Billy Bob Thornton should know better than this.
Landman, a new TV series from Yellowstone writer Taylor Sheridan, includes examples of false and misleading writing about renewable energy and climate change technology, Newsweek‘s Fact Check team has discovered.
The show, streaming on Paramount+, stars Billy Bob Thornton as a crisis manager in the Texas oil industry. The cast also includes Demi Moore, Jon Hamm, Michelle Randolph, Ali Larter and Jacob Lofland.
While reviews among critics and audiences have been mixed, the show’s debut episode, released on November 17, scored 14.6 million viewers during its first seven days across its streaming service and linear premiere, TheWrap reported, making it the biggest global premiere week for a Paramount+ original show.
A scene in a later episode has also been a hit with conservatives, going viral on social media.
n episode three, Thornton’s character, Tommy Norris, invectively describes the lifespan of renewable energy tech to attorney Rebecca Falcone, played by Kayla Wallace.
After Norris drives Falcone to take a look at a wind farm up close, he says: “Do you have any idea how much diesel they have to burn to mix that much concrete?
“Or make that steel and haul this s*** out here and put it together with a 450-foot crane? You want to guess how much oil it takes to lubricate that f****** thing, or winterize it? In its 20-year lifespan, it won’t offset the carbon footprint of making it.
“And don’t get me started on solar panels and the lithium in your Tesla battery.
“And never mind the fact that if the whole world decided to go electric tomorrow, we don’t have the transmission lines to get the electricity to the cities. It would take 30 years if we started tomorrow.”
Norris also claimed that oil giants such as Exxon Mobil would have built more wind farms if they saw their benefit.
On TikTok and X, formerly Twitter, right-leaning users and commentators have shared the clip numerous times.
Bonchie, a writer at RedState, wrote on X, “Every left-winger should have their eyes held open and be forced to watch this on repeat until it sinks in.”
The post has been viewed 21.6 million times, and similar posts have likewise received millions of views on the platform.
On December 2, the official TikTok account for Landman posted a longer version of the clip.
While audiences may expect Norris to defend the oil industry, which may make him an unreliable narrator, what he says in the scene is not forcefully challenged. The scene also doesn’t invite the audience to question or doubt his claims. Sheridan’s writing in other projects is peppered with similar polemics.
Landman is by no means an apology letter or puff piece for the oil industry, as it depicts industrial corruption and the inherent human danger involved in drilling.
However, as Newsweek discovered, most of what Norris said in the viral scene was either false or deeply misleading. Newsweek has contacted media representatives for Taylor Sheridan and Paramount for comment via email.
Research on this topic has repeatedly found that wind energy recoups the carbon footprint it creates within a matter of months, not years—certainly well within its lifetime.
Research from 2016 in the Journal of Fundamentals of Renewable Energy and Applications found that while turbines with a large kilowatt output may have a greater “embodied carbon output,” referring to the emissions created during construction, the greater the amount of energy a turbine produces, the quicker its offset. Researchers reported a 64-day offset for a 3.4-megawatt turbine compared to 354 days for a 100-kilowatt one.
Research from 2024 published in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand assessed a 176-megawatt wind farm, comprising 41 turbines, and found that the plant recouped its energy costs in half a year, with a greenhouse gas (GHG) payback of 1.5 to 1.7 years. The report did, however, note the difficulty in recycling the turbines at the end of their lifetime.
A 2019 study published in Environmental Science & Technology assessed 4,161 wind turbines built over 35 years and determined how long it took for GHGs emitted during the construction and use of a turbine to equal the total GHG savings from replacing a fossil fuel energy source with wind. The payback time varied from 1.8 to 22.5 months, averaging at 5.3 months.
Newsweek spoke with a group of experts on renewable technology and carbon offsetting, all of whom said the offset of wind farm production was a matter of months, not years.
Alasdair McDonald, a professor in the Institute for Energy Systems and Mechanical Engineering Discipline at the University of Edinburgh, told Newsweek: “Billy Bob Thornton is very good at portraying a common character that one meets when talking about wind energy; unfortunately, that character is misinformed and wrong.”
McDonald said that Vestas, one of the world’s leading turbine manufacturers, had publicly available life cycle assessments of its turbines, including the time it takes to offset its initial carbon cost.
For a medium-size wind farm—which would be slightly smaller than most wind farms in Texas, whereLandman is set—Vestas said the payback of energy involved in the manufacturing, operation, service and disposal of a 2-megawatt turbine, in medium wind, would be about seven months, and it would return initial energy output 35 times over 20 years.
