NOTE:
I summarize
the 42 page report
using direct quotes,
with a focus on
the two papers
within the report
that I found
most interesting
My Gruesome
Overall Summary:
- Wind turbine blades
kill lots of insects.
- Small birds and bats
come for fresh insect meals,
and then some of them
get shredded.
- Large birds
come for fresh small bird meals,
and then some of them get shredded.
- If not counted within a few days,
predators make many dead birds
"disappear", creating the illusion
that the bird kill problem is small.
- Humans are killing
birds and bats to get
intermittent, expensive
wind power, generated
with wind turbines,
whose noise disturbs
people, and I suppose
animals too.
- Using intermittent
expensive wind power,
when CO2-free
nuclear power and
cheap natural gas
power are much
better choices,
is a classic
Forrest Gump
energy policy,
even if you don't care
about birds and bats
as much as I do !
Ye Editor
all quotes below are from:
"THE IMPACT
OF WIND ENERGY
ON WILDLIFE AND
THE ENVIRONMENT
Papers from the Berlin Seminar"
Edited by Dr Benny Peiser
2019
"The environmentally destructive effects of renewable energies has never been widely discussed – mainly because they are seen as reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
The German Wildlife Foundation is not generally against wind energy.
But we are opposed to the unbridled expansion of energy projects in natural environments and natural spaces, a process that is increasingly happening today, especially in Germany.
In recent years, particularly in the hill country in the state of Hesse, the majority of wind turbines have been built in forests.
Meanwhile, the federal government plans to double or triple the number of wind turbines in Germany.
Today there are 28,000 of them, a figure which thus might increase to about 50,000–70,000.
In Germany, on average, there is one wind turbine every 2.6 kilometers.
Flying migratory insects rise up to heights above 60 metres and then allow themselves to be transported to more remote areas before oviposition.
This process has evolved so as to enable these insects to find new environments without food competition, but they can be carried hundreds of kilometers away.
Now, however, these insects hit wind turbines at 100 metres altitude and their dead bodies cake the turbine blades at certain times of year, causing a significant drop in the energy.
When I was CEO of REPower, the second largest German wind power manufacturer, we had to develop a new technology to allow us to clean the blades, which required washing at least annually, and sometimes twice each year.
Initial studies estimate that about 1200 billion migratory insects (or 3600 tons) are killed in this way.
To give you an idea of the magnitude of this kill rate: it is about 5%.
Dr. Benny Pieser
Ecological impacts of wind turbines:
are they the greener option?
Peter Henderson,
Pisces Conservation Ltd and University of Oxford
While onshore and offshore wind turbines share some ecological impacts, it is useful to consider them separately.
This is because, during construction, they impact different ecosystems and many terrestrial species do not move far offshore.
Offshore plant
Offshore wind farms create a new type of habitat that supports a higher biodiversity of benthic organisms than the surrounding, typically soft, sediments.
This community generates increased use of the area by the benthos, fish, marine mammals and some bird species.
With respect to birds, the key concerns are collisions, barrier effects and habitat loss.
Particular concern is focused on species undertaking regular seasonal migrations.
For example, hundreds of millions of birds cross the North and Baltic Seas at least twice every year.
A study by Hüppop et al. (2006)14 concluded that almost half of these birds fly at altitudes at which they could be killed by a turbine.
It is almost impossible to detect fatalities at offshore facilities and so we have no data upon which to assess the impact.
Large-scale onshore wind farms:
Onshore wind farms are often unpopular because of damage to the landscape and visual amenity.
This is a matter of personal taste rather than ecology and not discussed further here.
Land use:
Typically, horizontal wind turbines must be spaced 5–10 rotor diameters apart.
The turbines and associated infrastructure, including roads and transmission lines, therefore only occupy a small portion of the total area of a wind farm.
A survey by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of large wind facilities in the United States found that they use between 30 and 141 acres (57 hectares) per megawatt of power output capacity.
Bird deaths and bird habitat loss linked to wind turbines is a particularly contentious issue and brings into focus deep divisions within wildlife conservation organisations.
The number of birds directly killed by collision with turbine blades is not insignificant. Smallwood (2013) estimated 573,000 bird fatalities/year at 51,630 megawatt (MW) of installed wind-energy capacity in the United States in 2012.
This number included a worrying 83,000 raptor (birds of prey) fatalities.
In Europe and the USA, it is the loss of large raptors that has attracted the most concern.
It is clear that simply stating that killed birds are rarely observed cannot be used to argue that adverse impacts are not occurring.
Bats
The impacts of wind turbines on bats has been recently reviewed by Arnott et al. (2016).
The authors highlight the seriousness of the situation.
Bats are killed in a variety of ways: by blunt force trauma, barotrauma and through inner ear damage and other injuries not readily noticed during examination of carcasses in the field.
... some idea of the losses can be gained from German data.
An estimated 10–12 bats are killed annually at each wind turbine in Germany, which suggests that, if all wind turbines are equally destructive, about 200,000 bats are annually killed at onshore wind turbines in Germany alone.
These numbers are sufficient to produce concern for future populations, as bats are long-lived and have a low fecundity and so cannot quickly replace such losses.
The species most often killed in Europe are aerial-hawking, where the prey is pursued and caught in flight, they are relatively fast-flying, open-air, species.
As most bat fatalities in temperate countries occur during relatively low-wind conditions in late summer, restricting turbine operation in light wind conditions can produce an appreciable reduction in bat deaths.
One simple approach is to increase the wind speed at which turbines start to operate during periods of the year when bats are particularly vulnerable.
Such approaches may reduce mortalities by 50–90%.
If bats are attracted by the availability of insects then it may be possible to reduce the death rate by painting turbines in colours less attractive to flying insects.
