© Modvion It seems that you can build just about anything out of wood. While researching the carbon footprint of steel production for a lecture recently, I came across the line "it takes 200 tons of steel to make a wind turbine" – a justification for steel being green. It reminded me of a trope going around a few years ago where Thomas Homer-Dixon was misquoted as saying: "A two-megawatt windmill contains 260 tonnes of steel requiring 170 tonnes of coking coal and 300 tonnes of iron ore, all mined, transported and produced by hydrocarbons. A windmill could spin until it falls apart and never generate as much energy as was invested in building it." TreeHugger Mike demonstrated this wasn’t true , and Homer-Dixon wasn’t too happy about it either , but the steel industry is still pushing the idea that they are essential to a green future. To which Swedish company Modvion says, Oh yeah? We can build a wind turbine tower out of wood! There are actually many advantages to this. Not only does it avoid the carbon footprint of making all that steel, but because it is transported in sections rather than as complete tubes, it […]
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