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Mexican free-tailed bats in flight. <\/span>Ann Froschauer\/US Fish and Wildlife Service<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n This story was originally published by<\/em>\u00a0Canary Media<\/a>\u00a0and is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0<\/em>Climate Desk<\/a>\u00a0collaboration.<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s a\u00a0known problem<\/span>\u00a0that onshore wind turbines kill bats<\/a>. But it\u2019s unclear whether the same issue applies to offshore wind installations\u2014and the Trump administration just canceled groundbreaking research into the question.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute received a\u00a0letter from the Department of Energy abruptly canceling its\u00a0$1.6\u00a0million grant to study bat behavior<\/a>\u00a0in California waters earmarked for offshore wind development, a move that will hinder the nascent research effort. Christian Newman, EPRI\u2019s program manager for the grant, said the organization is actively looking for other funding sources.<\/p>\n The researchers had been two years into a\u00a0study of bats in the territory California plans to\u00a0dot with floating offshore wind turbines<\/a>\u00a0over the coming decades. There\u2019s so little information about how North American bats use the ocean environment that, in\u00a02021, Newman and his colleagues determined\u00a0in a\u00a0peer-reviewed study<\/a>\u00a0that predicting the number of bats potentially killed by US offshore wind development was\u00a0\u200b\u201cimpossible\u201d\u2014at least until more data rolled in.<\/p>\n The bat project is one of\u00a0351\u00a0individual Energy Department awards, totalling nearly $16\u00a0billion in funding, that in early October appeared on a\u00a0leaked list<\/a>\u00a0of potential grant terminations. News reports have since verified the cancellations of some awards on that list, including more than $700\u00a0million for batteries and manufacturing,\u00a0according to Politico\u2019s E&E News<\/em><\/a>. The cancellation of\u00a0EPRI\u2019s bat research grant has not previously been reported.<\/p>\n The news comes as the Trump administration defunds other research investigating offshore wind\u2019s impact on wildlife. In recent weeks, the Interior Department\u00a0scuttled two programs, totalling over $5\u00a0million<\/a>, that were actively monitoring the movement of whales in East Coast waters where five commercial-scale wind projects are currently being\u00a0built.<\/p>\n The West Coast bat study, awarded federal funding in\u00a02022, supported researchers from multiple organizations, including Bat Conservation International. The US-based conservation group has been at the forefront of bat and wind-energy research for over two decades. Until recently, almost all of that work was devoted to onshore wind turbines.<\/p>\n \u201cWind energy is a\u00a0really important component of our global energy transition. Unfortunately, wind turbines kill millions of bats globally every year,\u201d said Winifred Frick, chief scientist at Bat Conservation International.<\/p>\n She contributed to a\u00a0study last year that estimated onshore wind farms\u00a0killed nearly\u00a0800,000\u00a0bats every year<\/a>\u00a0in just four countries that took annual tallies\u2014Canada, Germany, the UK, and the United States<\/p>\n It\u2019s logical to expect fewer bat deaths might result from wind turbines spinning out in the ocean compared to ones operating on land. After all, according to Frick, even scientists like herself assumed that most species simply do not spend much time at\u00a0sea.<\/p>\n But, at least on the West Coast, researchers had never scientifically checked. In fact,\u00a0EPRI\u00a0was collecting first-of-its-kind information on how the Mexican free-tailed bat interacts with the ocean, deepening scientists\u2019 understanding of the species overall. The\u00a0EPRI\u00a0team detected the bats vocalizing while flying over a\u00a0dozen miles off the coast of Southern California last year, thanks to an acoustic listening device attached to a\u00a0small sailing drone<\/a>\u00a0they launched. Before this study, no one knew that this common and widespread species spent any time at\u00a0sea.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things that we\u2019re learning is that there are more bats flying out in the [ocean] environment than we might have otherwise expected,\u201d said\u00a0Frick.<\/p>\n And that means more bat species are potentially threatened by California\u2019s future offshore turbines than previously thought. Frick added that a\u00a0greater understanding of which species spend time at sea and when can inform the design of solutions that better minimize fatalities from wind\u00a0farms.<\/p>\n One solution is called curtailment. Frick described this approach as changing the\u00a0\u200b\u201ccut-in speed,\u201d which is the minimum wind speed at which operators allow turbine blades to begin spinning at certain times of day or\u00a0year.<\/p>\n The modification does not typically lead to significant changes in energy generation for onshore wind farms but can make a\u00a0big difference for bats, she said. For example, preventing turbine blades from spinning until the wind reaches\u00a05\u00a0meters per second can reduce fatalities among many species by\u00a062 percent on average,\u00a0according to a\u00a0study released last year<\/a>\u00a0by Frick and her colleagues.<\/p>\n Determining the best curtailment solutions for offshore wind turbines and North American bat species is still a\u00a0work in progress. Energy Department-funded studies, like the\u00a0EPRI\u00a0effort, were seen as critical to determining which bat-saving modifications would work best for California\u2019s unique vision to build floating turbines.<\/p>\n Frick called the grant\u2019s termination\u00a0\u200b\u201cdevastating\u201d because the team may not get to finish the study. In the meantime, researchers are retrieving bat listening devices from spots along the West\u00a0Coast.<\/p>\n Bat Conservation International continues its efforts to minimize bat deaths from turbines on land. It received a\u00a0$2.4\u00a0million grant from the Energy Department<\/a>\u00a0last year to assess how new technology might help. That award also appeared on the leaked list of\u00a0351\u00a0DOE\u00a0projects seemingly slated for cancellation. But, according to Frick, the federal government has yet to cut that research\u2014\u200b\u201cit\u2019s not officially terminated\u201d\u2014and she remains optimistic that it might endure.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n