Green energy threatens Chile’s Magallanes Region

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experiment, a comprehensive monitoring
scheme is required to collect data, ideally for
several years before turbines are first placed
and then through the construction, lifetime
operations, and decommissioning of the
turbines (11). A robust monitoring plan with
funding secured across all phases will help
distinguish effects of floating wind develop-
ment from other factors, such as climate
change. Although it is tempting to focus only
on the positives of clean energy, it is crucial
to think preemptively about the longer-term
impacts of floating wind turbines and use
adaptive management practices to mini-
mize impacts accordingly if necessary (12).
Prevention rather than cure will be essential
for the long-term sustainable success of this
exciting, yet unknown, new sector.
Andrew F. Johnson1,2*, Cyndi L. Dawson3, Melinda
G. Conners4, Cameron C. Locke5, Sara M. Maxwell5
1MarFishEco Fisheries Consultants Ltd, Edinburgh,
Scotland, UK. 2Marine Sustainability, Policy &
Conservation Evidence (Marine SPACE) Group, The
Lyell Centre, Institute of Life and Earth Sciences,
School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure
and Society, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh,
Scotland, UK. 3Castalia Environmental, Santa Cruz,
CA 95062, USA. 4School of Marine and Atmospheric
Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY
11794, USA. 5School of Interdisciplinary Arts and
Sciences, University of Washington, Bothell, WA
98011, USA.
*Corresponding author.
Email: andrew@marfisheco.com
REFERENCES AND NOTES
1. P. Rosa-Aquino, “Floating wind turbines could open up
vast ocean tracts for renewable power,” The Guardian
(2021 ).
2. J. Lee., F. Zhao, “Global Offshore Wind Report,”
Global Wind Energy Council (2021 ).
3. S. M. Maxwell et al. , J. Environ. Manage. 307,
114577 (2022).
4. S. Benjamins et a l., “Understanding the potential for
marine megafauna entanglement risk from marine
renewable energy developments,” Scottish Natural
Her ita ge C omm issi one d Re por t No. 791 (20 14), p . 95.
5. H. Baile y, K. L. Brookes, P. M. Thomps on, Aquat. Biosyst.
10, 8 (2014).
22 APRIL 2022 • VOL 376 ISSUE 6591 361SCIENCE science.org
PHOTO: TERJE AASE/SHUTTERSTOCK
Edited by Jennifer Sills
Offshore renewables need
an experimental mindset
The development of floating wind turbines
that can operate in deep, offshore waters
has unlocked tremendous energy generation
potential (1). Existing floating offshore wind
turbines, however, are still in demonstra-
tion phases. Because only about 10 turbines
exist worldwide (2), their short- and long-
term environmental impacts are still largely
unknown. Floating wind turbines are likely
to come with their own set of unique risks
(3), which could include secondary entangle-
ment of marine life in debris ensnared on
stabilizing mooring lines (4), increased colli-
sion potential due to three-dimensional tur-
bine movement (5), and benthic habitat deg-
radation from turbine infrastructure such as
anchors and buried interarray cables (6).
Despite potential impacts, countries are
rapidly moving toward full commercial
installations. The United States is advanc-
ing toward a lease sale for two areas in
central and northern California and pro-
posing floating wind turbines as a primary
technology for the Gulf of Mexico (7).
Floating wind turbines are also planned
for the Gulf of Maine (8) and likely for New
Yor k (9). European and Asian countries
have similar expansions planned (2).
Countries need robust plans to prevent,
monitor, and mitigate the environmental
impacts of floating wind turbines. We urge
energy authorities and lawmakers to treat
each installation as an experiment to gather
information about the costs and benefits
of this fledgling technology (10). Like any
LETTERS
Floating wind turbines, such as these two en route to the world’s first floating wind farm, could affect the environment in ways that have not yet been identified.
6. H . K. Farr et a l., Ocean Coast. Manage. 207,
105611 (2021).
7. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, “BOEM hosts
second Gulf of Mexico Renewable Energy Task Force
meeting” (2022); www.boem.gov/newsroom/notes-
stakeholders/boem-hosts-second-gulf-mexico-
renewable-energy-task-force-meeting.
8. State of Maine Governor’s Energy Office, “Gulf of
Maine floating offshore wind research array” (2021);
www.maine.gov/energy/initiatives/offshorewind/
researcharray.
9. New York State Energy Research and Development
Authority, “Governor Hochul announces nation lead-
ing $500 million investment in offshore wind” (2022);
www.nyserda.ny.gov/About/Newsroom/2022-
Announcements/2022-01-05-Governor-Hochul-
Announces-Nation-Leading-500-Million-Investment-
in-Offshore-Wind.
10. B. Snyde r, M. J. Kai ser, Renew. Energ. 34, 1567 (2009) .
11. A. Giron-Nava et al., M ar. Eco l. Pr og. S er. 572,
269 (2017).
