To each their own; I think they look cool. Solarpunk, even.
Perhaps not close enough.
- look up "infrasound" and "undercutting minimum distances", better use something else than Google for this.
- also check the requirements for the base materials: concrete, aluminium, fiber-reinforced plastic. Calculate the energy requirements for producing them.
- familiarize yourself with the space requirements (~ two acres of highly compacted soil, not including access roads)
- duration and disposal
- soil dehydration, other environment impact issues
- ... and as always of course, base load capability and storability
https://www.energymonitor.ai/tech/renewables/weekly-data-how...
If you don't mention the societal needs, and merely make unsupported claims that "windows kill birds," then you are being woefully disingenuous. Because windows do not kill eagles, but wind farms do! This is an important distinction which your blanket statement does not cover.
As for what's marginal, damaging or wasteful, then why is Germany supporting the construction of a woefully and inadequate technology when they have a much better alterative: Nuclear power?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Germa...
The Green Party is a result of the Anti-nuclear movement in Germany. They need to do a 180 first, before nuclear in Germany can happen again. That probably happens in the next three months...
All electricity generation is for societal needs.
And those eagles? One unfortunate incident, fixed by decommissioning one tower?
They predict that it will increase into the tens of millions, as more windmills are constructed.
Perhaps that number is "negligible" in a relative sense, but why kill birds at all? We should be working to increase the bird population, not adding more ways to kill them.
I'm not an expert, but just a bit of web searching has turned up some alarming studies and predictions. Maybe they're exaggerated; maybe they're one-sided. But it seems to me the problem shouldn't just be dismissed out of hand.
Birds eat ticks and other pests. 50 years ago, flocks of birds were much larger. Huge swarms of birds would descend on a pasture or a green grass yard and pretty much eat all the bugs. This is a beneficial thing.
Stopping wind power expansion because of the birds that die in collisions is like not extinguishing a building on fire because of fears of the damage the water will do to the building.
That said, many laws include provisions to minimise the harm to birds and bats. Including the German one under discussion.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200302-how-do-wind-farm...
https://www.treehugger.com/ways-to-protect-bats-and-birds-fr...
Apparently, transparent buildings kill a lot more birds than wind farms do.
As others have pointed out bats are actually much more in danger of windmills then birds. And they got lots of other problems too (White-nose syndrome)
Most birds of prey (well just about any predator species really) are usually endangered not because we directly kill them directly but because we destroy their ability to eat either by destroying the environment they hunt in or lower the amount of prey species available for them.
There are some exceptions like wolves, etc that kill livestock and thus farmers will hunt them usually to the point of wiping out the local population if given the opportunity.
Other than that, there are no more dead birds under a windmill than anyplace else. Such a study was posted here on HN no too long ago.
Absolutist statements aren’t very helpful in that context. Obviously wind turbines do kill birds. The correct consequence of that fact is not to never build wind turbines. It’s to find the right trade off between protecting birds, while still preserving the ability to have a shot at the needed energy transformation.
Bird killings just aren’t bad enough or frequent enough to justify that.
What specific issue do you take with the way this change proposes to deal with birds?