University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
URBANA, Ill. – Wind energy is increasingly seen as a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, as it contributes to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. It is estimated that by 2050, wind turbines will contribute more than 20% of the global electricity supply. However, the rapid expansion of wind farms has raised concerns about the impact of wind turbines on wildlife.
Research in that area has been limited and has yielded conflicting results. A new study, published in Energy Science, provides comprehensive data on how turbines affect bird populations.
While the study did find a negative effect on some breeding birds, it also suggests ways to mitigate that effect through wind turbine design and placement, explains Madhu Khanna, professor of agricultural and consumer economics in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois. Khanna is co-author of the study.
“We found that there was a negative impact of three birds lost for every turbine within 400 meters of a bird habitat. The impact faded away as distance increased,” Khanna says.
Overall, the researchers estimate that about 150,000 birds are affected by wind turbines in the U.S. every year. This includes both direct and indirect effects; that is, bird collisions with turbines as well as changes in bird habitat due to wind disturbances and other factors. The effects vary for different types of birds. When looking specifically at grassland birds, the researchers found fewer negative impacts than for other types of breeding birds.
The researchers analyzed data on wind turbines, breeding birds, land use, and weather across the United States over a six-year period. The study included 1,670 wind turbines and 86 bird observation routes across 36 states from 2008 to 2014.
“We compared bird routes that were close to turbines with those that were further away, making it possible to more easily and precisely identify the impact of the turbine, while controlling for other unobservable factors,” explains Ruiqing Miao, assistant professor of agricultural economics at Auburn University and lead author on the study.
The negative impacts on birds identified in this study are lower than estimates from some other studies. However, those studies were done on a smaller scale. This research uses a large dataset over a longer time frame, yielding more systematic and accurate information.
The researchers also found that the size of the wind turbine and the length of the blades make a difference: taller turbines and shorter blades reduce the impact on birds. Other studies have found that turbine height was negatively correlated with bird count, but the present study separated height from blade length and found length to be the more important factor.
The study’s findings can be used to inform decisions about wind turbine placement and design. Because the impact on birds diminishes as the distance increases, the researchers suggest that wind turbines be placed outside a 1,600 meter buffer zone of high-density bird habitats. They also recommend that turbines be taller but with shorter blade length.
Policy decisions regarding wind energy must consider the tradeoff between sustainable energy and bird populations, Khanna points out. “No single technology is such that it is only beneficial and has no negative consequences. You can minimize the effect by making the recommended adjustments,” she says.
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The article, “Effect of wind turbines on bird abundance: A national scale analysis based on fixed effects models” is published in Energy Policy.
Authors include Ruiqing Miao, Prasenjit N. Ghosh, and Jian Rong, Auburn University; Madhu Khanna, University of Illinois; and Weiwei Wang, Dell Financial Services, Austin, Texas.
“No single technology is such that it is only beneficial and has no negative consequences. You can minimize the effect by making the recommended adjustments,” she says.
Molten salt small modular reactors have no negative consequences and are not unreliable,
primitive 17th Century ,environmenatally obnoxious mechannives like wind turbines. They are inferior low carbon generators of power.
Apart from the fact we don’t have any commercially operating MS reactors working ANYWHERE!
Patrick MJD
“Apart from the fact we don’t have any commercially operating MS reactors working ANYWHERE!”
Thanks nor noting this!
How is it possible to write, like ColMosby did: “Molten salt small modular reactors have no negative consequences and are not unreliable” ?
If molten salt reactors would have worked 40 years ago, the French nuclear optimists never and never would have engineered two 4G reactors based on liquid sodium! And even these two were a complete failure. Their dismantling costs bypass everything imaginable.
ColMosby,
Molten salt small modular . . .
“There you go again.” [Governor Ronald Reagan, 1980]
The rule of 5s:
Get 5 working for 5 years. 50 under construction. 500 more financed and permitted. Until then . . .
This article says a lot about the quality of the Unversity and the scientists involved.
Seems to me that the reputation of academia and scientists is taking a knocking these days.
Drips working under pressure often comes to mind.
They can “mitigate” their effect but they CANNOT eliminate it. Wind turb ines will continue to kill flying creatures for ever.
Chicken wire screens around their facilities would stop the killing.
Any other business would be required to jump through hoops to prevent harming birds. These yahoos are exempted.
When analyzing the cost of wind, throw in the cost of protective screens around the facility.
Same for concentrated solar.
No other businesses could get away with it. Green corruption.
The study says that turbines with shorter blades will “affect” fewer birds. Seems logical.
Of course, shorter blades mean less power being generated, which means more turbines needed to produce the target power generation for a project, so overall bird mortality will either be greater, or less, or unchanged. Numbers are not quantified, so we don’t kow. Plus more access roads, meaning more habitat fragmentation.
They also recommend taller towers, which means more steel for construction, more cement for stable foundations, so more energy and materials used in building the wind farm.
Valuable study, no?
So to summarize this study: to reduce bird deaths, don’t put wind turbines near birds, and reduce the size of the blades, reducing the kill-zone.
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
(yes, sarc)
Reading the names of the “researchers” are we sure this is not a spoof ?
OK, after gaining more time to research ….
several are in Ag Econ . One of the most political groups at universities .
Gotta get in on the bandwagon ….
😉
The Port of Corpus Christi, Texas just “inherited” a small number of turbines on their property from a bankruptcy. They, with downchannel Harbor Island, have been the temporary storage for parts from ships before trucked inland. It is not sure what they will do with them. What are the shipping costs, among others, especially if you put in the disruption? Trucks carrying pipelines get no such police and police-like protection. We already tried this experiment once decades ago. Resulted in a number of fossil towers. I guess it takes three times to learn things these days, like how you separate the electricity by source as is advertised.
Does this study really come from the College of Consumer Sciences?
Not all forms of energy are created equal.
After more than three years of litigation, Syncrude has agreed to pay a fine amounting to nearly $89,000 per bird.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syncrude-fine-idUSKCN1OW1U1
Apply that cost to wind turbines and not one would be built.
Following green rules that lack of applying fines should be considered a subsidy as an externality.
For bald eagles in the US, that subsidy amounts to $373,800,000 per wind farm per 30 years ($89,000 x 4200).
That figure is actually too low for eagles. In the US, fines can be up to $500,000 per bird. So that would make the subsidy $2,100,000,000 per wind farm per 30 years, or $70 million per year.
wind power is ecologically WORSE than the internal combustion engine. Draining kinetic energy from the atmosphere is environmentally LETHAL. Pollenation depends on the wind. Oxygenation of the oceans depend on the wind. Trees depend on the wind to drive up sap in the Spring. We don’t know what we are messing with when we institute WIND TURBINES because no major study has been done that fully characterizes the role of the wind in the biome of Earth. Say “NO!” to wind power – it’s a catastrophe in its infancy.
“However, the rapid expansion of wind farms has raised concerns about the impact of wind turbines on wildlife.”
“We found that there was a negative impact of three birds lost for every turbine within 400 meters of a bird habitat.”
There are several ways to impact wild life death rate near turbines.
1. Change design and location of turbines, as proposed in paper.
2. Control population level of wildlife. Current design and location of wind turbines will reduce level of wildlife. Once bird level reaches 0 in vicinity of wind turbines, death rate will be 0. This can be accelerated by hunting birds near wind turbines. Problem solved at lower cost. Pass out the shotguns!
/s
Interesting study, but the conclusion falls short of what is needed:
1) Modeling shows that bird interactions with structures decrease with altitude. Above 8,000 meters there is essentially no avian presence. Bat and insect presence zero out even lower.
2) Modeling also shows that wind velocity increases with altitude, allowing turbines with smaller blades to spin faster and generate more power.
3) Modeling also shows that harmful effects of infra-sound decrease rapidly with distance, becoming undetectable by 10 kilometers.
The obvious conclusion is wind turbine towers should be 9,000 – 12,000 meters, putting them into the polar jet stream. They need to have blades and rotors capable of operating at wind speeds up to 400 km/hr so the only time they aren’t generating useful power is when jet stream velocity is below the cut in speed.
So it is clear we can generate 100% completely renewable energy from high-altitude turbines, with no objectionable ground-level noise at any frequency and essentially zero impact to birds. The models are 99.97% certain on this.
/sarc, in case you were unsure.
Alan Watt, CDL7
You remarked, “Bat and insect presence zero out even lower.” One time when I was flying back to California from Salt Lake City, in a small plane, we were continually being hit by large insects (locusts?) that left large yellow splotches on the windscreen, struts, and wings. We were at about 10,000 feet altitude. I was surprised at how numerous the insects were at that altitude.
Wind turbine companies should be fined the same that oil companies have to pay for killing birds.
Which is around $1000-2000 per dead bird.
All should be equal before the law.
Bruce of Newcastle
“All should be equal before the law.”
100% agreed.
“The fact is, in recent years, many missing condors have most likely perished at wind farms in California. Many of the captive bed condors, released into the wild since 1992, have turned up missing. Nearly 1⁄3 (one-third) of all the captive bred condors released, perish for unknown reasons. If one looks into the scientific literature, collision is nearly always listed as a major cause of death to condors. But there is never any mention of collision in association with the thousands of prop wind turbines with blade tips spinning at 200 miles per hour in their habitat.”
https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2009/10/07/wind-turbines-are-killing-condors/
This is 10 years old, granted, but not much has changed. If anything, it’s gotten worse with the erection of
more and more of these birdchoppers. There are bird-friendly designs, but the unreliable energy companies are too interested in pursuing the almighty dollar to investigate anything other than taller, longer, faster. It is mind-boggling to see the people who claim to be environmentalists cheering their greed.
“We compared bird routes that were close to turbines with those that were further away, making it possible to more easily and precisely identify the impact of the turbine”
You can easily and precisely identify the impact of the turbine by looking for a cloud of feathers.
There are things that kill birds in the wild. They’re called predators. As long as the turbines aren’t taking out too many in bulk, they’ll evolve to avoid this new predator.
The Windelec’s “bird slayer” problem:
Windelecs don’t “slay” air borne creatures.
The operating rotary wing of the windelec
with passing the airborne creature abrupt produces negative pressure,
the airborne animal’s abrupt pressure drop in the lungs ends in immediately collapse of the lungs.
Where many air borne animals die, there is a lot of free hunting grounds for young air borne predators, ie insect eaters and avivores: bats & birds.
The Windelec’s “bird slayer” problem:
Windelecs don’t “slay” air borne creatures.
The operating rotary wing of the windelec
with passing the airborne creature abrupt produces negative pressure,
the airborne animal’s abrupt pressure drop in the lungs ends in immediately collapse of the lungs.
Where many air borne animals die, there is a lot of free hunting space for young air borne predators, ie insect eaters and other avivores: bats & birds.
Nothing against talking about bats & wind turbines!
Today I read this on the web site of the French newspaper Le Monde (translated using Google):
Did anybody ever care about that here, since 2007?
I guess no…
If wind turbines could help us in avoiding the accumulation of that nuclear waste no one knows in Europe how to get rid of, I would welcome them.
Not every country is lucky about having giant desertic areas where to securely put it in 🙂
Monty Python’s
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hwqnp