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Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
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Summary

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the growth of capacity to generate electricity from wind energy has been rapid, growing from almost none in 1980 to 11,603 megawatts (MW) in 2006 in the United States and about 60,000 MW in 2006 globally. Despite this rapid growth, wind energy amounted to less than 1% of U.S. electricity generation in 2006.

Generation of electricity by wind energy has the potential to reduce environmental impacts caused by use of fossil fuels to generate electricity because, unlike fossil fuels, wind energy does not generate atmospheric contaminants or thermal pollution, thus being attractive to many governments, organizations, and individuals. Others have focused on adverse environmental impacts of wind-energy facilities, which include aesthetic and other impacts on humans and effects on ecosystems, including the killing of wildlife, especially birds and bats. Some environmental effects of wind-energy facilities, especially those from transportation (roads to and from the plant site) and transmission (roads or clearings for transmission lines), are common to all electricity-generating plants; other effects, such as their aesthetic impacts, are specific to wind-energy facilities.

This report provides analyses to help to understand and evaluate positive and negative environmental effects of wind-energy facilities. The committee was not asked to consider, and therefore did not address, non-environmental issues associated with generating electricity from wind energy, such as energy independence, foreign-policy considerations, resource utilization, and the balance of international trade.

Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
×

Wind energy has a long history, having been used for sailing vessels at least since 3100 BC. Traditionally, windmills were used to lift water and grind grain as early as the 10th century AD. However, significant electricity generation from wind in the United States began only in the 1980s, in California; today, electricity is generated from wind in 36 states, including Alaska and Hawaii.

There has been a rapid evolution of wind-turbine design over the past 25 years. Thus, modern turbines are different in many ways from the turbines that were originally installed in California’s three large installations at Altamont Pass, Tehachapi, and San Gorgonio (Palm Springs). A typical modern generator consists of a pylon about 60 to 90 meters (m) high with a three-bladed rotor about 70 to 90 m in diameter mounted atop it. Larger blades and taller towers are becoming more common. Other support facilities usually include relatively small individual buildings and a substation.

This study is concerned with utility-scale clusters of generators often referred to as “wind farms,” not with small turbines used for individual agricultural farms or houses. Some of the installations contain hundreds of turbines; the wind installation at Altamont Pass in California consists of more than 5,000, and those at Tehachapi and Palm Springs contain at least 3,000 each, ranging from older machines as small as 100 kilowatts (kW) to more modern 1.5 MW turbines. The committee that produced this report focused only on installations onshore. There were no offshore wind-energy installations in the United States as of the beginning of 2007.

THE PRESENT STUDY

Statement of Task

The National Research Council was asked to establish an expert committee to carry out a scientific study of the environmental impacts of wind-energy projects, focusing on the Mid-Atlantic Highlands1 (MAH) as a case example. The study was to consider adverse and beneficial effects, including impacts on landscapes, viewsheds, wildlife, habitats, water resources, air pollution, greenhouse gases, materials-acquisition costs, and other impacts. Using information from wind-energy projects proposed or in place in the MAH and other regions as appropriate, the committee was charged to develop an analytical framework for evaluating those effects to inform siting decisions for wind-energy projects. The study also was to identify major areas of research and development needed to better understand the

1

The MAH refers to elevated regions of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
×

environmental impacts of wind-energy projects and to reduce or mitigate negative environmental effects.

Current Guidance for Reviewing Wind-Energy Proposals

The United States is in the early stages of learning how to plan for and regulate wind-energy facilities. Federal regulation of wind-energy facilities is minimal if the facility does not have a federal nexus (that is, receive federal funding or require a federal permit), which is the case for most energy development in the United States. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, oil, and natural gas, but it does not regulate the construction of individual electricity-generation (except for nonfederal hydropower), transmission, or distribution facilities. Apart from Federal Aviation Administration guidelines, federal and state environmental laws protecting birds and bats are the main legal constraints on wind-energy facilities not on federal lands or without a federal nexus.

