Renewable sources have environmental impacts, some of which are significant.
Wind power environmental impacts include land use issues and challenges to wildlife and habitat.
The environmental impacts associated with solar power can include land use and habitat loss, water use, and the use of hazardous materials in manufacturing. 1
A recent study finds 2,206 onshore wind, hydropower, and solar PV energy generation facilities have 'already encroached on many of the word's most important places for conserving biodiversity', degrading 896 protected areas, 749 key biodiversity areas, and 40 distinct wilderness areas. 2
Even more concerning, the number of active renewable energy facilities inside important conservation areas is poised to increase by about 42% by 2028. To avert climate change, the United Nations demands a 10-fold increase in renewable energy by 2060. This emphasis will especially occur in developing regions like Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where the most biodiverse regions in the world are most threatened. 3
France
France is engaged in an act of landscape spoliation on a massive scale, from the vineyard slopes of Burgundy to the fortified medieval city at Carcassone. Construction recently began of a windfarm next to the Mont Sainte-Victoire, the craggy mountain near Aix-en-Provence, the one that Cezanne painted over and over again.4
France is spending $110 billion to solve a problem it doesn't have. And wind and solar make it impossible to close down its remaining fossil fuel power stations: wind turbines generate about a quarter of their installed capacity because the wind often doesn't blow enough, doesn't blow in the right direction or blows too much. For solar power the number is even lower. Fluctuations are huge from day to day, even from hour to hour.
At the peak of the coronavirus panic on April 21, the French government quietly issued “decree number 2020-456 relative to pluriannual energy planning”. Ignored by the media, it contains nevertheless, a bomb. A dramatic down-scaling of nuclear power and up-scaling of renewable energy.
France will, over the next eight years, build 6,500 new wind turbines to add to the 8,100 it already has. They will be larger than the existing ones so the new wind farms will enable France to more than double its existing installed wind power capacity.
The biggest problem is the scale. French church towers are usually around 30 meters high. The windfarms going up now in France are 185 meters high. A prefect in Burgundy has authorized the construction of 65 wind turbines that will be 240 meters high. The Eiffel Tower is 324 meters high. Its good to have one of these. Having thousands would be quite different. 4
For all the money, France is going to get no reduction in carbon emissions. Thanks to the nuclear power program begun by General de Gaulle in 1945 that made France by far the biggest per capita nuclear producer in the world. In 2019 French electricity was 71 percent nuclear, 11 percent hydro, 6 percent wind and 2 percent solar. Only 10 percent was CO2 producing thermal (mainly natural gas).
However, France has announced that it will close 14 nuclear reactors by 2035, bringing nuclear power's share of the electricity generation mix down to 50 percent. This is likely to have a similar effect. By closing nuclear reactors to achieve its target of 40 percent renewables in the energy mix by 2030, France may actually end up moving further away from its objective of carbon neutrality by 2050.
France doesn't need the extra electricity production wind and solar bring. It could get that easily by cranking up its nuclear plants to full capacity. Neither does it need them to decrease carbon emissions. 4
Wind turbines are, for all intents and purposes, decorative. Tens of billions of pounds to decorate the countryside with millions of tons of concrete and metal would scandalize France.
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Germany
The German state of Hesse's largest contiguous forest area will become a wind industry area if profit seeking planners get their way. The place is known as the 'treasure house of European forests' or 'Grimm's fairy tale forest.' Twenty million square meters of 1000-year the old 'fairy tale' forest will be designated as an industrial wind park zone. Approval procedure in final phase. The 1000 year old 'fairy tale' forest is slated to be industrialized for 'green' energy. 5
The first 20 wind turbines of unprecedented size are planed, the approval procedure is in the its final phase. And that would only be the beginning. A total of more than 60 of these gigantic wind turbines could be built on 7 large areas.
Concurrently, pressured by climate activism, power generator Vattenfall announced it will shut down its recently commissioned modern Moorburg coal power plant in Hamburg, Germany. The plant was commissioned in 2015 and is still considered as brand new on a power plant scale. It came with a 3 billion euro price tag and was scheduled to run until 2038. The power plant plays an important role in the power supply in northern Germany, in Hamburg and the surrounding area with its port, metal operations and Airbus.
With Moorburg's rated capacity of 1.65 GW, it will take over 1600 wind turbines with a rated capacity of 5MW (operating at 20%) to replace the power plant. That could mean a profound impact on forests and landscapes in Germany if they have to be cleared for more wind parks. 6
To meet all requirements of Germany's transition to green energies, two-thirds of the country would need to be outfitted with 200 meter tall rotating wind turbines at a distance of 1000m, no matter if there is a city, a river or a highway, a forest, a lake or a nature reserve.
Mojave Desert in the United States
More than 100 biologists and contract workers rounded up desert tortoises because they were blocking construction of the first major solar energy plant to be built on public land in Southern California. This disrupted complex tortoise networks and blood lines linked for centuries by dusty trails, shelters and hibernation burrows.
The reason? To make way for construction of BightSource Energy's 3,280 acre, 370 megawatt Ivanpah Solar Electric generation System. The development of solar power facilities in the desert was a top priority of the Obama Administration as it tried to ease the nation's dependence on fossil fuels and address climate change.7
Without the roundup, an estimated 17 federally threatened desert tortoises, and an unknown number of half-dollar-sized hatchings in the 913 acre initial phase of the project would be squashed by heavy equipment. The tortoises were put in pens until they could be transported and released in so-called natural settings elsewhere in the region determined to be free of disease and predators. 8
References
“Environmental impacts of renewable energy technologies,” ucsusa.org, July 14, 2008
Jose Andres Rehbein et al., “Renewable energy development threatens many globally important biodiversity areas,” Global Change Biology, 26(5), March 2020
Kenneth Richard, “Renewable energy threatens of thousands of globally important biodiversity ares—and it's worsening,” notrickszone.com, June 1, 2020
John Laurenson, “Thousands of new French windfarms-- but no reduction in carbon emissions,” standpointmag.co.uk, July 10, 2020
P. Gosselin, “Environment of dystopia: Germany plans to wipe put 20 million square meters of 1000-year old forest, for wind parks,” notrickszone.com, December 8, 2020
P. Gosselin, “Energy masterminds announce latest folly: shutdown of modern coal power plant commissioned just 5 years ago,” notrickszone.com, December 11, 2020
Louis Sahagun, “Biologists scour Mojave in desert tortoise roundup,” Los Angeles Times, October 9, 201
Will Kane, “Solar plant's last hurdle: 4 tortoises,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 26, 2010, Page D1
Jack Dini is author of Challenging Environmental Mythology. He has also written for American Council on Science and Health, Environment & Climate News, and Hawaii Reporter.
