• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 723 0

waste use up so much land as to make the comparison meaningless. They are mistaken. Even on the basis of a full life-cycle analysis, nuclear uses much less land than solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind.34 (Biomass comes out worst of all, using more than a thousand times the land area of nuclear power.) The energy efficiency advocate and dogged antinuclear activist Amory Lovins argues that wind uses land more efficiently than nuclear, but only by entirely ignoring the land in between turbines, which have to be sited a substantial distance apart in order not to interfere with each other.35 While it is true that some cultivation or grazing can go on underneath wind parks, to consider the land outside the actual concrete base of the windmills as equivalent to an undisturbed ecosystem is perverse. One could equally argue—and many anti-wind campaigners do—that the land-use impact of wind farms is much wider than their physical footprint because of their visual intrusion on the wider landscape, and the wildlife impact of birds and bats killed by spinning turbine blades.

The latter issue suggests a possible conflict between the climate change and biodiversity boundaries as renewable energy production is scaled up, as it surely must be. Although I hear many clean-energy enthusiasts downplaying the wildlife impacts in their understandable enthusiasm for green power, there is no doubt that wind farms in some areas do kill significant numbers of birds. One recent study of bird mortality in California’s 5,400-turbine Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area found an annual death toll that included 67 golden eagles, 188 red-tailed hawks, 347 American kestrels, 30 barn owls, 440 burrowing owls, 34 mallards, 120 mourning doves, 189 rock doves, 271 starlings, 415 western meadowlarks, and many other birds too numerous to list here.36 With this kind of mortality rate every year, large wind parks like this one could be significant population sinks for birds.

Whether this matters partly depends on the species. Bird carcasses found around wind turbines on Ontario’s Wolfe Island in the first half of 2010 included, according to local reports, an osprey and seven red-tailed hawks.37 The latter death toll may comprise more than a third of the local population, while the single osprey could be a tenth of the population of that species, suggesting that this particular wind farm could be affecting rare raptors in particular. However, the number of birds killed varies dramatically between wind parks, depending on topography, surrounding habitat, and local wildlife population. There is also some evidence that newer, larger turbine designs are less deadly to birds. However, these taller windmills are now thought to be a significant threat to bats, because they extend up into the airspace used by bats as they migrate. Again, location matters a lot: In a survey of wind-farm mortality studies across North America, some turbines killed no bats at all, while others killed 20–30 each.38 An April 2011 assessment published in the journal Science warned of more severe impacts, however. According to zoologist Justin Boyles and his team, wind energy parks could join the deadly “white nose syndrome” fungal pathogen in wiping out entire bat populations across the United States, causing $3.7 billion in agricultural losses due to bats no longer consuming insect pests.39 An earlier assessment of future bat mortality projected that up to 111,000 bats could be slaughtered annually by 2020 as wind farms sprout across the forested ridgetops of the eastern United States.40

On the other hand, properly sited wind parks may be quite benign in terms of their wildlife impacts, and some are being designed to actually enhance the biodiversity value of their impacted area. In South Wales, for example, Nuon Renewables is proposing an 84-turbine wind farm in a large area of upland peat bog that has been significantly damaged in the past by inappropriate government-planted coniferous woodland. Nuon is proposing to combine with its wind farm the largest peat-restoration project in South Wales