Never one to let a good faux scandal go to waste, the WSJ granted Robert Bryce (a fossil-fuel funded Manhattan Institute senior fellow) space to opine on a recent ruling about wind turbines and avian mortality. According to a federal ruling handed down on August 11th, the wind industry will not be granted a thirty-year exemption to the laws protecting eagles and must perform Environmental Impact Assessments for its turbines.
While this adds a layer of red tape (generally despised by WSJ opinion writers, but now celebrated) to wind power deployment, it's by no means a death knell to the industry. Not to mention fossil fuel power plants kill far more birds than wind or solar. While wind farms kill 0.27 birds per gigawatt-hour (GWh), fossil-fuel powered plants kill a staggering 9.4 birds per GWh. When you factor in reports like Audubon's that show nearly half the birds in the US may be driven to extinction by climate change this century, the expansion of wind power doesn't look like the "impending slaughter" described by Bryce. There's also the fact that research has shown eagle deaths are reduced dramatically over just a couple years as the birds learn to fly around the wind farms.
Unsurprisingly, the piece is remarkably similar to a 2013 oped by Bryce in the WSJ about wind and birds. Though the 2013 oped (incorrectly) suggests wind power might be on the way out, the pieces are quite similar in style, tone and meaning.
While situations may change, the WSJ's eagerness to give pundits a place to attack clean energy without disclosing their fossil-fuel funding apparently doesn't.
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