Wind Energy & the Environment

Wind energy works, is increasingly cost-effective, has a net positive environmental impact, and is compatible with most existing land uses. The links below touch on the topic of wind’s environmental benefits and impacts.

In Iowa Wind Opponents Turn to Animal Cruelty

By

Peter Sinclair

Science deniers needlessly killing animals, in order to needlessly kill more animals. Appalled but not surprised. People who don’t care about the massive extinctions brought on by climate change certainly won’t stop at killing innocent animals to further the fossil fuel agenda.

The climate and air-quality benefits of wind and solar power in the United States

By

Lbnl

We find cumulative wind and solar air-quality benefits of 2015 US$29.7–112.8 billion mostly from 3,000 to 12,700 avoided premature mortalities, and cumulative climate benefits of 2015 US$5.3–106.8 billion.

URI Researchers: Block Island Wind Farm “Highly Unlikely” To Have Caused Whale’s Death

By

Christian Winthrop

In response to the June 24, 2017 piece, “Block Island Wind Farm May Have Killed Young Humpback Whale,” several of us, researchers at the University of Rhode Island (URI), feel it is important to explain from a scientific view why it is highly unlikely the whale’s death had anything at all to do with a turbine from the Block Island Wind Farm.

Thirty years of North American wind energy acceptance research: What have we learned?

By

Joseph Rand; Ben Hoen

(1) North American support for wind has been consistently high. (2) The NIMBY explanation for resistance to wind development is invalid. (3) Socioeconomic impacts of wind development are strongly tied to acceptance.

Was America’s First Offshore Wind Farm Unfairly Blamed For A Whale’s Death?

By

Alexander C. Kaufman

Right-wing media find a new renewable energy bogeyman.

Wind farms are hardly the bird slayers they’re made out to be—here’s why

By

Simon Chapman

“Wind farms and nuclear power stations are responsible each for between 0.3 and 0.4 fatalities per gigawatt-hour (GWh) of electricity while fossil-fuelled power stations are responsible for about 5.2 fatalities per GWh.”