Fast-Tracking Wind Development on Western Public Lands: Bad Idea
The Obama administration is promoting a fast-track review and approval process for renewable energy projects on western public lands, particularly wind and solar energy developments. Among the 34 projects listed for fast-track approval, six are wind developments.1 The speeded-up process is designed to get projects underway by December 2010, to qualify them for large subsidies under The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.2
Fig. 1. Solar Power Potential
Expediting approval of these major public lands projects raises many problems.One of the largest is that most Department of Interior (DOI) staff lack the expertise and experience needed for thorough review of the projects’ environmental impacts, as required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
Although the Administration insists that the projects will have complete review and full public participation, its accelerated schedule allows for neither.3 The intended sites for fast-track wind developments lie in the same region targeted for solar projects.
This region contains the nation’s largest concentration of public lands, and has the highest potential for developing solar power (Figure 1). But, excluding offshore areas, it does not include the nation’s highest wind potential areas.
Fig. 2. Wind Power Potential
High-potential wind sites on western public lands are mostly limited to mountain ridge-tops. Developing wind farms on such steep terrain involves major road-building projects across hillslopes, which damage much more land than the road itself (Figure 2).4
In addition to extensive habitat segmentation (Figure 3)5, concentrated rainfall runoff, both from roads and turbine pads, cause major gullying downslope (Figure 4). Yet photographs of actual wind developments, and the project simulations found on industry websites, show no ground disturbance at all.
Fig. 3. Tehachapi, CA Wind Farms
In contrast to the regions of highest solar energy-generating potential, areas of high regional wind potential are concentrated on privately owned farming and grazing lands, located generally east of the Rocky Mountains (Figure 2). Wind farm development on agricultural lands does not seriously disrupt farming (Figure 5), and the terrain is generally not steep enough to create serious erosion problems from access roads and turbine pads.
Fig. 4. Windfarm gullies
Many wind developments on public lands have killed large numbers of birds and bats,6 a problem that agricultural wind farms may share. But the biggest drawback to extensive wind farm development in the Midwest is long transmission distances to coastal western population centers — a problem that plagues solar development of western public lands also.
Fig. 5. Farming-compatible
The limited potential for wind energy on western public lands and the high potential for greater environmental impacts of wind farms built in steep terrain militate against the fast-track wind development program. The severity of land damage must be considered along with energy loss problems of long transmission lines. Restoration of previously undamaged arid lands, in the sense of putting the land back the way it was prior to development, is not possible. In addition, some wind farms built on public lands have failed, with no adequate reclamation bonding or oversight to prevent continued erosion and wildlife habitat degradation (Figure 6).7
The costs for best possible reclamation results will be high, and must be assessed prior to development. The public needs to insist that sufficient funds to cover long-term reclamation by qualified independent parties be put up in advance, to avoid the same set of problems attendant on mine closure and reclamation, and ensure that public money is not the only source of funding.
Fig. 6. Abandoned wind farm
Notes:
1Bureau of Land Management, Fast-Track Renewable Energy Projects, February 23, 2010: http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/energy/renewable_energy/fast-track_renewable.html
2The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 allows as much as 30% of development costs to be collected in cash, in lieu of tax credits
3Nielson, Jane, Obama’s DOI Reforms Oil and Gas Leasing on Public Lands, But What About Renewables?: www.theamericanwestatrisk.com (January 2010); Wilshire, Howard, Fast-Tracking Solar Development in the Desert: www.theamericanwestatrisk.com (March 2010)
4Studies of roadway impacts show that physical, chemical, and biological impacts of roads generally affect about 4 times the amount of land as the actual roadway. Figure 2 shows a downslope impact far greater than the road width (~6 feet) due to side-casting of material removed to create the road. See (H. G. Wilshire et al., The American West at Risk: Science, Myths, and Politics of Land Abuse and Recovery (New York, Oxford University Press, 2008), Chapter 5
5Wilshire, Howard and Douglas Prose. 1987. Wind Energy Development in California, USA. Environmental Management 11:13-20
6P. M. Cryan, Overview of issues related to bats and wind energy: Web version of presentation to the Wind Turbine Guidelines Advisory Committee Technical Workshop & Federal Advisory Committee Meeting, Washington, D.C., 26 February, 2008, U.S. Geological Survey General Information Product, 2008; Smallwood, K.S. and C.G. Thelander. 2005. Developing Methods to Reduce Bird Mortality in the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area. BioResource Consultants, Final Report to the California Energy Commission, Contract No. 500—01-019
7 Fast track projects do require closure “restoration” bonding, but the level of bonding is unspecified
The American West at Risk 
One more naysayer. Let’s see. We can’t use oil; we can’t use nuclear; we can’t use coal and now we can’t use wind. Our energy problem will suffocate growth, comprise national security and threaten the well being hundreds of millions of people. The benefits of wind FAR outweight the trivial costs. Would you rather fight
Trillion dollar wars? Would you rather sentence millions of young Anericans to sub- standard access to education and jobs? Would you rather threaten the entire planet’s environment? Or, would you accept the trivial consequences you discuss for the greater good of all?
