Space, Time, and Size Dependencies of Greenhouse Gas Payback Times of Wind Turbines in Northwestern Europe

The net greenhouse gas benefits of wind turbines compared to their fossil energy counterparts depend on location-specific wind climatology and the turbines' technological characteristics. Assessing the environmental impact of individual wind parks requires a universal but location-dependent method. Here, the greenhouse gas payback time for 4161 wind turbine locations in northwestern Europe was determined as a function of (i) turbine size and (ii) spatial and temporal variability in wind speed. A high-resolution wind atlas (hourly wind speed data between 1979 and 2013 on a 2.5 by 2.5 km grid) was combined with a regression model predicting the wind turbines' life cycle greenhouse gas emissions from turbine size. The greenhouse gas payback time of wind turbines in northwestern Europe varied between 1.8 and 22.5 months, averaging 5.3 months. The spatiotemporal variability in wind climatology has a particularly large influence on the payback time, while the variability in turbine size is of lesser importance. Applying lower-resolution wind speed data (daily on a 30 by 30 km grid) approximated the high-resolution results. These findings imply that forecasting location-specific greenhouse gas payback times of wind turbines globally is well within reach with the availability of a high-resolution wind climatology in combination with technological information.