Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

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To Sort Out

  • RSPB at the Guardian
  • RSPB Home: https://www.rspb.org.uk/community/default.aspx
  • Bird Sensitivity Map to provide locational guidance for onshore wind farms in Scotland, https://www.rspb.org.uk/Images/sensitivitymapreport_tcm9-157990.pdf
  • Developers of four vast windfarms comprising 335 turbines, planned for the waters of the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Tay, backed by the Scottish government, could generate enough power to supply 1.4 million homes. Ministers approved the four turbine developments – Inch Cape, Neart na Gaoithe, Seagreen Alpha and Seagreen Bravo – in 2014. Lord Stewart upheld appeal by RSPB. Lord Carloway reversed the decision.
    • RSPB: these four huge projects threaten to kill thousands of Scotland’s internationally protected seabirds every year, including thousands of puffins, gannets and kittiwakes. Rhe length of the proposed turbine blades, which will be significantly longer than in previous windfarms, if the sites were being built to the latest specifications, the power required to move them would be greater and the blades thus smaller, posing less of a threat. But the new turbines will be built under old legislation that permits bigger blades to be used.
  • RSPB may appeal to the EU courts as its case hinged on EU legislation protecting seabird colonies. RSPB says there are plenty of alternative and less harmful sites. Under EU law these bird colonies are protected; development cannot go ahead if there is a significant impact on birdlife; must be shown that all other alt sites were explored.
    • Comment Matthew2012 "the RSPB lost the legal challenge is because the risk is not supportable by evidence", https://www.bto.org/science/latest-research/novel-methods-estimating-abundance-and-flight-heights-seabirds, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/02/butterfish-big-problem-for-little-puffins-eastern-egg-rock
    • Comment Matthew2012 "it has been delayed for 3 years because of the UK government taking an anti-renewables stance. While birds was the legal challenge in this case, most of these challenges have deeper roots.
    • Comment Murraythemint "The RSPB are objecting to the location - in the most sensitive area possible. The Scottish govt support the wind lobby's choice of location is entirely economic and political, in that placing the wind farms further North or further out in the sea would lead to much greater expenditure on interconnectors and other grid infrastructure + a significant loss in energy and revenue (the greater the distance the greater the cost of energy). One of the flagship SNP policy's has been renewable energy with the assumption of selling to the rUK integrated market. They know that investing in renewables further North is a fools errand under independence as it would price them out of the wider market - Dogger + Denmark and Ireland and France etc are closer and therefore cheaper. Therefore the closer to England the better especially as under independence there is little chance of Scotland (alone) being able to finance the necessary massive upgrade of the energy grid without the subs from the automatic wider market they get now as part of the UK (5 million people vs 60 million)."
    • Comment durand101 "Why not just move it further out to sea? It would be away from nesting birds while potentially generating more power from the windier conditions. Surely that would be just as economically viable?"
    • Comment Murraythemint "That would be the sensible option. But it all comes down to cynical economics and politics. Wind energy can't be stored like oil or gas (which can be pumped along a pipeline/transported, before being turned into energy, so distance isn't an issue (why it is cheaper to use). And the further the distance to travel from energy production/source, the greater the loss of energy through heat + the greater cost to infrastructure and transmission to get it to where it is needed (the grid). Therefore the further the distance of the turbines from the grid, the greater the cost of energy + the greater the need for expensive high voltage transmission."
    • Comment MOTCO "Not to mention the deeper the water gets and the larger the foundations required. Oh and since they only produce for 25% of their life you need four times as many..."
    • Comment geofarce "Or we could make the turbine hub heights 8m higher to minimise the problem in the first place."
    • Comment Constantinex "The turbines at the Inch Cape site will have a rotor diameter of 172m. With a wind speed of 22mph (force 5 on the Beaufort scale) the blade tips will be moving at around 180mph (80m/s)." (slow-flying birds cannot avoid them).
    • Comment Bangorstu "There is also a problem with the pressure differences caused by a blade moving that quickly. In the case of bats it's that which kills them rather than blade strike."
    • Comment Mr-Deplorable "I'm an electrical engineer specialising in HV generation, transmission and distribution and have over 25 years experience in the field. From an engineering perspective, wind is a steaming pile of poo that is hugely inefficient and requires massive subsidies (rent-seeking) in order to be viable. There are plenty of renewable technologies that can do part of the job but wind isn't one of them. Geothermal and nuclear would be better.
    • Comment Mazter (debunks nuclear as an option for various reasons)
    • Comment NoNukesPlease "I am sure that transponders could be fitted to the turbines to warn off seabirds, I am not sure what frequency they operate at but it is something worth looking in to. We need renewable energy and we must preserve wildlife. It isn't an either or, it's both." (followed by various comments on this)
    • Comment Mazter "storage is being rolled out all over the world, with technological improvements and price reductions. For instance in this example you could install twice as much on-shore wind at £50/MWh vs. the £100/MWh for nuclear (not forgetting that the contract/subsidy terms are 15yrs vs 35yrs). Then you take half the generation and store it at $32/MWh (£25/MWh), giving you an average cost of £62.50/MWh v's £100/MWh. And that $32/MWh storage cost is based on a purchase price of $160/kWh and 5,000 cycles, as the price comes down, and the cycles go up, the storage cost falls further. Bloomberg predict $73/kWh cost of buying batts in 2030, which at just 5,000 cycles brings the storage costs down to $14.60/MWh, or $7.30/MWh spread over all generation (half consumed at time of generation, and half stored)."
    • got to d1st1ngu1shed on page 2
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  • https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3015696/rspb-revives-fight-against-scottish-offshore-wind-farm
  • https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/firms-accuse-rspb-of-putting-600-jobs-at-risk-gn7j9c6xt
  • http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15474969.RSPB_takes_case_against_wind_farm_development_to_Supreme_Court/
  • How a Bird Charity’s Battle (RSPB) Against a Wind Farm Backfired, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-07/where-foes-of-wind-turbines-may-enrich-developers-they-oppose
  • RSPB revives fight against Scottish offshore wind farms, https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3015696/rspb-revives-fight-against-scottish-offshore-wind-farm
  • How a Bird Charity’s Battle (RSPB) Against a Wind Farm Backfired, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-07/where-foes-of-wind-turbines-may-enrich-developers-they-oppose
  • RSPB revives fight against Scottish offshore wind farms, https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3015696/rspb-revives-fight-against-scottish-offshore-wind-farm
  • Wind farms, https://www.rspb.org.uk/our-work/our-positions-and-campaigns/positions/windfarms/index.aspx
  • Bird Sensitivity Map to provide locational guidance for onshore wind farms in Scotland, https://www.rspb.org.uk/Images/sensitivitymapreport_tcm9-157990.pdf


