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If you want to take a coal plant, you have to compare it with something that's comparable.

A coal plant is a 1000MW machinery. A wind turbine is in the order of 10MW. Also, turbines have a very low capacity factor so you have to double them to guarantee their output and combine them with storage. So it's 1 coal plant vs 200 turbines at the very least.

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But coal plants use an absurd amount of coal and everything they don't burn ends up as ash.

And have you been close to a big coal plant? They're massive. A coal plant probably used more land than 200 turbines and unlike turbines the land is unusable.

Coal plants use many times their mass in coal during their lifetime. If you're looking at total materials needed over the lifetime of the plant, I wouldn't be surprised if coal was 100X higher than 200 turbines.

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