snip
"conservation groups are working with federal agencies and the wind industry to develop national siting guidelines that minimize bat and bird deaths and other environmental impacts.
"Being renewable is a necessary but not sufficient condition for being 'green,'" says Defenders' climate change associate Aimee Delach, a member of the federal advisory committee drafting recommendations for the guidelines. "We are trying to get developers to think about wildlife and habitat right at the outset, so that we can enjoy the benefits of wind while minimizing adverse consequences." (See sidebar, page 18, for more on how Defenders is working to limit the wildlife impacts from wind energy.)
These rules are sorely needed, because wind energy is expanding rapidly. Installed U.S. wind power capacity has tripled since 2004 and now totals more than 31,000 megawatts in 37 states—enough to power nearly 9 million homes. Now some developers are looking offshore, where winds blow harder and more steadily than on land.
It costs more to build turbines in ocean waters, but offshore wind also has advantages. Many windy U.S. lands are in rural areas such as the northern Plains, far from population centers. But the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and the Great Lakes have good wind resources near large cities, so electricity can be generated near where it's needed without building long transmission lines.
Offshore turbines have to be massive to withstand the force of waves and storms, but their size produces economies of scale. For example, Cape Wind plans to use 130 turbines that reach 440 feet above the water when their blades are vertical. Each turbine tower will generate up to 3.6 megawatts—roughly the same output as a solar plant operating today in Arizona that covers 44 acres of desert. More energy per turbine increases profits, which helps wind compete with fossil fuels and nuclear power.
Seventeen state and federal agencies have jurisdiction over various parts of Cape Wind. For Mass Audubon, though, one review mattered most at the outset. Under the National Environmental Policy Act, the Army Corps of Engineers was required to do a broad review of Cape Wind's environmental impacts. Assessing how the project could affect birds was challenging: even though Nantucket Sound was widely recognized as important avian habitat, little hard data existed to show how different species actually used the area.
To fill the gaps, Mass Audubon highlighted three critical questions for Cape Wind: how songbirds migrated across the sound, where wintering water birds concentrated, and whether terns crossed through the project area as they prepared to migrate. "We told the Corps very strongly that they needed at least three years of study on these three issues," says Taber Allison, the group's vice president for science, policy and climate change. "When they didn't require that much from the developer, we decided we'd have to get the information ourselves." (Ultimately the developer paid for radar studies of songbirds.)....
snip
Cape Wind is still securing other permits but hopes to start construction this year. Meanwhile, offshore wind proposals are dotting the Atlantic coast. Another developer, Bluewater Wind, has proposed a 450-megawatt wind farm 11 miles off the coast of Delaware. Rhode Island has chosen a third company, Deepwater Wind, to build an offshore wind farm big enough to generate 15 percent of the state's electricity supply (roughly 400 megawatts), and New Jersey is considering several projects that could add up to 1,000 megawatts of capacity. Still other companies are studying sites off Galveston, Texas and in Lake Erie.
Is an offshore wind boom coming? Maybe, says Laurie Jodziewicz of the American Wind Energy Association. "Things may look good at an early stage, but a lot has to come together for a successful project," she cautions.
Financing is tight, but the Obama administration—which strongly supports developing more clean energy and limiting greenhouse gas emissions—is working to move renewables forward. Last spring the Interior Department published guidelines for offshore renewable energy development, a step that developers welcomed because it creates rules for leasing areas off U.S. coasts. "I expect we're going to see wind turbine projects with significant power generation in the next several years off the Atlantic," said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
This push raises a new issue for wildlife: even if individual projects won't cause harm, what about cumulative impacts? Would some species lose more habitat than others or have to detour farther? (Studies at Danish offshore wind farms have found that waterfowl tend to shift their foraging areas and adjust flight paths to avoid project zones.) Scientists say they can't answer those questions yet.
"The Atlantic coast is huge. There's a lot of information from past bird surveys, but there are big gaps between data sets and some studies are very old," says Andrew Gilbert, an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Relatively few Atlantic coast bird surveys have been conducted since 2000, especially on a regional scale, and little data exists from North Carolina's Outer Banks down through Florida.
Gilbert and other USGS scientists are developing a model that will use existing data from Atlantic bird surveys to predict where and how about a dozen key species, including loons, eiders, gannets, petrels and terns, use the ocean. By relating bird observations to information on ocean temperature, plankton concentrations and water depth, they aim to pinpoint other areas that might also be important for birds.....
snip
http://www.defenders.org/newsroom/defenders_magazine/winter_2010/wind,_water_and_wings.php
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
