Driving through Amarillo on I-40, the number of windmills on the plains compared to even two years ago is mind-blowing. Saw lots of trucks carrying new blades etc. as well.

Where do all those blades go when they reach end of life?

Currently they go in landfills, but there are programs[1] starting up to recycle them.

[1]: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/ge-announces-first-us-wind-...

A giant graveyard outside Sweetwater, Texas. It's a blight in every way. You cannot recycle this stuff.

Are you talking about this?

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It’s a field about 600x600 feet. I wouldn’t call that “giant”, it’s about the size of a typical warehouse and certainly smaller than most landfills. And according to some brief searches on the internet, they are indeed being recycled.

I didn't know they can be recycled, and that is not the only graveyard. I appreciate the fact that we have differing opinions on the size of giant!

Iowa comes close. Sure it is a third, but on vastly less land area.

Texas has 5X the population of Denmark and 5X the wind energy generation. That doesn’t sound like a great justification for your smug comment. Also, that is current generation as the rate of increase of wind and solar appears to far outstrip Denmark on a per capita basis. If the WSJ is reliable, Texas is supposed to add an additional ~17GW of solar by 2023, reaching 21GW![1] If they reach that it’d beat Denmark’s 2030 goal by 23% and 7 years on a per capita basis.[2]

1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/solar-power-booms-in-texas-1160...

2. https://um.dk/en/news/newsdisplaypage/?newsid=25147b44-3dce-...

Per capita doesn't seem like the most useful measure here unless you're expecting people to spin the turbines by hand. Texas has (by GP's numbers) 16 times the land area and 2.5x the annual sunshine hours [1,2] (given Texas's proximity to the equator relative to Denmark, I'd be shocked if those hours didn't confer significantly more power too) but "only" 5x the generation?

Edit: Of course, it's 5x the wind power. For solar power in Texas and Denmark the difference is about 4x - 4,324.3 versus 1,079 MW [3, 4] so the point stands that Texas still has a way to go relative to the resources available to them.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_sunshine_dur...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark#Climate

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Denmark

4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Texas

> Per capita doesn't seem like the most useful measure here unless you're expecting people to spin the turbines by hand.p

“Percentage of energy generated” is probably better, but per-capita is better than per-acre. Broadly speaking, people use power, not cornfields.

Not when acres directly correlate with the amount of energy being generated. The Sahara has very few people but would be ripe energy-generation space.

I think far-off deserts aren't nearly lofty enough in the context of which nations are furthest ahead in renewable energy generation...

Why not set the baseline with Mercury? That's an entire planet with much more solar capacity than any measly desert!

I mean, if we're going for complete absurdity why not build a Dyson Sphere?

Getting back into the real world (and the original point, although accidentally I think you've made my point that energy generated per-capita isn't relevant) and putting aside that there are actual thoughts to build a solar farm in the north Sahara [1]...

Texas has lots of surface area currently used by agriculture so while it's cute to suggest cornfields don't need electrical power there's a conversation about whether there's space which could productively generate power and send it over the grid which the rest of the state (and through HVDC interconnects, the rest of North America) is connected to?

1: https://theconversation.com/solar-panels-in-sahara-could-boo...

Texas' population is 29 million. Denmark's is 5.8 million. So the scale is remarkably equivalent.

Why are you comparing figures like that? Is the land itself using the energy generated from those turbines?