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And many do not. So? Considering that you want to build very large grids to smooth over your generation (my country is a part of a synchronous grid supplying almost half a billion people with electricity), it's very hard to argue with "but where will we put these things?", because in almost all cases you will find a place.


Norway is one of the most sparsely populated areas of Europe, still, land based windmills are extremely unpopular in rural areas.

And sea based ones in the Norwegian trench are not exactly cheap to build, due to rough seas and the depth of the water.


You have stated that land use is «practically irrelevant» with the exception of «Singapore or the like». It is not.


It is practically irrelevant in the sense that you can virtually always find an acceptable place to put a wind turbine in in a several hundred kilometer radius. While there are places with very densely populated territories, there are no places with territories that are very densely populated over hundreds of thousands of square kilometers.


"an acceptable place"

Look at the situation in Germany. "An" acceptable place, yes, but given how many of the Windräder you need, finding enough such places is a different task, because many less populated places are wildlife refuges.

And yes, German wind power is expanding into old growth forests and mountains, which provokes embittered fights with classical nature protectionists who do not want to allow such damage to the last remnants of preserved landscape. The entire "do we need to protect local vulnerable species or do we have to sacrifice them to reduce global climate change by 0.1 per cent" debate is very bitter and as the Green party leans towards the latter, it may yet lead to emergence of an anti-Green pro-Naturschutz movement, which, in all likelihood, would be co-opted by the far right.


There are no 'last remnants of preserved landscape' in Germany. 97% of all forests in Germany are Wirtschaftswald i.e. commercially used forests.


Germany has more problems with north-south transmission lines than with places to put wind turbines in. Their windy coast would serve them perfectly well if they managed to push those transmission projects through.


> Their windy coast

In fact, it remains a good idea to place wind farms at least far away at sea, unless you have the comfort of hosting deserts.




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