[Greenbuilding] between a rock and a shoulder season

[Reuben Deumling]

On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 11:12 AM, Maren Leyla Cooke <maren.cooke at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I think the key here is that Laren (and others including me, for the
> excess need over our solar capacity) is using 100% wind from a grid that
> also includes nonrenewables.
>

Although intermittency and load shape asymmetry are issues, they are not *my
*chief concern. Pumped storage, shifting loads, etc. are conceivable ways
to improve on those.
What troubles me is our grid-scale renewable infrastructure's complete
reliance on fossil fuels. While some clever German folks have started
building wind turbine towers out of wood (amazing effort -
http://www.timbertower.de/en/), most every material, component, and all
upstream inputs (steel, concrete, plastic, aluminum, copper, rare metals)
are extracted with, made from, or rely in other ways heavily on large and
continued inputs of fossil fuels. I wish it were otherwise.
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