Leading Bird Conservation Group Formally Petitions Feds to Regulate Wind Industry

[Bob Wallace]

3. Already being done?

I have a hard time believing that wind farms are being built without environmental impact statements.

Don't federal regulations require impact reports?

BTW, bird kills per kWh/GWh is very low compared to some other forms of electricity generation. That's not to say that we should be careful about where we install and do what we can to minimize impact, but let's be careful to keep things in perspective.

"The study estimates that wind farms and nuclear power stations are responsible each for between 0.3 and 0.4 fatalities per gigawatt-hour (GWh) of electricity while fossil-fueled power stations are responsible for about 5.2 fatalities per GWh. While this paper should be respected as a preliminary assessment, the estimate means that wind farms killed approximately seven thousand birds in the United States in 2006 but nuclear plants killed about 327,000 and fossil-fueled power plants 14.5 million. The paper concludes that further study is needed, but also that fossil-fueled power stations appear to pose a much greater threat to avian wildlife than wind and nuclear power technologies."

http://nukefree.org/news/Avianmortalityfromwindpower,fossil-fuel,andnuclearelectricity