A WIND STORY LIKE DAVID V. GOLIATH

Prairie grouse could hamper wind energy growth
Betsey Blaney, August 4, 2009 (AP)
and
Sage Grouse Unlikely Focus of Wyoming Wind Wars
Ed Stoddard (w/Doina Chiacu), August 3, 2009 (Reuters via ABC News)

SUMMARY
From Texas to Wyoming, the builders of gigantic wind turbines are being stopped by the lowly grouse.

The sage grouse and 20 other bird species, which inhabit the sagebrush for which the American West is as well known as its legendary outlaws and mythical good guys in white hats, could be an obstacle to the further U.S. growth of New Energy. Developers, especially wind project and solar power plant developers, have sought out arid stretches of nothing but sagebrush on which to build the nation’s growing capacity of New Energy.

Now that idea may have gone with the birds. Flown the coop. The grouse is to 2009 what the spotted owl was to the 1980s, a poster child for the dwindling and precious unmarked landscape. Many species of grouse are, due to sharply falling populations, near being listed as endangered species.

Wyoming’s sage sustains 54% of the North American greater sage grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) population (as well as big game like elk and mule deer) through the cold Wyoming winter. Protection of grouse habitat has become the lynchpin on which hangs the fate of a 198-turbine, $600 million wind farm proposed by Horizon Wind Energy near Carbon, Wyoming.

Greater Sage Grouse (click to enlarge)

Horizon wants the grouse situation studied. Like President Obama, Horizon believes science may have an answer. While the President looks to science for answers to much bigger questions, Horizon is looking for a way to build or place turbines that can harness the power of Wyoming wind without harming the grouse. There very well could be one. Though some environmentalists dispute the point, state authorities say only ~14% of Wyoming's "economically viable wind areas" (good wind strength, speed, duration, etc.) are “core” sage and grouse grounds. That leaves 86% of the wind to reap.

Meanwhile, the lesser prairie chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) is threatening to do something nothing else in Texas showed the power or inclination to do: Slow the booming Texas wind industry.

Lesser Prairie Chicken (click to enlarge)

The species “grouse” is “near threatened” and the lesser prairie chicken is “vulnerable” and could be listed as “endangered” within 2 years.

1.3 million acres in the heart of the lesser prairie chicken’s remaining stomping grounds – from eastern New Mexico through eastern Colorado, western Kansas, northwest Oklahoma, and into parts of the Texas Panhandle and the South Plains – come out of a 25-year conservation program in September. Farmers and ranchers want the land for crops, which will eat up more of the lesser prairie chicken's breeding and nesting grounds.

Wind developers, already renewing West Texas and the Panhandle economically with wind, can’t wait to get at the newly available prime territory. Wind is entirely compatible with crops and grazing. The lesser prairie chicken doesn’t like it.

The lesser prairie chicken weighs ~400 grams and is a “shortflight” bird. It has an “evolutionary aversion” to giant structures within its lek (nesting/mating/breeding grounds) where predators could be perched, waiting to prey.

Lek mating arena, modeled on the sage grouse. Each male guards a territory. Dominant males may each attract up to 8 or more females. Higher-ranking individuals have larger personal spaces. Leks typically have 25-30 individuals. Lek where females compete for males is called a mung. Might be hard to get into the mood under turning turbines. (from Wikipedia – click to enlarge)

In 2004, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said wind developers should not build within 5 miles of the leks. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), which has a strong record of cooperation on environmental and animal habitat issues, wants to see evidence of the scientific basis for the 5-mile limit.

Wyoming’s wind industry, with ~20 installed projects and 4 under construction, is just getting started. Yet it is already 12th among the states in installed capacity and it has enormous untapped capacity. The Horizon project, if it proceeds, could revive the fading town of Carbon. The company already has deals with local landowners. While Horizon ponders when and where to apply for a license, state officials are working for a compromise and assuring the company it is only upholding restrictions that would equally apply to gas, oil and even housing developments as well.

Texas leads the U.S. in wind capacity. Its wind industry is approaching the kind of power and influence in the state once wielded only by the oil and gas industry.