Wind energy is a recent addition to the energy mix in most areas, and regulation of wind energy is evolving rapidly. In evaluating current regulatory review processes, the committee was struck by the minimal guidance offered to developers, regulators, or the public about (1) the quantity and kinds of information to be provided for review; (2) the degrees of adverse or beneficial effects of proposed wind developments to consider critical for approving or disallowing a proposed project; and (3) the competing costs and benefits of a proposed project to weigh, and how to weigh them, with regard to that single proposal or in comparison with likely alternatives if that project is not built. Such guidance, and technical assistance with gathering and interpreting information needed for decision making, would be enormously useful. This guidance and technical assistance cast at the appropriate jurisdictional level could be developed by state and local governments working with groups composed of wind-energy developers and nongovernmental organizations representing all views of wind energy, in addition to other government agencies. The matrix of government responsibilities and the evaluation guide in Chapter 5 of this report should help the formulation of such guidance.

The committee judges that material in Chapter 5 could be a major step in the direction of an analytic framework for reviewing wind-energy proposals and for evaluating existing installations. If it were followed and adequately documented, it would provide a basis not only for evaluating an individual project but also for comparing two or more proposed projects and for undertaking an assessment of the cumulative effects of other human activities. It also could be used to project the likely cumulative effects of additional wind-energy facilities whose number and placement are identi-

Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
×

fied in various projections. Finally, following this material would allow for a rational documentation of the most important areas for research.

Environmental Benefits of Wind Energy

The environmental benefits of wind energy accrue through its displacement of electricity generation that uses other energy sources, thereby displacing the adverse environmental effects of those generators. Because the use of wind energy has some adverse impacts, the conclusion that a wind-energy installation has net environmental benefits requires the conclusion that all of its adverse effects are less than the adverse effects of the generation that it displaces. However, this committee’s charge was to focus on the use of wind energy; it was not able to evaluate fully the effects of other energy sources. The committee also did not fully evaluate so-called life-cycle effects, those effects caused by the development, manufacture, resource extraction, and other activities affiliated with all energy sources. Thus, in assessing environmental benefits of wind-energy generation of electricity, the committee focused on the degree to which it displaces or renders unnecessary the electricity generated by other sources, and hence on the degree to which it displaces or reduces atmospheric emissions, which include greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide (CO2); oxides of nitrogen (NOx); sulfur dioxide (SO2); and particulate matter. This focus on benefits accruing through reduction of atmospheric emissions, especially of greenhouse-gas emissions, was adopted because those emissions are well characterized and the information is readily available. It also was adopted because much of the public discourse about the environmental benefits of wind energy focuses on its reduction of atmospheric emissions, especially greenhouse-gas emissions. The restricted focus on benefits accruing through reduction of atmospheric emissions also was adopted because the relationships between air emissions and the amount of electricity generated by specified types of electricity-generating sources are well known. However, relationships between incremental changes in electricity generation and other environmental impacts, such as those on wildlife, viewsheds, or landscapes, generally are not known and are unlikely to be proportional. In addition, wind-powered generators of electricity share some kinds of adverse environmental impacts with other types of electricity generators (for example, some clearing of vegetation is required to construct either a wind-energy or a coal-fired power plant and its access roads and transmission lines). Therefore, calculating the extent to which wind energy displaces other sources of electricity generation does not provide clear information on how much, or even whether, those other environmental impacts will be reduced. This report does, however, provide a guide to the methods and information needed to conduct a more comprehensive analysis.

Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
×

Projections for future wind-energy development, and hence projections for future wind-energy contributions to reduction of air-pollutant emissions in the United States, are highly uncertain. Recent model projections by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for U.S. onshore installed wind-energy capacity in the next 15 years range from 19 to 72 gigawatts, or 2 to 7% of projected U.S. onshore installed electricity-generation capacity. In the same period, wind-energy development is projected to account for 3.5 to 19% of the increase in total electricity-generation capacity. If the average wind-turbine size is assumed to be 2 MW (larger than most current turbines), 9,500 to 36,000 wind turbines would be needed to achieve that projected capacity.

Because the wind blows intermittently, wind turbines often produce less electricity than their rated maximum output. On average in the mid-Atlantic region, the capacity factor of turbines—the fraction of their rated maximum output that they produce on average—is about 30% for current technology, and is forecast to improve to nearly 37% by the year 2020. Those are the fractions the committee used in estimating how much wind energy would displace other sources. Other factors, such as how wind energy is integrated into the electrical grid and how quickly other energy sources can be turned on and off, also affect the degree to which wind displaces other energy sources and their emissions. Those other factors probably further reduce the 30% (or projected 37%) figure, but the reduction probably is small, at least for the projected amount of onshore wind development in the United States. The net result in the mid-Atlantic region is unclear. Because the amount of atmospheric pollutants emitted varies from one energy source to another, assumptions must be made about which energy source will be displaced by wind. However, even assuming that all the electricity generation displaced by wind in the mid-Atlantic region is from coal-fired power plants, as one analysis has done, the results do not vary dramatically from those based on the assumption that the average mix of electricity sources in the region is displaced.

