Wind Power and Its Environmental Footprint

From the Rice Lake (Wisc.) Chronotype:

State officials say a planned wind farm next to the Horicon Marsh in east central Wisconsin raises concerns the turbines could harm large migrating birds such as sandhill cranes and also could endanger the thousands of bats that hibernate at a nearby abandoned mine.

The draft environmental impact statement issued Tuesday suggests raptors and small birds could also be at risk from the 133 wind turbines proposed by the Forward Wind Energy Center.

Authors of the statement are critical of the developers for not having their studies include the types of birds located in areas closest to Horicon. Those studies focused on other wind energy projects and found little evidence of damage to birds, but none of the studies approximated conditions around Horicon, the report said.

Going forward, America and the world are going to need a lot more electricity, and we're going to have to rely on a diverse portfolio of sources of generation -- and every one of those comes with one kind of environmental opportunity cost or another.

There is no single magic bullet.

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NEI Nuclear Notes

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