And... Who cares? The world is working on eliminating greenhouse gases regardless of what any further study.
Who are you, Nancy Pelosi? :lol: Swapping CO2 for methane isn't reducing or eliminating jack-shit other than CO2.
Once again, here's the problem with your premise. Your average 2MW turbine contains about 200 tonnes of steel. Steel is produced using coal. Now, in order to meet just the annual increase in demand for power, you'd have to build about 350,000 2MW wind turbines every year. That's 70 million tonnes of steel and the associated coal burning that goes with it just to build wind turbines. Keep in mind that the 350,000 turbines per year are just to meet increasing annual demand. It does not take into account replacing current fossil fuel-powered generation.
Oh sure, the "reasoning" is you can use recycled steel to build them but at 70 million tonnes per year, that supply will dry up pretty quickly.
Each turbine also requires up to 900L of oil, and it ain't vegetable oil. That works out to 78.75 million
gallons of oil every year just for new turbines.
And by the by, when spacing between turbines is taken into account, 350,000 wind turbines take up about the same land space as Great Britain, including Ireland.
Next you have the natgas issue. Natgas has been used for years now to help provide flexibility in the power supply. Coal and oil also provide that ability as well but since we want to phase those out, we're stuck with methane, a GHG that is 25X more potent than CO2.
But that's not the only problem. Mating natgas to wind power makes the natgas plants far less efficient. You're not only using it for flexibility to meet increases in demand throughout the day, you also have to constantly make adjustments in output to make up for the vagaries of wind. This becomes analogous to driving a car. You get better fuel economy and produce fewer emissions and pollution when you can drive a nice steady speed. That's why mpg ratings are always higher for the highway than the city.
Phasing out coal and oil for power generation will eventually happen. But you won't ever phase out coal and oil completely until the supply runs out. Those pesky fossil fuels will still be around for a long, long time. Especially with all those nice accessible methane deposits that are absolutely essential for making wind power even remotely viable on more than just a local scale.
Solar is certainly better than wind but it also has its limitations. It's not unusual for an area or region to have heavy cloud cover along with some rain, or snow, for 3-4 days at a time. How you gonna generate power when the solar plants can't collect it? You better hope battery storage comes along a lot further than it is right now.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not entirely anti-wind/anti-solar. I just think they should concentrate on making it more readily available and affordable for property owners instead of trying to supply power generation with them on a commercial level and using it as a for-profit venture where consumers are
forced by govt to remain hooked to the grid. And why? Because, their cronies in the green energy sector would lose out on profits while the govt would lose out on taxes from individual bills as well as the taxes on the provider's profits.
It's one thing if it's a genuine public utility. It's quite another for govt to ensure the profits of a private corporation and its shareholders by forcing people to buy their power from them even if they are fully capable of being energy independent.