Concentrated solar power: Impact on the biosphere

Why birds burn around solar towers

What this tab covers Effects on human, animal, plant, fungal and microbial life and on whole ecosystems: in the short term (construction and early years), medium term (operating life) and long term (decommissioning and legacy).

CSP shares PV's low death rate and emissions but adds two specific problems: concentrated light that burns birds around towers, and water use in dry regions. Land is cleared and graded for the life of the plant.

Deaths per TWh (solar overall) about 0.02⁶ Life-cycle emissions, troughs and towers (published medians) 26 and 38 g CO2e/kWh³ Bird deaths, Ivanpah tower plant, first year about 3,500 (about 9 per MW, calculated)⁷ Water consumption, wet-cooled trough about 906 gallons (3.4 m3) per MWh⁵

Effects over time

Life affected	Short term	Medium term	Long term
Humans⁶¹	Construction accidents and dust; temporary work for several hundred people per plant.	Very low death rate (solar overall about 0.02 per TWh); wet-cooled plants compete for scarce desert water.	Little evidence of lasting effect; steel, glass and salt can be recovered.
Animals⁷⁸	Grading and fencing displace reptiles and small mammals.	About 3,500 birds were estimated killed in the first year at the 377 MW Ivanpah tower plant (about 9 per MW, calculated, against 2.49 per MW at PV sites); of deaths with a known cause, about 47% were from burns in concentrated sunlight and most of the rest from collisions.	Little evidence of lasting effect after removal.
Plants¹	Vegetation removed and ground levelled under the mirror field.	Little evidence of effect in the sources used.	Little evidence of effect in the sources used.
Fungi and soil life¹	Grading disturbs desert soils.	Little evidence of effect in the sources used.	Little evidence of effect in the sources used.
Ecosystems¹⁵	About 2 ha of habitat cleared per MW.	Wet cooling consumes about 3 m3 of water per MWh; dry cooling removes most of this.	Little evidence of effect beyond the site footprint.

How the effects are reduced

Dry or hybrid cooling cuts most water use for a small loss of output. At towers, changing heliostat standby positions so that light is not concentrated at points in the air, and deterring insects and birds near the receiver, reduce burns. Building on disturbed land, keeping native vegetation between mirror rows and leaving wildlife corridors reduce habitat loss.

Sources

Concentrating Solar Power: Technology Brief E10 IRENA and IEA-ETSAP, 2013
Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Trough and Tower Concentrating Solar Power Electricity Generation: Systematic Review and Harmonization (Burkhardt et al., Journal of Industrial Ecology 16 S1, S93-S109) NREL LCA Harmonization Project / RePEc, 2012
Operational water consumption and withdrawal factors for electricity generating technologies: a review of existing literature (Macknick et al., Environmental Research Letters 7, 045802), Tables 1 and 2 IOP Publishing (copy hosted by OpenEI), 2012
What are the safest and cleanest sources of energy? Our World in Data, 2024
3,500 birds died at Ivanpah 'power towers' in 1st year: report (reporting the H.T. Harvey and Associates monitoring report) E&E News, 2015
A summary of bird mortality at photovoltaic utility scale solar facilities in the Southwestern U.S. (Kosciuch et al., PLOS ONE 15(4): e0232034) PLOS, 2020