Originally Posted by
hooCycles
Are you proposing that electricity replace "scraping oil out of tar sands, or fracking"?
As @
asmac said perfectly, electricity is simply a means of transferring energy. The only way that you could 'capture' electricity is maybe in a superconducting loop.
You could also consider a capacitor 'stored' electricity. What we should be talking about are the stable sources of energy that we actually harvest to generate electricity or shaft power.
I could use my petrol engine to run a generator to generate electricity to then feed a motor to generate shaft power, but it would probably be more efficient to simply use the petrol engine's shaft power. Of course, a massive turbine at a power plant is probably more efficient than a 3-liter automobile engine at burning fossil fuels.
I am suggesting that the notion of "ugly windfarms" doesn't hold a candle to what we are doing to the environment for oil... And that we had better find some other way to harness other sources of energy, vice simply "burning whatever we can get our hands on..." be it wood, coal or oil. Wind power works at night, wave energy works at night, hydroelectric works at night... just to name a few renewable sources...
But ultimately "ugly windfarms" are nothing compared to the scraped lands and environmental disasters left behind in the pursuit of oil.