The government in my country is planning to install sea wind turbines as a part of the transition to green energy, and the communist party led local town govenment body is against it.
Lots of sensible reasons are stated, like the impact on local people and fishermen, and the energy being used for capitalists and not for the people, but one of the reasons is them supposedly being harmful to the environment. Is there any proof for this?
I would get them saying it for wind turbines being installed in forests or mountains where you would have to cut down many trees, but I don’t get it when it’s at sea.
building anything is bad for the environment
i have not heard of such turbine installations being worse than anything else, if that were the case i’d expect the NIMBYs to have a more specific complaint you could read.
there’s basically no evidence of problems yet, but as it’s a newer thing the researchers are reticent to certify ‘100% good’. the main issue seems to be they’ll make it harder to catch fish nearby, but what is good for the environment and the fishing industry are usually opposite
The waste from the blades when they reach their service life and a few dead birds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_wind_power
Bird fatalities can be reduced by 70% simply by painting one of the blades black instead of white.
That’s fascinating, how does that work? It Make it easier for the birds to see the blade paths or something?
I’m curious about that too. I don’t know much about it, but I imagine building massive, constantly noisy metal constructions will have some sort of impact on the ecosystems in the oceans around them.
Development in an otherwise unimpacted area is never good for the environment, but the choice isn’t usually wind vs nothing, it’s offshore wind vs whatever is being used for power generation instead. Most other methods are worse for the environment.
I only heard they decay faster than on land (like 15 years vs 25 years) and fiberglass is a problem to recycle, but other than that nothing.
Building them isn’t going to be environmentally friendly but neither is building anything