How Collaboration Helped Make SunZia Better for Birds

Building of the SunZia Wind and Transmission Challenge is now complete, and the venture’s 550-mile transmission line is delivering renewable vitality generated by 914 wind generators from New Mexico to Arizona and prospects throughout the Western grid. Since 2018, Audubon has labored with Sample Power and companions to advance the venture in ways in which profit birds and their habitats.  As the most important renewable vitality infrastructure venture in U.S. historical past, SunZia is a robust instance of how builders and conservation organizations can work collectively to increase the electrical grid whereas planning with birds in thoughts.

The venture was highlighted as a case research in Audubon’s 2023 Birds and Transmission Report, which explains that there is no such thing as a path to stabilizing the local weather for birds and folks with out dramatically increasing and modernizing the grid to ship renewable vitality. Within the case of SunZia, the transmission line was important to unlocking New Mexico’s plentiful wind assets, which generate essentially the most electrical energy within the late afternoon and night when demand on the grid is commonly highest. The report additionally acknowledges that transmission strains can pose dangers to birds if they aren’t rigorously deliberate and designed, which is why Audubon works instantly with builders to share bird- and wildlife-friendly recommendations based mostly on the perfect out there science.

SunZia is a robust instance of what that appears like. Audubon was concerned at a number of phases of planning, sharing scientific experience and sensible suggestions that helped form venture outcomes. This included:

• Providing steerage on greatest practices for transmission routing, tower siting, set up strategies, and tower design.  
• Offering analysis and conservation experience on alternatives to keep away from or reduce impacts earlier than building began. 
• Serving as a convener amongst Sample Power, conservation organizations, and authorities businesses, resulting in productive conversations.  
• Discussing how totally different route alternate options may have an effect on birds and wildlife, serving to inform the evaluate course of.

These conversations resulted in significant enhancements to the venture. Sample Power dedicated to putting in hen flight diverters on parts of the transmission line the place collision threat is best, serving to make the wires extra seen to flying birds. The corporate additionally relocated crossings alongside the Rio Grande River to cut back dangers to Sandhill Cranes and different migratory birds and co-located parts of the transmission line alongside current rights-of-way the place possible to attenuate habitat fragmentation.

Past the transmission line itself, the venture consists of vital conservation commitments, together with some that went above and past what was required by allowing businesses:

• Sample agreed to buy and switch an 1,100-acre farm with senior water rights alongside the Rio Grande in central New Mexico to the New Mexico Division of Wildlife as a brand new Wildlife Administration Space for the state. 
• In Arizona, the corporate redesigned parts of the path to span delicate canyons within the Decrease San Pedro River Valley and dedicated to a strong vegetation mitigation program, offsetting impacts at a 3:1 ratio. 
• The venture’s Avian Safety Plan and Migratory Chicken Conservation Plan included an revolutionary Habitat Equivalency Evaluation that quantified compensation for impacts throughout the transmission rights-of-way—one thing that’s fairly unprecedented for terrestrial vitality improvement. 
• The venture has additionally supported analysis on Sandhill Cranes, Pinyon Jays, bats, and different wildlife that can assist inform future conservation efforts.

SunZia demonstrates that impacts might be averted, minimized, and offset when builders, conservation organizations, and public businesses work collectively early and sometimes. In that very same spirit, the Western Governors’ Affiliation is main a multi-state effort to modernize and increase transmission infrastructure throughout the Intermountain West. As the USA continues to construct the electrical grid wanted for a clear vitality future, this type of science-based, collaborative method might help guarantee new transmission is responsibly sited and deliberate to profit birds, communities, and the locations all of us want.