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Posts tagged ‘wind farms’

Associated Press Got It Wrong: Wind Farm Contractors Acknowledge Turbines Kill Dolphins, Whales


By: Diana Furchtgott-Roth / December 28, 2023

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/12/28/memo-to-ap-wind-farm-contractors-admit-turbines-harm-whales-dolphins/

Members of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance practice a necropsy on the carcass of a humpback whale at Lido Beach in Long Island, New York, on Jan. 31. The male humpback washed up on the shore of Long Island the day before. (Photo: Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images)

When wind turbine companies seek permission to harm sea life, reporters for The Associated Press blame The Heritage Foundation (where I work) and the Heartland Institute, instead of reporting the facts.

It was a Chico Marx moment: “Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?

The misleading AP article—carried by WBTS-TV in  Boston; The Daily Star newspaper of Oneonta, N.Y.; and WTFX-TV in Philadelphia, among others—stated that “scientists say there is no credible evidence linking offshore wind farms to whale deaths” and that “offshore wind opponents are using unsupported claims about harm to whales to try to stop projects, with some of the loudest opposition centered in New Jersey.”

The article accuses opponents of causing “angst in coastal communities, where developers need to build shoreside infrastructure to operate a wind farm.”

If so, why are offshore wind farm companies asking Uncle Sam for permission to harm ocean mammals, and why are dead whales washing up on East Coast beaches?

According to AP reporters Christina Larson, Jennifer McDermott, Patrick Whittle and Wayne Parry, “One vocal opponent of offshore wind is The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the foundation’s center for energy, climate and environment, wrote in November that Danish company Ørsted’s scrapped New Jersey wind project was “unsightly” and “a threat to wildlife.” (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

If the four reporters had done their homework, they would have mentioned that in required environmental-impact filings with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, companies explain that sounds generated by their activities will harm ocean mammals.

For example, Atlantic Shores and Ørsted’s Ocean Winds both requested permission to harm ocean mammals in their applications for New Jersey offshore-wind projects. And, since boats ramped up offshore surveys in May 2022, 31 dead whales have washed up on New Jersey and surrounding beaches.

Ørsted, which in November pulled out of a proposed New Jersey offshore wind farm, requested permission to harm 30 whales, 3,231 dolphins, 82 porpoises, and eight seals through sound waves generated by its surveys—although the company claims that the damage would be negligible.

The precise numbers and detailed species can be found on the website of the NOAA, in Ørsted’s Application for Incidental Harassment Authorization (Table 9).

Atlantic Shores, owned by Dutch Shell oil and French EDF, is still seeking permission to locate an offshore wind farm in New Jersey. In its Request for Incidental Harassment (Table 6-3) it stated that acoustic waves associated with the siting of the wind turbines would likely affect 10 whales, 662 dolphins, 206 porpoises, and 546 seals (also termed a negligible amount). It received permission to harm these marine animals.

Although the companies describe effects as “negligible,” the NOAA website states that it’s difficult to measure the effects of manmade sounds on mammals.

“Acoustic trauma, which could result from close exposure to loud human-produced sounds, is very challenging to assess, particularly with any amount of decomposition,” or damage to the whale’s body, states NOAA on its website.

Sean Hayes, chief of protected species for the NOAA, wrote in a letter to Brian Hooker, lead biologist at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management: “The development of offshore wind poses risks to these species [right whales], which is magnified in southern New England waters due to species abundance and distribution … . However, unlike vessel traffic and noise, which can be mitigated to some extent, oceanographic impacts from installed and operating turbines cannot be mitigated for the 30-year life span of the project, unless they are decommissioned.”

In addition, the AP article made no mention that some of the companies that would install these wind farms are owned by Denmark, the Netherlands and France—despite the fact that renewable energy tax credits in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act are aimed at stimulating domestic firms to produce renewable energy. And there was no mention that New Jersey offshore wind farms would have practically no effect on mitigating global temperatures, either now or by 2100.

Local municipalities are increasingly rejecting wind farms, according to a Renewable Rejections Database tracker maintained by environmental scholar Robert Bryce. He reports that 417 wind farms and 190 solar arrays have been rejected by local communities in 2023. More than 600 projects have been rejected in 2023, up from 489 in 2022 and 208 in 2018.

Proponents of renewable energy are trying to gloss over its harms and exaggerate its benefits in an attempt to push costly offshore wind farms. For the record, French- and Dutch-owned Atlantic Shores and Danish-owned Ørsted asked permission to hurt whales, dolphins, porpoises and seals.

Americans in New Jersey and elsewhere oppose that environmental damage.

