In what bird lovers are calling a landmark ruling, the Montpellier court held EDF Renouvelables and nine of its subsidiaries responsible for the deaths of 160 bats and birds, especially lesser kestrels, which regularly collide with the blades despite deterrents put in place by operators.
If it’s am unsolvable issue particularly with larger birds, then I guess it can’t be helped. But to me it seems like this is one of those times where we overemphasize easily countable direct environmental impacts, whereas the diffuse statistical damages of fossil based power plants get ignored.
It might be next to impossible to calculate the impact one individual coal power plant has and how many birds (and other animals) die due to its carbon footprint. But that doesn’t mean those aren’t happening just because they don’t die from flying against the building.
Some German wind turbines are actually turned off during specific hours when birds/bats are active and/or have cameras. Apparently, even painting one of the blades a dark color is extremely effective at helping birds orient themselves.
That definitely sounds like something we’d do. I think I read somewhere that the difficulty with painting blades is that (especially with dark colors) it leads to them heating up more from sun exposure making differences in thermal expansion a potential issue.
Huh, so now I know why nobody does it!