12. A. Copping, V. Gartman, R. May, F. Bennet, in Wind
Energy and Wildlife Impacts: Balancing Energy
Sustainability with Wildlife Conservation, R. Bis po,
J. Bernardino, H. Coelho, J. Lino Costa, Eds. (Springer
International Publishing, 2019), pp. 1–25.
COMPETING INTERESTS
A.F.J. was funded by the Natural Resources Defense Council
to consult on the environmental and fishery impacts of float-
ing offshore wine turbines.
10.1126/science.abo7924
Green energy threatens
Chile’s Magallanes Region
On 2 December 2021, Chile’s minister of
energy and mining announced the country’s
largest green hydrogen project, to be devel-
oped in Chile’s southernmost Magallanes
Region (1–3). The project is intended to
help achieve Chile’s stated goal of generat-
ing 25 GW of green hydrogen by 2030 (1,
4). However, enthusiasm for clean energy
projects obscures their environmental and
cultural impacts.
Despite the potential benefits, the large
scale of this green hydrogen megaproject,
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particularly its wind farms, could have
an outsized effect on both ecological pro-
cesses and the surrounding landscape. San
Gregorio and Tierra del Fuego form part of
important migration routes of threatened
birds such as the ruddy-headed goose, the
red knot, and the Magellanic plover (5),
which fly across Patagonia on their way
to their austral summer areas. Replacing
sheep ranching with wind generation plants
also entails a profound cultural change,
comparable to the changes brought about
by the arrival of European immigrants
and inhabitants of the Chiloé archipelago
and the subsequent development of sheep
ranching in Magallanes at the end of the
19th century, which reconfigured social
relations and land use in the region (6, 7).
Preliminary estimates based on a pilot
project in Punta Arenas (3) suggest that
the megaproject could reach about 2900
installed wind turbines by 2027, occupy-
ing an area of at least 150,000 hectares.
This would represent a 320% increase in
Chile’s wind energy generation capacity and
would represent 1.35% of the wind energy
installed in the world [relative to 2021 data
(8)]. Recent studies in central Chile show
a rate of 0.6 to 1.8 bird collisions per wind
turbine per year (3). Scaling this to the mag-
nitude of the planned Magallanes project
could lead to between 1740 and 5220 bird
collisions per year. However, this estimate
does not consider that the Magallanes
Region is a migration area for about 43
species of birds, including Passeriformes,
Charadriiformes, and Strigiformes (5, 9),
which would likely increase these numbers.
Environmental impact assessments of
these projects must take into consideration
the high natural value of this landscape,
with protected areas such as Torres del
Paine National Park, Pali Aike National
Park, and Bahía Lomas Ramsar site and
Nature Sanctuary (10). Failing to do so
could turn the development of clean
energy megaprojects into another example
of extractivist development (11), which
would export a product (green hydrogen)
to Europe and Asia while generating
potentially irreversible changes to the local
environment and culture.
Heraldo V. Norambuena1*, Fabio A. Labra2, Ricardo
Matus1,3, Humberto Gómez4, Diego Luna-Quevedo5,
Carmen Espoz1
1Centro Bahía Lomas, Facultad de Ciencias,
Universidad Santo Tomás, Concepción Chile.
2Centro de Investigación e Innovación para
el Cambio Climático, Facultad de Ciencias,
Universidad Santo Tomás, Santiago, Chile. 3Centro
de Rehabilitación de Aves Leñadura, Punta Arenas,
Chile. 4Agrupación Ecológica Patagónica, Punta
Arenas, Chile. 5Western Hemisphere Shorebird
Reserve Network Executive Office–Manomet,
Plymouth, MA 02360, USA.
*Corresponding author.
Email: hnorambuena@santotomas.cl
REFERENCES AND NOTES
1. Ministerio de Energía, “El más grande de Chile: Ministro
Jobet anuncia nuevo proyecto de hidrógeno verde en
Magallanes” (2021); https://energia.gob.cl/noticias/
nacional/el-mas-grande-de-chile-ministro-jobet-
anuncia-nuevo-proyecto-de-hidrogeno-verde-en-
magallanes [in Spanish].
2. Highly Innovative Fuels, “Capítulo 1: Descripción de
proyecto—Proyecto piloto de descarbonización y
producción de combustibles carbono neutral, declara-
ción de impacto ambiental,” Tech. Rep. N° 2020-12-31
(2020); https://infofirma.sea.gob.cl/DocumentosSEA/
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2f257113b0281c634710 [in Spanish].
3. República de Chile, Comisión de Evaluación, Región de
Magallanes y Antártica Chilena, “Califica ambiental-
mente el proyecto: Proyecto piloto de descarbonización
y producción de combustibles carbono neutral”
(Resolución de Calificación Ambiental N°58, 2021) [in
Spanish].
4. Ministerio de Energía, “Transición energética de Chile,
política energética nacional” (Gobierno de Chile, 2021)
[in Spanish].
