The Inquiry Into Nuclear Power Generation in Australia has heard about the consequences of wind farms for bats and birds. Adrian Paterson is a South African scientist and engineer who worked on the Pebble Bed modular reactor and was CEO of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation from 2009-20. Paterson spoke of his concerns around complete reliance on renewables, from their lack of consistent energy generation through to land clearing and the nature of the infrastructure, which tends to only last around two to three decades.
But when speaking about the impact on the nation’s ecology, Paterson labelled the push for renewables as “distressing.” “I must say that with the wind turbines along the Southern European region, we now have demonstrated ecological information that the birds that fly from Africa to the north of Europe every year, those migrations that happen annually, they now do not fly across those countries,” he said. “They fly around via Turkey.
The wind turbines on the mountains in Europe have changed the migration patterns of birds between Europe and Africa. “We are seeing similar destruction in the ridges of Queensland with the 138 kilometres of wind turbines that have been put up there.” And while the death of birds is unsettling, Paterson said the threat to bats from wind turbines and the risk to insects with solar power generation were both extremely important.
Forty percent of Australia’s ecology is based on the existence of .
