Those faaaabulous "wind turbines"

MidAmerican Energy builds "wind farms"--collections of wind "turbines" that produce...well that's a great question.

They do produce electricity, but it takes more  energy to make the things than they'll every generate in their lifetimes.

Really.  Seriously.

Democrat: "Dat not possible!  Cuz if dat wuz true--if dey make less electricity than the energy needed to make 'em--why would all dem SMAHT pipo buy 'em, eh?  Answer me dat!  Neener neener neener!  You dumb!"

Ahhh yes, the classic response of people who don't know jack about actual energy--or finance, or tax law, or...well, anything except Taylor Swift and Dancing with the Stars.

Do let me continue.

You're about to see that "wind farms" make no economic sense except for a corrupt law that gives tax credits to the builders, AND forces utilities to buy electricity they produce at a far higher price than the average.

So...MidAmerican Energy has the word "energy" in its name, right?  So they must know a LOT about energy, eh?  And they just announced they were about to build the tallest wind turbine in the US:
  Imagine a 33-story building--a football field turned on its end.  Now put a 100,000-pound generator on top, with a huge side load at the top of the tower.
  The base will need almost 400 cubic yards of concrete to keep it from tipping over.  A cubic yard of concrete weighs about 4,000 pounds, so that...um...800 TONS of concrete, reinforced by roughly 30 TONS of steel "rebar."

The amount of CO2 produced by those two things alone is staggering.  Then there's the acres of fiberglass--literally tens of thousands of miles of glass fibers--in the blades.  A blade the length of a football field contains, oh, about 60,000 pounds of glass fiber.  Making fiberglass takes about 110 megajoules per kg.

MidAmerican's blades are actually modest in size by today's standards--just over 200 feet long.  The biggest blades are longer than a football field and weigh 110 metric tons, about half of that being glass fiber.  A metric ton is 1,000 kg.  So the biggest blades contain roughly 55,000 kg of glass, at 110 megajoules per kg.

Starting to get the picture yet?

Oh, and all the numbers for the MidAmerican windmill are for a modest 2.5 KW "nameplate" rating, meaning that's what it produces in a 30 mph wind.  As you can guess, that doesn't happen very often, and the average power produced by all "wind turbines" is less than 30% of "rated capacity."

Now: MidAmerican Energy is owned by a smart guy--Warren Buffet, founder and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway.  And here's what he says about why a company he owns builds wind farms:

"U.S. tax law says we get a tax credit for building wind farms.  The more we build, the lower our taxes.  That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make economic sense without the tax credit.”

Democrat: "NOOooo, dat not possible!  Buffet must be mistaken!  All gud Americans know wind farms are guuud!  Time Magazine and MSNBC have been telling us dat fo' years now!  Dey wouldn't lie!  So Warren Buffet must be wrong!  After all, he's even older than our president, so...wait, nevermind."

Starting to get the pic...nevermind.

Source.
 
https://energyskeptic.com/2020/900-tons-of-material-to-build-just-1-windmill/