Clean Wind Power

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Clean Wind Power in New Jersey
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Clean Energy in New Jersey is Important to meet
Environmental Needs

• Fossil Fuel derived energy contributes to
• Global Warming / Air Pollution
• Local Air Quality Problems
• External Effects

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Focus Pollution and Birds

• "Neotropical migratory birds are important for
  our ecosystems. They work as nature's pest
  controllers and pollinators and provide many
  hours of enjoyment for birdwatchers and outdoor
  enthusiasts. " (Secretary Gail Norton 6/9/04
  USFW press release)

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• Importance of Birds
• Insect control and pollination
• Seed dispersal
• Enjoyment- in 2001 wildlife watchers spent 1.23
  Billion in New Jersey (USFWS).
• Changes in weather mark the initiation of
  migration.

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Global warming threatens to create shifts in
vegetative communities and regional climatic
patterns.

• These changes could greatly disrupt migratory
  birds if the plants they depend on for food
  become absent in a region, flower or fruit
  earlier or later due to climatic changes.
• A study of 35 North American warblers found that
  the range of seven species have shifted northward
  an average of gt 65 miles over the past 24 years,
  while none of the 35 species shifted southward
  (Price and Root, unpubl. data in Price and Glick
  2002).

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• Scientists have discovered behavioral changes in
  birds that correspond with warming spring
  temperatures, resulting in earlier migration.
• Changes in migration chronology could have
  devastating consequences for some birds.
• Birds that are associated with very specialized
  habitat types are very vulnerable to climatic
  shifts because such shifts may eliminate their
  habitats. (Both and Visser 2000). These include
  Black-throated Blue Warbler, Golden-winged
  Warbler, Chestnut-sided Warbler, Blackburnian
  Warbler, and Rose-breasted Grosbeak (Price 2002).

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Pollution can have other effects on ecological
communities

• Concentrations of air pollutants common in many
  areas of the United States can alter vegetational
  communities.
• Leaching of calcium from the soil by acid rain
  may be having a negative impact on the nesting
  success of species dependent on environmental
  calcium for egg laying (Hames et al. 2002).
• Changing of ecosystem structure will likely cause
  an impact on avian, and other wildlife,
  populations.

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POINT Green Matters! Increased use of clean
energy is needed to protect the ecological health
of our environment.

• Potential Solution
• The effects of global warming will need to be
  ameliorated through changes to rules governing
  emissions, and incentives for increased fuel
  efficiency, energy conservation, and renewable
  energy.

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Wind Energy is Compatible with Ecology
Sticking with birds

• A major environmental concern with the locating
  and development of wind turbines or wind power
  farms is the impact the facilities may have on
  bird (and bat) populations.

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Is avian species mortality really an issue? -
Yes

• Wind derived electricity now represents only
  small component of the total electric produced in
  the U.S. (0.3?), but growing rapidly.
• Today's utility-scale wind turbines can be quite
  large blades 130' in length, total heights of
  400'. See the web site for the American Wind
  Energy Association for background data on wind
  plant operations http//www.awea.org.
• Any structure has the potential to harm birds.
  It has been estimated that communication towers
  kill up to 50 million birds a year, 90 of which
  are neotropical migratory birds. Tall-building
  collisions (office buildings) kill millions of
  birds each year.

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• Wind turbines impact birds through
• i) collisions with the turbine blades, towers,
  power lines, or with other related
• structures
• ii) Turbulence / wind shear
• iii) habitat impacts (the infrastructure)
• Recent information from U.S. projects indicates
  that bird mortality at wind turbine projects
  varies from less than one bird/turbine/year to as
  high as 7.5 birds/per turbine/year.

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The numbers of fatalities add up quickly.

• The Mountaineer Wind Energy Project in West
  Virginia, a wind farm of 44 large turbines and
  related structures, is believed to have caused an
  estimated mortality of 4.80 birds per turbine in
  2003 (211 birds).
• The National Wind Coordinating Committee reported
  that the annual estimate of all avian mortality
  from the 15,000 operational wind turbines in the
  U.S. in 2001 was 10,000 to 40,000 birds. See the
  National Wind Coordinating Councils web site at
  www.nationalwind.org.
• Poor planning could conspire to cause significant
  mortality. One calculation for a proposed 180
  turbine facility calculates a potential for
  15,000 bird/bat kills per year at that site
  alone.
• Add to this the cumulative effect on migrating
  populations as they move across multiple wind
  farms, and population impacts become an issue.

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POINT

• Development and implementation of wind-power
  facilities have the potential to cause
  significant harm to avian species, and so to
  ecological systems in general

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POINT CONTINUED BUT IT DOES NOT HAVE TOO.

• We need wind energy
• WHY?

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Can we develop ecologically friendly wind power?
Very Likely YES

• Prior to constructing wind power projects, the
  potential risks to birds and bats can be
  evaluated.
• Pre-construction, a proper siting analysis can be
  done for each new wind turbine farm.
• Sites known to be used by rare birds could be
  avoided, as could known heavy migration pathways,
  or landscape features known to attract large
  numbers of birds.
• Lighting could be minimized.

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What Are We Doing About All This?

• Power industry, wind industry, private parties,
  NGO's and government agencies are collaborating
  to design policies and guidelines to implement
  wind power in an ecologically friendly way.

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Bottom Line

• We believe that by engaging in open dialogue
  with commercial interests and regulators, and by
  carrying out research on potential impacts and
  impact avoidance in the mid-Atlantic flyway, we
  will likely be able to implement much needed,
  commercially viable, technologically feasible,
  and ecologically friendly wind energy in New
  Jersey.

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Clean Energy Is Environmentally Necessary and
Ecologically Viable Help It Happen