Student Congress Legislation & Evidence
Con: Individual Fishing Quotas
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- Catch Shares will not provide incentives for sustainable practices – fisherman will still cut corners to increase profit
- Con: Individual Fishing Quotas
- A Bill to Incentivize Off Shore Wind Energy
- Offshore wind farms can offset emissions and halt warming – they’ll produce 4 times the energy we need to power the US
- The wind industry is growing slowly because tax credits are offered for a year at a time - a long-term tax credit is key to give the wind industry a jump start.
- Offshore wind farms protect ocean species by providing shelter from fishing and reducing CO2 emissions.
- Wind energy production is stalling in the United States – lack of long term tax subsidies from the federal government deters investors from investing in new projects.
- Con: Off Shore Wind
- There are no ships for installation
- Wind farms destroy local habitat – makes it inhabitable, degrades soil, and air
- Don’t buy their “wind is cheap” evidence – best studies prove that hidden costs and infrastructure problems more than triple electricity prices
- Offshore wind doesn’t reduce GHG---only a risk backup power sources increase emissions
Con: Individual Fishing QuotasIndividual Fishing Quotas result in an uneven distribution of wealth – small fisheries will be priced out of the industry and jobs will be lostDoremas et al. UC Berkeley–Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology Conference 2012, Doremus, Holly, James H. House, and Hiram H. Hurd, Professor of Environmental Regulation, University of California, Berkeley and Member-Scholar, Center for Progressive Reform . Why International Catch Shares Won’t Save Ocean Biodiversity. LOSI-KIOST Conference., May 2012. Web. 3 July 2014. CS Economists, who have been the primary proponents of property rights approaches, typically do not prioritize wealth distribution as an important aspect of solving the fishery problem. Their major professional goal is efficiency. One reason they tend to gravitate toward market approaches is that in a smoothly functioning market voluntary transactions should achieve efficient outcomes regardless of the initial allocation of entitlements.57 Societies, however, are not necessarily indifferent to distributional consequences. Whether distributional outcomes are “equitable,” as the relevant society defines that term, can depend critically on the allocation of entitlements. Achieving equity may be in tension with achieving efficiency. In the fishery context, for example, programs that reduce overcapacity almost necessarily decrease employment. Whether improvements in the employment conditions for the remaining jobs outweigh the cost of the job losses is a question on which reasonable minds are likely to differ. Distributional concerns have driven much of the opposition to property rights-based fishing regimes in the United States.58 The notion of private rights in fisheries is inherently inconsistent with long-standing egalitarian norms about access to fishery resources.59 Opponents of catch shares worry that small fishers will be priced out of the industry, that fishing-dependent communities will suffer or even disappear, and that crew members of fishing vessels will be transformed from the economic partners of vessel owners to subordinate wage earners.60 There is evidence that some catch share programs have had precisely these sorts of distributional effects, reducing employment and increasing the market share of large operators.61 These concerns can be addressed by limiting the transferability of catch shares, but such limitations inevitably have efficiency costs. The relative importance assigned to efficiency and equity, therefore, is important not only to the decision to use catch shares or not, but also to the design of any catch share program. Catch Shares will not provide incentives for sustainable practices – fisherman will still cut corners to increase profitDoremas et al. UC Berkeley–Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology Conference 2012, Doremus, Holly, James H. House, and Hiram H. Hurd, Professor of Environmental Regulation, University of California, Berkeley and Member-Scholar, Center for Progressive Reform . Why International Catch Shares Won’t Save Ocean Biodiversity. LOSI-KIOST Conference., May 2012. Web. 3 July 2014. Conceptually, the position that property rights will increase incentives for stewardship is sometimes, but not always, compelling. If a stock is highly valuable but slow to reproduce, or if there is substantial risk that the future will reduce demand for the product, it will be economically rational for property rights holders to deliberately court a “boom-bust” cycle, or even to knowingly extirpate a stock.66 Without an effective regulatory backstop, quota holders may also be tempted to “high-grade,” discarding less valuable (generally smaller) fish in order to fill their quota with the most marketable specimens.67 Finally, catch shares, like other cap-and-trade allocations but unlike property rights in land, typically are not guaranteed to be