Are birds at greater risk from increased solar power generation than from continued reliance on fossil fuel sources?
A 2016 study examined the impact of large “utility-scale” solar energy plants in southern California on bird populations, and found that the risk to birds was far less than that already posed by fossil-fuel power plants. It estimated that up to 138,600 birds died each year because of solar plants then “either installed or under construction.” The authors cited a 2009 estimate of 14.5 million avian deaths annually from fossil-fuel plants.
No more recent research is available, but based on that data, the expected risks for birds from a planned fourfold expansion in large-scale solar plants would still be far less than the impact of equivalent fossil-fuel generation.
As larger solar installations began operating in the last decade, media reports noted the impact of designs using large arrays of mirrors. “Birds fly into concentrated beams of sunlight and are instantly incinerated, leaving wisps of white smoke against the blue desert,” the Los Angeles Times reported in 2016.
