Daily Archives: August 5, 2009

Wind power, birds, public policy, and the irrational fears of non-voters

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Michael Giberson

Should public policy accommodate the irrational fears of non-voters?

In this case, the phrase “irrational fears” refers to a seemingly innate overwhelming aversion to vertical structures, namely wind turbines and high-voltage transmission lines, and “non-voters” refers to the lesser prairie chicken.

A few weeks ago the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal ran a story on wildlife issues surrounding wind power development that focused particularly on a relatively local issue: the potential impact of wind power development on populations of the lesser prairie chicken.  The lesser prairie chicken is said to have an innate fear of vertical structures, so wind towers and transmission lines contribute to fragmentation of habitat.

Lesser prairie chicken are considered “vulnerable,” not yet “endangered” or “threatened,” but wildlife biologists anticipate that within a year or two the species may become listed.  An Associated Press article, “Ground bird is a wind issue,” observes that, if the species is listed “there would be significant restrictions on companies hoping to plant towering turbines across a five-state region believed to have some of the nation’s best wind energy potential.” That “five state region” is centered around the Texas Panhandle and includes nearby areas in eastern New Mexico, Oklahoma, and southern Colorado and southern Kansas.

Currently the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asks companies not to build turbines within five miles of a lek (a prairie chicken breeding area, see Wikipedia if you want to know more about lekking).  The science of the five-mile limit has been questioned, the guidelines are being reviewed and updated, and a report is expected this fall.  The Associated Press noted, “For energy companies, it’s a race. If transmission towers to bring the energy from the turbines to utility companies are up before the bird is listed, the structures would be grandfathered. If not, they probably would have to avoid the birds’ habitat.”

In print the Lubbock A-J story was headlined KILLER BLADES is very large print (if you come by my office in the next few weeks, I’ve got a copy you can look at).  I thought the title a bit overdramatic for a couple of reasons:

  • First, discussions of wind power’s “avian mortality” issue are very focused on what is easy to see – some dead birds near turbines – and tend to ignore what is hard to see – birds still alive due to reduced emissions from fossil fuel plants. (More commentary here on the “seen and the unseen.”)
  • Second, since the article focused on the lesser prairie chicken, a ground bird rarely more than five or ten feet off of the ground, the likelihood that one of the birds would ever come into contact with a wind turbine blade is essentially zero.
  • Third, this really is an irrational fear on the part of the lesser prairie chicken.  The AP article suggests that the fear is due to an “evolutionary aversion to tall structures around its breeding and nesting grounds because its predators include raptors, which perch in high places.”  To the extent that wind turbine blades and power lines are threats to birds, they are particularly threats to raptors and other fast-flying predators.  The lesser prairie chicken would likely be safer under the sheltering protection of a fast-spinning wind turbine.

So rather than a public policy process which may be inducing a wasteful race to invest before potentially stringent (and still more wasteful) resource restrictions are put into place, why doesn’t the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service just hire some wildlife psychologists to offer the little birds therapy sessions to help them with their irrational fears?

GEOGRAPHIC NOTE: The region to the south of the Texas Panhandle is sometimes referred to as the Llano Estacado, Spanish for “staked plains” (okay, technically, a better translation is “palisaded plains,” but now you don’t know what I’m talking about, and anyway, most people around here say “staked plains”).

OMITTED HUMOROUS MOVIE REFERENCE NOTE: I thought about titling this post “Stakes on a Plain,” because, you know, which is funny since in this case the “stakes” are scary to the lesser prairie chicken just like the … in the … oh, you got it? Okay.

Home energy management and home security product bundling

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Lynne Kiesling

In a Cnet Green Tech article, Martin LaMonica points to some developments in an area that I’ve been pushing on for years: the potential consumer value creation from bundling residential electricity service with home security services. The potential for such bundling is one example of why I argue so emphatically for retail competition: in an industry with government-generated entry barriers, a company like ADT or Brinks cannot legally enter and provide retail electricity service to residential consumers.

LaMonica’s article describes a start-up company called iControl, that could be a technology provider to such a company:

iControl’s approach is to create a hub, connected to a home broadband connection that has wireless connections to IP cameras and security boards as well as thermostats and lighting. To control energy-related devices, it uses the Z-Wave wireless standard for home automation which can also control doors and locks.

iControl intends to sell its technology through other providers, such as home-security companies and utilities looking to offer networked services to consumers.

7 individual energy management iPhone apps

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Lynne Kiesling

I’ve had several conversations with people my age and younger who work in the electricity end-use technology space in which we use a particular shorthand for the change in culture and mindset that we want to see happen in the retail electricity industry: “there’s an app for that.” In our conversations it’s shorthand for frustration and exasperation with the utility-centric, hierarchical control, non-consumer oriented retail electricity industry as it currently exists, and how far that traditional mindset and culture is from the potential that exists with highly distributed, mobile, and even transactive end-use technology. We are working to move the industry toward more of a consumer-oriented, “there’s an app for that” culture and level of consumer value-creating innovation.

It’s starting. Katie Fehrenbacher at Earth2Tech points out 7 different individual energy management iPhone apps. Some are from companies that are familiar to KP readers, such as Tendril and Ecobee. Some require manual data entry, which is time consuming and probably not very interesting unless you are a total energy geek. In fact, she cites the idea that these are apps ahead of their time:

Energy management tools designed to help you curb unnecessary power used in your home have yet to break into the mainstream, and only 13 percent of people say they would want to manage home energy consumption via a mobile device, according to Clint Wheelock of Pike Research (via GigaOM Pro subscription required). But hey, who needs a market for this stuff, when energy management startups can build a slick iPhone app on the cheap and use the mobile version as marketing for their main products.

Technology at the edge is there, and developing it gets cheaper and cheaper.