5. F. Medrano, R. Barros, H. V. Norambuena, R. Matus,
F. Schmitt, Eds., Atlas de las Aves Nidificantes de Chile
(Red de Observadores de Aves y Vida Silvestre de Chile,
Santiago, Chile, 2018) [in Spanish].
6. J. Calderón, Boletín del Ministerio de Agricultura 10, 1
(1936) [in Spanish].
7. R. Urbina, in Planning Outlook Series 1 (1956),
vol. 4, p. 22.
8. Global Wind Energy Council, Global wind report 2021
(2021); https://gwec.net/global-wind-report-2021/.
9. eBird: An online database of bird distribution and abun-
dance [web application] (Cornell Lab of Ornithology,
Ithaca, New York, 2022); https://ebird.org/chile/barcha
rt?byr=1900&eyr=2022&bmo=1&emo=12&r=CL-MA.
10. Comisión Nacional del Medio Ambiente Chile,
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biodiversidad en la xii región” (2002) [in Spanish].
11. M. A. Urbina et a l., Science 373, 1208 (2021).
10.1126/science.abo4129
Brazilian pesticides law
could poison the world
Brazil’s National Congress will soon vote
on a controversial bill (PL 6299/2002) that
relaxes the current legislation on pesticides
(1). Arguing that the registration of new
products takes too long, this bill proposes
changes to the evaluation and authoriza-
tion process, excluding the health and
environment federal agencies from the
decision. In addition, previously banned
substances could then be reevaluated
under these new rules. This bill fits Brazil’s
recent trend of undermining environmen-
tal law (2) by prioritizing the productive
sector to the detriment of environmental
integrity (3, 4).
In 2021, the government authorized the
use of 562 new agrochemicals in Brazil (5),
many of them imported from Europe and
North America (6). Several of those new
pesticides are banned in these countries
(6, 7), but their manufacturers continue
exporting them to places with permissive
legislation like Brazil. The indiscriminate
use of pesticides without proper evaluation
is a matter of public health. In the past 10
years, intoxication and deaths related to
pesticide poisoning increased by 94% in
Brazil (8), and those pesticides persist in
the environment (9).
Because Brazil is a leader in exporting
its crops, such as soy that supplies global
animal feed (10), the likely approval of
this bill should be a global concern. More
pesticides are not necessary to feed the
world (11). There are well-known solutions
to enhance productivity (12) that do not
require the intense use of pesticides, such
as agroecology (11). An alternative bill (PL
6670/2016) could move Brazil in a better
direction by initiating a national program
to reduce pesticides, but this proposal has
been given low priority and is unlikely to
become law under the current administra-
tion. Strengthening environmental agen-
cies and investing in science and technol-
ogy is the way to achieve the sustainable
development of agribusiness.
Laís Carneiro*, Larissa Faria, Natali Miiller,
André Cavalcante, Afonso Murata,
Jean Ricardo Simões Vitule
1Laboratório de Ecologia e Conservação, Setor
de Tecnologia, Departamento de Engenharia
Ambiental, Universidade Federal do Paraná,
Curitiba, PR, 81531-970, Brazil. 2Centro de
Ensino Pesquisa e Extensão em Agroecologia,
Departamento de Fitotecnia e Fitossanidade,
Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, PR,
81531-970, Brazil.
*Corresponding author.
Email: lais.olicar@gmail.com
REFERENCES AND NOTES
1. Agência de Notícias, “Câmara aprova projeto que altera
regras de registro de agrotóxicos.” (2022); www.camara.
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2000–2022” (2022); www.gov.br/agricultura/pt-br/
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Portuguese].
6. L . M. Bomba rd i , Geografia do Uso de Agrotóxicos No
Brasil e Conexões com a União Europeia (Faculdade de
Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, Universidade de
São Paulo, 2017) [in Portuguese].
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cides,” Pesticide Action Network International (2021);
https://pan-international.org/pan-international-
consolidated-list-of-banned-pesticides/.
8. R. J. Buralli, F. N. E. F. de Souza, “Mortality and morbidity
by work-related pesticide poisoning in Brazil, 2009–
2019,” ISEE Conference Abstracts 2021 (2021).
9. I. E. Barnhoorn, M. S. Bornman, C. J. Van Rensburg,
H. Bouwman, Chemosphere 77, 1236 (2009).
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leader for hazardous pesticides,” Unearthed (2020);
https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2020/02/20/
brazil-pesticides-soya-corn-cotton-hazardous-croplife/.
11. “Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food,”
United Nations A/HRC/34/48 (2017).
12. M. Lykogianni, E. Bempelou, F. Karamaouna, K. A.
Aliferis, Sci. Tot. Environ. 795, 148625 (2021).
10.1126/science.abo6942
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INSIGHTS |
LETTERS
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Green energy threatens Chile’s Magallanes Region
Heraldo V. NorambuenaFabio A. LabraRicardo MatusHumberto GómezDiego Luna-QuevedoCarmen Espoz
Science, 376 (6591),
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