Biden To Ruin Thousands Of Miles Of Land For Green Energy Scheme James Taylor
The Biden administration has announced plans to despoil thousands of miles of land throughout the United States with new corridors for wind and solar transmission lines. In addition to stretching across thousands of miles of land in length, the Department of Energy reports the transmission-line projects may be up to 100 miles wide. The transmission lines, which are necessary to deliver wind and solar power from rural wind and solar projects to distant population centers, will destroy an enormous amount of open spaces and wildlife habitats. The Energy Department is tapping into $4.5 billion to make the project happen.
States whose lands will be affected include Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Much of the land will be in migratory bird corridors and sensitive ecological habitats.
The scope of land development for these projects highlights some of the many environmental shortcomings of wind and solar power. Land conservation used to be a primary component of environmentalism. However, wind and solar power are the worst offenders among energy sources. Scientists at Harvard University report that converting existing electricity generation from conventional sources to wind power would require covering one-third of America’s landmass with wind turbines. That number would grow to one-half of America’s land mass under the Biden administration’s plans to electrify transportation vehicles. Necessary transmission lines, like the ones just announced by Biden’s DOE, would defile immense amounts of land in addition to the wind turbines themselves.
Coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants can be located close to most major metropolitan areas. Wind and solar projects, however, are mostly restricted to locations with favorable wind conditions or sunshine intensity. As a result, new wind and solar projects require crisscrossing America with large and extensive transmission lines.
In addition to extensive land development and habitat destruction, wind and solar projects are unique in their proclivity to directly kill wildlife. In 2013, when wind turbines powered just 4 percent of America’s electricity, peer-reviewed research documented that wind turbines killed approximately 1.5 million birds and bats in America each year, including endangered and protected species.
Since that study was published, wind power production has more than tripled. That’s likely four million birds and bats now directly killed by wind turbines in America each year. Also, scientists have documented a sickening death toll of birds incinerated to death in mid-flight when they cross concentrated solar streams produced by panels in solar power projects. Further expanding wind and solar power will dramatically increase the animal death toll, both from habitat destruction and direct kills by wind turbines and solar concentration.
This newest Biden administration proposal piles on top of other proposed large-scale wind and solar transmission lines being opposed by Native Americans, environmentalists, and residents near the transmission corridors. For example, the Tohono O’odham Nation and the San Carlos Apache Tribe have joined environmentalist groups and Arizona residents opposing the proposed SunZia transmission line, which would extend 550 miles to deliver wind and solar power across New Mexico and Arizona to Southern California. The most controversial segment of the SunZia project is a 50-mile stretch through the largely undeveloped San Pedro Valley, which a federal judge ruled is “one of the most culturally intact landscapes in southern Arizona.” The Native American tribes argue the U.S. Bureau of Land Management hid the environmental and cultural impact of the project when reviewing the application for the project.
Ultimately, the Biden administration and its radical climate activist allies propose destroying vast stretches of open spaces and an enormous number of wild animals and ecosystems to impose – at taxpayer expense – a nationwide patchwork of wind turbines, solar projects, and power transmission lines. Far from true environmentalism, that is merely using the power of the federal government to feed the climate industrial complex.
James Taylor (JTaylor@heartland.org) is president of The Heartland Institute.
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