This Letter to the Editor, written by CO2 Coalition Member Euan Mearns, was published in The Press and Journal, December 11, 2023:

Sir, John Kirk (letters 5 Dec) and Alistair Ballantyne (letters 6 Dec) muse about future use of lubricating oil in wind turbines. This rather misses the elephant in the room. A 1.8megawatt onshore wind turbine weighs about 164 tons. The materials comprise concrete (foundations), steel (tower and nacelle), speciality metals (magnets), copper (generators) and composites (blades).

The raw materials need to be mined using gigantic steel diggers and dumper trucks, the mined materials need to be ground using gigantic steel grinding machines before being refined in a furnace. In the case of steel (trucks, machines and tower) the iron ore is mixed with coal in a blast furnace in order to reduce the ore to metal.

The amount of fossil fuels embedded in wind turbines is vast. In order to declare wind turbines are sustainable and green, let us see all of the aforementioned mining, fabrication and installation being done using only intermittent wind energy. It is possible to use an electric arc furnace to smelt iron ore. And I’m quite sure Elon Musk will be happy to make battery powered dumper trucks. Let us not forget that all the lithium and cobalt in the gigantic battery should also be mined using only wind energy.

Dr Euan Mearns

Aberdeen