permanent.68 To the extent that the issuer retains the prerogative to reduce or withdraw shares without compensation, catch shares will not provide firm incentives for sustainable practices.6 Con: Individual Fishing QuotasCatch Shares don’t solve – doesn’t provide incentives for preservationDoremas et al. UC Berkeley–Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology Conference 2012, Doremus, Holly, James H. House, and Hiram H. Hurd, Professor of Environmental Regulation, University of California, Berkeley and Member-Scholar, Center for Progressive Reform . Why International Catch Shares Won’t Save Ocean Biodiversity. LOSI-KIOST Conference., May 2012. Web. 3 July 2014. There is also indirect evidence that catch shares reduce pressure on target species. The National Research Council, in a landmark 1999 study on individual fishing quotas, found that catch share fisheries were less likely to exceed the regulatory TAC,75 presumably because fishing can be carried out more carefully and over a greater period of time. On the other hand, there is also evidence of “high-grading” in some fisheries.76 There is little evidence on the question of whether catch share approaches affect stewardship of non-target resources. There are theoretical reasons both for optimism—because catch shares reduce economic incentives for wasteful practices, including some that increase bycatch—and for skepticism—because catch shares do nothing to produce a long-term profit incentive for preservation of resources that are not marketable. What evidence there is suggests that the answer is context-specific. In some cases, catch share fisheries seem roughly equivalent to those managed by conventional regulation in terms of bycatch and discards.77 On the positive side of the ledger, in the Alaska halibut fishery, the elimination of derby fishing by an individual quota approach seems to have sharply decreased “ghost fishing” by lost or abandoned gear.78 On the negative side, environmentalists have complained that Alaska pollock quota holders have shown little concern for the status of the endangered Steller sea lion.79 No solvency- EU countries like France and Spain are overfishing now and will continue New York Times 2007. Stephen castle, Ny times reporter, Ny times, France, Italy and 5 other European countries threatened for overfishing tuna, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/26/world/europe/26iht-tuna.4.7646491.html?_r=0> Seven European countries including France and Italy were threatened with legal action over lax fisheries controls Wednesday as part of new efforts to prevent the collapse of bluefin tuna from overfishing. Driven by the high prices from the Japanese sushi market, European fishermen have already caught their entire quota of 16,779.5 tons of bluefin tuna for 2007 and last week were ordered to stop fishing until next year. The European Commission said Wednesday that it intended to get tough with the countries that fail to police their national fishing fleets. In a statement it said that "high rates of undeclared overfishing have been singled out as a key cause of the decline of the stock." Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain were sent legal letters for failing to send official data on catches to the commission. France and Italy received the same warning though theirs also referred to shortcomings in their controls. If their answers fail to satisfy the European Commission, the countries can be taken to the European Court of Justice, the European Union's highest court. Stocks have been devastated by the efficiency of modern fishing techniques, with which tuna are caught and then dragged in nets to cages where they are fattened for several months to ensure maximum weight. Xavier Pastor, an executive director of Oceana, an international marine conservation organization, said the commission's decision was welcome though overdue. "This is not the first time that countries like France and Italy ignore the rules, overfish their allocated quota and then subsequently fail to accurately report their catches," he said. Con: Individual Fishing QuotasThe US is already taking stepsOver half of the studies claiming the benefits of catch shares were paid for by environmental groups—any evidence of catch shares being good is most likely a product of these skewed statisticsSuzanne Rust The Bay Citizen. 13, “Catch shares leave fishermen reeling”, The Bay Citizen, https://www.baycitizen.org/news/environment/system-turns-us-fishing-rights-into-commodity-sque/) Since 2000, 47 studies have looked at environmental effects of catch shares. Slightly more than half, 24, found no effect or negative effects, including the four most comprehensive and recent studies, a review of the research shows. The Center for Investigative Reporting found that the seafood industry and the environmental groups advancing the system paid for 11 of the 23 studies that praised catch shares. In six cases, funding could not be established. Roughly 2 out of 3 favorable studies with clear funding sources were paid for by an industry that has spent more than $200 million promoting the system. Five independent