29 January 2014
Wind farms and hydel power projects are supposed to be environment-friendly as they produce clean and renewable energy. However, they adversely impact communities and ecosystems, cause massive deforestation and pillage ecologically vulnerable regions
At a workshop to map a conservation plan for the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard, some of us raised the issue of the harmful impacts of ‘green’ energy projects and called for moratorium/strict regulation on these, in GIB and other important wildlife landscapes, given their devastating impacts on birds and natural habitats. This was met with much resistance from those concerned with planning and other sectors as it was perceived being too obstructionist.
To understand this issue, let’s examine the question: How ‘green’ is green energy? While not concentrating on their efficacy as a reliable and optimal source of energy, I would like to underline the fact that the viability of this sector is heavily subsidy-dependent and also relies on fossil fuels for infrastructure installation and maintenance. I will also focus on their impact on wildlife as well as wind and mini-hydel projects which are being aggressively promoted in India.
Globally, India ranks fifth in wind power generation with an installed capacity of 20,149MW, with an additional 6,000MW expected to be installed in 2014. Wind energy accounts for 1.6 per cent of our power generation. While there is no denying their minimal impact on climate change, we are failing to take into account their devastating impacts on ecology and natural habitats, besides high mortality of birds and bats, due to direct collusion.
The scales are enormous. A recent US-based study indicated that wind turbines kill between 1,40,000 and 3,28,000 birds annually. Published in the journal Biological Conservation last December, the study also finds a greater risk of collusion from giant turbines, which are more energy efficient.
In the Indian context, wind energy has similar disastrous implications. There are large concentration of wind energy farms in the deserts and grasslands of Kutch and Rajasthan — and a great push for their further expansion. These grasslands, usually dismissed as ‘wastelands’, are throbbing ecosystems, harbouring some of our rarest wildlife, including the critically endangered GIB, lesser floricans, wolves, blackbucks, wild asses and caracals. The Union Ministry of Environment & Forests’ guidelines for GIB recovery programme cites wind turbines as a “major threat to the these low flying birds”, and have strongly advocated that such bustard-unfriendly development be curtailed.
In a recent visit to Rajasthan’s Desert National Park, I saw the devastation first hand. Outside the park, the entire landscape is an endless wind farm (in fact, this region has one of the largest such farms in the world). The turbines are lethal for the birds, and along with transmission lines that criss-cross the landscape, allows no safe flyways to the GIBs, Houbara Bustards, vultures and other raptors that this region is known for. Forest staff and researchers working here assert that the GIBs have abandoned areas where wind mills have come up — a fact corroborated by conservationists in Kutch.
We visited Mokhla, a 40sqkm patch of pristine grassland, some 20 miles from the park as the crow flies. We spotted the tiny pugmarks of a desert cat, saw long billed vultures hunched over a kill, and overhead a falcon took flight. It’s a great potential GIB habitat, but with windmills surrounding the grassland, its passage is lost.
Just about a 100 GIBs remain in the wild today, and the status of the lesser florican is only marginally better. With their habitats hammered by massive encroachments, ill-thought afforestation programmes, industry, real estate and canals, this new and seemingly benign industry could well be a death knell.
Further down south, the slopes of the Western Ghats, a bio-diversity hotspot, are equally favoured for windmills. The high altitude Bubabudangiri Hills in Chikmagalur district of Karnataka have strong air currents, providing an ideal environment for raptors and other birds. The vegetation here supports populations of tigers, gaurs, elephants, hornbills, and other wild animals. These forests protect vital watersheds of the Bhadra river and form a buffer for the tiger reserve of the same name. The environment is also ideal for wind mill projects, because of which about 220 wind turbines are proposed to come up along 42km of this ridge.
Setting up the turbines and their maintenance will require a well-connected and wide road system, transmission lines, staff quarters which in turn will mean destroying and fragmenting fragile forests. However, here a consistent battle by a network of conservationists, NGOs and committed forest officers has seen a limited success in stalling some of these damaging projects. While a few may have been halted, the threat of new projects loom large because such eco-fragile regions do not have the legal protection status of a forest.
The Madhav Gadgil report on the Western Ghats pointed out the destructive impacts of wind mills, coming down hard on the 113MW wind power project being developed near the Bhimashankar Wildlife Sanctuary in Maharashtra, which it said, “caused substantial forest destruction, triggered large-scale soil erosion and landslides because of poor construction of roads on steep gradients.”
Small hydel projects with an installed capacity of less than 25MW are also aggressively promoted as renewable energy, and currently with an installed capacity of 3,632MW in March 2013, with a target to increase it by about 2,000MW by 2017. They are heavily subsidised, enjoy various tax breaks, due to its minimal impacts on climate change, but have serious impacts on communities and ecosystems, causing massive deforestation, pillaging ecologically vulnerable valleys, particularly in the Himalayas, the Western and the Eastern Ghats.
As of December 2012, there were more than 40 such projects under implementation, and many more proposed in Uttarakhand. Similarly, many such hydel projects are also proposed in the Western Ghats. Though there is currently a stay order by a High Court in Karnataka, the threat of these ‘little green monsters’ — dubbed by noted wildlife scientist Ullas Karnath — continues.
Ironically, such ‘green’ projects are not in the environment regulatory framework, falling outside the purview of the Environment Impact Assessment notification, thus escaping processes of public consultation and scrutiny for impacts on wildlife. Developers are known to break down big projects into smaller ones to avoid crucial environment filters.
As India looks at developing its renewable energy sector, it is imperative that we assess, understand and take on board the grave impacts of such alternate energy sources and ensure that they follow strict regulatory processes.
(The writer is trustee, ‘Bagh’ and a former member of the National Board for Wildlife)
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