IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/renene/v92y2016icp405-414.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A preliminary assessment of avian mortality at utility-scale solar energy facilities in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Walston, Leroy J.
  • Rollins, Katherine E.
  • LaGory, Kirk E.
  • Smith, Karen P.
  • Meyers, Stephanie A.

Abstract

Despite the benefits of reduced toxic and carbon emissions and a perpetual energy resource, there is potential for negative environmental impacts resulting from utility-scale solar energy (USSE) development. Although USSE development may represent an avian mortality source, there is little knowledge regarding the magnitude of these impacts in the context of other avian mortality sources. In this study we present a first assessment of avian mortality at USSE facilities through a synthesis of available avian monitoring and mortality information at existing USSE facilities. Using this information, we contextualize USSE avian mortality relative to other forms of avian mortality at 2 spatial scales: a regional scale (confined to southern California) and a national scale. Systematic avian mortality information was available for three USSE facilities in the southern California region. We estimated annual USSE-related avian mortality to be between 16,200 and 59,400 birds in the southern California region, which was extrapolated to between 37,800 and 138,600 birds for all USSE facilities across the United States that are either installed or under construction. We also discuss issues related to avian–solar interactions that should be addressed in future research and monitoring programs.

Suggested Citation

  • Walston, Leroy J. & Rollins, Katherine E. & LaGory, Kirk E. & Smith, Karen P. & Meyers, Stephanie A., 2016. "A preliminary assessment of avian mortality at utility-scale solar energy facilities in the United States," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 405-414.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:92:y:2016:i:c:p:405-414
    DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2016.02.041
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148116301422
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.renene.2016.02.041?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Taber Allison & Terry Root & Peter Frumhoff, 2014. "Thinking globally and siting locally – renewable energy and biodiversity in a rapidly warming world," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 126(1), pages 1-6, September.
    2. Sovacool, Benjamin K., 2009. "Contextualizing avian mortality: A preliminary appraisal of bird and bat fatalities from wind, fossil-fuel, and nuclear electricity," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 2241-2248, June.
    3. Hernandez, R.R. & Easter, S.B. & Murphy-Mariscal, M.L. & Maestre, F.T. & Tavassoli, M. & Allen, E.B. & Barrows, C.W. & Belnap, J. & Ochoa-Hueso, R. & Ravi, S. & Allen, M.F., 2014. "Environmental impacts of utility-scale solar energy," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 766-779.
    4. Scott R. Loss & Tom Will & Peter P. Marra, 2013. "The impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife of the United States," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 4(1), pages 1-8, June.
    5. Shafiee, Shahriar & Topal, Erkan, 2009. "When will fossil fuel reserves be diminished?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 181-189, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hsiao, Yao-Jen & Chen, Jyun-Long & Huang, Cheng-Ting, 2021. "What are the challenges and opportunities in implementing Taiwan's aquavoltaics policy? A roadmap for achieving symbiosis between small-scale aquaculture and photovoltaics," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    2. Lv, Furong & Tang, Haiping, 2024. "Sustainable photovoltaic power generation spatial planning through ecosystem service valuation: A case study of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    3. Sascha Samadi, 2017. "The Social Costs of Electricity Generation—Categorising Different Types of Costs and Evaluating Their Respective Relevance," Energies, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-37, March.
    4. Visser, Elke & Perold, Vonica & Ralston-Paton, Samantha & Cardenal, Alvaro C. & Ryan, Peter G., 2019. "Assessing the impacts of a utility-scale photovoltaic solar energy facility on birds in the Northern Cape, South Africa," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 1285-1294.
    5. Jamal Mamkhezri & Leonard A. Malczynski & Janie M. Chermak, 2021. "Assessing the Economic and Environmental Impacts of Alternative Renewable Portfolio Standards: Winners and Losers," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-23, June.
    6. Li, Dong & Cruz, Jose M., 2022. "Multiperiod supply chain network dynamics under investment in sustainability, externality cost, and consumers’ willingness to pay," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 247(C).
    7. Alexandra Vrînceanu & Ines Grigorescu & Monica Dumitrașcu & Irena Mocanu & Cristina Dumitrică & Dana Micu & Gheorghe Kucsicsa & Bianca Mitrică, 2019. "Impacts of Photovoltaic Farms on the Environment in the Romanian Plain," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(13), pages 1-18, July.