government studies have found positive effects from the system. One of the most notable and widely cited studies, a 2008 article in the journal Science by University of California, Santa Barbara researchers, showed that in fisheries where catch shares had been implemented, the system could halt and even reverse fishery collapse. That study, according to both the Environmental Defense Fund and a researcher at UC Santa Barbara, was largely paid for with a $5 million grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation as part of a partnership between the university and the environmental group. A spokeswoman for the foundation said the grant money was given only to the university and not the environmental organization. With the study in hand, the Environmental Defense Fund has attempted to advance the cause. In a letter to the TED foundation, an Environmental Defense Fund vice president outlined the organization’s partnership with UC Santa Barbara and its involvement in the research, noting that the study has helped contribute to “a campaign to convert the majority of U.S., Canadian and Latin American fisheries to catch shares.” “In a nutshell, the effort was our attempt to rescue West Coast fisheries from the failures of the broken regulatory system,” said John Mimikakis, a spokesman for the Environmental Defense Fund. Another study, published in 2012 in the journal Marine Policy, also funded by the Environmental Defense Fund, showed that catch shares improved environmental and economic conditions in fisheries where the system had been established. The Environmental Defense Fund did not respond to questions about the study’s cost. “I don't understand why some of my colleagues seem to be turning to catch shares as the solution or the only alternative to open access,” said Mark Spalding, president of The Ocean Foundation, an environmental advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. “But anytime we get into silver bullet solutions, we’re making a mistake.” A Bill to Incentivize Off Shore Wind EnergyBE IT ENACTED BY THE STUDENT CONGRESS HERE ASSEMBLED THAT: Section 1. The United States Federal Government will offer incentives, grants and loans to spur the production of off shore wind generated power. . Subsection A. The off shore wind production tax credit will be extended indefinitely. Subsection B. The Department of Energy will be allocated funds to offer start up grants to cover up to 30% of the cost of building off shore wind energy power plants. Additionally the Department of Energy will offer secured loans to investors for the production of off shore wind power plants. Section 2. : Federal law will explicitly allow off shore wind development. Any current law interpreted to prevent off shore wind development will be considered void for the purposes of allowing off shore wind development. Section 3.All regulation and permitting of off shore wind energy will be run through the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement. Section 4. This bill will be enacted immediately upon passage. Pro: Off Shore WindOffshore wind farms can offset emissions and halt warming – they’ll produce 4 times the energy we need to power the USThaler, Visiting Professor of Energy Policy & Law at University of Maine School of Law and Economics, 2012 (Jeff, “FIDDLING AS THE WORLD BURNS: HOW CLIMATE CHANGE URGENTLY REQUIRES A PARADIGM SHIFT IN THE PERMITTING OF RENEWABLE ENERGY PROJECTS,” Environmental Law, Vol 42 Iss 4, Sept 17, Online: https://law.lclark.edu/live/files/13156-thalerready-for-websitepdf) As noted in Part I, offshore wind energy projects have the potential to generate large quantities of pollutant-free electricity near many of the world’s major population centers, and thus to help reduce the ongoing and projected economic, health, and environmental damages from climate change. Wind speeds over water are stronger and more consistent than over land, and “have a gross potential generating capacity four times greater than the nation’s present electric capacity.”119 The net capacity factor for offshore turbines is greater than standard land-based turbines, and their blade-tip speeds are higher than their land-based counterparts. Offshore wind turbine substructure designs mainly fall into three depth categories: shallow (30 m or less), transitional (30 m to 60 m), and deep water (greater than 60 m).122 Most of the grid-scale offshore wind farms in Europe have monopole foundations embedded into the seabed in water depths ranging from 5 m to 30 m;123 the proposed American projects such as Cape Wind in Massachusetts and Block Island in Rhode Island would likewise be shallow- water installations.124 In deeper water, it is not economically feasible to affix a rigid structure to the sea floor, and floating platforms are envisioned. The three concepts shown below have been developed for floating platform designs, each of which is tethered but not built into the seabed.125 Each design uses a different method for achieving static stability, and some small pilot efforts are underway to demonstrate the performance of different turbines.126 Greater wind speeds and thus available