U.S. Rep. Louis Gomert criticized President Joe Biden’s infrastructure policy, saying it promotes green energy that is dangerous to birds.
On August 11, Texas Republican Senator Gomert criticized the infrastructure bill on the One America News channel and compared its green energy provisions with the Green New Deal:
“The other part of this green deal is their huge solar farm at the junction of California and Nevada. Thousands of acres of concave mirrors magnify the sun to three towers, heat the liquid there and turn the turbines. They didn’t expect it to be. There are hundreds of flamethrowers, because when the birds fly by, if they survive the windmill, then they will hit the magnified sun, explode in the flames and fall, they become birds, guts There are mirrors everywhere. So this needs some cleaning. This is a green thing that just got out of control and will disappoint the country”
We have conducted fact-checks on multiple claims about bird deaths and wind turbines, but this is the first time we have heard politicians link bird deaths to solar energy.
Gohmert may have cited an article from 2014 that described what workers at solar power plants in Southern California called “streamers” (rather than “flames”). A report on the Ivanpa Solar Power System in California, a power plant that uses mirrors to gather the sun’s rays, said birds flew over the sun’s rays and ignited it in mid-air.
Thousands of birds died after flying over such solar power plants, but Gomert’s assertion ignores the important context.
“It is wrong to list solar and wind energy (electricity) separately as having a bird mortality problem,” said David Jenkins, chairman of the responsible management Conservative Party. “The estimated number of birds killed by collisions, electrocution and poisoning in fossil fuel power plants actually dwarfs the number of birds attributed to solar and wind energy.”
A 2016 study found that solar power plants cause 37,800 to 138,600 bird deaths each year in the United States, while fossil fuel power plants cause 14.5 million deaths. Another study attributed between 365 million and 988 million bird deaths due to collisions with buildings and windows.
Experts say that most of the solar energy produced in the United States comes from photovoltaic panels, rather than concentrated solar power towers like the Ivanpah factory, which creates conditions that can cause fatal harm to these birds.
“There are only two existing centralized solar power tower projects in the United States, and one of them recently went bankrupt,” said Robin Shepard, a spokesperson for the National Audubon Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting birds and their habitats.
Although Gomert said that thousands of birds died at the Ivanpah factory, he hinted that the possible deaths caused by the “green materials” clause in the Biden Infrastructure Act are a reason why the House of Representatives should not pass it.
But experts say that renewable energy has the benefits of reducing climate change, even if it has other consequences.
“All forms of human development have the potential to have an impact on the environment, and the development of renewable energy is no exception,” Le Royvol, a leading environmental scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory and the author of the study estimated that solar energy causes the death of birds. Ston said.
During the broadcast, Gohmert compared the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act with the Green New Deal, and PolitiFact rated this comparison as “mostly wrong.” Biden’s plan is smaller than the Green New Deal and ignores broader social goals such as universal healthcare and affordable higher education.
According to the New York Times, the cost and climate clauses in the Biden plan allocated $73 billion for the modernization of the national grid so that it can carry more renewable energy.
It was found that birds would be ignited after flying over a solar farm that uses concentrated solar energy. However, most solar farms in the United States use photovoltaic panels and have not been found to cause birds to die in this way. Gohmert’s statement ignores the findings, which indicate that more birds die from fossil fuel production or collide with buildings each year.
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