Save Birds by Promoting Wind Energy

Appalachia can't stand anymore of the prosperity of the new and improved, clean, green, hybrid coal industry bombing and blasting our mountains and streams to smithereens ! Of course birds and bats are a concern. What about people ?

http://www.wisecountyissues.com/?p=138

I don't think counting dead birds is the point. Large structures of any kind will cause the deaths of individual birds. Our use of fossil fuels is causing the loss of entire species. Many species.

All forms of power generation, transmission and use have risks. Its about time for people to stop the fear. It would be impossible for us to cause as much cancer with man-made nuclear power as is caused by the sun, but people fear man-made nuclear power more than the sun. Go figure. The political instability of oil rich countries has killed more birds than wind power ever will.

so now people are going to reject wind energy because it may kills some birds. They werent complaining when the current powers stations were doing the same thing. Get real about saving our world and reject these people with dumb complaints. Wind energy is the way to go

Sovacol misrepresents bird studies at wind energy facilities. They are done precisely because the numbers and patterns of bird and bat deaths are not well established. Their primary purpose is therefore to study the fatality results of a facility, which might then be used to direct siting to minimize risk in the future.

Furthermore, comparison with other sources is irrelevant unless building wind facilities will reduce those sources to a degree that will also reduce the harm. Thus the only comparison worth making would be with other sources of energy (not, e.g., house cats, cars, or skyscrapers). Sovacol assumes that connecting more wind reduces the use of other sources of energy, but that has yet to be proven, even in European countries that have substantial wind energy. He also appears to count transmission lines as belonging to "other sources", as if wind-generated electricity does not also require the same grid.

The conclusion is therefore that wind adds to the toll -- needlessly, since other sources have not been shown to be reduced by adding wind to the grid.

While Sovacool's esimates of bird and bat mortalities are interesting he fails to account for one of the major negative impacts of each engery source. Many birds are area sensitive and require large blocks of unfragmented habitat. Large wind facilities often cover thousands of acres and require much more land than either coal or nuclear power facilities. There is quite a bit of evidence showing that birds avoid anthropogenic features (wind turbines, power lines, buildings, etc.) for nesting and general habitat use. If Sovacool were to consider the birds that are displaced by each engery source those estimates would be much more comparable across the different sources. Additionally, the birds that are being affected by the siting of wind facilities and their infrastructure are generally area sensitive grassland birds that are in serious decline. That suite of birds is generally not affected much by coal or nuclear because those facilities are typcially placed in habitats that are already fragmented.

Hey everyone,

I thought I?d briefly weigh in on two points. First, Rucio?s point that wind energy doesn?t displace fossil fuel or nuclear energy strikes me as odd. The more electricity that wind turbines generate, the less electricity that is needed from conventional sources. This is not mere conjecture. To take a paragraph from another one of my articles, this one in Utility Policy:

Renewable power generators already displace a significant share of baseload generation, contrary to the beliefs of many within the American electricity industry. The U.S. EIA has determined that ?the imposition of a national renewable portfolio standard (a law mandating the use of renewable generators) would lead to lower generation from natural gas and coal facilities.? Examinations of fuel generation in several states confirm this finding. The New York State Energy and Research Development Authority looked at load profiles for 2001 and concluded that 65 percent of the energy displaced by wind turbines in New York would have otherwise come from natural gas facilities, 15 percent from coal-fired plants, 10 percent from oil-based generation, and 10 percent from out of state imports of electricity. Alden Hathaway, Director of Green Power Programs at the Environmental Resources Trust, found that every new kWh of renewable generation in Virginia would displace a portfolio of coal, natural gas, and oil facilities. In Texas, the Union of Concerned Scientists noted that renewable energy technologies primarily displace natural gas and coal facilities.

This article is still in press but can be accessed at linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0957178708000611 for those with access to the journal.

Second, Kansas Man raises an excellent point about how different birds will be sensitive to different types of land impacts. Although wind turbines leave much of the land they ?use? available for other uses, they can fragment habitat when sited poorly or in densely forested areas. I?m not sure this means that the estimates are comparable across energy sources?wind and nuclear don?t contribute to acid rain and have much smaller lifecycle emissions of greenhouse gases, making them advantageous for many types of birds. But more detailed study is certainly called for. As I conclude in my study about avian mortality (the actual article, not the post on Scitizen):

The shortcomings of this preliminary study are as obvious as they are numerous: a focus on bird deaths but not bird births; a small sample size for wind, coal, and nuclear facilities that may not be representative; a focus on individual species such as the wood thrush or waterfowl to produce overall estimates of avian mortality that are definitely not representative (and undoubtedly conservative); a presumption that coal was only mined using mountaintop removal (thereby excluding the impacts from other types of coal mining); fatalities that happened on particular days and weeks that were then presumed to be the only ones throughout the year (also resulting in conservative estimates); an assumption that only carbon dioxide emissions from power plants contribute to climate change (again conservative for excluding other greenhouse gases); highly uncertain deaths attributed to climate change that may be prevented if future greenhouse gas emissions are significantly reduced.

Note that many of these factors could mean the negative impacts to birds from fossil fuels could be underestimated.

With respect to Rucio's point. I think that Rucio is confusing the difference between energy displacement and total consumption.

World energy needs are growing thus even if you increase the total contribution to our energy needs from wind from 1% to 5% in 5 years it does not mean that now (after the 5 years) you are using less energy from fossil fuels and nuclear sources. What it does mean is that less fossil fuels and nuclear energy are needed than would have been needed if wind energy had not increased production. You are decreasing the amount that fossil fuels and nuclear would have needed to increase. Because of growing demand, more fossil fuels and nuclear are likely to be used even if wind energy production increases. That is why even countries in Europe where wind has grown more quickly that in the US, still need more fossil fuels than they did 10 years ago.

However if we can get the rate of displacement to be higher than the rate of consumption growth, then wind will represent a growing percentage of our energy pie pie. If this can be kept up, eventually fossil fuel and nuclear energy consumption will fall below current levels.

Rucio is right that even more important than minimizing the negative impact of our energy sources is to reduce our energy consumption. However, Rucio we must do both. Dr. Sovacool's excellent article is addressing the production side. It is unfair to claim his article is lacking because it does not deal with another subject which is related but separate.

Also to tmullins. Yes people are by far #1 (though not the only consideration). It has already been established that wind is good for people so that is a non-issue (cleans our air, provides jobs, increases national security by making us less reliant on imported oil, reduces health costs and human misery associated with fossil fuel extraction, etc.). The question was if we do this that is good for people will it be devastating for birds and bats? If there is this trade-off, then we have to make a very tough choice, does the benefit to people outweigh the damage to the ecosystem? Dr. Sovacool is stating that this might not be a dilemma at all (though more study is needed), wind is good for people and our flying friends. Best analysis available so far suggests that wind energy is more likely to be a win-win.

Displacing generation is different than reducing fuel use at other plants, and the latter has yet to be shown, likely owing to spinning standby, ramping inefficiencies, etc.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) in the UK actually support wind turbines. A friend of mine recently had a small 6kW Proven wind turbine installed on their farm by Capture Energy Ltd and are very pleased. They are birds of prey enthusiasts and would not have installed the turbine if there was a real risk to the local bird population. Fossil fuels offer a higher risk to birds by far.

Recently the RSPB installed its own 15kW wind turbine at its Rainham Marshes branch.