energy capture are found further from shore, particularly at ocean depths greater than 60 m.127 These attributes, combined with their proximity to major coastal cities and energy consumers,128 are why, in our carbon-stressed world, offshore wind requires serious consideration and prompt implementation. As demonstrated in the following pages, however, the maze of federal and state regulatory requirements facing renewable energy projects in general and offshore wind in particular, is especially burdensome.129 These requirements undermine the fundamental goal of significantly increasing reliance on emission-free renewable energy sources and, unless substantially revised, will effectively preclude any meaningful efforts to mitigate the many damaging human and economic impacts of climate change. Pro: Off Shore WindThe wind industry is growing slowly because tax credits are offered for a year at a time - a long-term tax credit is key to give the wind industry a jump start.Walsh, Law Clerk for the Superior Court of Connecticut, 2013 (Kevin, “Renewable Energy Financial Incentives: Focusing on Federal Tax Credits and the Section 1603 Cash Grant: Barriers to Development,” environs, 36:2, Online: http://environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/36/2/walsh.pdf) Renewable energy financial incentive legislation has been volatile. Congress typically extends tax credits or section 1603 cash grants for a period between one to three years (the section 1603 cash grant has not been extended, but is still available for a certain period of time).200 This causes a number of problems for investors, because if the project is not operational before the lapse, the credit/grant will not be awarded. This creates risk in the investment and diminishes investment.201 As stated above, the years following lapses approximately have an 80% drop rate in wind installations.202 Congress has failed to provide a steady, long-term financial incentive.203 This inconsistency discourages long-term planning for wind energy project investments.204 Congress’ unsteady legislation has also pushed manufactures to offshore markets with more certain financial incentives.205 To avoid constrained growth in the renewable energy market, Congress should make the tax credits/grant available for longer periods of time. As explained above, many variables delay renewable energy projects. The delays make the one to three year timeframe of the credit/grant availability a risky investment. Were Congress to implement a long-term tax policy for renewable energy financial incentives, the renewable energy market would grow at a much quicker rate. To attain the United States renewable energy consumption goals, this is a necessary action for Congress to take. Pro: Off Shore WindOffshore wind farms protect ocean species by providing shelter from fishing and reducing CO2 emissions.Zoe Casy, Senior Communications Officer at European Wind Energy Association, 2012 (Zoe, “Offshore wind farms benefit sealife, says study,” European Wind Energy Association Blog, December, Online: http://www.ewea.org/blog/2012/12/offshore-wind-farms-benefit-sealife-says-study/) Offshore wind farms can create a host of benefits for the local marine environment, as well as combatting climate change, a new study by the Marine Institute at Plymouth University has found.¶ The Marine Institute found that wind farms provide shelter to fish species since sea bottom trawling is often forbidden inside a wind farm, and it found that turbine support structures can create artificial reefs for some species.¶ A separate study at the Nysted offshore wind farm in Denmark confirmed this finding by saying that artificial reefs provided favourable growth conditions for blue mussels and crab species. A study on the Thanet offshore wind farm in the UK found that some species like cod shelter inside the wind farm.¶ One high-profile issue covered by the Marine Institute study was that of organisms colliding with offshore wind turbines. The study, backed-up by a number of previous studies, found that many bird species fly low over the water, avoiding collision with wind turbine blades. It also found that some species, such as Eider ducks, do modify their courses slightly to avoid offshore turbines.¶ When it comes to noise, the study found “no significant impact on behaviour or populations.” It noted that a separate study in the Netherlands found more porpoise clicks inside a Dutch wind farm than outside it “perhaps exploiting the higher fish densities found”.¶ The study also said that offshore wind power and other marine renewable energies should be rolled out rapidly in order to combat the threats to marine biodiversity, food production and economies posed by climate change.¶ “It is necessary to rapidly deploy large quantities of marine renewable energy to reduce the carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning which are leading to ocean acidification, global warming and climatic changes,” the study published said.