All use of energy to maintain human populations has an environmental effect. All use of fossil fuels has a polluting effect on the human environment, especially the current immense use of fossil fuels. All attempts to replace the use of fossil fuels with alternatives will have impacts. Those are simply facts. Natural resource depletion is the naysayer; we are merely reporting. And trying to do it accurately. Some mistakes do creep into blogs, but we try to correct them as quickly as possible.
As we approach (or maybe as we pass) the peak production of fossil fuels worldwide (some say it has already happened), we feel that the time has come to expose the problems with our land uses, including energy development, so that as a nation we may choose our paths more carefully than previously. Covering up problems does not make them go away, and haven’t we had enough of living on hype?
However quickly the Bakken field can be exploited, growth of on-land U.S. oil production (including from the Bakken Formation) cannot keep up with depletion of older fields plus consumption growth. Simple calculations based on the equations controlling growth show that only 1 percent growth in consumption will more than halve the lifetime for any resource (see The American West at Risk, Chapter 12, Table 12.3, p. 321).
For deeply detailed discussion of this and other resource depletion issues, please go to The Oil Drum website: http://www.theoildrum.com/.
As long as oil consumption grows because of what you and others describe as U.S. “energy needs” (so much greater per capita than any other nation in the world), the U.S. will also feel required to increase imports. There’s no solution to this problem other than to reduce per capita energy consumption or replace fossil fuel energy with other energy sources. As you probably realize, we are way behind the curve on that process.
You apparently did not read the whole blog. In The American West at Risk, we salute wind and solar as the greenest and most renewable of alternative electricity generating power sources. The point of these blogs on fast-tracking solar and wind projects is to point out the potential for broadscale destruction of desert public lands from locating solar and wind projects on those relatively undamaged lands, to serve the desires of an industry that does not care about environmental degradation.
This rush to plant solar and wind power projects on fragile public lands habitat is another example of the old practice of externalizing costs for industry. The public eventually pays many times over for the resulting environmental degradation, while filling private pockets.
I never realized going ahead with this kind of a green initiative can have bad impacts on different spectrums, thanks.
That’s right! Green energy forms also have environmental impacts — that’s a condition of life support. All life support has environmental impacts. Just because solar and wind power are equated to “green power” does not mean that solar and wind developments have minimal environmental impacts. Siting large PV installations on public desert lands, and wind turbines on steep hillsides have had and will have negative environmental impacts. The larger the developments, the larger the impacts.
That is NOT to “naysay” solar or wind! To be truly green we OUGHT to deploy our technologies in the least disruptive manner. So laying waste to relatively intact public lands is not the way to go green with solar or wind. As Howard Wilshire wrote in the wind-power blog, wind is best combined with lands under cultivation — both because those are the best lands for wind power, and because the wind farms will disrupt less unspoiled habitat.
Solar power is best deployed as close to the sites of use as possible, and urban areas have many “brownfield” sites to use for solar collectors — plus ALL THOSE ROOFS!
The urgency of proposals to use public desert lands for solar power generation is due to the profit motive (utilities make their money from transmission lines not from generation), and does not factor in the loss of efficiencies that long transmission lines will incur.
If the population on this planet were only 2 billion, do you think you would be having this heated debate? Increasing population is driving a whole series of train wrecks. Overpopulation is the elephant in the room that journalists are afraid to write about.
The survival problems facing humans at the moment are results of activities as old as civilization itself. They are from the human activities of combustion of energy, fishing, grazing and farming. Why these should suddenly emerge as perilous threats is no particular mystery. It is the pressure of a human population of 6 billion (and soon to be 9 billion) that shows no signs of slowing its growth. That’s why they are fast-tracking these technologies. Simple as that.
The weakest, most self-indulgent and decadent of us are in denial about this question. But as Andy Jackson said so eloquently “One person with courage makes a majority.” Let’s all be that one person.
PS. Read the book Cod. It is the story of cod and how they how they dwindled to dearth due to overfishing. In the book there is not one single mention about the root cause of the staggering impact of human overpopulation.
Of course, you are largely correct. Overpopulation is the central problem for changing the quality of life worldwide. But over-consumption is the other huge problem.
The US population is not a very large proportion of world population, but it’s the largest consumer of materials on Earth — that’s total consumption, due to the astronomical level of per capita consumption. China is catching up to our total consumption, especially in energy minerals, but their per capita consumption is way low (huge population, of course).
If China was able to ramp up per capita consumption to our level in just a few months (not really possible) it would have to corner the world’s remaining resources, and would use them up in a very short period.
It has been said for the rest of the world’s nations to match US consumption, would require the resources of 3 more Earths. This means that this Earth, the one that produced humans and sustains them, cannot and will not provide the materials for that level of consumption growth. So the problem is both population growth and consumption growth.
Very well stated. Thank you for that.
To your point about resource consumption, check out http://www.global-warming-forecasts.com/2015-climate-change-global-warming-2015.php
Scroll down checking the right hand column until you reach the heading, “Raw Materials Shortages 2015,” which is a real head-shaker in terms of roadblocks to U.S. efforts to dramatically cut GHG emissions through cleantech like wind, CFL, hybrids, etc.
Seneca