World Wind Watch | Green Energy News

January 2, 2005 – Vol.9 No.41

WORLD WIND WATCH.

Pro and anti wind farm advocates are gearing up for a battle over the future development of wind farms in the U.S. state of Maryland. (This editor’s home state.)

Those for wind farms say we (including the rest of the world) need clean, reliable wind power to cut pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and dependence on fossil fuels.

Those against say wind farms don’t make a real difference in cutting pollution or greenhouse gas emissions, are industrial eyesores that can destroy the natural vistas, and are killing fields for bats and birds.

On the first point, do wind farms make a difference in cutting emissions? They probably won’t cause the closure of power plants, yet could reduce the number of new conventional fossil fuel power plants that would be built to meet growing demand for electricity.

Are wind farms ugly industrial facilities? Let the people decide what looks good and what doesn’t. A survey in Ireland showed that people preferred the look of small clusters of wind turbines, but didn’t like them in large numbers. Larger capacity turbines, but fewer of them, might be a good choice for Maryland. But developers still would have to reduce the scope of wind farm generating capacity.

Anti-wind farm advocates (sometimes environmentalists themselves) always bring up the statistics that wind farms kill tens of thousands of birds each year.

True enough, at least for the U.S. The statistics anti-wind people cite appears to be from a study prepared by Western EcoSystems Technology for the National Wind Coordinating Committee. That study, completed in 2001, showed that 33,000 birds were killed that year from the 15,000 turbines then in operation nationwide - 2.19 birds per year per turbine.

However, the study points out that of the 15,000 turbines, 11,500 were in California where the majority of bird kills took place. And most of those turbines are a fraction of the size (100 - 250 kilowatts capacity) of today’s commonplace wind generators (1000 kilowatts and up).

The early generation California turbines installed in the 1980’s and early 90’s are also densely packed, with many on laticework towers. (Laticework towers create attractive places for birds to perch. When the turbine blades begin to move in the wind, birds would fly off possibly into them.) Laticework towers in newer installations have been replaced by smooth cylindrical towers in newer wind farms. The tubular towers look better too.

The Western EcoSystems study can be in contrast with one completed by wind developer EHN in Spain. There, a 2003 study of 692 turbines at 18 wind farms revealed 88 deaths of medium and large birds in one year - 0.13 birds per turbine. Dramatically less than in the U.S.

A Finnish Ministry of the Environment study in 2003 similarly showed 10 bird deaths from 60 turbines in a one year period - 0.16 bird deaths per turbine to support the EHN study.

Wind turbines in both Spain and Finland would have been newer and larger, since wind power development in Europe is more recent than in the U.S.

Newer, fewer, larger turbines, better bird migration and habitat studies, and cylindrical towers appear to have dramatically cut bird deaths at wind farms at newer facilities.

The conclusions of the bird studies are included in a European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) publication Wind Energy - the Facts (see Environment) http://www.ewea.org/ .