Wind turbines kill more birds than oil spills

Question

A meme posted on Facebook by the group “Patriot Energy Facts. I’ve heard this claim repeated in energy debates, especially by those opposing wind power, but I’ve also seen environmentalists strongly dispute it. I want to fact-check it to see what the actual data says.

Answer 1

An estimated 500,000 birds die worldwide due to oil spill every year. This is especially important because seabirds are the most commonly endangered type of bird (https://ornithology.com/birds-and-oil-spills/). During just a single oil spill incident, Deepwater Horizon, 800,000 coastal birds and 200,000 offshore birds died (https://www.audubon.org/news/more-one-million-birds-died-during-deepwater-horizon-disaster). In addition to this, oil spills kill and endanger many other animals, such as fur bearing animals like sea otters, to sea turtles, dolphins, whales, fish, shellfish, and coral (https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/oilimpacts.html)

Although wind turbines do kill a significant number of birds every year (somewhere between 140,000 and 680,000), they are significantly less damaging than oil spills (https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds). These numbers are statistically smaller than deaths by oil spill, but they are also less horriffic, as it is only a fraction as many birds are killed per year by housecats, cars, buildings, or the  lethal fossil fuel operations being replaced by turbines.  Wind projects kill 0.269 birds per gigawatt hour of electricity produced, compated to 5.18 birds per the same unit by fossil fuel projects (https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds-and-other-climate-questions/). So Ultimately, no, wind turbines do not kill more birds than oil spills, which have many more terrible repercussions, and wind turbines are better for birds than other alternatives. 

Answer 2

 

The claims that “wind turbines kill more birds than oil spills” is not true. While wind turbines do kill some birds, the number is much lower than the deaths caused by the oil industry. Experts estimate that wind turbines in the U.S. kill between 140,000 and 500,000 birds each year. Some studies say the number might rise as more turbines are built, but it's still far less than often claimed. I do like the meme reference though!

Comments

What's your source? I don't see any mentioned, but you stated "experts". Who are you referring to?

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This is in fact true but, if you are tryin g to make the claim that wind turbines are as bad as oil spills that would be false. Wind turbines provide clean energy while oil spills harm are entire planet not just birds.

Answer 3

https://abcbirds.org/blog21/wind-turbine-mortality/

https://ornithology.com/birds-and-oil-spills/

https://blog.nwf.org/2014/05/study-estimates-around-800000-birds-killed-during-bp-oil-spill/

The claim that wind turbines kill more birds than oil spills is true. According to ABC Birds, about 1.17 million birds are killed by wind turbines in the U.S each year. They came to this conclusion by conducting a study near wind turbines. Next, according to Ornithology, just over 500,000 birds die annually WORLDWIDE. This suggests that many more birds were killed due to wind turbines over oil spills. Lastly, according to NWF Blog, around 800,000 birds were killed due to oil spill. All in all, both sources show that oil spills caused less deaths than wind turbines which means that this claim is true. 

Answer 4

In my research, the wind turbine statistic was a tough one to get an exact number for. Roughly, the number of birds killed by wind turbines each year is anywhere from 140,000 to 680,000. On the other hand, oil spills are a bit harder to pin down. Largely, though, it depends on the year. Most years, depending on the severity of the oil spills, we see about 500,000-800,000 bird deaths from oil spills, with some sources even suggesting those numbers can hit millions. In research conducted by NIH, oil pits (not spills) are estimated to kill 500,000 birds a year. It seems that on average, turbines kill less birds than oil spills do. Furthermore, if we factor in the death toll from the oil pits, the gap becomes even larger.

https://ornithology.com/birds-and-oil-spills/

https://blog.nwf.org/2014/05/study-estimates-around-800000-birds-killed-during-bp-oil-spill/

https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds

https://abcbirds.org/blog21/wind-turbine-mortality/

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds-and-other-climate-questions/

Answer 5

In the article posted from Environment America, it states: “Studies drawing on data from 2012 – before the first U.S. offshore wind project – estimated that wind turbines kill anywhere from 140,000 to nearly 700,000 birds annually in America. This figure is likely higher nowadays, considering we’ve added roughly 3,000 turbines each year since.” The American Bird Conservancy writes that in 2012, a study reported around 44,500 wind turbines (ABC Birds). According to the U.S. Wind Turbine Database reported that in 2021, there were 65,500 wind turbines; thus, there was a low estimate of 538,000 bird deaths caused by wind turbines in one year (ABC Birds) 

