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Are wind farms good at reducing carbon emissions, not so much!
Are wind farms good at reducing carbon emissions, not so much! Wind farms will create more carbon dioxide, say scientists http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/9889882/Wind-farms-will-create-more-carbon-dioxide-say-scientists.html
"Thousands of Britain’s wind turbines will create more greenhouse
gases than they save, according to potentially devastating scientific
research to be published later this year.
The finding, which
threatens the entire rationale of the onshore wind farm industry, will
be made by Scottish government-funded researchers who devised the
standard method used by developers to calculate “carbon payback time”
for wind farms on peat soils.
Wind farms are typically built on upland sites, where peat soil is common. In Scotland alone, two thirds of all planned onshore wind development is on peatland. England and Wales also have large numbers of current or proposed peatland wind farms.
But peat is also a massive store of carbon, described as Europe’s
equivalent of the tropical rainforest. Peat bogs contain and absorb
carbon in the same way as trees and plants — but in much higher
quantities.
British peatland stores at least 3.2billion tons of
carbon, making it by far the country’s most important carbon sink and
among the most important in the world.
Wind farms, and the miles of
new roads and tracks needed to service them, damage or destroy the peat
and cause significant loss of carbon to the atmosphere, where it
contributes to climate change."
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