{"id":243146,"date":"2023-02-03T19:54:28","date_gmt":"2023-02-03T18:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=243146"},"modified":"2023-02-03T19:54:35","modified_gmt":"2023-02-03T18:54:35","slug":"wyoming-wind-projects-pose-profoundly-dangerous-threat-to-golden-eagles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=243146","title":{"rendered":"Wyoming Wind Projects Pose \u201cProfoundly Dangerous\u201d Threat To Golden Eagles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From SubStack<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Robert Bryce<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Offshore wind projects threaten endangered whales; proposed wind projects in Wyoming \u201cwill exponentially impact Golden Eagles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Golden Eagle, photo by\u00a0Craig Hughes<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Apologists for the wind industry \u2014 and there are legions of them<\/a> at NGOs and on Wall Street<\/a> \u2014 routinely claim that the hundreds of thousands of birds that are killed every year<\/a> by wind turbines aren\u2019t a big deal. They like to claim that the numbers aren\u2019t that big and that other forms of energy production, and buildings, and cats, kill birds, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Sylvester and Tigger aren\u2019t killing our Bald Eagles and Golden Eagles. Wind turbines are \u2014 and they are killing them by the untold hundreds. That was proven last April, when the Department of Justice prosecuted ESI, a wholly owned subsidiary of Florida-based NextEra Energy, the world\u2019s biggest renewable energy producer<\/a>, for the deaths of at least 150 Bald and Golden Eagles at its wind projects in Wyoming. The DOJ prosecuted the company for what it called its \u201cblatant disregard\u201d for federal wildlife laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed,\u00a0the agency\u2019s April 5, 2022 press release<\/a>\u00a0on the agreement with NextEra Energy, says that the company repeatedly ignored warnings from federal authorities that its proposed wind projects in Wyoming would kill eagles. Despite the warnings, the company went ahead with the projects. Why? So it could collect more in federal tax credits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The DOJ said NextEra rushed to build the Wyoming wind projects known as Cedar Springs I and II so it could meet \u201cdeadlines for particular tax credits for renewable energy.\u201d In other words, NextEra and ESI didn\u2019t get federal permits because they were racing to collect even more subsidies. The DOJ said NextEra \u201creceived hundreds of millions of dollars in federal tax credits for generating electricity from wind power at facilities that it operated, knowing that multiple eagles would be killed and wounded without legal authorization, and without, in most instances, paying restitution or compensatory mitigation.\u201d (A photo of the Cedar Springs project is featured prominently in NextEra\u2019s ESG report<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s essential background given the raging debate over offshore wind energy development and the recent deaths of numerous whales on the East Coast. As I reported on January 4<\/a>, those whales are washing ashore in the same regions that are being targeted for massive offshore wind projects. In that piece, I quoted Sean Hayes, the chief of the protected species branch at the NOAA\u2019s National Northeast Fisheries Science Center. In a letter to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Hayes said that disturbance to the North Atlantic Right Whales\u2019 foraging areas \u201ccould have population-level effects on an already endangered and stressed species.\u201d Hayes\u2019 conclusion was unequivocal: the \u201coceanographic impacts from installed and operating turbines cannot be mitigated for the 30-year lifespan of the project, unless they are decommissioned.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why are so many corporations vying to build offshore wind projects even though their turbines pose a clear threat to one of the most endangered mammals on the planet? \u00a0The answer is simple: like NextEra, they want to collect federal tax credits. But unlike Florida-based NextEra, some of the biggest beneficiaries of the tax credits for offshore wind development are foreign companies. As I reported back in 2021, Britain\u2019s BP, Norway\u2019s Equinor, and Denmark\u2019s \u00d8rsted are pushing to\u00a0develop a total of some 6.2 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity in US waters<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The history of NextEra\u2019s egregious conduct in Wyoming and the travesty of offshore wind development by foreign corporations is relevant to the proposed Two Rivers Wind Energy Project, which is being pushed by Canada-based BluEarth Renewables. The proposed 420-megawatt facility would cover more than 20,000 acres near the town of Medicine Bow, in southeastern Wyoming. As Dustin Bleizeffer reported for WyoFile last month<\/a>, BluEarth has applied to the Fish and Wildlife Service for permission to kill (the legal term is an Incidental Take Permit) up to 11 Bald Eagles and 217 Golden Eagles over the 30-year term of the permit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as Bleizeffer reports, \u201cthe cumulative impacts of the Two Rivers project when combined with nearby existing and planned wind and solar energy developments remain largely unknown, according to federal agencies.\u201d Bleizeffer goes on to point out that there are already nearly 500 wind turbines within 10 miles of the proposed Two Rivers project and that the Power Company of Wyoming\u2019s planned Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind project, \u201cwill erect 600 wind turbines across a public-private checkerboard of 320,000 acres south of Sinclair.” (Sinclair is about 50 miles west of Medicine Bow.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Power Company of Wyoming is a wholly owned affiliate of The Anschutz Corporation<\/a>, which is owned by Denver-based magnate Philip Anschutz. Forbes<\/a><\/em> puts Anschutz\u2019s net worth at about $11 billion.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2016, the American Bird Conservancy \u2014 one of the few NGOs in America that\u2019s truly interested in protecting wildlife \u2014 identified \u201c10 of the worst sited wind energy projects for birds in the U.S.\u201d It included Anschutz\u2019s Chokecherry and Sierra Madre project on the list \u201cprimarily because of its potential impacts on Greater Sage-Grouse and Golden Eagles<\/a>.\u201d It continued, saying that the Wyoming location is \u201cnot a good place to put large-scale commercial wind energy and associated infrastructure from the perspective of wildlife conservation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2015, ABC noted that the Fish and Wildlife Service itself had determined that \u201cGolden Eagle populations in the United States may not be able to sustain\u00a0any additional, unmitigated mortality and the threshold for this species is zero<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos<\/em>), in the San Francisco Zoo, 2007. Credit: https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Aquila_chrysaetos_Flickr.jpg<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That history helps put the Two Rivers project in proper context for the comments filed with the Bureau of Land Management by Mike Lockhart, a veteran wildlife biologist. Lockhart tracks Golden Eagles in Wyoming for the U.S. Geological Survey and Conservation Science Global. Lockhart\u2019s December 23, 2022 comments about the Two Rivers project<\/a> (see letter #18) are blistering and deserve extensive quotation. He wrote:  <\/p>\n\n\n\n