In addition to CO2, coal-fired power plants also are important sources of SO2 and NOx emissions. Those two pollutants cause acid deposition and contribute to concentrations of airborne particulate matter. NOx is an important precursor to ozone pollution in the lower atmosphere. However, because current and upcoming regulatory controls on emissions of NOx and SO2 from electricity generation in the eastern United States involve total caps on emissions, the committee concludes that development of wind-powered electricity generation using current technology probably will not result in a significant reduction in total emission of these pollutants from the electricity sector in the mid-Atlantic region.

Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
×
Conclusions
  • Using the future projections of installed U.S. energy capacity by the DOE described above, the committee estimates that wind-energy development probably will contribute to offsets of approximately 4.5% in U.S. emissions of CO2 from electricity generation by other electricity-generation sources by the year 2020. In 2005, electricity generation produced 39% of all CO2 emissions in the United States.

  • Wind energy will contribute proportionately less to electricity generation in the mid-Atlantic region than in the United States as a whole, because a smaller portion of the region has high-quality2 wind resources than the portion of high-quality wind resources in the United States as a whole.

  • Electricity generated in the MAH—including wind energy—is used in a regional grid in the larger mid-Atlantic region. Electricity generated from wind energy in the MAH has the potential to displace pollutant emissions, discharges, wastes, and other adverse environmental effects of other sources of electricity generation in the grid. That potential is estimated to be less than 4.5%, and the degree to which its beneficial effects would be realized in the MAH is uncertain.

  • If the future were to bring more aggressive renewable-energy-development policies, potential increased energy conservation, and improved technology of wind-energy generation and transmission of electricity, the contribution of wind energy to total electricity production would be greater. This would affect our analysis, including projections for development and associated effects (for example, energy supply, air pollution, and development footprint). On the other hand, if technological advances serve to reduce the emissions and other negative effects of other sources of electricity generation or if fossil-fuel prices fall, the committee’s findings might overestimate wind’s contribution to electricity production and air-pollution offsets.

  • Electricity generated from different sources is largely fungible. Depending on factors such as price, availability, predictability, regulatory and incentive regimes, and local considerations, one source might be preferentially used over others. The importance of the factors changes over varying time scales. As a result, a more complete understanding of the environmental and economic effects of any one energy source depends on a more complete understanding of how that energy source displaces or is displaced by other energy sources, and it depends on a more complete understanding of the environmental and economic effects of all other available

2

The quality of a wind resource refers to the amount of wind available for wind-powered generation of electricity.

Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
×

energy sources. Developing such an understanding would have great value in helping the United States make better-informed choices about energy sources, but that was beyond this committee’s charge. Nonetheless, the analyses in this report have value until such time as a more comprehensive understanding is developed.

Ecological Impacts

Wind turbines cause fatalities of birds and bats through collision, most likely with the turbine blades. Species differ in their vulnerability to collision, in the likelihood that fatalities will have large-scale cumulative impacts on biotic communities, and in the extent to which their fatalities are discovered. Probabilities of fatality are a function of both abundance and behavioral characteristics of species. Among bird species, nocturnal, migrating passerines3 are the most common fatalities at wind-energy facilities, probably due to their abundance, although numerous raptor fatalities have been reported, and raptors may be most vulnerable, particularly in the western United States. Among bats, migratory tree-roosting species appear to be the most susceptible. However, the number of fatalities must be considered in relation to the characteristics of the species. For example, fatalities probably have greater detrimental effects on bat and raptor populations than on most bird populations because of the characteristically long life spans and low reproductive rates of bats and raptors and because of the relatively low abundance of raptors.

