The wind
industry promotes itself as better for the environment than traditional
energy sources such as coal and natural gas. For example, the industry claims that wind energy reduces carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.
But there are many ways to skin a cat. As IER pointed out last week, even if wind curbs CO2
emissions, wind installations injure, maim, and kill hundreds of
thousands of birds each year in clear violation of federal law. Any
marginal reduction in emissions comes at the expense of protected bird
species, including bald and golden eagles.
The truth is, all
energy sources impact the natural environment in some way, and life is
full of necessary trade-offs. The further truth is that affordable,
abundant energy has made life for billions of people much better than it
ever was.
Another environmental trade-off concerns the materials
necessary to construct wind turbines. Modern wind turbines depend on
rare earth minerals mined primarily from China. Unfortunately, given federal regulations
in the U.S. that restrict rare earth mineral development and China’s
poor record of environmental stewardship, the process of extracting
these minerals imposes wretched environmental and public health impacts
on local communities. It’s a story Big Wind doesn’t want you to hear.
Rare Earth Horrors
Manufacturing wind turbines is a resource-intensive process. A
typical wind turbine contains more than 8,000 different components, many
of which are made from steel, cast iron, and concrete. One such
component are magnets made from neodymium and dysprosium, rare earth
minerals mined almost exclusively in China, which controls 95 percent of the world’s supply of rare earth minerals.
Simon Parry from the Daily Mail traveled to Baotou, China,
to see the mines, factories, and dumping grounds associated with China’s
rare-earths industry. What he found was truly haunting:
As more factories sprang up, the banks grew higher, the lake grew larger and the stench and fumes grew more overwhelming.
‘It turned into a mountain that towered over us,’ says Mr Su.
‘Anything we planted just withered, then our animals started to sicken
and die.’
People too began to suffer. Dalahai villagers say their teeth
began to fall out, their hair turned white at unusually young ages, and
they suffered from severe skin and respiratory diseases. Children were
born with soft bones and cancer rates rocketed.
Official studies carried out five years ago in Dalahai
village confirmed there were unusually high rates of cancer along with
high rates of osteoporosis and skin and respiratory diseases. The lake’s
radiation levels are ten times higher than in the surrounding
countryside, the studies found.
As the wind industry
grows, these horrors will likely only get worse. Growth in the wind
industry could raise demand for neodymium by as much as 700 percent over
the next 25 years, while demand for dysprosium could increase by 2,600
percent, according to a recent MIT study. The more wind turbines pop up in America, the more people in China are likely to suffer due to China’s policies. Or as the Daily Mail put it, every turbine we erect contributes to “a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China.”
Big Wind’s Dependence on China’s “Toxic Lakes”
The wind industry requires an astounding amount of rare earth
minerals, primarily neodymium and dysprosium, which are key components
of the magnets used in modern wind turbines. Developed by GE in 1982, neodymium magnets
are manufactured in many shapes and sizes for numerous purposes. One of
their most common uses is in the generators of wind turbines.
Estimates of the
exact amount of rare earth minerals in wind turbines vary, but in any
case the numbers are staggering. According to the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences,
a 2 megawatt (MW) wind turbine contains about 800 pounds of neodymium
and 130 pounds of dysprosium. The MIT study cited above estimates that a
2 MW wind turbine contains about 752 pounds of rare earth minerals.
To quantify this in terms of environmental damages, consider
that mining one ton of rare earth minerals produces about one ton of radioactive waste, according to the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. In 2012, the U.S. added a record 13,131 MW
of wind generating capacity. That means that between 4.9 million pounds
(using MIT’s estimate) and 6.1 million pounds (using the Bulletin of
Atomic Science’s estimate) of rare earths were used in wind turbines
installed in 2012. It also means that between 4.9 million and 6.1
million pounds of radioactive waste were created to make these wind
turbines.
For perspective, America’s nuclear industry produces between 4.4 million and 5 million pounds
of spent nuclear fuel each year. That means the U.S. wind industry may
well have created more radioactive waste last year than our entire
nuclear industry produced in spent fuel. In this sense, the nuclear
industry seems to be doing more with less: nuclear energy comprised
about one-fifth of America’s electrical generation in 2012, while wind accounted for just 3.5 percent of all electricity generated in the United States.
While nuclear
storage remains an important issue for many U.S. environmentalists, few
are paying attention to the wind industry’s less efficient and less
transparent use of radioactive material via rare earth mineral
excavation in China. The U.S. nuclear industry employs numerous
safeguards to ensure that spent nuclear fuel is stored safely. In 2010,
the Obama administration withdrew funding for Yucca Mountain,
the only permanent storage site for the country’s nuclear waste
authorized by federal law. Lacking a permanent solution, nuclear energy
companies have used specially designed pools at individual reactor
sites. On the other hand, China has cut mining permits and imposed
export quotas, but is only now beginning to draft
rules to prevent illegal mining and reduce pollution. America may not
have a perfect solution to nuclear storage, but it sure beats disposing
of radioactive material in toxic lakes like near Baotou, China.
Not only do rare earths create radioactive waste residue, but according to the Chinese Society for Rare Earths,
“one ton of calcined rare earth ore generates 9,600 to 12,000 cubic
meters (339,021 to 423,776 cubic feet) of waste gas containing dust
concentrate, hydrofluoric acid, sulfur dioxide, and sulfuric acid, [and]
approximately 75 cubic meters (2,649 cubic feet) of acidic wastewater.”
Conclusion
Wind energy is not nearly
as “clean” and “good for the environment” as the wind lobbyists want
you to believe. The wind industry is dependent on rare earth minerals
imported from China, the procurement of which results in staggering
environmental damages. As one environmentalist told the Daily Mail,
“There’s not one step of the rare earth mining process that is not
disastrous for the environment.” That the destruction is mostly unseen
and far-flung does not make it any less damaging.
All forms of energy
production have some environmental impact. However, it is disingenuous
for wind lobbyists to hide the impacts of their industry while
highlighting the impacts of others. From illegal bird deaths to
radioactive waste, wind energy poses serious environmental risks that
the wind lobby would prefer you never know about. This makes it easier
for them when arguing for more subsidies, tax credits, mandates and
government supports.
IER Policy Associates Travis Fisher and Alex Fitzsimmons authored this post.
The Institute for
Energy Research (IER) is a not-for-profit organization that conducts
intensive research and analysis on the functions, operations, and
government regulation of global energy markets. IER maintains that
freely-functioning energy markets provide the most efficient and
effective solutions to today's global energy and environmental
challenges and, as such, are critical to the well-being of individuals
and society.