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Media

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UK’s Onshore Wind Scheme Could Backfire, With Far More Potent Greenhouse Gas Emissions


By: Miles Pollard / September 12, 2023

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/12/uks-onshore-wind-scheme-might-not-lower-emissions-could-raise-energy-prices/

As it relates to wind power in the United Kingdom, not everything is coming up daisies, much less roses, despite what advocates for renewable power would have Britons believe. (Photo: Studio-fi/iStock/Getty Images)

Shortly after naming Claire Coutinho as secretary of state for energy security and net zero on Aug. 31, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a plan to accelerate the approval process for onshore wind projects. Previously, a 2015 ruling allowed a single complaint within a community to halt an onshore wind program and fully stopped subsidies for such projects. Under the new rule, communities can speed up the process for allocating sites through local development orders or community right-to-build orders.

However, wind farms can drastically raise the cost of electricity when the wind doesn’t blow and could leak a chemical that is exponentially more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide (CO2).

Perhaps Coutinho isn’t aware of the influential 2019 BBC article that uncovered how the U.K.’s offshore wind turbine gearboxes are utilizing the world’s most potent greenhouse gas, sulfur hexafluoride, and that these gearboxes are leaking 15% of the gas over their lifecycle.

Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is 23,500 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2). For reference, methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2­0) are roughly 25 and 298 times more potent than carbon dioxide, respectively. Additionally, these estimates are only over a 100-year perspective, and SF6 could exist up to 3,200 years in the atmosphere. Consequently, a single pound of released SF6 is the equivalent of 11 tons of CO2 in the atmosphere. 

No energy source, not even wind, can be fully without externalities, even with the most advanced recycling techniques. That’s not to mention the hydrocarbons needed to fabricate the nylon and fiberglass for blades and to create the steel and concrete for towers.

Speaking of externalities, Coutinho should also acknowledge the potential of 100,000 birds killed every year by wind turbines in the U.K. However, losses could be minimized by adopting the Norwegian practice of painting one rotor blade black to reduce those deaths by an estimated 70%.  

Despite the calls for expansion of energy generation, one of the largest hurdles is the time it takes to link to the grid, with more than 1,100 projects currently waiting to connect. With such a backlog of projects and the lack of transmission infrastructure, the U.K. government should contemplate allowing these projects to compete in an unsubsidized market to weed out economically unviable projects and restore reliability and adaptability to the grid.

Furthermore, the U.K. should also be wary of greenlighting or expanding every wind project without completing the due diligence to investigate local environmental harm and to acknowledge the wishes of local constituents. Abandoning reliable generation capacity for intermittent wind power without first investing in viable storage capacity is a recipe for disaster. For example, scalable gas-fired power stations saved the U.K. last winter by providing 60% of the needed electricity while wind turbines contributed a paltry 3%.

In order to end the economic malaise caused by ever-increasing energy prices and a culture of strangling economic freedom into stagnation, the U.K. needs to adopt an energy policy that will lower prices of electricity, rather than adopting the German model of closing reliable nuclear power stations and massively expanding intermittent solar and wind. Instead, the U.K. should adopt the Trump-era all-of-the-above strategy for energy security. 

Similarly, the U.K. should roll back pre-Brexit European laws and rebuff current proposed measures that seek to control people’s everyday lives, such as mandating that properties meet net zero targets or pay £15,000 (about $18,750).

In an economic climate of spiraling inflation, the U.K. government should look to all avenues, including retaining its coal power until viable base-load generation alternatives can be secured.

The U.K.’s remaining nuclear reactors should be left online or expanded, and small modular nuclear reactors should be explored. Rather than solely expanding wind turbines that could leak a greenhouse gas 23,500 times more potent than CO2, the U.K. should explore scalable alternatives, such as the zero-emission natural gas plant that is being brought online in 2025.  

With continuing inflation, connected insiders colluding with unelected bureaucrats, and a worldwide populace increasingly leery of increasing government censorship, the U.K. needs to abandon anti-energy policies and acknowledge that economic growth will always require more energy and more ingenuity. Lifting restrictions on wind power and other sources is but the first step to allowing the U.K. to become energy secure.

Intermittent sources alone cannot ensure energy security, as they are only as good as their storage capacity. Wind power must also be upfront about its tangible greenhouse gas emissions.

The U.K. needs stable and scalable energy sources to alleviate its energy woes. Only by lowering high energy bills and lowering the cost of living can the U.K. reignite the boundless energy of human potential.

COMMENTARY BY

Miles Pollard

Miles Pollard is an economic policy analyst with the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at The Heritage Foundation.

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Green New Deal, International Politics

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