PolitiFact – A wind turbine can produce in months, not years, more energy than was needed to manufacture it

Wind turbines, an alternative to fossil fuels, convert wind energy into electricity — about 10% of all electricity produced in the U.S.

An image shared on Instagram made several claims about wind turbines, including that they’re actually a big waste.

“The turbine has to spin continually for over four years just to replace the energy it took to manufacture it,” said the image, which included a picture of a wind turbine over water.

“Annnd this is why I don’t take climate hysteria seriously,” the poster wrote.

The post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Modern windmills generally produce in months more energy than was needed to manufacture them, experts,  research studies and other fact-checkers found.

There are many steps in the making of a wind turbine. The raw materials need to be mined, those materials need to be turned into rotors and towers, and those parts need to be shipped. 

“Wind turbines have positive net energy payback within about a year,” said Ken Caldeira, a global ecology senior scientist with the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California.

That’s consistent with reporting by USA Today and Newswise.

Here’s a look at some of the research we found that was published by university researchers in peer-reviewed journals:

• A 2022 study by Brazilian researchers found energy payback was achieved in about six months.

• A 2019 study by European researchers found that the payback on onshore steel wind-turbine towers was four to six months. 

• A 2017 study by Taiwanese researchers found the energy payback period was 13 to 14 months.

• The highest estimate we found was a bit under six years, in a 2019 study by civil engineering professors at the University of Texas at Arlington.

“In general, as technology advances, the energy payback times will decline,” said Ryan Wiser, senior scientist in the Electricity Markets and Policy Department at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California.

Most of the evidence we found on energy payback says it takes a wind turbine operating for months, not years, to produce more energy than was needed to manufacture it.

We rate the claim False.