At Carbon Lighthouse we love both renewable energy and birds (though some of our team members’ love of pigeons is debatable), but we also love data and information-driven analysis.
So we conducted a literature review of about 20 peer reviewed academic papers studying the effects of wind turbines.
A selection of these papers is listed in the bibliography below. These papers not only carefully studied the effects of wind farms on birds and bats across the world, they studied those effects for years, sometimes even a decade or longer.
The results were clear: it turns out wind farms kill ten times fewer birds than fossil fuel power plants. Specifically, wind farms and nuclear power plants kill only 0.3 to 0.4 birds per GWh of electricity generated, while oil, gas, and coal power plants kill 5.4 birds per GWh of electricity generated. [2]
If we simply count up the birds based on the amount of electricity generated by each source, it means Wind Farms kill about 7,000 birds per year, Nuclear power plants kill about 327,000 birds per year, and coal and natural gas plants combined kill about 14,500,000 birds per year. [2]
These number are part of the reason why the National Audubon society “strongly supports” wind power.
I’ve compiled a simple table below showing concluding data from the studies, but before we launch in to that, let’s share some of the interesting anecdotes from some of these papers:
- Interesting anecdote 1: A study of raptors and wind turbines found that the number of raptor deaths did not actually depend on the number of raptors near the wind turbines. In other words, the ten, er, oddest, raptors were going to be killed each year by wind turbines whether there were 100 raptors living near the wind farm, or 10,000. These are probably the same raptors that fly into the walls of your house.
- Interesting anecdote 2: A study focused on Northumbria beach-based wind farms, a leading killer of birds as far as wind farms are concerned, found as many birds caught up in fishing gear or oil as by turbine blades. So stop leaving your pots of oil uncovered outside the house.
- Interesting anecdote 3: Birds are killed much more often by fast moving turbine blades, which is reasonable since they are harder to see and harder to avoid. Bats, inexplicably, are killed in much greater numbers by the slower, easier to avoid blades.
- Interesting anecdote 4: Your cat kills 2 birds per year on average. So your house kills 1.
Alright, on to the data! Each of the studies ([1], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7]) analyzed different sets of wind farms in different places. Some analyzed small wind farms, others large farms, others on shore vs. off shore. The following table is a compilation of the results from these studies:
Larger turbine blades turn much more slowly so birds can easily avoid them. Thankfully, larger turbines are also more efficient and cost effective, so it is very rare to see small turbines used in wind farms at all any more.
Regardless, fossil fuel based power plants kill ten times as many birds as do wind farms.
Selected bibliography:
1. Newton & Little. Assessment of wind-farm and other bird casualties from carcasses found on a Northumbrian beach over an 11-year period. Bird Study, Vol. 56, July 2009.
2. Sovacool, Benjamin. Contextualizing avian mortality: A preliminary appraisal of bird and bat fatalities from wind, fossil-fuel, and nuclear electricity. Energy Policy, Vol. 37, June 2009.
3. de Lucas, Janss, Whitfield, & Ferrer. Collision fatality of raptors in wind farms does not depend on raptor abundance. Journal of Applied Ecology, Vol. 45, December 2008.
4. Smallwood & Thelander. Bird mortality in the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area, California. Journal of Wildlife Management, Vol. 72, January 2008.
5. Kerlinger, Gehring, Erickson, Curry, Jain, & Guarnaccia. Night migrant fatalities and obstruction lighting at turbines in North America. Wilson Journal of Ornithology, Vol. 122, December 2010.
6. Everaert & Stienen. Impact of wind turbines on birds in Zeebrugge (Belgium). Biodiversity and Conservation, Vol. 16, November 2007.
7. Osborn, Higgins, Usgaard, Dieter, & Neiger. Bird mortality associated with wind turbines at the Buffalo Ridge wind resource area, Minnesota. American Midland Naturalist, Vol. 143, January 2000.