¶ EWEA forecasts that 40 GW of offshore wind capacity will be online in European seas by 2020 which will offset 102 million tonnes of CO2 every year. By 2030, the expected 150 GW of offshore capacity will offset 315 million tonnes of CO2 annually – that’s a significant contribution to the effort to cut carbon.¶ “It is clear that the marine environment is already being damaged by the increasingly apparent impacts of climate change; however it is not too late to make a difference to avoid more extreme impacts,” the study said.¶ “If you bring all these studies together they all point to a similar conclusion: offshore wind farms have a positive impact on the marine environment in several ways,” said Angeliki Koulouri, Research Officer at EWEA. “First they contribute to a reduction in CO2 emissions, the major threat to biodiversity, second, they provide regeneration areas for fish and benthic populations,” she added. Pro: Off Shore WindWind energy production is stalling in the United States – lack of long term tax subsidies from the federal government deters investors from investing in new projects.USA Today, 2014 (“US wind industry slammed by tax uncertainty, fracking,” USA Today, April 19, Online: http://www.htrnews.com/viewart/20140420/MAN03/304200220/US-wind-industry-slammed-by-tax-uncertainty-fracking) Once a booming industry, U.S. wind power saw its growth plummet 92 percent last year as it wrestled with tax uncertainties and cheap natural gas.¶ The industry is still growing but not nearly as fast, says a report by the American Wind Energy Association. It added a record 13,131 megawatts of power in 2012 but that fell to only 1,087 MW last year — the lowest level since 2004.¶ One reason was investors’ uncertainty that Congress would renew a federal wind tax subsidy. “People didn’t know it would be passed ... so they weren’t creating new projects” early last year, says AWEA’s president Tom Kiernan. He says it takes about nine months to plan a wind farm, so the one-year extension in January 2013 didn’t trigger a flurry of new wind farm construction until the second half of 2013.¶ He expects this year will see a rebound in new capacity but how much will depend on whether Congress extends the tax subsidy, which expired in January. An extension is pending in the Senate. Retailer IKEA has announced Thursday that it’s building a wind farm in Hoopeston, Ill., slated to open in early 2015.¶ The AWEA report is the latest to show the challenges confronting the clean energy sector. Last year, investments in renewable energy fell 14percent globally and 10 percent in the United States, according to an analysis by the United Nations Environment Programme. It says U.S. investments in wind were $13.3 billion, down from $14.5 billion in 2012. Con: Off Shore WindOffshore wind farms disrupt ocean flows – can’t predict any benefitsMichael REILLY Discovery News – NBC 2008[Michael Reilly, Offshore Wind Power Could Alter Ocean Currents, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/27681666/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/offshore-wind-power-could-alter-ocean-currents/#.U44MqPk_ClU] Generating wind power at sea may disturb ocean currents and marine ecosystems, according to a new study. Offshore wind farms are common in Europe; Denmark, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom all have several active installations. Wind power in the United States is currently confined to dry land, but three installations are planned off the coast of New Jersey, Rhode Island and Delaware, totaling about 1,500 megawatts of generating capacity. Extracting energy from wind changes regional air currents, which can in turn affect how the nearby ocean circulates, according to Goran Brostrom of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute in Oslo. In a paper published this month in Journal of Marine Systems, Brostrom shows in a model that winds swirling at 11 to 22 miles per hour downwind of large farms are uneven. As they blow over the ocean they can roil the waters, causing upwelling. The change in currents seems small — a nudge of just 3.3 feet per day — and the wind farms have to be around 1.9 square miles. But Brostrom said the effect is enough to bring nutrient-rich waters up from the depths, which marine life can thrive on. "I think you will see a large effect over time," he said. "You will get more plankton blooming, and you will see more vibrant life overall at that place." Plankton blooms are infamous for causing toxic red tides and for sucking oxygen out of the water. But they can also be food sources for larger animals.
And Brostrom's study is a very general model — ocean currents and marine life could be affected in very different ways depending on the location of the farm. "If you want to understand how ocean currents are really going to be affected, you'll want to include the bathymetry at the site," Dvorak said, referring to analysis of underwater depth, as well as do a detailed, specific study of the area's ecosystem. Still, Dvorak pointed out Brostrom's study raises a point no one in the wind power industry had yet considered. "People have looked at the climate effects of wind farms on land, but this is the first to bring up the question of ocean currents," he said. "This is something we should be looking at."
