Wind farms may be an environmentally friendly source of power, but the renewable energy came at a high price for Wyoming’s Duke Energy Renewables, which was fined $1 million last month for killing birds.

Duke Energy Renewables pleaded guilty in the deaths of more than 160 birds—14 of which were golden eagles—as a result of impact with the company’s wind turbines between 2009 and 2013, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Violating the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the case against Duke marks the first-ever criminal conviction for a renewable energy company under the act, which was established in 1918 to protect more than 1,000 species of birds.

According to the Justice Department, Duke failed to make “all efforts to build the projects in a way that would reduce the risk of bird deaths, despite a warning from the Fish and Wildlife Service,” reports the Times. The company claims that it built the wind turbines  prior to federally established regulations on turbines (which went into effect in 2012). But the Justice Department said the wind turbine regulations didn’t matter because the company was still in violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act by killing the birds.

The company says it is working to install radar technology to help detect birds near the turbines so that the company can shut them down temporarily if necessary.

In a statement following the guilty plea by Duke, the federal government warned wind turbine companies to make sure research is done on the possible effects on birds, because, “at the present time, no post-construction remedies” exist to make the turbines safe for birds. Despite the setback, renewable energy is a necessary step forward in helping to reduce our impact on the environment so that it’s safer for humans. And birds.

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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Climate control freaks?

Geoengineering is exactly what it says it is – engineering our geo. But here’s a cooler definition from the National Academy of Sciences:  “Options that would involve large-scale engineering of our environment in order to combat or counteract the effects of changes in atmospheric chemistry.” Consider this: when Mt. Pinatubo, in the Philippines erupted in 1991, its bad-ass belch of some 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide dropped world temperatures by an average of half a degree. Scientists now have the technology get the same job done without any help from the volcano gods; they can use airplanes to inject sulfur dioxide right into the stratosphere. One way to combat global warming? Maybe, but hey, maybe it’s a good idea to set up some rules here before we get all crazy, no?

Who’s upstairs?

There are lots of breakthroughs these days regarding our knowledge of what’s happening at the helm of our own personal wheelhouses. While we’re always going on about how we should all be thinking, buying and even voting green, how much control do we really have as to where our minds and dollars go? What we’re getting here is, do you know what the “neuromarkerters” are up to these daze? Do you know the role they played in this month’s election? Stay tuned in (if you can) for tales about who’s trying to take control of your controls.

Insides Out

While we’re looking at what’s under the hood, how about them stem cells? We’re all about sustainability here, right, and what could be more sustaining than potentially life-giving research opportunities? Well it depends on who you ask. What’s happening on the biotech ground – from university and corporate labs to the halls of the Hill – affect our current and future quality of life every day, and the latest rules and regs and funding issues are playing a major role in how we approach these issues as a society. Who are the players on these issues and what do they have cookin’ up in their petri dishes?

It’s in the air

Blown away by all the wind-generated energy hubbub? Swept up by the grand promises while suffering though the doldrums of slow-to-no progress? Well, we are too. With plans for massive “farming” projects everywhere from the Great Plains to off our coastlines, there are a lot of questions to explore about what’s the right way to go about an effective wind grabbing. What are the costs? What are the potential rewards? Who’s primed to make coin on these deals that could make large-scale engineering efforts like the Hoover Dam seem like specs in our collective rear view mirror? And as a nation, are we interested in taking the innovation lead?

What’s happening?

Save the date! Our global(ish) eco-social is coming up this month in sunny Cancun, Mexico, where the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is guaranteed to entertain. And who better to cover the red carpet happenings than EcoSalon? The background from the UN is this: “Over a decade ago, most countries joined an international treaty – the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – to begin to consider what can be done to reduce global warming and to cope with whatever temperature increases are inevitable. More recently, a number of nations approved an addition to the treaty: the Kyoto Protocol, which has more powerful (and legally binding) measures.” Here’s the subtext for this 16th meeting: Might a new binding treaty emerge? Don’t hold you breath – or maybe hold it. In any case, we’ll be covering the event! (In fact, we should send a reporter, right? Um, editor at ecosalon dot com. Tell her Scott sent you.)

OMG! It’s getting warmer in here!

If you thought we were going to leave Rep. Shimkus alone (note our shot across the bow last week), you’re mistaken. Not that we’re not saying there’s anything wrong with a Godly approach to life, but if he is speaking to us at all, he’s probably saying “knock it off with the greenhouse gases!” Anyway, it’s not just Shimkus we’re worried about. We’ll be keeping our eye on the climate control-busting shenanigans class of 2011. No quarter here. That’s a promise.

Duck and cover

Picking up on the Shimkus wave, we’re here to remind you that the War on Science is alive and well – and well-funded. Science denial seems to reaching a crescendo these days, whether deniers are taking on Einstein or climate change, the span between what science is telling us and what we believe seems to be growing. What are the facts on this issue? Does anyone care? Who wants you not to know better?

Is this thing (still) on?

Do I really need a new laptop already? It seems like I just bought one. Well, surprise, surprise, my breakdown might have been planned to go down well before my box was boxed. Planned obsolescence is a story not only about marketing and corporate greed, but about product footprints, waste and and throwaway culture. As our pal Brian Clark Howard recently said over at The Daily Green, “The issue has big environmental implications, because our insatiable appetite for stuff drives carbon emissions and pollution.” Quick, before the warranty expires, let’s take a look at this issues, and why it’s not necessarily an all-bad phenomenon.

