“A growing body of research illustrates that the effects of utility-scale wind energy production can be far reaching and some times have large and unexpected consequences for biodiversity. Furthermore, achieving renewable energy targets will require converting large areas of land to support wind power . . . often located in remote and high-biodiversity areas.” (- Nature Reviews Biodiversity, below)
MasterResource has long given voice to the ecological problems of industrial wind power, onshore and offshore, including:
Wind vs. Ecology in Australia (Nick Cater reports) (October 18, 2024)
Industrial Wind vs. Deep Ecology: Surface Impacts (January 16, 2024)
Industrial Wind Plants: Bad Economics, Bad Ecology (Jon Boone: October 24, 2009)
Vineyard Wind: Catastrophic Failure (‘sharp fiberglass shards’ close Nantucket beaches) (July 18, 2024)
Offshore Wind: Ecologists Tip-Toe into the Negatives (August 23, 2022)
Wind Turbines and Birds: Latest from the American Bird Conservancy (June 14, 2021)
Add to the literature an article recently published in Nature Reviews Biodiversity, “Impacts of Onshore Wind Energy Production on Biodiversity” (September 8, 2025). Todd E. Katzner et al. wrote:
ABSTRACT
Wind is increasingly used as a renewable source of energy worldwide. However, harvesting wind energy can have negative consequences for biodiversity. In this Review, we summarize the growth of onshore wind power, its impacts on species and ecosystems, and how those impacts are assessed and mitigated.
Across the construction, operation and decommissioning stages, wind facilities are associated with wildlife fatality and behavioural change as well as alteration, loss and fragmentation of terrestrial and aerial habitat. These negative consequences can be mitigated by avoiding construction of wind turbines at sensitive sites, detecting and deterring wildlife, curtailing turbines to reduce fatalities, and replacing lost habitats.
Uncertainty about wildlife populations and their demographic parameters, the rate and extent of build-out of onshore wind energy, and best practices for mitigation, as well as variability in regulatory requirements by country or region, all contribute to the difficulty of predicting the consequences of this technology for biodiversity. Scenario-based modelling that incorporates population- and community-level consequences to biodiversity from varying degrees of wind energy development — including the cumulative effects of multiple facilities — is key to addressing this uncertainty.
Key Points
Introduction Excerpts
Given the risks to wildlife and that the regulatory implications of wildlife fatalities can impede or restrict efforts to construct and operate wind power facilities, attention has turned to identifying ways to mitigate harmful effects.
Actions such as informed macro- and micro-scale siting of wind power facilities, curtailment (suspending turbine operations when activity is highest for vulnerable species), detection and deterrence of volant (flying) wildlife, and compensatory mitigation measures (offsetting negative effects via restoration or protection in other areas) aim to reconcile biodiversity conservation and energy production. However, these tools have been applied inconsistently.
A growing body of research illustrates that the effects of utility-scale wind energy production can be far reaching and some times have large and unexpected consequences for biodiversity. Furthermore, achieving renewable energy targets will require converting large areas of land to support wind power facilities, and new wind facilities are often located in remote and high-biodiversity areas.
In the face of an ongoing biodiversity crisis, understanding the impacts across the extensive land areas required for wind turbines demands a nuanced consideration of multiple factors that extend beyond ecology and draw from diverse fields, including economics, climate science and sociology.
For example, bat fatalities at wind turbines are rarely put into the context of economic losses caused by losing important ecosystem service providers. Impacts of wind energy on biodiversity are also rarely assessed in the context of net outcomes or scenario-based comparisons. Likewise, regulatory and political considerations often determine impacts of renewables on biodiversity, and a host of factors, including transboundary considerations, climate change denial, changing perceptions of the value of biodiversity and its protection, and economic considerations (that vary in developed and developing countries), all can influence perceptions of how wind turbines affect biodiversity.
Summary Excerpts
… Proponents of wind power often state that wind energy’s impacts on biodiversity will be less than the impacts of climate change. Although plausible, this assumption is untested.
One way to evaluate this assumption is through scenario-based modelling. Specifically, present conditions can be compared with counterfactuals (conditions different to those presently occurring) describing a range of levels of build-out resulting in different reductions of climate change and different consequences to biodiversity.
There are substantial uncertainties in such modelling and questions about its feasibility at the scale of individual wind facilities. However, highly informative efforts with similar levels of uncertainty have been implemented in the fields of climate change attribution, energy system modelling, cost–benefit analyses of different energy types, cost effectiveness for mitigation of avian fatalities, emergency conservation decisions, and even assessments of impacts to wildlife from renewable energy and from climate change. Such net impact assessments can be used to target mitigation efforts — whether at the species or ecosystem level — and to the necessary degree, thereby enhancing biodiversity conservation.
Taking this approach would allow continued growth of wind energy but also provide an additional context for protecting vulnerable ecosystems and species.