Con: Off Shore WindThere are no ships for installationTim McDonnell Climate Desk's associate producer Mother Jones 2/28/13 (Tim McDonnell, Climate Desk Associate Producer, ¶ Top 4 Reasons the US Still Doesn't Have a Single Offshore Wind Turbine¶ http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/02/us-rough-seas-offshore-wind) 3. Not a single ship in the Unites States is equipped to handle wind turbines: Forget about whales and yacht routes. How the hell do you go about lodging a 450-ton, over-400-foot tall turbine into the ocean floor? Answer: With one massive mother of a boat. But there's a problem, says Chris van Beek, Deepwater's president: "At this point, there is not an existing vessel in the US that can do this job." The world's relatively small fleet of turbine-ready ships—500-foot, $200 million behemoths—is docked primarily in Europe; an obscure 1920 law called the Jones Act requires ships sailing between two US ports to be US-flagged, and once the foundation of an offshore turbine is laid it counts as a "port." Consequently, turbine installation ships cruising in from, say, Hamburg, wouldn't be able to dock in the States. On top of that, given the pittance of offshore projects in the works in the United States, bringing the ships in from abroad can be cost-prohibitive. Offshore turbines could find themselves all dressed up with nowhere to go. Weeks Marine of New Jersey is working to solve the problem by building the first country's first turbine ship. They've completed the hull and hope to have the boat seaworthy by 2014, possibly in time to chip in on putting up Cape Wind. Wind farms destroy local habitat – makes it inhabitable, degrades soil, and airGregory ADAMS J.D. Northwestern School of Law. 2006, [Gregory M. Adams, Bringing Green Power to the Public Lands: The Bureau of Land Management's Authority and Discretion to Regulate Wind-Energy Developments, Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation, 21 J. Envtl. L. & Litig. 445] The footprint a wind farm leaves on the land can be significant in undeveloped areas valued for their scenic attributes. n16 The footprint can include turbines, structures, power stations, roads, new transmission lines, and even on-site concrete-batching plants. n17 Construction requires digging and blasting holes for tower foundations thirty-five to forty feet deep and pouring dozens of cubic yards of concrete per turbine. n18 Developers must also clear and compact up to three acres for a "staging area" to erect each turbine. n19 Even after on-site mitigation and restoration measures, construction and maintenance of the facilities leaves a footprint of five percent to ten percent of the acreage of the entire site for the life of the project. n20 Construction of roads to access the site also creates a significant footprint and a permanent [*451] alteration of a previously undeveloped area. n21 This can create significant environmental impacts including landscape degradation, unfavorable aesthetics, and noise, all of which can engender local opposition. n22 Wind-farm footprints can significantly degrade the landscape. n23 In the past, groups have opposed wind farms in an effort to stop the industrialization of rural landscapes. n24 Of all the impacts to a rural landscape caused by wind farms, extensive road building can be the most significant. n25 If existing roads cannot be used, developers must remove massive amounts of soil and construct roads in hilly terrain typical of most wind-farm sites. n26 Such construction permanently scars the landscape. Extensive road construction and use can also cause fugitive dust to escape into the air, degrading air quality and visibility. n27 Con: Off Shore WindDon’t buy their “wind is cheap” evidence – best studies prove that hidden costs and infrastructure problems more than triple electricity pricesThe Daily Caller December 31, 2012, http://dailycaller.com/2012/12/31/report-wind-generation-cost-twice-as-much-as-government-estimates/, accessed 1-2-2013. As lawmakers rush to hash out a deal to extend tax credits for wind energy generation, a new report shows that, once hidden costs are accounted for, the true cost of wind power generation is twice that of what previous government estimates have shown.¶ “Once these hidden costs are included and subsidies are excluded, wind generation is not close to being competitive with conventional generation sources such as natural gas, coal or nuclear,” said George Taylor, lead author of the report and senior fellow in energy policy at American Tradition Institute, in a statement.