LOW-TECH MAGAZINE

How to Make Wind Power Sustainable Again

For more than two thousand years, windmills were built from recyclable or reusable materials: wood, stone, brick, canvas, metal. When – electricity producing – wind turbines appeared in the 1880s, the materials didn’t change.

It’s only since the arrival of plastic composite blades in the 1980s that wind power has become the source of a toxic waste product that ends up in landfills.

New wood production technology and design makes it possible to build larger wind turbines almost entirely out of wood again – not just the blades, but also the rest of the structure. This would solve the waste issue and make the manufacturing of wind turbines largely independent of fossil fuels and mined materials. A forest planted in between the wind turbines could provide the wood for the next generation of wind turbines.

Reinventing the Small Wind Turbine

Many commercially available small wind turbines with plastic blades and steel towers are infamous for their low reliability, high embodied energy, and limited power output.

Building them out of wood can address these issues. Because of their aesthetic appeal, and thanks to the ability to produce them locally, small wooden wind turbines can also improve the public acceptance of wind power.

Furthermore, innovation in tower design facilitates the installation of small wind turbines, reducing the need for concrete foundations and heavy machinery. 

Image: A wind turbine with wooden blades. Source: EAZ Wind.

Low-tech Magazine: The Printed Website

After 12 years, Low-tech Magazine finally makes the jump from web to paper.

The first result is a 710-page perfect-bound paperback which is printed on demand and contains 37 of the most recent articles from the website (2012 to 2018).

A second volume, collecting articles published between 2007 and 2011, will appear later this year.

Heat your House with a Mechanical Windmill

Renewable energy production is almost entirely aimed at the generation of electricity. However, we use more energy in the form of heat, which solar panels and wind turbines can produce only indirectly and relatively inefficiently. 

A solar thermal collector skips the conversion to electricity and supplies renewable thermal energy in a direct and more efficient way.

Much less known is that a mechanical windmill can do the same in a windy climate -- by oversizing its brake system, a windmill can generate lots of direct heat through friction. A mechanical  windmill can also be coupled to a mechanical heat pump, which can be cheaper than using a gas boiler or an electric heat pump driven by a wind turbine.

Keeping Some of the Lights On: Redefining Energy Security

As a society depends more on energy sources for its daily functioning, it becomes more vulnerable if the supply of energy is interrupted. This obvious fact is ignored in current strategies to achieve energy security, making them counter-productive.

How Circular is the Circular Economy?

The circular economy – the newest magical word in the sustainable development vocabulary – promises economic growth without destruction or waste. However, the concept only focuses on a small part of total resource use and does not take into account the laws of thermodynamics.