Fact: The poor birds! Vladimir Putin, in a recent speech taking place in one of the most polluted areas of Russia to a convention of miners ridiculed wind power, saying it killed the birds and even vibrated the worms out of the soil. The worm vibration story has not been confirmed but there is data on bird kills. In 2014, it was pointed out that with the expansion of wind power, the estimate on bird kills in the UK would be anywhere between 9,600 and 106,000. In other words, they don’t really know. In the US, the estimate was between 500-10,000. It would seem that President Putin doesn’t know about the danger of cats for birds. It is estimated that 55 million birds are killed each year by domestic cats. In a study in 2009, it was estimated that 0.3 birds would be killed with each 1 GW of power generated by wind turbines.
However for fossil fuel power plants the number jumps to 5.2 for every GW. So for wind turbines we would see 7,000 deaths, for nuclear, 300,000 and for fossil fuel, some 14.5 million. Why the high number? Deaths from mining (probably habitat), onsite collision, electrocution, and poisoning. As long as wind turbines are installed away from major migration routes, the danger to birds is not excessive.
Of course, there is a reason for Putin’s ridiculous speech (eerily familiar to another false claim from President Trump that windmills cause cancer). Fossil fuels make up 60-70% of Russia’s exports and generate 40-50% of the government’s budget. Their current energy mix is 521,788 GW from gas, 196,614 from nuclear, 186,640 from hydro, 171,443 from coal, 10,968 from oil, 2,432 from waste, 462 from solar, 446 from geothermal, and 148 from wind.