Ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all is one of the Sustainable Development Goals. Some countries have therefore invested significantly in wind energy, but emissions, which is a common measure for sustainability in this context, have not fallen significantly. Reductions between 20% and 40% are typical. We therefore test the hypothesis that wind energy reduces emissions compared to using gas turbines when life-cycle emissions are included. The Irish grid is studied due to its record-high wind penetration. The model is based on high resolution grid data covering four years and input from 828 Life-Cycle Assessment cases to allow detailed analysis of demand, supply, life-cycle emissions and their changes due to the increased ramping of gas turbines and increased grid reserves required to maintain grid reliability when wind is deployed. Indirect effects are included to some extent. The model is sampled 10,000 times using Monte Carlo simulations. The results show that emissions are reduced by 10–20%, which supports the hypothesis. However, with an average wind penetration of 34% in 2019, reaching many times the 65% limit for non-synchronous generation set by the system operator to maintain grid reliability, such modest reductions logically imply that achieving an affordable, low-carbon grid using wind together with fossil energy balancing is infeasible with today’s technology, emissions and costs. This key finding is transferable to other grids where wind has large penetration and requires fossil energy balancing. Thus, wind energy is not sustainable when balanced by fossil fuel generators.

确保所有人都能获得负担得起的、可靠的、可持续的现代能源是可持续发展目标之一。因此，一些国家对风能进行了大量投资，但作为这种背景下可持续发展的常用措施，排放量并未显着下降。减少 20% 到 40% 是典型的。因此，当包括生命周期排放时，我们测试了与使用燃气轮机相比风能减少排放的假设。爱尔兰电网因其创纪录的风力渗透率而受到研究。该模型基于四年的高分辨率网格数据和来自 828 个生命周期评估案例的输入，可以对需求、供应、由于燃气轮机的爬坡增加和在部署风力时保持电网可靠性所需的电网储备增加而导致的生命周期排放及其变化。间接影响在一定程度上包括在内。该模型使用蒙特卡罗模拟进行了 10,000 次采样。结果表明，排放量减少了 10-20%，这支持了假设。然而，由于 2019 年平均风电渗透率为 34%，达到了系统运营商为保持电网可靠性而设定的非同步发电 65% 限制的许多倍，这种适度的降低在逻辑上意味着实现负担得起的低碳电网使用以当今的技术、排放和成本，风能与化石能源的平衡是不可行的。这一关键发现可转移到其他风能渗透率大且需要化石能源平衡的电网。因此，当由化石燃料发电机平衡时，风能是不可持续的。