One externality you did not include was the cost of decommisioning different plants and restoring the land. I probably would not have thought about it either, except I talked with a nice man at a swedish environmental NGO. He told me how they had been pushing for all-steel structures (or at least a lot of metal) for wind-power, when swedish concrete giants had wanted to build wind-farm on concrete platforms. The reason for this was that as long as it was fairly pure metals, it would in all probability be worth it to harvest the scrap metal if and when it was decommisioned. Otherwise they might leave concrete plates all over.
Now there was a organisation that was thinking ahead. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
The cost of taking them down is not so high on a per turbine basis; you should also expect that in a few years, most useful sites will have been taken, and turbiens will be taken down - to put bigger ones in the same, already approved, spot... In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Anyway that is good news, but I was actually more thinking of possible lingering environmental effects from nuclear and coal plants sites. I do not know what they might be, but I guess the dismantling of Barsebäck here in Sweden might give a hint.
If there are such effects it would of course push the calculus in favor windpower. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
