The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Wind Energy Deserves Some Love || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

I've bad mouthed solar power enough times for people to know where I stand, but why am I taking it easier on wind power?Join the Live Q&A on Feb. 7 by becoming an Analyst member on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/wind-energy-deserves-some-love

Hey all, Peter Zeyn here coming to you from just outside of Kingston at New Zealand. This is Lake Waukatipu. Today we're going to take an entry from the Patreon page, specifically. Let's see if I can get this quote right. You've talked a lot of shit about solar power and the green transition. That's a quote. But you've never really talked badly about wind. Why?

Is there something we should be worried about? There's just something we should be aware of. Short version of why the green transition is problematic in my point of view is that most of the equipment that has been put down to this point hasn't gotten in the right places. Most advanced countries tend to be in temperate zones with big swings between summer and winter, which means that things like solar are always going to be a disadvantage

because they can't provide baseloak. You know, sun goes down, yes, problem. Number two, winter is a problem. And places that are very, very sunny, like, say, Sicily are either too mountainous or too far from population centers. So if you're going to put solar panels up and say, Berlin, you will never pay down the carbon cost, much less the economic cost that it took to install the things in the first place. There's also a problem with raw materials.

The processed silicon that goes into PV cells is one of the most energy-intensive things that can be done by humans. The town per pound, it's something like 35, 40 times as carbon intenses of making steel. And a lot of that is done by slave labor in Jijang in China on top of that. It's fun. Wind doesn't have most of these problems. I mean, yes, there are obviously places in the world that are windier than others, and the geography of green power still matters. But in terms of raw materials, they do require a lot, but they require copper, which it's difficult for me to envision a world where there's a huge copper shortage. Zinc, which is spread around the world in terms of production and processing, so that doesn't go away.

And then chromium, which is not something that is particularly rare either. It's not that there aren't some sticking points, but there's nothing like you would have when you're looking at, say, electric vehicles or battery technology where just so much of the core material is relatively rare and in geographically concentrated positions. Second, there's the issue of improvement in the technology. Yes, solar has gotten incrementally better year-on-year for the last 30 years, and that is great. But wind? Wind, they've discovered that if you make a turbine tall enough, it doesn't even. even matter if it's windy on the ground. So we now have turbines going in that are 800 feet high and higher. And with that sort of range, you can actually tap into currents that are much stronger

and far more reliable than what you would get closer to the ground. And so in places like West Texas and Iowa, we have for a couple of years now already seen significant baseload power coming from wind. Base load versus intermittent. Let me explain that real quick. So baseload is You have it pretty much all day and you know the wind blows at night whereas intermittent means that when the wind stops you don't get power anymore wind used to be a primarily intermittent power source although you could get some at night solar will always be intermittent because you can only get it when the sun's out and you can only get it when it's not cloudy so whether it's a geography issue a

material issue or just the mechanics of what green tech is wind looks a lot more stable And then finally, there's a labor issue. Solar panels and all of the attendant things that go with it require fingers and eyes for their manufacture and especially assembly. Wind is oversimplifying here. A big turbine and a bunch of big blades, and then you're done. And those blades are typically some sort of carbon fiber,

which is something that's not particularly difficult to manufacture. So no matter what happens with the green transition, no matter what happens with the world of electricity moving forward, wind is a far more durable component of our future. And that's before you consider that it also generates a lot more electricity per dollar.

So for every dollar that you put into generating, say, solar power, you'd actually get twice as much electricity coming from wind. And that means in places, such as the wind belt in the United States, the Great Plains, wind has long been the cheapest source of power and has been driving other sources

of power out of business, especially once they started to address the intermittency issue. So, wind looks good, no matter where it happens to be, some places are better than others. Try to move there if you can or at least get a wire that takes the power to you. Oh, one more quick thing. Why you haven't heard this before is simply due to a combination of the Inflation Reduction Act and personal preferences. You see, the IRA provided cash for anyone who, or credits, tax credits, for anyone who could put up green tech. And while not everyone can have, say, a wind turbine at their house, anyone can put up solar panels. So wind turbines very rarely go to places that are not windy,

whereas solar panels often go to places that are not sunny because individuals could do it. So for example, the state in the United States was the highest penetration per capita of solar panels is Vermont, our least sunny state. And so just like Berlin, they will never generate enough electricity to pay down the carbon cost, much less the economic cost of installation. with wind you don't have that problem because you know you're not going to put one of these

turbines that's 800 feet tall on your roofs