• Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    If it’s being powered by wind, it’s not adding additional energy to the environment, at all. It all comes down to conservation of energy, and no chemical changes are occurring.

    Electrical energy is being generated by harvesting kinetic energy in the wind, that’s essentially just moving energy, converting it from one form to another. Energy can be swapped and converted around, but in the end, it almost always ends up turning into heat or light.

    That wind, one way or another was going to convert its energy into heat. Most often it does that by convection, causing water vapor in the air to change state, after condensing, the now warmer water release its heat into the ocean when it falls as rain.

    Turning a wind turbine to generate electricity, to run computers, is a much more elaborate route to take, but the result is the same. The wind is moving slower, a lower energy state, but the ocean is warmer, a higher energy state. It all evens out.

    Edit: I just realized, that sometimes that kinetic energy from wind contributes to storms and sometimes those storms generate lightning, and while most of the energy from lightning does turn into heat, some of that energy generates light, and some of that light shoots out into space (actually escaping the earth). So probably, higher wind speeds do result in cooling the earth a very little bit (but it’s likely negligible)