Human activities release calories into the atmosphere, warming up the environment where people initially lived in equilibrium with the huge quantities of energy received from the sun, and sent back to the outer space. Fortunately, there exists an energy-efficient way to slow down and reduce that global warming through the use of wind turbines, solar panels, and hydraulic turbines to capture and sequester atmospheric calories. Laboratory tests have demonstrated that when a specific system receives energy from its outside world, it will warm up, and if part of the incoming energy is sequestered, the warming is slowed down and reduced, provided the converted energy is not released back into the system. More specifically, actual temperature data and thermodynamic laws confirm that operating wind farms can cool the atmosphere after air kinetic energy is converted into electrical energy and then definitively sequestered. Cooling the atmosphere is further aided by the positive feedback loop governing the decrease of CO2 and H2O vapor concentrations, and the subsequent decrease of the greenhouse effect. Additionally, cooling the atmosphere helps resolve the intermittency problem of renewable energy.

In 2023 the average rate of human-made energy consumption was ~21 TW.  During the night when the sun is not visible, the human-made energies released to the environment are significant, representing 1/3 of the total energy released.  However, this energy originates only from regions where humans live, i.e., a small part of the total Earth’s surface.  The amount of incoming solar radiation energy the Earth receives from the sun is huge (~173,000 TW), with significant parts of it reflected by clouds and by the Earth’s surface, or radiated into the outer space as long wave infrared energy.  There is thus sufficient renewable energy available to drive the energy sinks built to absorb all the calories human activities can release, i.e. at the rate of 21 TW. 

To compare with these magnitudes of energy rates, the cooling of the total atmospheric air mass alone, at a rate of 0.11 °C/decade, requires only 1.8 TW cooling power, assuming the atmosphere mass is 5.15×10¹⁸ kg, and air Specific Heat Capacity Cp = 1 kJ/kg°C.

With wind farm operation, there is an initial cooling effect, but this has not resulted in a slowdown of global warming.  The current practice of using the produced electricity for various industrial and heating purposes, releasing back the harvested air energy to the environment, has resulted in the absence of global atmosphere cooldown.  Things are different if the electricity is irreversibly and irrevocably sequestered.  No reheating would occur, and atmospheric cooldown will be achieved by virtue of the laws of thermodynamics.

Energy sinks will have an impact on atmospheric temperature, very much like the energy sources do.  Electrical Power Plants are energy sources that release calories into the environment.  At the same power level as that of power plants, energy sinks will be able to decrease the atmosphere’s energy content, and the environment's temperature with similar absolute magnitudes. However, a larger land surface area needs to be provided for the construction of the energy sinks due to their lower energy density compared to that of nuclear and fossil fuel power plants. This is not a problem if the energy sinks are built in large deserts or offshore.

We focus here on the air temperature downwind of the farms, as this parameter determines the wind farm’s cooling capability on the atmosphere in the regions where people live.  It is obvious that land surface temperature at the wind farms is impacted by their operation.  At these energy sites, it is normal that land surface temperature increases with the operation of the wind turbines due to air friction and Joule effects.  However, overall, the energy content of the global atmosphere being reduced, the air temperature must decrease.

Further, capturing atmospheric energy to sequester it, and cooling down the atmosphere, will reduce the CO2 and H2O vapor concentrations in the atmosphere.  Water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas and is responsible for about half of the greenhouse effect.  For every degree Celsius that the atmospheric temperature decreases, the amount of H2O vapor in the atmosphere can decrease by about 7%, which is significant.  When it is colder CO2 moves out of atmospheric air, and H2O vapor falls from the air as rain or snow, and the amounts of CO2 and H2O vapor in the atmosphere decrease, reducing the greenhouse effect and further cooling down the atmosphere.  This positive feedback loop helps thus accelerate the atmospheric cooldown, and provides a decisive edge to our process of energy capture and sequestration. 

Intermittency of Renewable Energy

The energy sinks can play a crucial role in regulating the electricity grid to cope with the intermittency of wind, solar, and hydraulic energy.  Currently, Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) systems can only return a fraction of the energy they receive due to their imperfect efficiencies in energy conversion during both charging and discharging.  Additionally, their storage capabilities are short in time, as they can store energy only for hours or weeks, while there is a need for very long-term storage to cope with seasonal changes in energy use.

In this context, energy sinks built to capture and sequester atmospheric calories can process large energy surpluses from the grid and feed the grid with renewable energy at 100% efficiency during both short and extended periods.  The energy surpluses received from the renewable energy grid are thus used to reduce global warming through its sequestration.

For each MWh received from the grid, the energy sinks are capable of returning the same or more MWh to the grid with their energy production equipment when in grid-feeding mode.  The energy sinks can thus provide improved services to the grid, while also offering valuable atmospheric cooldown effects by permanently sequestering the calories that are captured from the atmosphere.

The arrangement of the energy sinks in a distributed network across large regions further reduces the probability of their periods of low wind or solar energy coinciding with those of the grid they serve.  Additionally, due to the diversity of renewable energy sources used by the energy sinks—wind, solar, and hydraulic—the probability of all sources being unavailable at the same time is low.  Even in a “dunkelflaute” situation.

During normal operation, the energy sinks’ power supplies are fully utilized to cool down the atmosphere, ensuring no underutilization of the equipment.  When there is a need to feed the grid, the calorie sequestration function is shut down, and the energy production of the energy sinks is fed to the grid without any loss of efficiency.

This grid feeding can last for very long periods because combating global warming is a long-term process, extending over many decades until the end of the century, compared with the short duration of energy deficits in the grid, which last for hours, days, or months.  The short grid-feeding operation is insignificant compared with the time frame of the global warming combat.

Thus, it is not merely the use of expensive standby power plants to cope with the intermittency of renewable energy.  The energy sinks provide a source of power that is normally used for a long-term objective (several decades) to serve the grid for a relatively short period (several months) without compromising long-term climate preservation objectives.  This source is available with the energy sinks, with their full renewable energy supply fed to the grid with 100% efficiency when there is a need to fill the energy deficit of the grid.

Since the energy sinks can switch from calorie capture mode to grid feeding mode for long periods of time, they can be used in grid feeding mode during winter when there is a deficit in grid energy, and at the end of winter, revert back to their normal duty, capturing calories to combat global warming during the warm and hot seasons.  They can also be used for power valley filling when the normal means for peak shaving and valley filling are insufficiently available.