With the recent approvalof an enormous windfarm off Cape Cod and with the formation of large wind power companiesto meet demand it would appear these “alternative” energy plans could have a big impact on global power producing initiatives. I recently entered a conversation with a group of grad students on wind power v. fossil fuels. One major of wind over oil is that if a wind turbine breaks out at sea and sinks down to the ocean floor it won’t be spilling 10,000 barrels of oil a day into the water.
Obviously, there is more money to be made in the buying and selling of fossil fuels, that is a given that I will start this conversation with. One thing I have been working on lately is studying the ways people give money to alternative energy. I’ve been looking into whether or not people care where their power comes from if they always have the ability to turn a switch and make a light come on. Personally, it costs me $117 a month for gas and electricity; I would happily pay the same amount if my power came from a wind farm. Would you?
Aesthetically speaking, one major gripe about wind farms is that they are not pleasing to the eye [as if an oil rig is any more or less pleasing]…to mitigate this they are placing them below the horizon so those who live on the coasts won’t see them. I think if we could produce power for our coastal cities alone with wind and or solar, it would greatly reduce the current demand for fossil fuels.
Do you care where your power comes from?
Would you rather a wind farm off the coast or an oil rig? Why?
Define “fossil fuel.” Electricity comes from coal, not oil. And there are no offshore coal mines.
Moving away from fossil fuels in general is a good thing (as long as it’s affordable and the net environmental damage is less.) But wind farms vs. oil platforms is a false dichotomy; the two resources are used for entirely different purposes.
And if we had enough clean electricity we could power our cars with that instead of gasoline, thus replacing a large part of our current fossil fuel use. I’m not saying it happens the first year, but we’d be moving in the right direction.
Me too (thinks they’re kind of pretty). It helps that they’re white. I wouldn’t feel the same if they were John Deere green or fluorescent orange, or black. And they’re tall and delicate, well-proportioned. There’s a science fiction feel to them, like something from the future, or another planet.
Plus, the windfarms here are in the middle of nowhere and the windmills are fairly spread out – there’s no clutter. I might feel differently if they were in metropolitan areas, which already have too much clutter.
But it depends on how “massive” the farms might get. I wouldn’t want to see any area absolutely covered with them.
At least some comes from oil I think, I’ve seen that mentioned in some of the recent discussions on alternate energy & oil.
Between the two, I’d definitely choose a wind farm. They do less damage when they break. I actually find little to choose between an oil platform and a wind farm in appearance; I just like the look of humongous engineering projects. As long as they aren’t spilling black goo on everything, at least.
I’d pay a 10% surcharge to my electrical bill, if I knew that the money was going to pay for wind or solar generated power. The electric company would have to prove that this was above and beyond what they are already required to buy, and not just a way for them to point at windmills already being paid for.
I might consider more than that, if you had a compelling story about what the money was being used for.
The op question really doesn’t make sense. It’s apples and oranges.
Having said that, wind farms are expensive maintenance hogs which no sane person would want to live next to. If it’s truly a windy section of ocean and it’s at least a mile offshore then bring them on. Better offshore than on land. Oil rigs are just the opposite. Open up places like ANWAR to move oil with the pipeline that already exists to move it.
Need both. We have plenty of electrical generation capacity in this country already. Sure, it’s good to go green in electrical generation, so I don’t oppose wind farms at all. But we have an obvious need for crude oil, and so that’s where my priority lies. Accidents aside, it’s better to get our oil here than from, e.g., Venezuela.
I’d like to see some numbers on how much power wind actually generates, but the aesthetic argument doesn’t sway me at all. I think they’re cool looking and have a bizarrely high number of pictures of windmills from various trips & travels.
Our local power company has thisvery thing. We can add a few dollars to our power bill to help build wind farms. They’re also talking about building a tidal power plant off the Oregon coast somewhere.
On a clear day I can see wind turbines out my back door. At night, I can see them all blinking their red lights in unison like some invading hoard straight out of War of the Worlds. I have several hundred of them scattered around within 20 miles of my home.
I like them, and I don’t think of them as an eyesore at all. Now, I wouldn’t want one 50 feet out my back door though. I have hear some complaints from those that live near them that there is some getting used to the humming and whooshing noises associated with them, but for the most part, if you are that close to them to hear them, you are getting some sort of payment from the wind farm company.
Seeing the blades at ground-level on a specially built truck really gives you a better idea of the size of these things. When they are already erected, you lose some of the perspective of how truly massive they are.