But are wind turbines worse than oil spills? This number is difficult to pinpoint because it is difficult to track the effects of oil spills; they are infrequent in size and quantity per year. The National Wildlife Federation notes that a study calculates around 600,000 to 800,000 sea birds were directly killed by oil during the Deepwater Horizon disaster, in which 200 million gallons of oil spilled off the Gulf of Mexico (NWF). It is the largest marine oil spill, and spills of this magnitude do not happen annually (BBC Deepwater Horizon). From my research, I did not pinpoint an exact number of birds killed annually from oil spills, in part because, even with the Deepwater Horizon disaster, there is conflicting data over the amount of oil spilled and the birds killed. However, if we look at oil spills alone and ignore the more serious and widespread impacts of fossil fuel production, you could make the argument that wind turbines kill more birds than oil spills.

This claim ignores the broader context of bird deaths. Impacts of wind turbines are relatively small compared to habitat loss, disruptions, and other climate-change impacts from oil and gas (BBC Oil vs Wind). Moreover, when compared to other figures, wind turbines and oil spills account for a much smaller number of bird deaths. From MIT Press, annually in the U.S., there are 988 million birds killed by housecats, 4 billion bird deaths from flying into buildings, and between 12 and 64 million birds killed by power lines. 

In conclusion, this statement is intentionally misleading. While you might be able to argue that wind turbines annually kill more birds than oil spills, it implies that renewable energy sources are as negatively impactful as fossil-fuel energies; this implication is false.

Answer 6

In the article posted from Environment America, it states: “Studies drawing on data from 2012 – before the first U.S. offshore wind project – estimated that wind turbines kill anywhere from 140,000 to nearly 700,000 birds annually in America. This figure is likely higher nowadays, considering we’ve added roughly 3,000 turbines each year since.” The American Bird Conservancy writes that in 2012, a study reported around 44,500 wind turbines (ABC Birds). According to the U.S. Wind Turbine Database reported that in 2021, there were 65,500 wind turbines; thus, there was a low estimate of 538,000 bird deaths caused by wind turbines in one year (ABC Birds) 

But are wind turbines worse than oil spills? This number is difficult to pinpoint because it is difficult to track the effects of oil spills; they are infrequent in size and quantity per year. The National Wildlife Federation notes that a study calculates around 600,000 to 800,000 sea birds were directly killed by oil during the Deepwater Horizon disaster, in which 200 million gallons of oil spilled off the Gulf of Mexico (NWF). It is the largest marine oil spill, and spills of this magnitude do not happen annually (BBC Deepwater Horizon). From my research, I did not pinpoint an exact number of birds killed annually from oil spills, in part because, even with the Deepwater Horizon disaster, there is conflicting data over the amount of oil spilled and the birds killed. However, if we look at oil spills alone and ignore the more serious and widespread impacts of fossil fuel production, you could make the argument that wind turbines kill more birds than oil spills.

This claim ignores the broader context of bird deaths. Impacts of wind turbines are relatively small compared to habitat loss, disruptions, and other climate-change impacts from oil and gas (BBC Oil vs Wind). Moreover, when compared to other figures, wind turbines and oil spills account for a much smaller number of bird deaths. From MIT Press, annually in the U.S., there are 988 million birds killed by housecats, 4 billion bird deaths from flying into buildings, and between 12 and 64 million birds killed by power lines. 

In conclusion, this statement is intentionally misleading. While you might be able to argue that wind turbines annually kill more birds than oil spills, it implies that renewable energy sources are as negatively impactful as fossil-fuel energies; this implication is false.

Answer 7

The claim that wind turbines kill more birds than oil spills is a false claim. While wind turbines do contribute to the deaths of a significant amount of birds per year, evidence shows that this number is significantly less than the number of birds killed per year by oil spills. According to the MIT Press Reader, a study done in 2012 concluded that "wind projects kill 0.269 birds per gigawatt-hour of electricity produced, compared to 5.18 birds killed per gigawatt-hour of electricity from fossil fuel projects." these numbers are statistically significant when it comes to the number of birds per year that are being killed due to different causes. This article also brought up that though there is a good amount of birds killed per year by wind turbines, "they represent a tiny fraction of the birds killed annually in other ways, like flying into buildings or caught by prowling house cats, which past studies have estimated kill up to 988 million and 4 billion birds each year, respectively."

