Tag Archives: Tasmania

Wind Turbine Wipeout: Rare & Endangered Eagles’ Days Are Numbered

From STOP THESE THINGS

The wind industry is battling on all fronts, including mounting community outrage, driven not least by its wanton slaughter of eagles, whales and other magnificent creatures.

The outer tips of 60m wind turbine blades travelling at over 350kph make short work of avian predators, such as hawks, kites, falcons and eagles, including the rare and endangered Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle.

A short while back we covered a story exposing bogus claims made by wind power outfits about a whizbang technology – IdentiFlight – that was supposed to prevent the inevitable slaughter of eagles, hawks and kites etc by shutting off turbines as the birds approached them. It didn’t; and dozens of eagles have been sliced and diced, notwithstanding the supposedly wizard technology.

Meanwhile, a recent study on the issue shows that the wind industry – and the additional transmission lines necessary to support it – are wiping out Tasmania’s wedge-tailed eagles and vulnerable white-bellied sea eagles, as if the industry was being paid a bounty per kill.

Here’s a report from Matthew Denholm on the end of days for Tasmania’s rare and endangered eagles.

Tasmanian wind rush ‘pushes eagles to extinction’, says study
The Australian
Matthew Denholm
18 September 2023

Tasmanian wind farms and transmission lines have killed or injured 321 threatened eagles in 12 years, but the real figure is likely far higher, a new study finds.

The peer reviewed study, published in Australian Field Ornithology, uses data from wind farms, TasNetworks and eagle rescuers to identify the death or injury of 272 endangered Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagles and 49 vulnerable white-bellied sea eagles.

It found that from 2010 to 2022, 268 eagles were recorded killed and 53 injured by wind and transmission energy infrastructure, with the state’s four wind farms reporting 38 deaths, TasNetworks 139 deaths and raptor rescuers 91 deaths.

“The real number can only be higher, since surveying at wind farms is incomplete,” noted study author Gregory Pullen. “Specifically, it is only close to turbines, is periodic and does not involve all turbines or all habitat around each turbine, scrub often being excluded.

“In addition, carcasses are found by TasNetworks crews by coincidence during maintenance – not planned searches.”

Mr Pullen declared a membership of a group opposed to a central highlands wind farm proposal but said his data was entirely verifiable and the study peer reviewed before publication in the journal.

In Tasmania, up to 10 new wind farms have been proposed. Most are in part or fully contingent on the $3bn-plus Marinus Link – a proposed second interconnector between the island and Victoria to allow Tasmania to export wind and hydro energy to the mainland.

A North West Transmission project linked to Marinus would see 240km of new and upgraded lines installed across the state’s northwest.

Eagle experts have called for a moratorium on new wind development in the state until regulation and planning is improved, including declaration of “no go” areas for turbines in high-density eagle areas.

Mr Pullen’s study points to estimates from some of these experts that less than 1,000 Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagles remain and expresses concern the wind rush could push the iconic species close to extinction.

It says the federal government has set a 1pc trigger for migratory birds, with actions likely to destroy 1pc of a migratory bird population declared “important”.

“Currently, no similar policy guideline is available for resident bird species, despite mortality from wind farm development and operation being a threat to multiple species,” the paper argues.

Tasmania’s planning body is currently hearing appeals related to conditional approval for a 122 turbine wind farm on Robbins Island, in the state’s far northwest.

The state Environment Protection Authority approved the project but on condition it shut down for almost five months of the year to minimise impacts on the critically endangered orange bellied parrot.

“Industry-leading” bird collision avoidance technology employed at one Tasmanian wind farm, and increasingly relied on by regulators, was recently found to have failed to stop the deaths of at least eight eagles in less than four years.
The Australian

The Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagles’ days are numbered.

Enviro-Spin Unravels: Eagle ‘Saving’ Technology Just Another Wind Industry Lie

From STOP THESE THINGS

Lucky survivor: Craig Webb with Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle rescued post turbine collision.

The wind industry has just been caught out lying about a technology that was meant to prevent Eagles being slaughtered by their turbine blades. Cars, cats and skyscrapers don’t kill Eagles, but 60-80 m wind turbine blades with their tips travelling at 350 Kph routinely smash them out of existence.

