Anything and everything in excess destabilizes the balance of nature. Wind energy is considered to be green but unfortunately there is no policy regulation on how many windmills a landscape can sustain. This might turn out to be hazardous in future and definitely raises a question on its sustainability. Windmills have changed the area around Satara in Maharashtra dramatically. Asia’s largest wind farm is located in and around the Chalkewadi plateau in the northern Western Ghats. The lateritic rocks of the region are broken down to construct more windmills and other structures that accompany them. This image shows how roads built to make windmills accessible prove fatal to unsuspecting Sitana males that display in the open.
The image was taken in 2013 by our team (Amod Zambre, Bhanu Sridharan, Harshal Bhonsale & myself) when we went out on an assignment (Funded by Saevus Nature Capital Awards) to document and tell the story of Plateaus of Northern Western Ghats.
See related post: How Green is Our Green Energy?
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'Green Energy' in the form of solar and wind generated power is touted as the panacea for all the ills plaguing the planet. But how green are these technologies really? In India we urgently need more studies that assess the impact of large -scale solar and wind energy projects on local ecology.