“For a good Texan wind farm, I’d expect the farm to operate for longer, and the energy production to be higher, so I’d treat that 35 times as a lower bound,” McDonald added.
Vestas’ data showed that for every 1 kWh of energy produced, it needed about 0.09 megajoules of primary energy.
“For one turbine that would be 15,121,800 MJ of primary energy resource—that’s about 103,206 U.S. gallons of diesel equivalent,” McDonald said.
“It sounds like quite a big number, but quite small when you will generate energy worth 3,612,223 U.S. gallons of diesel equivalent over 20 years,” he added.
Cristina L. Archer, the director of the Center for Research in Wind at the University of Delaware, echoed these findings: “My understanding is that it takes at most two years for a wind turbine to completely offset all of the carbon that was used to create it and maintain it.
“Including everything—the concrete, the crane, the lubricants. Obviously, there is a spread that depends on where the turbine was made. If in China, it’s probably two years. If in Europe, probably one year.”
Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and the director of the Atmosphere/Energy program at Stanford University, told Newsweek: “The energy payback time of a wind turbine even 15 years ago was 1.6 to 4.3 months, nothing close to what is claimed [in Landman].
“Thus, a wind turbine (with a 30-year lifetime) is 98.8 to 99.6 percent carbon-free. Even with a 20-year lifetime, the payback time ranges from 4.2 to 6.4 months, making it 98.2 to 98.8 percent carbon-free.”
Research for offshore systems also falls below the estimates given by Norris. A 2017 study in Renewable Energy that simulated the environmental impact of two offshore wind power systems found that it took 12.8 and 14.4 months to pay back the energy consumed in construction. A further four months were taken from those figures when the recycling of waste materials was added to the calculation.
Norris made this argument, though with less specificity, as he discussed the carbon costs of building a wind farm.
According to research and experts Newsweek spoke with, this claim is also incorrect.
A 2024 comparison by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) of solar photovoltaic systems installed in the United States assessed the carbon payback time (CPBT) of various solar farms across the country.
NREL, a national laboratory of the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, found that the CPBT spanned from 0.8 years to 20 years. However, the larger figure was based on a scenario where turbine technology was produced in high-carbon areas, farms were set up in locations with low irradiated energy from the sun and parts were sent to a landfill at the point of disposal.
“The benchmark system was determined to have a CPBT of 2.1 years, which is on the lower end of estimates from recent literature,” the review said.
Energy payback time varied between 0.5 to 1.2 years in the U.S., depending on supply chain and location.
Jacobson provided Newsweek with a copy of a 2008 review he authored, published in Energy & Environmental Science, that assessed the payback of technologies, including solar panels.
“Solar PV panel payback times 15 years ago were longer, 1-3.5 years, depending on the solar resource available at the location (e.g., one year would be Arizona),” Jacobson said.
“That means solar PV panels are 88.3 to 96.7 percent carbon-free,” he continued, adding, “Payback times today for both are lower due to greater efficiencies of both wind turbines and solar PV panels.”
James Manwell, an emeritus professor of mechanical and industrial engineering and the founding director of the Wind Energy Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told Newsweek: “I did look into solar PV panels a few years ago and their energy payback was not as good as wind turbines, but the energy return was greater than the energy invested.
“As PV panel prices drop, which they have been doing, I expect that the energy return on investment is similarly improving.”
The payback of a lithium battery in a car depends on its manufacture and materials and the grid it’s using to recharge. A car connected to a grid that uses energy sources with more greenhouse gas output will take longer to offset the carbon footprint from its production and maintenance than one that plugs into a grid with renewable energy.
A 2018 briefing produced for the think tank the International Council on Clean Transportation said high emissions produced during an electric vehicle’s manufacture drop after two years compared to an “average conventional vehicle.”
As reported in a PolitiFact analysis from 2022, researchers estimated a break-even point for EVs of between 13,500 miles and 26,000 miles. While other research posits figures higher than these, the number is affected by how and where batteries are manufactured, their strength and the grids they are plugged into.
The environmental impact of electric vehicles is nonetheless considered better than that of conventional combustion engines. Writing in 2022, the MIT Climate Portal cited 2019 research from MIT showing that in their life cycle—including production, use and disposal—gasoline cars emit more than 350 grams of carbon dioxide per mile driven over their lifetimes. Hybrids scored more than 250 grams per mile, while fully battery-electric vehicles emitted the equivalent of 200 grams.
Golly geez, I wonder who’s bankrolling that production?
I refuse to watch this kind of garbage!!!