The type of turbines may influence bird and bat fatalities. Newer, larger turbines appear to cause fewer raptor fatalities than smaller turbines common at the older wind-energy facilities in California, although this observation needs further comparative study to better account for such factors as site-specific differences in raptor abundance and behavior. However, the data are inadequate to assess relative risk to passerines and other small birds. It is possible that as turbines become larger and reach higher, the risk to the more abundant bats and nocturnally migrating passerines at these altitudes will increase. Determining the effect of turbine size on avian risk will require more data from direct comparison of fatalities from a range of turbine types.

The location of turbines within a region or landscape influences fatalities. Turbines placed on ridges, as many are in the MAH, appear to have a higher probability of causing bat fatalities than those at many other sites.

The overall importance of turbine-related deaths for bird populations is unclear. Collisions with wind turbines represent one element of the cumu-

3

Passerines are small to medium mainly perching songbirds; about half of all U.S. birds are passerines.

Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
×

lative anthropogenic impacts on these populations; other impacts include collisions with other structures and vehicles, and other sources of mortality. As discussed in Chapter 3, those other sources kill many more birds than wind turbines, even though precise data on total bird deaths caused by most of these anthropogenic sources are sparser and less reliable than one would wish. Chapter 3 also makes clear that any assessment of the importance of a source of bird mortality requires information and understanding about the species affected and the likely consequences for local populations of those species.

The construction and maintenance of wind-energy facilities also alter ecosystem structure through vegetation clearing, soil disruption and potential for erosion, and noise. Alteration of vegetation, including forest clearing, represents perhaps the most significant potential change through fragmentation and loss of habitat for some species. Such alteration of vegetation is particularly important for forest-dependent species in the MAH. Changes in forest structure and the creation of openings alter microclimate and increase the amount of forest edge. Plants and animals throughout an ecosystem respond differently to these changes. There might also be important interactions between habitat alteration and the risk of fatalities, such as bat foraging behavior near turbines.

Conclusions
  • Although the analysis of cumulative effects of anthropogenic energy sources other than wind was beyond the scope of the committee, a better analysis of the cumulative effects of various anthropogenic energy sources, including wind turbines, on bird and bat fatalities is needed, especially given projections of substantial increases in the numbers of wind turbines in coming decades.

  • In the MAH, preliminary information indicates that more bats are killed than was expected based on experience with bats in other regions. Not enough information is available to form a reliable judgment on whether the number of bats being killed will have overall effects on populations, but given a general region-wide decline in the populations of several species of bats in the eastern United States, the possibility of population effects, especially with increased numbers of turbines, is significant.

  • At the current level of wind-energy development (approximately 11,600 MW of installed capacity in the United States at the end of 2006, including the older California turbines), the committee sees no evidence that fatalities caused by wind turbines result in measurable demographic changes to bird populations in the United States, with the possible exception of raptor fatalities in the Altamont Pass area, although data are lacking for a substantial portion of the operating facilities.

Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
×
  • There is insufficient information available at present to form a reliable judgment on the likely effect of all the proposed or planned wind-energy installations in the mid-Atlantic region on bird and bat populations. To make such a judgment, information would be needed on the future number, size, and placement of those turbines; more information on bird and bat populations, movements, and susceptibility to collisions with turbines would be needed as well. Lack of replication of studies among facilities and across years makes it impossible to evaluate natural variability.

Recommendation
  • Standardized studies should be conducted before siting and construction and after construction of wind-energy facilities to evaluate the potential and realized ecological impacts of wind development. Pre-siting studies should evaluate the potential for impacts to occur and the possible cumulative impacts in the context of other sites being developed or proposed. Likely impacts could be evaluated relative to other potentially developable sites or from an absolute perspective. In addition, the studies should evaluate a selected site to determine whether alternative facility designs would reduce potential environmental impacts. Post-construction studies should focus on evaluating impacts, actual versus predicted risk, causal mechanisms of impact, and potential mitigation measures to reduce risk and reclamation of disturbed sites. Additional research is needed to help assess the immediate and long-term impacts of wind-energy facilities on threatened, endangered, and other species at risk. Details of these recommendations, including the frequency and duration of recommended pre-siting, pre-construction, and post-construction studies and the need for replication, are in Chapter 3.

