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Webinar

Webinar: Bats and Wind Energy - Protecting bats around onshore wind farms

For our next Energy & Nature webinar, we discussed the issue of bat mortality around onshore wind farms and focussed on the solutions to reduce the risk for the populations while ensuring energy supply coming from renewables, essential to tackle the climate crisis.

Bats are already highly threatened in Europe and play a significant role in many ecosystems. Therefore, the additional impact of wind turbines can pose a real threat to certain species.  Yet little is known about this worldwide issue and the factors causing mortality across wind energy facilities.

Fatalities are due to two main causes: direct collision with the wind turbine blades or barotrauma - fatal injuries that occur when a bat encounters sudden and extreme changes in atmospheric pressure near rotating blades.
Thankfully, solutions exist, such as:

  • Proper planning and Environmental Impact Assessments run by ecologists in order to identify high-risk areas for bats and help ensure safer siting of wind farms;
  • Use of tools to calculate the optimal shutdown times for turbines during periods of high bat activity on operating wind farms;
  • Improve practices through collaborations between all key stakeholders and share knowledge to replicate actions.

Want to learn more about the topic and the good practices out there? Watch the recording of our webinar!

The experts were:

  • Herman Limpens, Senior scientist at the Dutch Mammal Society. He opened the webinar by exposing the issue of bat mortality around onshore wind farms in Europe and presented their collaborative work with the Dutch wind industry and authorities.
  • Élise Drouet, Ecological engineer at H2air, French wind developer. Élise presented the work of H2air to protect bats in case of identified risk and what are the physical and regulatory challenges to implement solutions as a wind developer.
  • Dr. Simon Ghanem, environmental consultant at KS Umweltgutachten GmbH and KJM Conseil (French branch), introduced Probat – a freely available tool used in Germany on operating wind farms that calculates turbine specific shutdowns for a bat-friendly operation of the turbines.

Following presentations by each of the speakers, we had a 30-minute Q&A and open discussion round.

For more information or in case of questions, please get in touch with Manon Quetstroey.

Recording

Webinar presentations

Élise Drouet – Ecological Engineer, H2air

 

Dr Simon Ghanem – Consultant, KS Umweltgutachten GmbH

 

Manon Quetstroey – Manager, Energy & Nature, RGI

Herman Limpens – Senior scientist, Dutch Mammal Society

Contact

Manon Quetstroey
Manager - Energy and Nature

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t: +49 30 2332 11034
manon[at]renewables-grid.eu

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect those of the EU or LIFE Programme. Neither the EU nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

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RGI gratefully acknowledges the EU LIFE funding support:

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Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the LIFE Programme. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.