Could Wind Power Become the Fourth Largest Source of Unnatural Avian Mortality by 2050?

Photo by Thomas Kohler Via Flickr Creative Commons

The largest single cause of bird mortality from Mark Jacobson's 100% renewable energy plan comes from the increase in the number of high voltage power lines to connect wind and solar to load centers.

Figure 1: Annual Bird Mortality According to Sovacool Study

Many of you have seen the chart in Figure 1 from the study by Benjamin Sovacool which launched the internet urban legend that nuclear kills more birds than wind. After correcting his errors, it turns out that wind turbines kill far more birds per unit energy than nuclear. But, to Sovacool's credit, that wasn't his main point. His main point was that fatalities from wind and nuclear are very small in comparison to other unnatural sources of fatalities.

And that may have been the case in 2011, with wind supplying a percent or two of our power and nuclear supplying about 20%. Figure 2 shows an estimate of what may happen if we attempt to implement Mark Jacobson's 100%renewable energy plan.

Figure 2: Potential Impact on Mortality from Mark Jacobson's 100% Renewables Scenario (right click + view image to enlarge)

Note that Sovacool's estimate for the annual impact of climate change (23,448,000) from fossil fueled power stations is almost three times lower than Jacobson's impact from wind power (63,193,729), suggesting that the cure is worse than the disease when it comes to bird mortality.