Impacts on Humans

The human impacts considered by the committee include aesthetic impacts; impacts on cultural resources, such as historic, sacred, archeological, and recreation sites; impacts on human health and well-being, specifically from noise and from shadow flicker; economic and fiscal impacts; and the potential for electromagnetic interference with television and radio broadcasting, cellular phones, and radar. This is not an exhaustive list of all possible human impacts from wind-energy projects. For example, the committee did not address potentially significant social impacts on community cohesion, such as cases where proposed wind-energy facilities might cause rifts between those who favor them and those who oppose them. Psychological impacts—positive as well as negative—that can arise in confronting a controversial project also were not addressed.

Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
×

There has been relatively little dispassionate analysis of the human impacts of wind-energy projects in the United States. In the absence of extensive data, this report focuses mainly on appropriate methods for analysis and assessment and on recommended practices in the face of uncertainty. Chapter 4 contains detailed conclusions and recommendations concerning human impacts, including guides to best practices and descriptions of information needs. General conclusions and recommendations concerning human impacts follow.

Conclusions
  • There are systematic and well-established methods for assessing and evaluating human impacts (described in Chapter 4); they allow better-informed and more-enlightened decision making.

  • Although aesthetic concerns often are the most-vocalized concerns about proposed wind-energy projects, few decision processes adequately address them. Although methods for assessing aesthetic impacts need to be adapted to the particular characteristics of wind-energy projects, such as their visibility, the basic principles (described in Chapter 4 and Appendix D) of systematically understanding the relationship of a project to surrounding scenic resources apply and can be used to inform siting and regulatory decisions.

Recommendations
  • Because relatively little research has been done on the human impacts of wind-energy projects, when wind-energy projects are undertaken, routine documentation should be made of processes that allow for local interactions concerning the impacts that arise during the lifetime of the project, from proposal through decommissioning, as well as processes for addressing the impacts themselves. Such documentation will facilitate future research and therefore improve future siting decisions.

  • Human impacts should be considered within the context of the environmental impacts discussed in Chapter 3 and the broader contextual analysis of wind energy—including its electricity-production benefits and limitations—presented in Chapter 2. Moreover, the conclusions and recommendations concerning human impacts presented by topic in Chapter 4 should not be considered in isolation; instead, they should be treated as part of a process. Questions and issues concerning human impacts should be covered in assessments and regulatory reviews of wind-energy projects.

Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
×

Analyzing Adverse and Beneficial Impacts in Context

The committee’s charge included the development of an analytical framework for evaluating environmental and socioeconomic effects of wind-energy developments. As described in Chapter 1, an ideal framework that addressed all effects of wind energy across a variety of spatial and temporal scales would require more information than the committee could gather, given its time and resources, and probably more information than currently exists. In addition, energy development in general, and wind-energy development in particular, are not evaluated and regulated in a comprehensive and comparative way in the United States, and planning for new energy resources also is not conducted in this manner. Instead, planning, regulation, and review usually are done on a project-by-project basis and on local or regional, but not national, scales. In addition, there are few opportunities for full life-cycle analyses or consideration of cumulative effects.

There also are no agreed-on standards for weighting of positive and negative effects of a proposed energy project and for comparing those effects to those of other possible or existing projects. Indeed, the appropriate standards and methods of conducting such comparisons are not obvious, and it is not obvious what the appropriate space and times scales for the comparisons should be. Therefore, a full comparative analysis has not been attempted here.

The committee approached its task—to carry out a scientific study of the adverse and beneficial environmental effects of wind-energy projects— by analyzing the information available and identifying major knowledge gaps. Some of the committee’s work was made difficult by a lack of information and by a lack of consistent (or even any) policy guidance at local, state, regional, or national levels about the importance of various factors that need to be considered. In particular, the committee describes in Chapter 1 and Chapter 5 the reasons that led us to stop short of providing a full analytic framework and instead to offer an evaluation guide to aid coordination of regulatory review across levels of government and across spatial scales and to help to ensure that regulatory reviews are comprehensive in addressing the many facets of the human and nonhuman environment that can be affected by wind-energy development.

Framework for Reviewing Wind-Energy Proposals

Conclusion
  • A country as large and as geographically diverse as the United States and as wedded to political plurality and private enterprise is un-

Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
×

likely to plan for wind energy at a national scale in the same way as some European countries are doing. Nevertheless, national-level energy policies (implemented through such mechanisms as incentives, subsidies, research agendas, and federal regulations and guidelines) to enhance the benefits of wind energy while minimizing the negative impacts would help in planning and regulating wind-energy development at smaller scales. Uncertainty about what policy tools will be in force hampers proactive planning for wind-energy development. More-specific conclusions and recommendations follow.

