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Below you'll find some basic answers to frequently asked questions and concerns about wind energy. For additional questions about wind energy or the Prattsburgh Wind project, please visit the resources section or contact us.
Do wind farms impact property values?
What sounds do wind turbines make?
What benefit does a wind farm have for me if I don’t have any turbines on my land?
Will I like the look of the wind turbines in my community?
Do wind turbines shed ice?
What does wind power cost?
Is wind power subsidized?
How green is wind power?
Does wind power require back-up by fossil fuel generation on the energy grid?
How does wind power affect birds and bats?
A: While studies have shown that wind farms do not adversely impact surrounding property values*, some residents believe that upstate New York is unique, with views playing an especially important role in property valuations. There is no research evidence to support this belief today. What most people can agree on, however, is that due to rising energy demands and costs, wind farms are becoming a more common and readily accepted part of the American landscape.
A: Today, an operating wind energy project at a distance of 750 to 1,000 feet emits sounds at a level comparable to a kitchen refrigerator or a moderately quiet room.
Wind turbines make a whooshing sound as the blades travel through the air. When standing directly under a wind turbine, you may hear a hum made by the generator and/or gearbox. Because wind turbines only produce sound when appropriate wind conditions are experienced, the wind makes sound as well, and the sound of an operating wind turbine is masked more than 800-900 feet away. Thus, with appropriate setbacks enacted through local regulatory authorities, wind turbine sound emissions should not affect neighboring residents.
A: A wind farm generates substantial value for a local community, including:
- Revenues to Towns: Property taxes or payments in lieu of taxes.
- Short Term Construction Benefits: Taken as an example, the construction of 50 wind turbines will produce roughly 60 full and part time jobs and create a significant demand for local construction materials and services. It is First Wind's policy to subcontract locally for construction to the greatest extent possible.
- Long Term Operations and Maintenance: Operation and maintenance of 50 wind turbines will produce approximately 4-6 long term service jobs. It is First Wind's policy to hire and train locally to the greatest extent possible.
- Electricity Supply: America's energy demand continues to increase and wind energy provides a way to meet a significant portion of this increase without the drawbacks of other types of power generation:
- Coal plants produce significant amounts of pollutants including carbon dioxide (greenhouse gas), SO2 (acid rain), NOx (acid rain and smog), particulate matter (asthma and other air pollution related illnesses), carbon monoxide, and mercury (contamination of fish and water supplies).
- Natural gas-fired plants, while cleaner than coal and oil, are often not cost competitive due to large and sudden fuel price increases.
- Large-scale hydroelectric projects have significant human and natural environmental impacts from the flooding of large areas of land.
A: A trip to a wind farm is worth at least a thousand words. Although aesthetics are subjective, anecdotal evidence suggests:
People generally like the look of modern, slowly rotating wind turbines on tubular towers. People are generally more receptive to the visual impact once they have visited a wind farm in person where they gain perspective on the size and distance. On a recent visit to a wind farm in Fenner, NY, a NY landowner said:
"You know, it wasn't until I actually saw the wind turbines at Fenner that I realized how amazing they are. It's hard to describe them; they're magnificent, graceful, inspiring. And you know, I knocked on people's doors and everyone I spoke to said they really liked them. I was expecting a couple people to have reservations, but no one did!"
This anecdote is not to say that everyone likes the look of wind turbines. It is just to say that many people do and it is important for a person to experience them first hand.
A: Wind turbines shut down during icing events due to either imbalance detection or the control anemometer icing (the control anemometer tells the turbine how fast the wind is moving). Any ice buildup tends to shed while the turbine is at rest or while it is starting up (that is, moving at slower than operational speed). Due to this, and the fact that the ice sheds in thin, non-aerodynamic pieces that break apart as they fall, current turbine setbacks from roads and residences are sufficient to protect the public from ice shed.
The best way to discover whether there have been any injuries caused by wind turbine ice shed is to review insurance claims. To date, there has not been any insurance claim for injury due to ice shed.
A: With a moderate to good wind resource, wind power generation is competitive with conventional sources of generation. In the future as fossil fuel prices increase, it is expected that wind will be cheaper than these sources.
Furthermore:
- Wind can be produced at a known cost, which reduces price volatility in the energy markets, effectively saving utilities and ratepayer's money.
- Wind will reduce the demand on natural gas, which should also reduce prices.
- The price of wind generation continues to go down while the price of conventional fuel continues to go up.
- Wind power does not incur the external costs (costs not included in the market price) of fossil fuel power production such as air pollution related health care costs (i.e. treatment for lung ailments).
