1w ago

French energy giant ordered to switch off wind turbines that kill endangered birds

www.telegraph.co.uk

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.

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1w ago

French energy giant ordered to switch off wind turbines that kill endangered birds

www.telegraph.co.uk /world-news/2025/04/08/edf-ordered-to-stop-wind-turbines-killing-endangered-birds/

15 comments

Key takeout:
The wind farm has been in operation since 2006 and generates the annual electricity needs of 60,000 people.
The Aumelas plateau was awarded the Natura 2000 label in 2016, which advocates the protection of areas that are representative of European biodiversity.
So it's ok to do a reassessment.
Possibly move the windmills somewhere else - reuse unrecyclable blades.
- Or replace them with newer, taller wind turbines. Turbines get higher and higher to harvest higher winds, which are more reliable if I understand it correctly. But seems these also have less fatalities … if less birds fly at that hight.

We fixed this with glass, surely we can find a way with wind mills too. We just need to update these:
- Bird stickers on the blade?
  
  I have no clue what would work well, but I mean we figured it out right. I'm glad they are trying to save birds but turning them off all the time sounds so prehistoric.
  Have you ever heard of a persistence of video display? It spins around a long led strip and all of a sudden an image appears because it spins round so fast your brain can't process the fact that it is a spinning string. It looks like this:
  I mean, if we can make that and we can make windmills, surely we could generate power while also preventing birds from accidently killing themselves.

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.

15 comments