Conclusion
  • Because wind energy is new to many state and local governments, the quality of processes for permitting wind-energy developments is uneven in many respects.

Recommendation
  • Guidance on planning for wind-energy development, including information requirements and procedures for reviewing wind-energy proposals, as outlined in Chapter 5, should be developed. In addition, technical assistance with gathering and interpreting information needed for decision making should be provided. This guidance and technical assistance, conducted at appropriate jurisdictional levels, could be developed by working groups composed of wind-energy developers; nongovernmental organizations with diverse views of wind-energy development; and local, state, and federal government agencies.

Conclusion
  • There is little anticipatory planning for wind-energy projects, and even if it occurred, it is not clear whether mechanisms exist that could incorporate such planning in regulatory decisions.

Recommendation
  • Regulatory reviews of individual wind-energy projects should be preceded by coordinated, anticipatory planning whenever possible. Such planning for wind-energy development, coordinated with regulatory review of wind-energy proposals, would benefit developers, regulators, and the public because it would prompt developers to focus proposals on locations and site designs most likely to be successful. This planning could

Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
×

be implemented at scales ranging from state and regional levels to local levels. Anticipatory planning for wind-energy development also would help researchers to target their efforts where they will be most informative for future wind-development decisions.

Conclusion
  • Choosing the level of regulatory authority for reviewing wind-energy proposals carries corresponding implications for how the following issues are addressed:

  1. cumulative effects of wind-energy development;

  2. balancing negative and positive environmental and socioeconomic impacts of wind energy; and

  3. incorporating public opinions into the review process.

Recommendation
  • In choosing the levels of regulatory review of wind-energy projects, agencies should review the implication of those choices for all three issues listed above. Decisions about the level of regulatory review should include procedures for ameliorating the disadvantages of a particular choice (for example, enhancing opportunities for local participation in state-level reviews).

Conclusion
  • Well-specified, formal procedures for regulatory review enhance predictability, consistency, and accountability for all parties to wind-energy development. However, flexibility and informality also have advantages, such as matching the time and effort expended on review to the complexity and controversy associated with a particular proposal; tailoring decision criteria to the ecological and social contexts of a particular proposal; and fostering creative interactions among developers, regulators, and the public to find solutions to wind-energy dilemmas.

Recommendation
  • When consideration is given to formalizing review procedures and specifying thresholds for decision criteria, this consideration should include attention to ways of retaining the advantages of more flexible procedures.

Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
×
Conclusion
  • Using an evaluation guide such as the one recommended in Chapter 5 to organize regulatory review processes can help to achieve comprehensive and consistent regulation coordinated across jurisdictional levels and across types of effects.

Recommendation
  • Regulatory agencies should adopt and routinely use an evaluation guide in their reviews of wind-energy projects. The guide should be available to developers and the public.

Conclusion
  • The environmental benefits of wind-energy development, mainly reductions in atmospheric pollutants, are enjoyed at wide spatial scales, while the environmental costs, mainly aesthetic impacts and ecological impacts, such as increased mortality of birds and bats, occur at much smaller spatial scales. There are similar, if less dramatic, disparities in the scales of realized economic and other societal benefits and costs. The disparities in scale, although not unique to wind-energy development, complicate the evaluation of tradeoffs.

Recommendation
  • Representatives of federal, state, and local governments should work with wind-energy developers, nongovernmental organizations, and other interest groups and experts to develop guidelines for addressing tradeoffs between benefits and costs of wind-energy generation of electricity that occur at widely different scales, including life-cycle effects.

Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
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Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
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Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
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Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
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Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
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Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
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Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
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Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
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Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
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Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Research Council. 2007. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11935.
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The generation of electricity by wind energy has the potential to reduce environmental impacts caused by the use of fossil fuels. Although the use of wind energy to generate electricity is increasing rapidly in the United States, government guidance to help communities and developers evaluate and plan proposed wind-energy projects is lacking. Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects offers an analysis of the environmental benefits and drawbacks of wind energy, along with an evaluation guide to aid decision-making about projects. It includes a case study of the mid-Atlantic highlands, a mountainous area that spans parts of West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. This book will inform policy makers at the federal, state, and local levels.

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