Okay, so there’s a little EcoSalon skin. Hot huh? We missing anything? Thoughts? Ramblings? Send us a note at contact at ecosalon dot com.

Images: World Economic Forum, flydime, Liberal Democrats, James & Vilija, , phault
World Economic Forum, danielfoster437, woodleywonderworks, m.gifford

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As Paul Krugman’s New York Times Magazine cover story on environmental economics, “Building the Green Economy,” was ricocheting around the enviro-blogosphere last week, the American Wind Energy Association released its annual report [PDF] on the state of the wind industry.

It was an interesting juxtaposition – Krugman’s deep dive into the macroeconomics of an aggressive cap-and-trade or carbon-tax policy to limit greenhouse-gas emissions alongside a report from the front lines where the green economy is actually under construction.

What’s striking is that the wind-farm-building boom continued through the depths of the Great Recession in 2009, with a record 10,010 megawatts of new capacity added last year in the United States. In fact, wind energy accounted for 39 percent all new electricity generation that came online in 2009.

Sure, the renewable energy tax incentives in the Obama stimulus package and various state renewable-energy requirements certainly helped prime the pump. But even absent a national cap on greenhouse-gas emissions, the strength of the wind industry indicates the decarbonization of the economy is already underway, if haltingly.

According to AWEA, 90 percent of new power generation built over the past five years has come from renewables and natural gas. In other words, you are not likely to see many, if any, new coal-fired power plants built in the coming years. California regulators have prohibited big investor-owned utilities from signing long-term contracts for electricity generated by coal plants in places like Utah and Arizona, while the Golden State’s biggest coal-consuming utility, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, has pledged to wean itself from that particular fossil fuel.

And if carbon caps don’t do in other coal-fired power plant projects, their voracious appetite for water may well halt expansion in the desert Southwest. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that a coal-fired power plant equipped with carbon capture and storage could consume twice as much water as a conventional power plant.

Kristin Mayes, chair of the Arizona Corporation Commission, the state’s utility regulator, told me last year that all power-plant projects are being closely scrutinized for their water use. “If one of our utilities wanted to build a new coal plant, we would be talking very much about water issues as well as cap-and-trade,” she said.

Wind-turbine farms, of course, use no water in electricity production. AWEA estimates that by displacing fossil-fuel power, wind farms saved 15 billion gallons of water in 2009.

Where the wind do blow

The knock against wind is that despite the huge increases in capacity that have made the U.S. the world’s biggest wind power — with more than 35,000 megawatts installed — all those turbines still satisfy less than 2 percent of the nation’s demand for electricity.

True enough, but the picture changes if you take a state-by-state look. Iowa, for instance, relies on wind farms to generate 14.2 percent of its electricity, according to the wind industry report. Wind power supplies 9.4 percent of Minnesota’s electricity, 8.1 percent of North Dakota’s, and 6.4 percent of Oregon’s.

In the report, there’s a series of color-coded maps of wind-farm installations in the United States between 2000 and 2009. Those states with significant numbers of turbines are colored in shades of blue, those with few or none are white. At the beginning of the decade, broad swaths of the country were blank slates, with California the only dark blue state along with a handful of light blue states.

By decade’s end, most of the West and wind-swept Great Plains states as well as parts of the Northeast were a sea of blue of varying hues. Only the wind-poor Southeast and a handful of other states remained as white spots on the map.

So, is the wind boom only benefiting the blue states?

Not at all. Turn to a map of wind-related manufacturing and the red states are a pincushion of red dots from Arkansas to Georgia to Virginia, each dot indicating a factory.

“Currently, over 200 facilities across the U.S. supply to the wind industry, and this figure does not capture the many additional facilities at the sub-supplier level,” the report states. “Wind manufacturing facilities can be found in every region of the United States, and include major new wind-dedicated facilities and established businesses that have diversified into the wind-energy industry.”

Since 2005, the number of turbine makers doing business in the U.S. has tripled from five to 15. The wind industry currently employs 85,000 people, according to the report, a figure that remained flat in 2009 after growing rapidly in previous years. Texas remains the place to get a wind job, with more than 10,000 people employed in the industry.

A cap-and-trade market would certainly boost the fortunes of the wind industry, but emissions trading probably can’t solve one of the biggest obstacles to further expansion — the lack of transmission to connect far-flung wind farms to population centers.

“The inadequacy of the nation’s electric grid is a major impediment to the continued growth of the wind industry,” the report noted. “Many wind projects that have connected to the grid are forced to curtail a significant amount of their output or are facing low or even negative electric prices because there is inadequate transmission to carry their full output.”

There are an astounding 300,000 megawatts worth of planned projects seeking connection to the grid, only a fraction of which are likely to get built due to transmission constraints, according to the report.

Constructing that transmission will be akin to building the interstate highway system of the past century, and will involve juggling a slew of competing local, state, and federal interests — a task the market alone is unlikely to facilitate and finance.

“These are daunting tasks,” the report concluded. “But the progress made in 2009 suggests an industry that is at the cusp of new growth, and new opportunity.”

Editor’s note: Article by Todd Woody. Originally published by our friends at Grist.org. Grist is a media organization that has been dishing out environmental news and commentary with a humorous twist since 1999. Be sure to visit them and say hi, and follow Grist on Twitter, too!

Image: warrenski

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