Do wind turbines have negative environmental impacts, like toxic materials that are used in solar panels?
Small wind turbines are about 90-percent steel. They have a very minimal impact in terms of land use: they don’t require water; they produce no hazardous waste or greenhouse gas emissions; they don’t require mining; and the fuel is free, unlimited, and completely renewable. So, if you’re looking for environmental impacts, you’re looking pretty hard if you’re only coming up with the negative ones. It really depends on your wind resource, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that it comes as a net benefit, not only for the person who owns it, but also for the community as a whole. Do they kill a lot of birds? A study by the National Academy of Sciences found that large wind turbines in big wind farms account for less than 0.003 percent of all human-caused bird and bat deaths. And for a small turbine, you can infer that they account for even less. In comparison, a house cat kills 10,000 times more birds than a turbine. Do small wind turbines make a lot of noise? In the middle of last centu