That wind turbines can kill large numbers of insects is supported by the remarkable fact that insect bodies adhering to the blades’ leading edges have been implicated in halving turbine power
output in high winds.
output in high winds.
It is known that the common turbine colours pure white and light grey both attract insects, as does UV-reflecting paint.
Wind turbines are of sufficient size to interfere with flying insect migrations.
For example, monarch butterflies in North America have been reported as killed by wind turbines.
Ecological issues
relating to
transmission lines
on land
Large-scale use of wind generation requires the construction of extensive cable networks.
... placing high-voltage transmission lines underground is uncommon and can cost two to ten times as much as an overhead line.
Birds are probably the animals most impacted by above ground transmission cables.
Power lines are one of the most important causes of bird mortality.
They kill birds following collision and through electrocution.
Electrocution tends to occur when large birds, such as white- tailed eagles, with a 2.45-m wingspan, take off from a perch on a pylon and touch a cable in the process, causing a fatal short circuit.
Such large birds may also, on occasion, touch two power lines simultaneously while in flight, again causing electrocution.
... high losses (sometimes in excess of 500 casualties per kilometre of power line per year) are reported from lines with multi-level arrangements, and with thin and low- hanging wires in sensitive areas.
Transmission line impacts are getting worse because of the need to build more transmission lines to support wind farms and solar installations.
However, it may not be possible to design overhead lines that are more visible to some species of birds: a study on three particularly vulnerable species – kori bustards (Aerdeotis kori ), blue cranes (Anthropoides paradise ), and white storks (Ciconia ciconia ) – found that they typically look down while in flight.
Therefore, the addition of tags, or reflective markers to make power lines visible are ineffective.
Wind power and birds of prey:
problems and possible solutions
Oliver Krüger, University of Bielefeld
The growth of bird of prey populations in recent years is a very, very great conservation success story and thanks are owed to the many conservation organisations who have helped make this happen.
We know of several species that are adversely affected by wind energy: griffon vultures, sea eagles and golden eagles, for example.
Bird collisions with wind turbines are often seen as a major nature conservation problem.
The Norwegian town of Smola, for example, has a large population of sea eagles.
Nevertheless, a wind farm was built there.
Norwegian ornithologists warned against this, but their advice was ignored.
In the last 16 years, more than 60 sea eagles have collided with the turbines. A classic example of ‘We told you so’.
The Altamont Pass in the USA is another example.
The location is significant because large numbers of golden eagles pass through it.
Again, despite the warnings of ornithologists, a wind farm was built, and now, every year, between 75 and 110 golden eagles are killed in this one location.
How do you determine the number of birds killed by each turbine?
The area that has to be searched around each turbine is 3–10 hectares.
Your immediate reaction might be to think you can search that area quite quickly, but there are 365 days in a year and 29,000 wind turbines.
... even if you could find every corpse in theory, many would no longer be there by the time you came to look: scavengers get to work quickly.
So preparing a meaningful estimate is not trivial.
The research approach was a so-called line-transect sample.
One can complain a lot about such studies, but we did not make it easy for ourselves. In total, the research team walked more than 7,600 km under wind turbines in order to obtain the data.
Moreover, there were 12,800 wind turbines in the study area, about half of the total German wind fleet at the time."
Conclusions
So to conclude, we all know that wind farms have significant impacts on the environment, as do the associated grid projects.
From our perspective, it would seem that communities and habitats are just collateral damage: nobody cares.
In Ireland, state bodies and agencies are part of the problem.
There has never been a strategic environmental assessment of the national renewable plans, there has never been a cost-benefit analysis or a regulatory impact analysis, despite both being required by the Irish state, and I assume by other countries’ governments as well.
The environmental NGOs (environmental activists) are also part of the problem,
and it absolutely breaks my heart to say that, having been a firm supporter of all these bodies.
The environmental NGOs (environmental activists) are also part of the problem,
and it absolutely breaks my heart to say that, having been a firm supporter of all these bodies.
In fact, some of our environmental NGOs have actually received funding from the wind industry, and it makes me so angry to see that going on.
The NGOs are completely ideologically driven, and I have now come to the conclusion that it is a religion, and it’s nothing to do with science.
The state, and the environmental NGOs – with the exception of the Irish Raptor Study Group – are not playing their part, and not doing what they should be doing. We, as communities, must fight aline to uphold the idea of environmental protection.
But we must do so without any resources to back us.
In reality, I don’t know how long we can stay in the fight.
In reality, I don’t know how long we can stay in the fight.
Concluding remarks
by Hilmar Freiherr von Münchhausen,
by Hilmar Freiherr von Münchhausen,
German Wildlife Foundation
This paper, produced by the Global Warming Policy Foundation and the German Wildlife Foundation, takes a Europe-wide look at the conflict between wind energy and nature conservation.
In many European countries, people are opposing wind energy projects that are destroying wildlife habitats.
We need to be aware that all energy sources have a negative impact on the environment and nature.
It is therefore all the more important to generate reliable scientific results about these impacts.
The German PROGRESS study, which reviews the effects of wind energy on bird life, shows the great effort and difficulty involved in collecting meaningful data.
The study is so valuable because it provides scientifically sound quantitative results.
This is of the utmost importance for a fact-based political discussion.
In particular, the consequences of wind turbines in forests are serious for many types of wildlife.
We observe with great concern the massive expansion of wind power in Germany’s forest areas.
As a financially independent advocate of nature conservation and species conservation, the German Wildlife Foundation is implacably committed to the protection of wildlife and its habitats.
The German Wildlife Foundation regards wind energy as an important contributor to the energy mix of the future.
Its further expansion in Germany, Europe and also worldwide, however, should not be promoted at any price.
For Germany, at least for the construction of wind turbines in the forest, we demand a moratorium."