Massive amounts of carbon fiber used in wind blades is coming from … oil. So same problem here. And it becomes unusable toxic waste.
So many people are worried about small scale downsides to technologies that are trying to address truly massive problems.
But to make that case you'd actually have to do the next step of assessing the relative scales of how much oil gets used in the creation of windmill components compared to an alternative case where the energy is generated with traditional fossil fuel infrastructure.
I feel like if we're going to bring up the fossil fuel inputs into the creation of critical components for windmills, the mandatory next sentence has to be an acknowledgment of the relative scales of consumption in both cases. Otherwise it's a throwaway line with no context and no clear upshot.
If oil inputs were so massive, the cost of a turbine (or by implication the electricity it generates) should be MUCH higher. Just guessing, but probably orders of magnitude higher.
We should switch, even if we don't convert to renewables. (Which we absolutely should)
The scale of issue in dealing with a bunch of solid waste you can just bury compared to climate change is insignificant.
> Carbon Rivers’ recycling uses pyrolysis—a process during which organic components of a composite (e.g., resins or polymers) are broken down with intense heat in the absence of oxygen and separated from the inorganic fiberglass reinforcement.
> The process converts organic products back into raw hydrocarbon products called syngas and pyrolysis oil, which can be used for energy production.
Which in a video I can't find they talk about piping this to a concrete plant that was burning it for their heating needs