French energy giant ordered to switch off wind turbines that kill endangered birds

Telegraph

08-04-2025

EDF wind turbines on a farm in southern France have been ordered to shut down after a court ruled they were to blame for killing scores of protected birds and bats.
In what bird lovers are calling a landmark ruling, the Montpellier court held EDF Renouvelables and nine of its subsidiaries responsible for the deaths of 160 bats and birds, especially lesser kestrels, which regularly collide with the blades despite deterrents put in place by operators.
Their numbers have seen a recent worrying decline in Europe, as have those of Montagu's harriers and bats.
The court ordered the shutdown of all 31 wind turbines on a plateau of garrigue, or scrubland, overlooking the Mediterranean for the four-month period over the summer when the birds remain in France after migrating from Africa.
The wind farm has been in operation since 2006 and generates the annual electricity needs of 60,000 people.
The Aumelas plateau was awarded the Natura 2000 label in 2016, which advocates the protection of areas that are representative of European biodiversity.
'With these wind turbines at a standstill, there will be no further deaths this year, since lesser kestrels arrive in April from Africa to nest and leave at the end of the summer,' said Simon Popy, president of France Nature Environnement (FNE) Occitanie Méditerranée, the association behind the complaint.
'In the future, EDF should think twice before restarting operations' or face further court action, warned FNE lawyer Olivier Gourbinot.
In the first such ruling in criminal proceedings against wind turbine operators, the court also fined each of the 10 companies €500,000 (£430,000) and handed a six-month suspended prison sentence to Bruno Bensasson, the former chief executive of EDF Renewables, along with a €100,000 fine.
They will also have to publish at their own expense the ruling, which found them guilty of the 'destruction of 160 individual birds and bats, in particular lesser kestrels', in several national and local newspapers.
The 10 companies were also ordered to pay a total of €114,000 in damages respectively to both to France Nature Environnement Occitanie-Méditerranée and its parent group, France Nature Environnement.
Finally, as compensation for the environmental damage caused, they were ordered to pay the French state €74,087, which will go towards France's 'national plan for the protection of the lesser kestrel'.
EDF Renouvelables, the parent company, had pleaded not guilty, saying it had done its utmost to avoid deaths.
It cited in particular a system of cameras installed on masts and GPS beacons on 78 lesser kestrels.
It argued that overall the population of the birds of prey had risen despite the wind farms, going from around 35 pairs in 2006 to around 400 today.
Environmentalists say the number would be twice as high if the wind farms had not cut them down.
With wind farms scaling up across the world in the drive to net zero, concerns are growing about the impact on avian habitats and birds killed by colliding with turbines.
In the UK, a pilot programme has been launched to paint offshore wind turbines black in an effort to deter birds from flying into the spinning blades.
The scheme was launched after Donald Trump told Sir Keir Starmer he was concerned about 'windmills' in the North Sea.
The US president has reportedly become fixated on the number of birds killed by wind turbines, and has signed an executive order pausing all wind energy projects in the US.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is in favour of wind farms, but in 2021 criticised a decision to expand a giant farm off the Yorkshire Coast, saying that kittiwakes would need to dodge the blades as they fly to their breeding grounds.
It was reported in 2009 that the RSPB's decision to support wind farms caused some members to leave in protest.
The lesser kestrel is a small migratory bird measuring around 60cm. Males have blue-grey upper parts while females are mottled brown.
It was categorised as 'vulnerable' by the International Union for Conservation of Nature due to a significant fall in numbers between the 1950s and 1990s.
Threats include habitat loss
The species has enjoyed 'least concern' status from 2011 in the EU but a study released last year revealed a decline of 6 per cent per year in Spain since 2012. The country hosts around 40 per cent of the European breeding population.
Threats include habitat loss due to overgrazing and conversion of lands to agricultural fields, pesticide and rodenticide poisoning, human persecution and the destruction of old buildings which it uses to nest in.
In a similar case, the same court in Montpellier is due to hand down a ruling on another wind farm with seven turbines operated in Bernagues, also in the Hérault department, over charges it caused the death of a male golden eagle, part of a breeding pair. Operators also face heavy fines.
There has been increasingly heated debate in France over the installation of wind farms and other types of renewable energy as the country seeks to honour its commitment to carbon neutrality by 2050.
France plans to reduce the share of fossil fuels in final energy consumption in France from around 60 per cent in 2023 to 30 per cent in 2035.
The share of low-carbon electricity is slated to increase from 27 per cent to 39 per cent in that period.
Under pressure from farmers, the Right-leaning government has pledged to loosen environmental norms and restraints on pesticides and there have been even been calls to scrap the French Agency for Ecological Transition.