Case in point: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has watched the population of the lesser prairie chicken fall from 3 million in 1963 to its present 80,000 and has enough information on the bird's threatened status to propose it for the Endangered Species Act. Wind developers and utilities are racing to build turbines and transmission lines because if they are built before the bird is listed, the projects will stand and if they are not built, developers will have to work around the protected habitat. The Texas Public Utility Commission (TPUC) has fast-tracked plans for new Panhandle transmission, aiming for completion by the end of 2013. If the lesser prairie chicken gets protected first, the director of electric transmission analysis for the TPUC says they will work something out short of "…total avoidance of the habitat…"

In the West, they are beginning to refer to it as "the grouse that roared."

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COMMENTARY
That they take the time to deal with these environmental issues is to the credit of the New Energy industries in general and the wind industry in particular. Unlike the Old Energy industries of the 19th and early 20th centuries that tore up the landscape in pursuit of riches, the New Energies are growing to maturity in a world where it is necessary and proper not only to do the right thing (develop emissions-free energy) but to do it in the right way (with respect to the creation and its many critters).

Example: The wind energy industry formed the American Wind Wildlife Institute (AWWI), a coalition of public and private energy and environmental organizations, to anticipate areas of conflict in advance and prevent them from becoming obstacles to growth or incidents of environmental harm.

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Example: The solar energy industry is an enthusiastic participant in the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC), a coalition dedicated to managing the toxic byproducts and waste of hi-tech and solar industry manufacturing and use in a responsible way.

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Example: The TPUC anticipated problems that could arise from the rapid expansion of wind and transmission and created Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZs) in which many of the conflicts were anticipated and eliminated in advance, clearing the way for sustainable growth.

Example: In Wyoming, Horizon planned its Simpson Ridge project, near Carbon, to make use of existing transmission lines rather than create the additional footprint of building new lines.

Environmentalists face a quandary in thinking about wind. On the one hand, there is the intrusion on the landscape’s open spaces of the tall, elegant but undeniably obvious turbines. There is the construction, the maintenance roads and the transmission that comes with them. There is the presence of a certain – if not entirely objectionable at least undeniable – sound. And there is the overdiscussed impact on avian and bat populations and wildlife habitat when turbines and transmission are not thoughtfully placed.

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Yet, there is this: The intrusion on the landscape and the threat to wildlife that nuclear power, fossil fuel plants and global climate change represent are much much worse, orders of magnitude worse.

In Texas, a committee of industry groups, wildlife advocates, researchers and biologists is updating new project guidelines. They will issue a report in October that could have a profound effect on the survival of the lesser prairie chicken. WildEarth Guardians filed a listing petition for the bird in the mid-1990s and says it should have been listed as threatened or endangered 10 years ago.

Which means, interestingly, that the wind industry can claim some part in protecting the lesser prairie chicken and its habitat if and when it finally is listed.

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QUOTES
Wyoming
- Alison Holloran, National Audubon Society in Wyoming "They want to build it around here but we need to be thinking truly green. It is not just about our carbon footprint…"
- Arlo Corwin, development director, Horizon Wind: "There is no peer-reviewed research on how sage grouse respond to turbines…We believe that obtaining this research is essential to see if wind turbines and sage grouse are going to be able to coexist."
- Brian Kelly, field supervisor, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Wyoming: "The impact of fragmentation is very, very clear. We know that they won't occupy habitat close to an interstate for example. They are a landscape species and need big open intact habitats…If we conserve…20 percent [of Wyoming grouse] we effectively conserve 40 percent of the birds in North America. That's why it is significant…"
- Aaron Clark, energy advisor to the governor of Wyoming: "We don't need to pick one or the other, grouse or wind. We can have robust sage grouse populations and robust wind development in Wyoming -- no problem…"

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Texas
- Heather Whitlaw, wildlife biologist, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department: "We've never seen the likes of [the protective efforts of the lesser prairie chicken]…Anybody who puts anything on our landscape would be evaluated in one form or another."
- Laurie Jodziewicz, spokeswoman, AWEA: "We still have not seen [scientific research] that looked at prairie grouse and leks and wind turbines…I don't know that (any wind company) is [using the 5-mile limit]…"
- Mark Salvo, WildEarth Guardians: "[Restoring the prairie chicken population] will be much more difficult now…[as developers] slice and dice the habitat into ever smaller spaces…It's already a relatively small landscape and it's getting smaller…We are in an emergency situation here. It's a really, really imperiled candidate."