Change: Solar Power Towers Setting Thousands of Birds on Fire in Flight

Solar power towers work by setting up mirrors which reflect the sun’s light onto a tower, where water is boiled creating steam, which then turns a turbine.

Here’s a diagram to give you a better idea:

Here’s what they actually look like:

You can see the intense light being directed on that tower. When a bird flies through that, they catch on fire and die.

Called “streamers” because of the smoke trail they leave as they burst into flames, it’s estimated that solar power towers kill around 28,000 birds in flight a year.

Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one “streamer” every two minutes, are urging California officials to halt the operator’s application to build a still-bigger version.

The investigators want the halt until the full extent of the deaths can be assessed. Estimates per year now range from a low of about a thousand by BrightSource to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group.

The deaths are “alarming. It’s hard to say whether that’s the location or the technology,” said Garry George, renewable-energy director for the California chapter of the Audubon Society. “There needs to be some caution.”

The bird kills mark the latest instance in which the quest for clean energy sometimes has inadvertent environmental harm. Solar farms have been criticized for their impacts on desert tortoises, and wind farms have killed birds, including numerous raptors.

But at least the caribou in Alaska are safe…right next to this oil pipeline.

Who cares if a few hundred thousand birds die though, right?