Texas Christian University, in partnership with
University of Oxford and NextEra Energy (formerly known as FPL
Energy), will spend the next five years researching wind power
in Texas. The project objective is to assess the broad scale
ecological and socio-economic impacts of wind development, including
evaluation of the coexistence of wind power with thriving bird
and bat populations, ecological footprints of wind farms, carbon
offset analysis, and benefits of wind farms to ecosystem health
and local communities.
In the first phase of the project, TCU has two areas of concentration:
the evaluation of the perception of wind turbines held by citizens
living in proximity of wind farms and the study of wind turbine
interactions with the avian population of West Texas. |