Newman Christian, Surrey Katie C
Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, California94304, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2025 May 5;20(5):e0322005. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0322005. eCollection 2025.
The wind industry's expansion in North America due to the need to provide clean energy is leading to increased regulatory concern for bats, particularly those that are endangered due to white-nose syndrome. The projected growth of installed wind capacity overlaps extensively with the ranges of several endangered and potentially regulated bat species. Wind energy operators in the US can comply with the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by submitting a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) and Incidental Take Permit (ITP) to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. HCP documents include wind project overviews, estimates for incidental take (e.g., unavoidable fatalities), outline minimization and compensatory mitigation measures to avoid take, and often include estimated cost information for actions to implement the HCP/ITP. However, the lack of insight into specific cost data, combined with the lengthy ITP application process, has potentially led to the perception that ESA compliance imposes a costly regulatory burden on the private sector, deterring motivation for voluntary compliance. Resulting from the absence of routine reporting practices, it is not known how much it costs for companies to comply with ESA listings, nor is there a standardized database of compliance costs or a method for estimating them. This analysis of 25 publicly available project-specific HCPs published through 2022 establishes one approach to conceptualizing these costs and determined the median total cost for an HCP to be approximately $4.68 million (USD), with a notable discrepancy between the median costs for compensatory mitigation cost ($1.64 million) and fatality monitoring ($3.15 million). This analysis also created a general linear model that can be used to estimate potential project-specific costs, and overall provides better insight into the costs of complying with the ESA by identifying variables that might affect compliance costs, and estimating future costs for the wind industry.
由于提供清洁能源的需求，北美风电行业的扩张导致对蝙蝠的监管关注度增加，尤其是那些因白鼻综合征而濒危的蝙蝠。预计的风电装机容量增长与几种濒危且可能受到监管的蝙蝠物种的活动范围广泛重叠。美国的风能运营商可以通过向美国鱼类和野生动物管理局提交栖息地保护计划（HCP）和附带捕获许可证（ITP）来遵守《濒危物种法》（ESA）。HCP文件包括风电项目概述、附带捕获的估计（例如不可避免的死亡）、避免捕获的最小化和补偿性缓解措施概述，并且通常包括实施HCP/ITP行动的估计成本信息。然而，由于缺乏对具体成本数据的了解，再加上ITP申请过程漫长，可能导致人们认为遵守ESA会给私营部门带来高昂的监管负担，从而削弱了自愿遵守的积极性。由于缺乏常规报告做法，目前尚不清楚公司遵守ESA名录的成本有多高，也没有合规成本的标准化数据库或估算方法。对截至2022年发布的25份公开的特定项目HCP进行的分析确立了一种概念化这些成本的方法，并确定HCP的总中位数成本约为468万美元（美元），补偿性缓解成本（164万美元）和死亡监测成本（315万美元）的中位数成本之间存在显著差异。该分析还创建了一个通用线性模型，可用于估算潜在的特定项目成本，总体上通过识别可能影响合规成本的变量并估算风电行业的未来成本，更好地洞察遵守ESA的成本。
