Even though wind turbines offer emission-free energy, manufacturing, transporting and installing those turbines does create greenhouse gases. This week on Possibly we do the math and find that turbines deliver emission savings in less than a year.
Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.
My relatives know that I work on a podcast about climate change, so one of them asked me an interesting question. They said — wind turbines might create renewable energy, but don’t you need fossil fuels to make them? Is it really worth it in the end?
To find out, we had Christine Peng and Leo Nachamie look into this question. Welcome, Christine and Leo!
Christine Peng: Hi, Megan!
Leo Nachamie: Hello!
Megan Hall: OK, before we get started, I want to make sure— do wind turbines create greenhouse gas emissions?
Christine Peng: Great question! Let’s back up a bit. The way we get our energy right now, anytime you make something, the act of creating it releases some greenhouse gas emissions.
Megan Hall: Why is that?
Leo Nachamie: Because right now, the energy that we use to get materials and turn those materials into a product usually comes from burning fossil fuels.
Megan Hall: But what about wind turbines in particular?
Christine Peng: They don’t produce emissions when they’re generating electricity.
Leo Nachamie: But building them? That’s a different story.
Stephen Porder: There’s a whole bunch of emissions when you make it and install it again, because you’re using fossil fuels in that process.
Christine Peng: That’s Possibly’s founder, and Brown University’s provost for sustainability, Stephen Porder. He says most of the emissions come from mining and transporting materials and then using them to build the wind turbine.
Stephen Porder: And then you have to take it down and throw it away, or recycle it, or whatever. And there’s some emissions associated with that.
Megan Hall: So, the emissions aren’t from the turbine running, but from the process of making it, building it, and taking it down?
Leo Nachamie: Exactly.
Megan Hall: Okay, so if building a wind turbine still generates emissions, how do we know whether it’s actually better than coal or gas?
Leo Nachamie: To figure that out, we need to look at the total emissions that are created over the entire life of the wind turbine.
Christine Peng: Then we need to compare those emissions to how much electricity a wind turbine creates over that same amount of time.
Leo Nachamie: Luckily for us, someone already did those calculations.
Stephen Porder: So the National Renewable Energy Lab did a recent estimate, and they said, well, about 20 grams of CO2, maybe 30 per kilowatt hour per unit of electricity produced for a wind turbine.
Megan Hall: Is that a lot? Or a little?
Christine Peng: Right — 20 to 30 grams of Co2 doesn’t mean a lot to most of us. But here’s some perspective–
Stephen Porder: Compare that to a gas fired power plant. That number is closer to 500 compare it to a coal fired power plant, coal fire’s closer to 900, maybe 950.
Christine Peng: So basically, for every unit of electricity, coal can emit up to 45 times more CO2 than wind.
Megan Hall: Ok, so when you compare the emissions from wind turbines to fossil fuel, it’s not even close!
Leo Nachamie: In fact, on average, it only takes wind turbines 7 months of operating to offset the emissions of their manufacturing, installation, and disposal.
Christine Peng: And in the future, wind turbines could create even less emissions. Right now, we’re using fossil fuels for creating and getting rid of turbines because most of the US’s energy comes from fossil fuels. But that doesn’t have to be the case forever.
Leo Nachamie: Because if we switched to renewable energy to power those steps…
Christine Peng: We could lower those emissions even more.
Leo Nachamie: Stephen puts it this way:
Stephen Porder: If we can put more windmills and solar panels into our electricity production system, then the electricity we use for manufacturing will have lower and lower carbon footprint.
Christine Peng: So yeah, wind turbines aren’t perfect right now—building them takes fossil fuels. But they’re already way more climate friendly than coal or gas, the main fossil fuel sources of electricity.
Leo Nachamie: And here’s the bigger picture: the more wind energy we use to build the next round of clean energy, the closer we get to a system that’s creating even fewer greenhouse gases.
Megan Hall: Great! Thanks, Christine and Leo!
That’s it for today. You can find more information, or ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, at askpossibly.org. You can also subscribe to Possibly wherever you get your podcasts or follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, or Bluesky at “askpossibly”
Possibly is a co-production of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative, and the Public’s Radio.
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