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Below are some basic answers to frequently asked questions and concerns about wind energy. If you have any additional questions please contact Steel Winds.
Is wind power subsidized?
How green is wind power?
Does wind power require back-up by fossil fuel generation on the energy grid?
How does wind power affect birds and bats?
A: The Steel Winds plant sells its power to energy buyers at market prices just like any other power plant.
The Steel Winds project does not benefit from any project specific subsidy or legislation. Like all other energy projects (including coal, nuclear, oil and gas) wind energy does qualify for accelerated depreciation of the investment dollars used to build the plant. In addition, wind energy plants in the US also qualify for a federal tax credit based on the actual production of pollution free energy after startup.
The wind industry is subsidized, but not nearly as much as the coal, oil, nuclear, and natural gas industries. Historically, the energy industry has been subsidized as a means of ensuring that the country has adequate and reliable supplies of energy. The largest subsidies, however, go to coal, oil, nuclear and natural gas fuels and generation.
The National Commission on Energy Policy found a low-end estimate for federal energy subsidies in 2003 to be $37 billion to $64 billion. Total wind energy subsidy payments in that same year are estimated at $155 million - well under one percent of the federal energy subsidy total.
Furthermore, fossil fuel energy generation has external costs that all Americans pay such as:
- Health care costs
- Pollution costs
- Securing petroleum in unstable areas of the world
- Disposal costs (nuclear)
Sources: National Commission on Energy Policy, P. 204-217 / Union of Concerned Scientists
A: Generating wind power produces no pollution and no by-products. Furthermore it uses no natural resources, such as water, in the production of energy, whereas fossil fuels and nuclear use water for both creating steam to turn turbines and for cooling, in addition to consuming non-renewable consuming mineral deposits. For every MWh produced by wind turbines a MWh is not produced by the standard electricity supply mix in the United States.
- Coal: 49%
- Nuclear: 20%
- Natural Gas: 14%
- Hydro: 7%
- Biomass: 7%
- Oil: 2%
- Other: 1%
By offsetting the need for fossil-fueled generation, wind power reduces the amount of emissions created by traditional energy sources. The most recent (2004) data shows the U.S. electricity industry produced annual emissions totaling:
- 2.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide
- 10.7 million tons of sulfur dioxide
- 4.1 million tons of nitrogen oxides
- 53 tons of mercury
SOURCE: National Research Council Wind Report, EPA
A: Given the size of the U.S. mainland electric grid, even large amounts of wind power would require little to no backup by fossil fuel. In a 2004 study, the Minnesota Department of Commerce found that 1,500 MW of wind generation would require only 8 MW of "spinning reserve." Spinning reserve refers to generation resources that can come online immediately to make up for any sudden shortfall in supply.
Furthermore, there is usually already more spinning reserve available on a system than would ever be required by any single wind farm or series of wind farms. Typically, the electricity grid operator maintains enough spinning reserve to insure there are no disruptions should a significant generation source experience a forced outage, for example a large nuclear or coal plant.
Sources: Minnesota Department of Commerce / Independent System Operator of New England
A: Wind energy and all forms of renewable energy are good for the environment as well as the people, animals and birds that live in the environment. As it represents the largest form of undeveloped renewable energy, wind energy is particularly beneficial to the environment.
While it is true that birds will fly into all tall structures, including wind turbines, the number of birds who are impacted by a wind turbine is small compared with other structures such as tall buildings and suspension bridges.
As a general matter, First Wind conducts extensive, multi-season environmental reviews of each potential project site to determine its impact on local wildlife. While we make every effort to minimize the impact of our wind turbines on birds and bats, it is impossible to ensure no bird or bat will be affected. When compared to other causes of death to birds and bats, however, we believe the benefits to the overall wildlife environment outweigh the risk. In fact, recent data shows wind turbines account for less than 0.003% of all annual bird fatalities in the U.S.
Many studies on the subject are ongoing, and most remain inconclusive on the full impact of wind power on wildlife. First Wind closely monitors research in this area as part of its environmental reviews. The National Research Council, in a comprehensive review of wind power, recently offered this perspective:
The overall importance of turbine-related deaths for bird populations is unclear. Collisions with wind turbines represent one element of the cumulative anthropogenic impacts on bird populations; other impacts include collisions with tall buildings, communications towers, other structures, and vehicles, as well as other sources of mortality such as predation by house cats.
While estimation of avian fatalities caused by wind-power generation is possible, the data on total bird deaths caused by most anthropogenic sources, including wind turbines, are sparse and less reliable than one would wish, and therefore it is not possible to provide an accurate estimate of the incremental contribution of wind-powered generation to cumulative bird deaths in time and space at current levels of development.
Data on bat fatalities are even sparser. While there have been a few reports of bat kills from other anthropogenic sources (e.g., through collisions with buildings and communications towers), the recent bat fatalities from wind turbines appear to be unprecedentedly high. More data on direct comparisons of turbine types are needed to establish whether and why migratory bats appear to be at the greatest risk of being killed. Clearly, a better understanding of the biology of the populations at risk and analysis of the cumulative effects of wind turbines and other anthropogenic sources on bird and bat mortality are needed.
Having said the above, we provide here estimates summarized by Erickson et al. (2005) and estimates reported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (2002a). Those sources emphasize the uncertainty in the estimates, but the numbers are so large that they are not obscured even by the uncertainty:
- Collisions with buildings kill 97 to 976 million birds annually
- Collisions with high-tension lines kill at least 130 million birds, perhaps more than one billion
- Collisions with communications towers kill between 4 and 5 million based on "conservative estimates," but could be as high as 50 million
- Cars may kill 80 million birds per year
- Toxic chemicals, including pesticides, kill more than 72 million birds each year
- Domestic cats are estimated to kill hundreds of millions of songbirds and other species each year
- Collisions with wind turbines killed an estimated at 20,000 to 37,000 birds per year in 2003, with all but 9,200 of those deaths occurring in California
Erickson et al. (2005) estimate that total cumulative bird mortality in the United States 'may easily approach 1 billion birds per year.' Clearly, bird deaths caused by wind turbines are a minute fraction of the total anthropogenic bird deaths-less than 0.003% in 2003 based on the estimates of Erickson et al. (2005). SOURCE: National Research Council Wind Report 2007
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