There is no question that climate change is a problem that needs addressing. The Earth is warming at a rate ten times faster than the typical speed following an ice age, carbon dioxide emissions likewise are 250 times higher than they should be, ice sheets are shrinking, the ocean is warming, and extreme weather-related events are becoming more common, according to NASA. The biggest culprit in these changes is the use of fossil fuels to power civilization, making up over 75% of greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90% of carbon dioxide emissions, according to the United Nations. To solve this problem, people must rethink the ways in which energy is produced. In the hopes of helping the planet, it can be easy to label all energy sources as either good or bad, but it is important to remember that the world is a complex place.
While green energies like wind show potential, the future of green energy lies elsewhere. Wind energy is not a candidate that deserves serious consideration as a replacement for the modern day fossil fuel industry.
Wind energy currently makes up 10% of all energy produced in the United States, nearly half of all green energy. In addition, wind energy contributed $148 billion to the economy in the last decade in the form of investments in wind energy developments, according to the American Clean Power Organization. By comparison, natural gas makes up 43% of American energy and contributed nearly $2 trillion to the economy in 2021 alone, according to the American Petroleum Institute. This means that every watt of energy produced by natural gas contributes nearly three times as much to the economy as wind energy.
Economically speaking, fossil fuels are unequivocally better than their green energy counterparts. While green energies are getting cheaper, they have not yet reached a level to feasibly replace fossil fuels. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, natural gas costs anywhere from $922-2630 per kW, while wind power costs $1,462 per kW on shore (land-based wind turbines) and $3,285-5,908 offshore (sea-based wind turbines). At best, wind energy is 158% times more expensive than natural gas and at worst, 640% as much.
Wind farms require vast amounts of land in order to produce adequate quantities of energy. To serve 1000 households with energy, wind takes up an average of six acres. Natural gas on the other hand only takes up 0.2 acres of land to produce an equivalent amount of energy, according to the Natural Gas Supply Association. The difference in land needed makes natural gas 30 times more land efficient than wind energy; alternatively, in the same six acres, natural gas could power 30,000 homes compared to wind energy’s 1,000.
Wind farms, while a step in the right direction, are unlikely to reach the efficiency needed to replace natural gas and other fossil fuels any time soon. While attention needs to be given to restructuring current, problematic energy sources, that attention should be directed to other alternative sources of energy, rather than wind energy. The main contender against typical green energies, such as wind or solar, is nuclear energy. According to the Natural Gas Supply Association, nuclear energy requires one-tenth of the land wind energy does to power 1000 homes. Nuclear energy already comprises almost 20% of America’s energy production, according to the Energy Information Administration and contributes nearly $43 billion to the economy annually according to the United States Nuclear Industry Council. Nuclear power already requires less land, produces more energy, and contributes more to the economy than wind energy, the largest of all green energies. It may seem that natural gas and nuclear power pose much greater environmental risks than wind energy, but people tend to over-exaggerate their danger. Natural gas is primarily methane, a clean-burning fuel produced from means other than harvesting fossil fuels. When burned, methane takes carbon out of the atmosphere. The problem arises when unburned methane makes it into the atmosphere, according to SoCalGas. Because methane is a by-product of many other processes, the ability to capture and burn it for energy is actually a net positive for the environment. Nuclear energy is one of the largest emissions free sources of energy; even the nuclear waste it generates isn’t dangerous to the environment. Nuclear waste is already both safely contained and recycled to produce even more energy, according to the Office of Nuclear Energy.
While wind energy has the potential to supply a part of the United States’ energy demands, it has not yet reached the same efficiency that fuels like nuclear energy or clean-burning natural gasses have. For the future of clean energy developments, people must abandon the idea that green means good needs to be abandoned to focus on energies that show the most promise.
