Comments on: Wind turbines pay back coal use in one month http://www.ewea.org/blog/2012/02/wind-turbines-pay-back-coal-use-in-one-month/ Breath of fresh air Sat, 15 Jun 2013 10:44:10 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Zoë Casey http://www.ewea.org/blog/2012/02/wind-turbines-pay-back-coal-use-in-one-month/#comment-12620 Zoë Casey Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:32:16 +0000 http://www.ewea.org/blog/?p=2885#comment-12620 Thank you for your comment. We are of course aware of the document you mention, which we also used for our calculations. But there is still a remarkable difference between the two calculations.
Moreover, the WCA did not specify what product lifetime they considered, no methodology was revealed.
The focus on the manufacturing process aimed at presenting a distorted assessment of the wind turbine product – decommissioning of the turbine, recycling, end of life policies were inexplicably excluded from the assessment
A wind turbine, over a 20-year turbine lifetime, will return over 30 times more energy to society than it consumed during the manufacturing, operation and recycling process

]]> By: World Coal Association http://www.ewea.org/blog/2012/02/wind-turbines-pay-back-coal-use-in-one-month/#comment-12588 World Coal Association Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:01:46 +0000 http://www.ewea.org/blog/?p=2885#comment-12588 Thanks for drawing attention to the World Coal Association infographic.

The figures WCA cite in the graphic are not ‘way above the reality’ as you suggest – as referenced in the graphic, they are in fact taken from Vestas, a leading manufacturer of wind turbines, in a publicly accessible document.

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