evolution

There’s a study going on in my former stomping grounds which will affect whether or not wind is further developed as an energy source in Kansas. Here’s a Reuters story with some background on it.

The research, which is being funded by a range of public and private sources, including the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks (headed by former Republican Gov. Mike Hayden, a Sebelius appointee) and the ostensible wind farm developers themselves. Special bonus: Two researchers from K-State are carrying out the study.

Riley County placed a moratorium on new wind farm construction that expired a year and a half ago — which was not, as far as I know, removed. (If you’d like to provide more information than my searches turned up, feel free.)

A concern — besides the obvious NIMBY-related concerns, and the Reuters story mentions such concerns popping up among certain statist patricians in Massachusetts (Romney and Kennedy, now there’s a pair) — is that wind farms in the Flint Hills area will affect the natural habitat of Kansas’s prairie-chicken, the numbers of which are dwindling. This study appears to have the blessing of both the local conservation groups and the energy companies, which as I said partially funded the research. This is a switch from the debates surrounding the moratorium, the nature of which you can get from this story which ran in my alma mater’s newspaper, the Kansas State Collegian. The study will analyze the impact of existing wind farms on prairie-chickens in locations throughout Kansas over a period of four years to see what, if any, harm is done to them by the wind turbines.

I recall my reaction at the time being something like schadenfreude at the irony of environmentalists opposing a clean energy source on environmental grounds. I was teaching then, and therefore consuming large quantities of Boulevard Wheat to deal with the pain, and I’ve had time to think since then.

Placing myself at the energy companies’ points of perspective, I might be a little irritated at first, and then come to see the benefits of funding such a study. The biggest benefit I see besides a potential source of revenue is the benefit of positive public relations. Companies who build wind farms here can justifiably claim that they took every step to minimize harm to the environment while providing valuable service to their customers. From the environmental groups’ perspectives, the benefit is again PR — they can justifiably say, again, that they cooperated with energy producers to produce a valuable benefit for minimal ecological cost; also, they fight what I see as an obstructionist reputation. In addition to that, there is the added benefit of collecting data on the birds, which I’m sure will be valuable (although I cannot say how; my academic training being in mathematics and all).

In any case, I’d be interested to see what this study comes up with. I don’t think there are any problems to be found here except the length of time involved, but that seems a small price to pay. The energy companies and environmental groups put their heads together with public officials and came up with a solution that appears to have pleased just about everyone. With this sort of careful planning, I believe it is possible to achieve what I feel is one of the top national security goals of our time — energy independence. It is a bonus, I think, to do it with minimal harm to the environment.

Plus, talking about this story gives me a chance to re-post this Photoshop from a while back: