Wind Farms

The letter in the recent Herald decrying wind farms really needed to footnote their opinions, because that's what their objections were, unsupported by facts. It seemed like a backhanded attempt to smear the Biden administration. Not to rebut every point, but while the fishing industry off the East Coast could indeed be affected by wind farms, the industries are working daily to find solutions. Each of the units has a life span of 20-25 years, with yearly maintenance, kind of like a dependable car. Only some of the turbines are anchored to very large cement structures. The methods of anchoring vary greatly, depending on location. The wind turbines are indeed getting bigger. The towers are made of steel (recyclable), the nacelles contain electronics made of copper and aluminum (very recyclable) and the wind vanes are composites of fiberglass and carbon fiber (currently much less recyclable). While they are less recyclable at the moment, the value of the energy produced makes the current research on finding ways to recycle the vanes important and ongoing. Wind farms on land are in fact a hazard to birds, but far less so at sea. Research looks for places where birds fly higher and there are fewer of them. For animals in the ocean, construction and operation could be a problem, but that's why we research and investigate before installation to mitigate the effects if possible, and many of the sites become reefs harboring a lot of sea life. Certainly, there are fewer effects on marine life than from finding, harvesting, transporting and burning fossil fuels.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration is an excellent source of information about our use of energy, both fossil and renewable. So is ChatGPT.