The electric transmission loss is 8.7% per 1000 miles, so in reality it is a trivial amount compared to the 70% of the energy that gets wasted as heat in an internal combustion engine -- Our powerplants are spaced much less than 2000 miles apart, and the line losses are thus much less than this figure. For each one percent lost in transmission, one additional windmill per hundred would have to be built, or each windmill would have to be very slightly larger and produce 1% more.
Wind power has increased from 4 billion kilowatt hours in 2000 to 300 billion kilowatt hours in 2020 -- an increase of 7500%. It is now at about 8% of the mix, or the equivalent of 4 average US states. By midcentury the output will be many times larger. Solar power is currently less than 2%, but this is mostly due to the improvements in solar efficiency being very recent. Dams are less likely to be built -- some are in fact being removed, and nuclear may struggle to gain traction in this country, though it is expanding rapidly in China and to a lesser degree in Europe, and we all share the same atmosphere, and the same finite oil reserves.
The environmental impact of materials for windmills needs to be spread over the lifecycle of the windmills -- 200 years? Each of those windmills you see spinning away is roughly the same as a 4000 hp generator, so any discussion of the fossil fuels that go into making one needs to keep in mind how much electricity it will produce and for how long. Wave and tidal generation might also eventually become realistic, though they seem to be getting off to a slow start.
In my view the biggest worry is running out of oil, and not global warming. Look around you and count all the different products that contain petrochemicals. What do you want to make them out of when the oil is gone? And what do you want to fuel airliners with when the oil is gone? It just seems like such a waste to pour millions of barrels of this critical feedstock into gas tanks each day -- our civilization is very dependent on petroleum and we need to respect the fact that it is a nonrenewable resource.
Sheikh Zaki Yamani, the Saudi oil minister who died last week, said "The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil". Let's hope he was right -- Running out of oil before we are ready will be a disaster.