    8. Grubert, E. & Zacarias, M., 2022. "Paradigm shifts for environmental assessment of decarbonizing energy systems: Emerging dominance of embodied impacts and design-oriented decision support needs," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    9. Jeffrey Vervloesem & Ernesto Marcheggiani & MD Abdul Mueed Choudhury & Bart Muys, 2022. "Effects of Photovoltaic Solar Farms on Microclimate and Vegetation Diversity," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(12), pages 1-31, June.
    10. VanDeventer, William & Jamei, Elmira & Thirunavukkarasu, Gokul Sidarth & Seyedmahmoudian, Mehdi & Soon, Tey Kok & Horan, Ben & Mekhilef, Saad & Stojcevski, Alex, 2019. "Short-term PV power forecasting using hybrid GASVM technique," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 367-379.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gasparatos, Alexandros & Doll, Christopher N.H. & Esteban, Miguel & Ahmed, Abubakari & Olang, Tabitha A., 2017. "Renewable energy and biodiversity: Implications for transitioning to a Green Economy," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 161-184.
    2. Kannan, Nadarajah & Vakeesan, Divagar, 2016. "Solar energy for future world: - A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 1092-1105.
    3. Blaydes, H. & Potts, S.G. & Whyatt, J.D. & Armstrong, A., 2021. "Opportunities to enhance pollinator biodiversity in solar parks," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    4. Luthra, Sunil & Govindan, Kannan & Kharb, Ravinder K. & Mangla, Sachin Kumar, 2016. "Evaluating the enablers in solar power developments in the current scenario using fuzzy DEMATEL: An Indian perspective," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 379-397.
    5. Feuerbacher, Arndt & Laub, Moritz & Högy, Petra & Lippert, Christian & Pataczek, Lisa & Schindele, Stephan & Wieck, Christine & Zikeli, Sabine, 2021. "An analytical framework to estimate the economics and adoption potential of dual land-use systems: The case of agrivoltaics," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    6. Zerrahn, Alexander, 2017. "Wind Power and Externalities," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 245-260.
    7. Wachs, Elizabeth & Engel, Bernard, 2021. "Land use for United States power generation: A critical review of existing metrics with suggestions for going forward," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    8. Visser, Elke & Perold, Vonica & Ralston-Paton, Samantha & Cardenal, Alvaro C. & Ryan, Peter G., 2019. "Assessing the impacts of a utility-scale photovoltaic solar energy facility on birds in the Northern Cape, South Africa," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 1285-1294.
    9. Feuerbacher, Arndt & Herrmann, Tristan & Neuenfeldt, Sebastian & Laub, Moritz & Gocht, Alexander, 2022. "Estimating the economics and adoption potential of agrivoltaics in Germany using a farm-level bottom-up approach," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    10. Sebestyén, Viktor, 2021. "Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews: Environmental impact networks of renewable energy power plants," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    11. Xiangwen Xue & Qi Zhang & Xinyu Cai & Vadim V. Ponkratov, 2023. "Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis for Evaluating the Effectiveness of Alternative Energy Sources in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(10), pages 1-14, May.
    12. Aye, Goodness & Gupta, Rangan & Hammoudeh, Shawkat & Kim, Won Joong, 2015. "Forecasting the price of gold using dynamic model averaging," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 257-266.
    13. Ali Mubarak Al-Qahtani, 2023. "A Comprehensive Review in Microwave Pyrolysis of Biomass, Syngas Production and Utilisation," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(19), pages 1-16, September.
    14. Jen-Yu Lee & Tien-Thinh Nguyen & Hong-Giang Nguyen & Jen-Yao Lee, 2022. "Towards Predictive Crude Oil Purchase: A Case Study in the USA and Europe," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(11), pages 1-15, May.
    15. Steve Newbold & Charles Griffiths & Christopher C. Moore & Ann Wolverton & Elizabeth Kopits, 2010. "The "Social Cost of Carbon" Made Simple," NCEE Working Paper Series 201007, National Center for Environmental Economics, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, revised Aug 2010.
    16. Ritter, Hendrik & Zimmermann, Karl, 2019. "Cap-and-Trade Policy vs. Carbon Taxation: Of Leakage and Linkage," EconStor Preprints 197796, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    17. Yassir El Karkri & Alexis B. Rey-Boué & Hassan El Moussaoui & Johannes Stöckl & Thomas I. Strasser, 2019. "Improved Control of Grid-connected DFIG-based Wind Turbine using Proportional-Resonant Regulators during Unbalanced Grid," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(21), pages 1-21, October.
    18. Jānis Krūmiņš & Māris Kļaviņš, 2023. "Investigating the Potential of Nuclear Energy in Achieving a Carbon-Free Energy Future," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(9), pages 1-31, April.
    19. Wang, Yifei & Leung, Dennis Y.C. & Xuan, Jin & Wang, Huizhi, 2016. "A review on unitized regenerative fuel cell technologies, part-A: Unitized regenerative proton exchange membrane fuel cells," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 961-977.
    20. Bodisco, Timothy & Brown, Richard J., 2013. "Inter-cycle variability of in-cylinder pressure parameters in an ethanol fumigated common rail diesel engine," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 55-65.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:92:y:2016:i:c:p:405-414. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/renewable-energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.