¶ For example, wind generation costs three times as much as natural gas-fired electricity and up to 50 percent more than government estimates for new nuclear and coal power generation. The Energy Information Administration reported in its most recent “levelized cost of electricity” that wind generation costs eight cents per kilowatt hour. However, this understates the true cost of wind generation because it leaves out indirect and infrastructure costs which are hard to measure and raise the true cost of generating wind power. Studies don’t distinguish between onshore and offshore—all agree kills lots of birds Benjamin K. Sovacool, Visiting Associate Professor at Vermont Law School and founding Director of the Energy Security & Justice Program at their Institute for Energy and Environment, “ 2013 (Avian mortality from wind power, fossil-fuel, and nuclear electricity”, 9/13, http://nukefree.org/news/avianmortalityfromwindpower,fossil-fuel,andnuclearelectricity) A survey conducted by the author found more than 600 studies, articles, and reports investigating avian deaths and wind farms published from 1998 to 2008. Studies have generally noted that onshore and offshore wind turbines present direct and indirect hazards to birds and other avian species. Birds can smash into a turbine blade when they are fixated on perching or hunting and pass through its rotor plane; they can strike support structures; they can hit parts of towers; or they can collide with associated transmission and distribution (T&D) lines. These risks are exacerbated when turbines are placed on ridges and upwind slopes, built close to migration routes, or operated during periods of poor visibility such as fog, rain, and at night. Some species, such as bats, face additional risks from the rapid reduction in air pressure near turbine blades, which can cause internal hemorrhaging through a process known as barotrauma (Baerwald et al., 2008). Indirectly, wind farms can positively and negatively physically alter natural habitats, the quantity and quality of prey, and the availability of nesting sites (Fielding et al., 2006; National Wind Energy Coordinating Committee, 1999). Con: Off Shore WindOffshore wind doesn’t reduce GHG---only a risk backup power sources increase emissionsDavid Tuerck, PhD Beacon Hill Institute 2011, The Cost and Economic Impact of New Jersey’s Offshore Wind Initiative, Beacon Hill institute, June When wind power reduces fossil fuel use, it also indirectly contributes to cleaner air through lower emissions of sulfur oxides (SOx), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and carbon dioxide (CO2). The reduced emissions of CO2 are believed to reduce the greenhouse effect and thereby moderate the effects of global warming, although the strength of these effects is a matter of considerable debate.¶ The main benefit of lower emissions of SOx, NOx and CO2 is a reduction in human mortality and morbidity. It is not easy to put a dollar value on these effects, and so estimates vary widely. We use the numbers reported by Muller et al. and value CO2 using the most recent futures auctions from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) for New Jersey, or $2.04 per tonne of CO2.16¶ However, coal is the largest marginal producer for the mid-Atlantic region, according to the market report for the PMJ. In this case, it is unclear that the use of renewable energy resources, especially wind, significantly reduces GHG emissions. Due to their intermittency, wind requires significant backup power sources that are cycled up and down to accommodate the variability in their production. As a result, a recent study found that wind power could actually increase pollution and greenhouse gas emissions when coal represents a large portion of the marginal electricity produced for New Jersey.17 Thus the case for the heavy use of wind to generate “cleaner” electricity is undermined in terms of replacing coal.¶ Therefore, we assume that the resources used as the marginal producer will only reduce emissions for the portion of the marginal production from natural gas and oil and not from coal. Table 4 displays the calculations. / Directory: wp-content -> uploads -> 2013 2013 -> International post doctoral research fellowship programme final report title of the research 2013 -> Seals Family History 1565 to 2004 2013 -> Rao bulletin 15 July 2013 html edition this bulletin contains the following articles 2013 -> R institute of technology school of foreign languages 2013 -> Provisional Programme – subject to change thursday 10th april 2013 -> June, 2013 National hiv testing Day Month Men’s Health Week Hurricane Safety Month 2013 -> In memory of the residents of the Parish Chesham Bois that served their country during wwii 2013 -> Federal contract awards in georgia april 2013 Download 197.98 Kb. Share with your friends:
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