Wind Power Environmental Concerns
Grassroots environmental groups, such as Save Western Ohio, are expressing serious concerns about the negative environmental impacts of wind power. The groups emphasize several worries:
• According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, wind turbines in the United States annually kill 440,000 birds, including many protected and endangered species.
• Wind turbines kill a prodigious number of bats, though the actual number of kills is hard to quantify.
• Wind farms require 300 square miles or more of land to produce as much power as a single conventional power plant.
• Wind turbines are most efficient in aesthetically and environmentally important places such as mountain ridges and coastlines.
• Large swaths of land must be developed for new transmission lines to bring wind power to urban demand centers.