The rampant slaughter of millions of birds and bats – includes rare, endangered and majestic species, like America’s iconic bald and golden eagles, and Tasmania’s extremely rare wedge-tailed Eagle.

Faced with outrage from real environmentalists, to date, the default response from the wind industry is to lie like fury and – when the corpses can no longer be hidden and the lying fails – to issue court proceedings to literally bury those facts (see our post here).

However, a couple of years back its spin doctors began seeding the narrative with the claim that the industry had developed a new, whizbang technology – IdentiFlight – that would prevent so much as a feather from being ruffled, by shutting off turbines as eagles, hawks and kites etc approached them.

Well, surprise, surprise, it turns out that the IdentiFlight system is yet another cynical ploy by the wind industry to placate those concerned about the fate of our apex avian predators, by pretending to actually care about the critters it’s been killing, en masse, for decades now. Matthew Denholm has this report on how the wind industry’s latest enviro-spin effort has unravelled, with a mounting pile of rare and endangered wedge-tailed Eagle carcasses to prove it.

‘Cutting-edge’ Tasmanian wind farm still a wedge-tailed eagle killer
The Australian
Matthew Denholm
17 August 2023

A wind farm with so-called “industry-leading” bird avoidance technology has killed at least eight endangered Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagles, prompting calls for an urgent moratorium on new turbines in eagle zones.

Cattle Hill Wind Farm in Tasmania’s Central Highlands uses IdentiFlight camera technology – which it describes as a “cutting-edge avian detection system” – to stop the wind turbines when birds approach.

However, the system – which is spruiked by the industry and regulators as the foremost solution to wind turbine bird deaths – has failed to prevent the deaths of at least eight eagles in less than four years.

The Australian understands that figure – confirmed by Tasmania’s Environment Protection Authority – includes five eagle deaths in the past 12 months.

“We should be very concerned about this because what we’re looking at here is the start of a planned huge industry,” said eagle expert and wildlife biologist Nick Mooney.

“Everybody has ignored rule 101. That is, if you’re worried about eagles, don’t put wind farms where there’s lots of eagles, and the overseas (scientific) literature stresses that.”

He was aware of 61 wedge-tailed eagles and five white-bellied sea-eagles being found dead or incapacitated during periods of formal mortality monitoring at Tasmania’s existing wind farms.

This was likely the tip of an iceberg, with some wind farms no longer required to monitor for bird deaths and formal monitoring restricted to areas under ­turbines, missing birds that die further afield after being struck.

He was aware of another nine large-scale wind farms proposed for Tasmania, which was concerning given that cumulative impacts of multiple wind farms was still not factored into federal environmental approvals.

Cattle Hill Wind Farm confirmed the deaths. It said its modelling had predicted its turbines would kill 14 eagles after four years and this was allowed under its permit conditions.

Mr Mooney said the system’s shortcomings and any solution should be independently verified.

He said he believed several turbines at Cattle Hill may need to be shut down in the interim, and the massive industry expansion in eagle density areas put on hold until an effective bird avoidance system was developed.

The wedge-tailed eagle recovery plan was due to be updated in 2010, but a promised revamp was yet to materialise, despite the proliferation of wind farms since.
The Australian

Kym Dixon with a not-so-lucky wedge-tailed Eagle, Waterloo SA.

Not So Bright Spark: Grand Renewable Energy ‘Battery’ Plan Runs Flat

From STOP THESE THINGS

Hubris drives the so-called wind and solar ‘transition’, which now depends upon the myth of giant batteries compensating for the vagaries of the weather and sunset. These mythical batteries come in all shapes and sizes and with enough added hyperbole have grown to include the entire island state of Tasmania. Touted with the rent-seeking classes’ usual understatement as “The Battery of the Nation”.

The wheeze goes something like this.

Tasmania has an enviable hydropower generation capacity (2,270MW in total), thanks to its mountains and exceptional annual average rainfall. It also features 4 clusters of wind turbines with a total notional capacity of 556MW. Whereas its hydropower generation capacity is available on demand (with the exception of lengthy dry conditions when Tasmania turns to diesel generators), its wind power fleet delivers occasional power around 30% of the time, they just can’t tell you which 30% of the time that might be with any meaningful advance notice.

Tasmania is already connected to the mainland’s power grid, via a high-capacity undersea cable acting as an interconnector between Tasmania and Victoria’s remaining coal-fired power plants.

