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mad_method_man t1_ixm26e3 wrote

theyre good, but theres a few downsides

comparatively low energy, you need a lot of land and wind turbines. keep in mind, these things are huge since its more efficient to make the biggest, structurally sound fans you can (which is about the size of a football field). at the end of life turbines are basically impossible to deal with, they go in the trash and likely the infrastructure to recycle these things is decades off, but we wont see the impacts of this for at least 10-30 years, and obviously, you need to build them in a windy area.

some downsides that arent really issues but get brought up a lot, they dont create that much noise, they dont kill that many birds, they are a eyesore but thats an aesthetic thing, they could influence local climate as they do slow down winds, but we're not entirely sure there is an impact at all, they also sometimes catch on fire but its mostly a danger to maintenance workers.

from an environmental standpoint, i still think more nuclear plants need to be built, but wind is a good choice when there is a viable location. its just not this magic energy device that spins forever. these things need maintenance and eventually break down and just get buried. solar suffers similar issues as well.

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