Articles

  • Nov.14.2018: Police on the trail as hen harrier vanishes. ...After Arthur hatched in the Peak District in the summer he was fitted with a satellite tracking device by the RSPB. He flew into the North York Moors National Park on Oct.26, and his last recorded position was near several moors where driven grouse shooting takes place. The loss of more than a tenth of the population of one of the country’s most endangered species in such a short period has reinforced fears that they are being targeted by gamekeepers. Arthur’s sister, Olivia, disappeared in August close to a driven grouse moor in the Peak District. There are estimated to be only 50 hen harriers left. The police said that evidence suggested that the missing birds were concentrated over two or three moorland areas managed for grouse shooting. The National Gamekeepers Organisation said that it utterly condemned raptor persecution and pointed out that 21 of this year’s hen harrier chicks had fledged from land managed for grouse shooting. David Brown, The Times.
  • Aug.20.2018: RSPB under fire over parking charge plans in Anglesey reserve. Locals say wildlife charity acting like a ‘corporate monstrosity’ over £5-a-day fee. It plans to charge £5 a day for peak season visits to the South Stack reserve in Anglesey, despite renting the 780 acres of public land for just £7. The RSPB has taken its fight to the planning inspectorate, launching an appeal after councillors on the Isle of Anglesey county council twice rejected its bid to impose the charges. The RSPB wants to use the income from the new charges to help fund a £840,000 visitors’ centre. Tania Chakraborti, The Guardian.
  • Aug.20.2018: RSPB under fire over parking charge plans in Anglesey reserve. Locals say wildlife charity acting like a ‘corporate monstrosity’ over £5-a-day fee. It plans to charge £5 a day for peak season visits to the South Stack reserve in Anglesey, despite renting the 780 acres of public land for just £7. The RSPB has taken its fight to the planning inspectorate, launching an appeal after councillors on the Isle of Anglesey county council twice rejected its bid to impose the charges. The RSPB wants to use the income from the new charges to help fund a £840,000 visitors’ centre. Neither the concession of extending the £20 annual pass to Anglesey residents, nor a proposed staged fee of £2 an hour has been enough to quell support for a petition against the parking charges, which has gained about 6,130 signatures. Tania Chakraborti, The Guardian.
  • Apr.20.2018: RSPB disputes research on turbine threat to seabirds. Research was commissioned by 11 wind farm developers, the Crown Estate and Marine Scotland. It used naval surveillance and weather radars to monitor birds. Analysis of videos of an offshore wind farm in Thanet, Kent, observed only 6 collisions. The RSPB, part of an expert panel that advised the research, said that the authors had twisted the results by presenting an “extremely optimistic interpretation of the data”. The threat to birds from offshore wind farms is one of the key barriers to new developments, and industry officials seized on the results when they were published yesterday to call for more and bigger offshore turbines. The project was part of the Offshore Renewables Joint Industry Programme (Orjip) and was managed by the Carbon Trust, an environmental consultancy. Jerome Starkey, The Times.