The Battery of the Nation story depends upon yet another cable with a multibillion-dollar pricetag being dropped beneath the icy waters of Bass Strait, presumably allowing Tasmania’s wealth of wind and hydro power to pass seamlessly between Tasmania and the mainland. However, as it turns out, Tasmania hasn’t got enough power to power itself, as the team from Jo Nova report below.

Battery of the Nation goes flat
J Nova Blog
Jo Nova
11 August 2023

The Marinus Link cable was meant to spark a glorious renewables boom and make Tasmania “The Battery of the Nation”, instead it will cost more than a new advanced coal fired plant, provide no energy at all, and currently even the thought of it is causing chaos. New projects are on hold, factories can’t expand and Tasmania is held hostage to visions of an electricity grid designed to stop storms instead of generate energy.

The Marinus Link is a 255km cable that was supposed to be the second interconnector from Tasmania to the mainland. In theory it would cost $3 billion and carry 1.5GW of electricity. But the costs have blown out to $5.5 billion and the State Premier is balking at the new bill.

However, most of the new wind power projects in the state are awaiting the magic cable before they commit — without it, they can’t reach the real market, which is mainland Australia. But without them, the local grid doesn’t have enough surplus capacity to cover the lean times (or rather, without the cable, they can’t get access to more reliable brown coal power in Victoria).

The brutal truth is that wind power is only “cheap” (or even barely economic) if the poor taxpayer serfs pay for the five thousand million dollar cable (and the storage). If Tasmania built another reliable power plant instead, it wouldn’t need the inter-connector at all. The cables look, smell and cost like public infrastructure, but are just another hidden cost of “renewables”.

The foiled plan and uncertainty means Tasmania is in a quiet energy crisis.

Even without being built, “the cable” is causing chaos
As reported in The Australian, Tasmanian businesses can’t get energy to expand. One paper mill that runs on coal-fired boilers wants to replace them with electricity but can’t. In a state with “100% renewable energy” you’d think the state electricity corporation would be beating a path to their door. Instead Hydro Tasmania said it can’t spare 50MW of despatchable power and told the company it needs to arrange equivalent power from wind and solar generators. But the paper mill is struggling, and says it would involve “substantially higher operating costs”. Funny how the free energy always costs more?

Industry, jobs on hold as Tasmania ‘runs out of power’ and Marinus Link stalls
Matthew Denholm, The Australian

Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Michael Bailey said the state was in “another energy crisis”.

We have businesses asking the government for more power to expand and create more jobs, yet today we’ve heard that the government is turning them away because we simply do not have enough generation to meet demand,” Mr Bailey said. “If that’s not the definition of a crisis, then what is? Even the Economic Regulator has said … there is no ‘head room’ in the Tasmanian grid, which confirms the business community’s worst fears.

In the glory days of 2018 as dreamed up by Malcolm Turnbull, the second cable was originally estimated to cost $1.1 billion, and the full 5GW “Battery” of pumped hydro in Tasmania would be twice the size of Snowy 2.0 (which is currently also stalled in its own cost blowout and trapped tunnel borer).

Some Greens want to Sink the Link too
Environmentally the idea is so bad even Bob Brown and Christine Milne, former Greens leaders, have launched a “Sink the Link” campaign to stop the cable for environmental reasons. They can see now that it will unleash a wave of industrial development that will consume the wilderness.

Are these older Greens finally realizing they were tools of property developers and big industry all along? They campaigned for years for exactly this future. Now they want to stop this train?

“No one in Tasmania’s south appreciates the sell-out and industrialisation of the north that is being proposed to line the pockets of private developers and feed power to the mainland. The magnificent Robbins Island, takayna, Stanley, and forests and farmlands from Circular Head to Eddystone Point and the Central Plateau are all in the firing line. It is time that people had access to information about what is happening on the ground,” Bob Brown Foundation takayna Campaigner Scott Jordan said.

–Bob Brown Foundation

This is the state that approved a Mega Wind farm that won’t be able to operate for five months of the year lest it hurt the Orange-bellied Parrot. That’s the Robbins Island Mega wind farm: killing birds and baseload power at 300 kilometers per hour. Presumably construction of the largest wind farm in the Southern Hemisphere is also waiting for the big cable…
Jo Nova Blog