say they’re “unable to be recycled”. In fact, several European countries have prohibited the landfilling of turbine blades. Several pilot projects have tried reusing them wholesale (turning them into structures like footbridges and bus shelters) or broken them down to use their components (the silica in their fiberglass can be used for making cement).

Solar panels also produce a relatively small amount of waste (Figure 3), as we’ve shown in another past review.

ANY power plant needs to be constructed

We are building more wind turbines than ever before. The International Energy Agency predicts the world’s wind power capacity to double or even triple between 2022 and 2030, depending on economic conditions. Wind turbines are designed to remain stable for 20 to 30 years, often in harsh weather (after all, wind turbines do perform better in stronger winds). We might see this done via a complex construction process involving pile-driving and concrete-casting, as the video shows, and imagine that it’s environmentally unfriendly.

But any power plant needs “energy and resources” to build. Constructing a single coal, gas, or nuclear power plant might consume more than 40,000 cubic meters of concrete and 20,000 tonnes of metal. Some power sources also consume “energy and resources” to operate. In recent years, U.S. electricity production used over 400 million tonnes of coal, over 350 million liters of gas, and over 30 million pounds of uranium concentrate each year. 

Instead of dealing with different materials, different units, and different scales, we can make a more useful (if still simplified) comparison by examining power sources’ footprint over the same amount of electrical energy. Then we can compare the impacts of different power sources in a consistent manner – as we’ve shown above. When we make that comparison, the data is very clear that wind turbines have a far smaller footprint than fossil fuel sources.

Again, we’re primarily using fossil fuels as a comparison and focusing on greenhouse gas emissions, because a key reason to build wind turbines is to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, and because burning fossil fuels is the primary source of the excess CO2 and other greenhouse gas that is well-established as the cause of a changing climate^[6].

Conclusion

Despite Wide Awake Media’s claim playing up the resources and CO2 emissions needed for building wind turbines, when we actually compare wind power to other power sources, we find that it is not a significant source of emissions. A wind farm is more emissions-intensive to construct than a coal or gas power plant, but the fossil plants generate hundreds of times more emissions during their operation.

Furthermore, wind turbine blades are expected to be no more than a minor portion of the world’s waste stream in the decades ahead. Everyday activities and fossil fuel power sources will both produce hundreds of times more waste. Indeed, using wind power as a tool for switching the world’s electrical supply away from fossil fuels may actually cut down on waste.

References:

1. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. (2021) Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Electricity Generation: Update. 
2. United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. (2021)  Life Cycle Assessment of Electricity Generation Options.
3. Liu and Barlow (2017). Wind turbine blade waste in 2050. Waste Management.
4. Mirletz et al. (2023) Unfounded concerns about photovoltaic module toxicity and waste are slowing decarbonization. Nature Physics.
5. Tamanna et al. (2023) Coal bottom ash as supplementary material for sustainable construction: A comprehensive review. Construction and Building Materials.
6. IPCC. (2022) Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability..