Wind energy seemed like a perfect sustainable-energy technology to me until several years ago, when my wife and I attended a talk sponsored by the local Audubon Club, concerning the effect of wind turbines on avians, and the costs of wind energy in general. In brief:

-They were concerned about siting turbines on forest ridges, which is perfect for wind generation, but also provides excellent soaring conditions for large birds and bats. A wind farm at Altamont Pass is notorious for avian deaths.

-They were concerned because the standard wind farm procedure was to clearcut a large circular swath of the forest around the base of each turbine. In some cases those open circles nearly overlap each other. All these open fields, and access roads, have the effect of changing deep forest into shallow forest, which affects the wildlife that thrives in deep forest, and sometimes increases erosion.

-They were concerned about the long term effects on animals and humans living near constant noise and vibration. Complaints by lessors were ignored because Wind Farms had long term leases with fine print. As reported in the NY Times neighbors are often surprised by the loudness of wind turbines:

For Those Near, the Miserable Hum of Clean Energy

Like nearly all of the residents on this island in Penobscot Bay, Art Lindgren and his wife, Cheryl, celebrated the arrival of three giant wind turbines late last year. That was before they were turned on.

“In the first 10 minutes, our jaws dropped to the ground,” Mr. Lindgren said. “Nobody in the area could believe it. They were so loud.”
...

Maine, along with many other states, puts a general limit on nighttime noise at 45 decibels — roughly equivalent to the sound of a humming refrigerator. A normal conversation is in the range of 50 to 60 decibels. In almost all cases, it is not mechanical noise arising from the central gear box or nacelle of a turbine that residents react to, but rather the sound of the blades, which in modern turbines are mammoth appendages well over 100 feet long, as they slice through the air.

Turbine noise can be controlled by reducing the rotational speed of the blades. But the turbines on Vinalhaven already operate that way after 7 p.m., and George Baker, the chief executive of Fox Island Wind — a for-profit arm of the island’s electricity co-operative — said that turning the turbines down came at an economic cost.

“The more we do that, the higher goes the price of electricity on the island,” he said.

I was hoping the Times would cite a decibel level of the installed turbines, but in the accompanying video, one can see results of ~47 or 48 dB on the homeowner's measuring device.

Returning to that Audubon talk, the speaker also offered several criticisms of the companies that install and manage wind power, claiming that they were in general bad neighbors, that they were only in the business because of the government incentives and that they tended to leave rusting hulks behind once the seed money ran out.

He noted that even beyond the quality of life issues, between two and three thousand wind turbines would be needed to match the electrical generation of one coal-fired plant in PA. I took away the feeling that a utility company is a utility company, whether they are selling coal, nuclear or wind power, and worried that King Coal and Big Oil had been joined by Mighty Wind.

But because of the looming spectre of climate change, the national Audubon Club now seems to be a cautious supporter of wind energy, providing turbines are properly sited, even featuring Wind Power in their June 2009 issue. Audubon admits, however, that regulation is difficult to enforce.

Most of the authority over wind farms rests with local governments, which rarely ask probing questions about wind turbines and wildlife. In the small southeastern Colorado town of Lamar ... wind has been welcomed as an economic lifesaver. The county planning and zoning commission, which handled the permits for the Colorado Green development, approved it quickly and unanimously in March 2003, and local residents were almost uniform in their support.

The Colorado Green developers voluntarily commissioned some very general bird and other wildlife surveys before beginning construction, though the details of those surveys are not available to the public. The companies’ report on the environmental impacts of the project stated that while some birds and bats would be killed by the Colorado Green turbines, the deaths “will not result in significant adverse effect on populations of birds.” The report suggested that the site would be broadly similar to a large wind farm in northeastern Colorado, where several years of monitoring conducted by experienced biologists has recorded only one raptor death and very few songbird and bat kills.

The Colorado Green report was hardly an exhaustive analysis, but it was enough to satisfy local authorities. Now the company wants to build 100 new turbines in the Lamar area, and plans for several new wind farms are forming in other parts of Colorado, thanks to a new state constitutional amendment requiring large utilities to purchase 10 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2015. Congress recently extended a significant federal tax credit for wind power through 2007, boosting the confidence of wind-power developers and investors throughout the nation.

But while stipulating to all the concerns over avian deaths, the Audubon Club concedes that wind energy has value:

So conservationists find themselves in a tough spot. How can they support and encourage the rapid spread of wind power—our most promising source of clean, renewable energy—while ensuring that the industry minimizes its damage to birds and other wildlife?

“We can’t lose sight of the larger benefits of wind,” says Audubon Washington’s Tim Cullinan. “The direct environmental impacts of wind get a lot of attention, because there are dead bodies on the ground. But nobody ever finds the bodies of the birds killed by global warming, or by oil drilling on the North Slope of Alaska. They’re out there, but we don’t see them.”

The solution to this dilemma, say many conservationists, begins with early, consistent involvement in project planning. “Once those turbines go in,” says biologist Pete Bloom, “they don’t come down.” To encourage early consideration of wildlife, environmental groups have developed guidelines and policies for wind development. Audubon Washington’s guidelines, for instance, call for several seasons of bird surveys and other in-depth wildlife studies at proposed wind-power sites, and support statewide or multi-state planning efforts for wind facilities.

These, of course, are exactly the sort of, "snail darter" regulations that tend to be shunted aside under an administration favorable to business interests, and more interested in campaign contributions than in long term environmental benefits.