Postscript: Exchange with Eleanor Whittle
I had a Nature-Climate debate last week with Eleanor Whittle, a self-described advisor “on climate and nature-related risk, strategy, and decisions.” Her business byline is: “Nature is the blind spot in your climate strategy.” Fair enough. But when did not mention industrial wind and solar in a post, I commented: “Then don’t invest in industrial wind and solar, right?”
She asked: “… curious to understand how you drew that conclusion from what we said?” I responded with more detail:
The landscape/living space is violated much more with wind and solar (and biomass) than from the stock energies.
“The greenest fuels are the ones that contain the most energy per pound of material than must be mined, trucked, pumped, piped, and burnt. [In contrast], extracting comparable amounts of energy from the surface would entail truly monstrous environmental disruption…. The greenest possible strategy is to mine and to bury, to fly and to tunnel, to search high and low, where the life mostly isn’t, and so to leave the edge, the space in the middle, living and green.”
– Peter Huber, Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists (New York: Basic Books, 1999), pp. 105, 108.
She responded:
That quote is from 1999 and the reality and technology has changed drastically since then. Energy density has improved massively for renewables and e.g. wind is among the cheapest sources of energy there is. That quote is also scientifically inaccurate because those activities it mentions don’t only happen where “life mostly isn’t” – for example oil and gas extraction heavily target areas such as the Gulf of Mexico and the Niger Delta which are both extremely important regions for biodiversity. The quote also completely ignores the climate cost of those activities, which in turn exacerbates the degradation of nature and landscapes.
So no, we are absolutely not saying you shouldn’t invest in wind and solar. But of course investments need to be looked at through both a climate and nature lens to avoid unintended damage to natural habitats.
Bradley: “You misread the quotation. Much oil and gas infrastructure is below ground–wind and solar are above ground. And the average capacity factors of wind and solar are around 20 percent to 40 percent. Same with its transmission (adding to sprawl and blight). There are reasons why more than 1,100 wind, solar, and battery projects have been delayed or abandoned in the US alone. The quotation stands.
Whittle: “I didn’t misread the quote. It is more than 25 years old and is scientifically inaccurate and a misrepresentation of the reality. You argue that nothing happens on the surface – what about mining? And you mention transmission – how do you think oil and gas gets moved from A to B?” Going ad hominem, she continues:
I think it’s important to note that your organisation (Institute of Energy Research) gets funding from fossil fuel companies like Exxon, which is presumably a reason you don’t support renewables. The reason that renewables projects in the US have been delayed is because of divisive politics not because they are inherently unsustainable.”
Bradley: “Underground drilling and pipelines protect the surface area. Directional drilling can go for miles and capture multiple formations from one location. Same for offshore. Mining operations can be remediated. Industrial wind and solar are stuck on the surface for their entirety. This was true in the 1990s and is true today. The 1999 observation stands today.
The grassroots ‘divisive politics’ is because of the blight and sprawl of industrial wind and solar. ‘A machine in every pristine’ is the opposite of environmentalism, after all.
Wrong on the ‘guilt from association’. IER is a principled classical liberal organization that is fuel-and-technology neutral. Consumers decide with government neutral. We are pro consumer, taxpayer, freedom. And pro-environment vs. government-enabled wind and solar.”
Whittle: “The environmental and economic impact of energy systems isn’t determined by whether infrastructure is “above” or “below” ground. Oil and gas systems rely on extensive surface infrastructure — pipelines, roads, processing facilities — and carry well-documented environmental and climate risks. And many mining operations cannot be adequately remediated.
Reducing this to a visibility argument is a drastic oversimplification and ignores the full system impacts.
And if your organisation is funded by fossil fuel companies, it’s difficult to credibly claim to be “fuel and technology neutral” while consistently arguing against wind and solar, using outdated, qualitative information.”
Bradley: “Above ground is worse than below ground. Pipelines are below ground. This is a black mark against wind and solar, resources that are also very fragile to the elements.
This is an important variable. No, IER has thousands of donors that do not favor fossil-fuel subsidies any more than other explicit energy subsidies. IER is a principled, classical liberal organization. And no, the case against wind and solar is sound on economic and ecological grounds. The grassroot opposition to industrial wind and solar speaks for itself.
Ms. Whittle then stated rather lamely: “Let’s leave it there. If you want to spread misinformation on behalf of fossil fuel interests then you need more compelling arguments than ‘above ground is worse than below ground’.”.
Bradley: “First, I am not neither spreading misinformation nor arguing “on behalf of fossil fuel interests”. I am a classical liberal if you will understand what that is. And I take economics and ecology seriously.
Second, above ground vs, below ground is a very important distinction for your post on Nature and biodiversity. It is not the only point (I never said that–that is your escape argument to not defend wind and solar in this regard).
There is an extensive peer-reviewed literature on the ecological problems of industrial wind and solar. Are you familiar with it??
Final Comment
I am amazed that the “green” intelligentsia and lobby do not stop to consider what coating the living space with highly inefficient energy machines are doing to the environment. But the guilty are blinded by “climate change” and are too emotionally and professionally involved to break away. Can that change in the years ahead?