That estimate is considerably lower than the range put out by ABC, which has cited annual mortality estimates between 600,000 and somewhere north of 1 million.Ī flock of starlings flies over a field with wind turbines. While research into the exact number of fowl fatalities is somewhat lacking, mainstream scientists contend that turbines kill somewhere between 140,000 and 500,000 birds per year. It’s true that the very nature of wind turbines - tall, sharp, and spinning - poses a legitimate threat to the winged. The organization has lobbied Capitol Hill against the Public Land Renewable Energy Development Act, sought stringent new federal regulations over wind siting, and reacted to President Joe’s Biden recently announced push for more offshore wind with caution.

states and countries from Brazil to South Africa. The scope of ABC’s anti-wind work includes campaigns in more than a dozen U.S. “Our wildlife should not be collateral damage in our effort to combat climate change, nor does it have to be.” “Alternative energy is not ‘green’ if it is killing hundreds or thousands or millions of birds annually,” an ABC official said in 2016. To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist. ABC literature pushing this position has been cited by a wide array of wind energy opponents, including local community groups, members of Congress, and former President Donald Trump. Over the last decade or so, the influential organization, which sits on a nest egg of $20 million in annual revenue, has repeatedly deployed representatives to oppose wind energy projects, defang renewable energy legislation, influence journalism, and legitimize anti-wind activists and climate change skeptics through a powerful but misleading argument: that wind power is uniquely environmentally destructive and may do more harm than good. It’s taken a similarly combative posture nationwide. If successful, ABC could halt Heritage, overturn New York’s siting rules, and prevent the Empire State from meeting its lofty green energy goals. (Even so, they’ve agreed to limit turbine motion at night as a precaution.) The group contends this upstate project will devastate the local bald eagle population - a claim contrary to that of the developers, who, following two years of data collection, found that few rare birds inhabit the siting area. Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times via Getty ImagesĪBC had previously voiced concerns over the state’s draft siting guidelines and is also opposing Heritage Wind, a renewable energy farm proposed for a rural town just north of Buffalo.

“We strongly support the deployment of renewable energy projects as long as they are sited responsibly and avoid intense consequences to birds and vulnerable wildlife,” she said.Ī red–tailed hawk soars through a foggy morning near a row of windmills used for power generation in the Altamont Pass area outside Tracy, California. But she expressed faith in the state’s ability to maintain the right balance. As this new office takes shape, state officials have sought input from environmental interests, including the New York Audubon Society, which secured regulatory language meant to minimize threats to birds and other wildlife by ensuring that turbines are properly sited and monitored.Įrin McGrath, Audubon’s policy manager in Albany, told Grist that the birding group was negotiating a “tug and pull” between the need to build renewables while preserving avian habitats. In response to these failures, last year the state legislature established a new Office of Renewable Energy Siting. The office aims to streamline wind and solar development while retaining important safeguards like environmental assessments and community feedback. A wind farm slated for a small island on Lake Ontario was also scrapped after a hunter spotted a pair of eagles, which spurred a contentious environmental assessment. In one case, a proposed solar development in the Buffalo-area town of Cambria was rejected after violating local zoning laws. But while the Empire State hopes to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, its most promising green energy source - wind - has remained stagnant for years, accounting for just 3 percent of the state’s power supply.Ī complex regulatory process has frequently denied applications from renewable energy developers or driven them to such frustration that they’ve withdrawn their plans altogether. Over the last two decades, New York state has repeatedly set some of the country’s most ambitious green energy benchmarks.

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