Adverse impacts of wind energy
Besides a minuscule effect on fossil fuel emissions[1] and the high expense of extracting any meaningful energy from such a diffuse, intermittent, and variable source (particularly as other sources must still be maintained and built to balance the highly fluctuating wind infeed as well as to supply 100% backup for when the wind doesn't blow),[2] wind turbines have many other adverse impacts.
Aesthetics
Wind turbines meant to supply the grid are hundreds of feet in height, each with blades sweeping a vertical air space of 1.5 to 2 acres (or even more).[1] At night they require warning lights for airplanes. Because they need to be well away from where people live and work, and because they need a lot of open space around them to adequately catch the wind and not interfere with each other’s wind, they are necessarily erected in formerly undeveloped places: typically farmland and mountain ridges. They inevitably dominate the landscape and destroy the special character, the peace and quiet, especially at night, of those places. (See also “Noise” and “Tourism” below.)
Environment
Wide strong roads, clearance for transmission lines, electrical substations, huge buried foundations of concrete and steel rebar, staging around each turbine for maintenance as well as initial construction, hundreds of gallons of coolant and lubricating oil in each machine, the noise and direct physical toll of the turning blades ... wind energy facilities are sprawling industrial installations with obvious environmental impacts: destruction and fragmentation of habitat, alteration of [groundwater and runoff], disturbance and deaths of animals (see “Wildlife” below)...
Noise
Wind turbine blades sweeping a vertical air space of 1.5 to 2 acres necessarily create noise as they thus remove energy from the wind to turn the generators. The gears and the generator also make noise as they turn. The characteristic pulsing noise of wind turbines is likely due the different air pressures at the top and bottom of the blades’ rotation area. The passing of each blade by the tower may also contribute.
Furthermore, because the blades are mounted on towers hundreds of feet in height, the noise may be projected a great distance, particularly at night (owing to atmospheric inversion causing sound waves to bounce back down to earth) and particularly infrasound and low-frequency noise. The latter not only travels farther without attenuation, but also penetrates walls and windows and can even resonate with them.[1][2]
Because large wind turbines are necessarily erected in previously undeveloped places, the addition of this noise is especially intrusive, particularly at night.
- See also: Wind Watch documents concerning noise
Health
- See: Health Effects of Noise from Large Wind Turbines
- See also: Wind Watch documents concerning health
Property values
Although there is a shortage of desirable housing in most rural places and people often have to makes compromises in their choices, nobody, given the choice, would choose to live near a giant wind turbine, let alone several of them. That unavoidably affects property values.
Farming
Tourism
- See also: Wind Watch documents concerning tourism
Wildlife
- See also: Wind Watch documents concerning wildlife
Bats
- See also: Wind Watch documents tagged for bats
Birds
- See also: Wind Watch documents tagged for birds