THE TURBINES AT HORNS REV hover above the morning fog.
THE AMERICAN COMPARISON The biggest U.S. wind farms were built during the California “wind rush” of the 1980s, when public alternative-energy subsidies were so high that companies constructed turbines quickly, without much attention to design. California’s 5,400-turbine Altamont Pass wind farm is physically the largest in the world. For many Americans it’s the face of wind power, and it’s a shame the face is such an ugly one. The windmills there form an impenetrable wall that not only visually dominates the landscape but also kills as many as 4,700 birds each year, according to a 2004 California Energy Commission survey. The wall runs directly through a migratory route—a fact that no government officials or private utilities thought much about during its construction. 72 | P L E N T Y
arrangement of the machines—in curving lines that hug the landscape rather than in staggered rows that form a solid, impenetrable wall—helps minimize the number of bird deaths, because it leaves more space for the creatures to pass by. Such technological developments come easily to a country with a history of green energy policy. A decade before ratifying the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, Denmark instituted emissions taxes on all energy production and consumption—even private households pay a pollution surcharge for the power they use. (In the United States, by comparison, there is no mandatory tax on carbon dioxide emissions. Regional emissions-trading programs in the States allow low-emitting businesses to sell their allotted shares of pollution to other companies that pollute more, but these programs are voluntary and do not apply to households.) With such high December/January 2006 www.plentymag.com