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds-and-other-climate-questions/

Overall, this claim is false, even though wind turbines do kill a large amount of birds per year. There are countless other other human activities such as the use of fossil fuels and oil spills kill a much larger number every year.

Answer 8

The claim being made is that wind turbines kill more birds than oil spills. To find out whether this is true or not, we first need to find data on how many birds are killed annually by wind turbines.

The article cited referenced the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) as its source as to how many birds are killed by wind turbines within the US, which itself cited 3 different sources with 3 different estimates as to the amount of bird fatalities there are annually. Loss et al. estimates that it is 234,000 on average. Smallwood claims that the true number is closer to 573,093. Erickson et al. argues that it would be more accurate to claim it is around 291,000. One of these averages is much higher than the others, thus skewing the result and giving the ABC an average estimate of 366,000 birds from these averages. Not to mention, these studies are from 2013-2014, which the article itself even claims may be outdated due to the fact that we have tens of thousands more turbines compared to when these articles were first published. Considering how the rest of this article depends on extrapolating data from these studies to make its claim, I feel that this article is questionable in its modern-day applicability. Not to mention, there has been further research on how to make wind turbines safer, such as May et al.'s study on painting wind turbines reducing 70% of bird deaths and Gémard et al.'s research article on bird-detecting AI systems to let us further doubt the article's ability to further extrapolate its findings. Unfortunately, every other article I have found with estimates for wind turbine-related deaths reference either ABC's article or the studies mentioned within the article, so the total amount of bird deaths coming from wind turbines is inconclusive. However, for the sake of argument, let's assume that the article's extrapolation is reasonably accurate, and thus the annual bird death rate today is close to 1.17 million.

The comparison to oil spills is even harder to conduct when you consider the fact that oil spills do not happen on an annual basis. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has listed all significantly large oil spills on US waters from 1969 onwards (I chose specifically to compare with US waters due to the fact that the prior article uses exclusively American data as well). Again, in order to conduct a fair comparison, let's only utilize data related to oil spills from the 2000's onwards in order to get a similar time range.
Deepwater Horizon, 2010: From Haney et al., 800k.

Hurricane Katrina Oil Spills, 2005: No data found.

DBL 152, 2005: No data found

Citgo Refinery Oil Spill, 2006: From U.S. Department of the Interior, 11,896.

Kalamazoo River, 2010: From U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, 22.

Taylor Energy Platform, 2004: No data found.

Mississippi Canyon, 2009: No data found.

Westchester, 2001: From National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 582.

Bayport Channel Collision, 2019: No data found.

Eagle Otome, 2010: No conclusive data found, but according to ABC News, at least 4.

DM932, 2008: No data found.

Yet again, there is a problem found in missing data. As we can see, there have been 11 significant oil spills within the past 25 years, 5 of which have data on the amount of bird fatalities. The average of those 5 years is 162,500.8, with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill causing a massive skew. Regardless, for the sake of argument, let's assume that we can apply that average towards the other oil spills lacking data. Since we can assume that the rest of the years would have negligible bird deaths, there would be an average of 71,500.352 annual bird deaths caused by oil spills within the US.

1.17 million to 71,500 is an inarguable and obvious comparison. If these numbers are to be trusted, then yes, windmills do kill birds more than oil spills do and by a significant margin. However, I believe that we lack the conclusive data required to make such an argument.

Answer 9

To start we need to understand how many birds are killed by each of these methods yearly. In a study by MIT in 2012 they estimated that anywhere from 120,000 to 680,000 birds are killed each year by wind turbines. In this same study, it is elaborated upon that for every GWh produced by fossil fuel around 5.18 birds are killed while every GWh produced by wind turbines around .269 birds are killed. https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds

In another study by the American Bird Conservancy, they took the average number of bird deaths in multiple studies around 2012 to determine an estimate of bird deaths which was around 366,000. It is elaborated that even more deaths may occur annually with the expansion of wind turbine energy. https://abcbirds.org/blog21/wind-turbine-mortality/

In regards to oil spills vs wind turbines to see which causes more deaths to local birds each year, oil spills are responsible for around 500,000 deaths each year. In some specific cases, the Deepwater Horizon spill killed up to one million birds which is far greater than anything wind turbines have caused in a single year. Yes this was an outlier of an event, but it just goes to show how much more devastating oil spills can be to wildlife in comparison to wind turbines. https://ornithology.com/birds-and-oil-spills/