A: Yes it is, but not nearly as much as the coal, oil, nuclear, and natural gas industries. Historically, the energy industry has been subsidized as a means of ensuring that the country has adequate and reliable supplies of energy. The largest subsidies, however, go to coal, oil, nuclear and natural gas fuels and generation. The National Commission on Energy Policy found a low-end estimate for federal energy subsidies in 2003 to be $37 billion to $64 billion. Total wind energy subsidy payments in that same year are estimated at $155 million - well under one percent of the federal energy subsidy total.
Furthermore, fossil fuel energy generation has external costs that all Americans pay such as:
- Health care costs
- Pollution costs
- Securing petroleum in unstable areas of the world
- Disposal costs (nuclear)
A: Generating wind power produces no pollution and no by-products. Furthermore it uses no natural resources, such as water, in the production of energy, whereas fossil fuels and nuclear use water for both creating steam to turn turbines and for cooling, in addition to consuming non-renewable consuming mineral deposits. For every MWh produced by wind turbines a MWh is not produced by the standard electricity supply mix in the United States.
- Coal: 49%
- Nuclear: 20%
- Natural Gas: 14%
- Hydro: 7%
- Biomass: 7%
- Oil: 2%
- Other: 1%
By offsetting the need for fossil-fueled generation, wind power reduces the amount of emissions created by traditional energy sources. The most recent (2004) data shows the U.S. electricity industry produced annual emissions totaling:
- 2.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide
- 10.7 million tons of sulfur dioxide
- 4.1 million tons of nitrogen oxides
- 53 tons of mercury
A: Given the size of the U.S. mainland electric grid, even large amounts of wind power would require little to no backup by fossil fuel. In a 2004 study, the Minnesota Department of Commerce found that 1,500 MW of wind generation would require only eight MW of "spinning reserve." Spinning reserve refers to generation resources that can come online immediately to make up for any sudden shortfall in supply.
Furthermore, there is usually already more spinning reserve available on a system than would ever be required by any single wind farm or series of wind farms. Typically, the electricity grid operator maintains enough spinning reserve to insure there are no disruptions should a significant generation source experience a forced outage, for example a large nuclear or coal plant.
A: First Wind conducts extensive, multi-season environmental reviews of each potential project site to determine its impact on local wildlife. While we make every effort to minimize the impact of our wind turbines on birds and bats, it is impossible to ensure no bird or bat will be affected. When compared to other causes of death to bird and bats, however, we believe the benefits to the overall wildlife environment outweighs the risk. In fact, recent data shows wind turbines account for less than 0.003% of all annual bird fatalities in the U.S.
Many studies on the subject are ongoing, and most remain inconclusive on the full impact of wind power on wildlife. First Wind closely monitors research in this area as part of its environmental reviews. The National Research Council, in a comprehensive review of wind power, recently offered this perspective:
The overall importance of turbine-related deaths for bird populations is unclear. Collisions with wind turbines represent one element of the cumulative anthropogenic impacts on bird populations; other impacts include collisions with tall buildings, communications towers, other structures, and vehicles, as well as other sources of mortality such as predation by house cats (Erickson et al. 2001, 2005).
While estimation of avian fatalities caused by wind-power generation is possible, the data on total bird deaths caused by most anthropogenic sources, including wind turbines, are sparse and less reliable than one would wish, and therefore it is not possible to provide an accurate estimate of the incremental contribution of wind-powered generation to cumulative bird deaths in time and space at current levels of development.
Data on bat fatalities are even sparser. While there have been a few reports of bat kills from other anthropogenic sources (e.g., through collisions with buildings and communications towers), the recent bat fatalities from wind turbines appear to be unprecedentedly high. More data on direct comparisons of turbine types are needed to establish whether and why migratory bats appear to be at the greatest risk of being killed. Clearly, a better understanding of the biology of the populations at risk and analysis of the cumulative effects of wind turbines and other anthropogenic sources on bird and bat mortality are needed.
Having said the above, we provide here estimates summarized by Erickson et al. (2005) and estimates reported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (2002a). Those sources emphasize the uncertainty in the estimates, but the numbers are so large that they are not obscured even by the uncertainty:
- Collisions with buildings kill 97 to 976 million birds annually
- Collisions with high-tension lines kill at least 130 million birds, perhaps more than one billion
- Collisions with communications towers kill between 4 and 5 million based on “conservative estimates,” but could be as high as 50 million
- Cars may kill 80 million birds per year
- Toxic chemicals, including pesticides, kill more than 72 million birds each year
- Domestic cats are estimated to kill hundreds of millions of songbirds and other species each year
- Collisions with wind turbines killed an estimated 20,000 to 37,000 birds per year in 2003, with all but 9,200 of those deaths occurring in California
Erickson et al. (2005) estimates that total cumulative bird mortality in the United States “may easily approach 1 billion birds per year.” Clearly, bird deaths caused by wind turbines are a minute fraction of the total anthropogenic bird deaths—less than 0.003% in 2003 based on the estimates of Erickson et al. (2005).
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