Sir, – Chris Horn (“Offshore wind farm technology is not particularly green when its ‘whole of life’ is considered”, Innovation, May 25th) catalogues the imperfections of offshore wind technology, but offers little in the way of comparison or scale to provide context to the headline’s assertion. Gearbox faults, blade wear and ice are real issues, but they are not catastrophic pitfalls for some radically new technology. They are the bread and butter of wind energy engineering. They can be costed into the industry’s plans, based on decades of experience and gradual progress towards today’s colossal machines. Average downtime for blade repair is reported in hours per year per blade, and there are multiple anti-icing and de-icing solutions which enable wind farms to be productive in cold regions such as northern Sweden.
The only data point in the article that even superficially supports the headline claim is the projected 325,000 tonnes per year of end-of-life turbine blades in the EU. Let’s place this big number on a relative scale: 325,000 tonnes is about half the mass of EU non-recycled automotive scrap. If we put every blade in landfill, it would add less than 1 per cent to current EU municipal landfill. Even if we burn every worn-out blade, it would be less than 0.2 per cent of the tonnage of Diesel fuel burned every year. We won’t do that, because there are promising approaches for recycling and repurposing blades, as Dr Horn points out. Wind energy may not meet standards of absolute perfection, but it is by far the most mature, rapidly deployable, and cost-effective technology offering low-carbon energy to northern Europe.
Against this background, it is not only simplistic, but inaccurate, to proclaim in a headline that offshore wind energy is “not particularly green”. Our future energy supply is an existential question that requires rigorous analysis of the available options. – Yours, etc,
Dr NATHAN QUINLAN,
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School of Engineering,
University of Galway.