Win-Win for Wind and Wildlife

Throughout the world, countries are planning how to satisfy growing energy demands and, in the shadow of an increasingly changing climate, how to advance alternatives to fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency’s 2040 forecast predicts renewable energy generation reaching 17,970 terawatt hours (51 percent of global electricity demand), with a significant portion of that coming from a tenfold increase in wind energy. In the United States, the world’s largest cumulative producer of greenhouse gases, federal and state renewable energy policies moved forward rapidly, culminating in the Department of Energy’s (DOE) vision for 35 percent of the United States’s electricity generation from wind by 2050—we’ll refer to this as the “DOE vision.”