You know who looks at the economics of wind turbines? Companies that build wind turbines. The fact that these farms were all under construction means they pencil out just fine.. there's such bizarre strains of concern trolling on clean energy topics.
You say economics instead of emotion, but your last sentence is emotion.
If capex is your concern, explain the purpose of canceling an almost-complete farm.
If energy breakevens are your concern, explain how this breakevens compares against, e.g. oil liquids.
I live near both wind turbines and oil/gas fracking sites in Colorado. The wind turbines are far less obtrusive. Fracking sites produce a lot of noise and they try to hide them with these giant walls that look like a post-apocalyptic fort. On top of that, because they don't disclose their fracking fluids you always kind of have ground water contamination near your home on the back of your mind.
I'm not even against fracking but the alternatives to wind and solar are more a public nuisance to live around.
I love to look at the economics. The payback periods don’t look terrible. More importantly the market should decide what is good or not. I am all for removing subsidies but let the market decide the best path forward.
I live near one (no-USA) and honestly it doesn't bother me. It's a small price to pay to avoid ever-decreasing foreign-sourced oil/gas and insanely over-budget/over-schedule nuclear.
I do not understand why people think it’s exciting to drop into the comments and pointlessly lie to defend their favorite dictator. We know and you know that you didn’t think wind farms were ugly until it became necessary to defend Trump’s obsession; what do you hope to gain by pretending otherwise?
No one cared about the looks of wind turbines until they built some near Trump's golf course in Scotland. He hates them, and by pure and total chance, his base/cult now does too.
