On the island of Skye off Scotland, a three-year effort to build an industrial wind plant in Edinbane was sent back to square one last week because of legal technicalities. Concerns about peat destruction and raptor deaths have also been newly raised. Members of the Skye Windfarm Action Group (SWAG) had already been subject to intimidating letters, telephone calls, and vandalism, and this weekend the pro-wind camp were true to form: painting a bed-and-breakfast sign with "SWAG scum," cutting down a dozen spruce trees and piling them in a driveway, smashing and pulling up road signs.
news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=593462005
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/4594555.stm
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms
May 31, 2005
The color of money
Disgen, the company behind the Brodie Mtn. project in Massachusetts, has an outline of the "Wind Development Process" (a 135-KB PDF). Under "Financing," the source of equity is characterized with "Rate of Return 16-18%."
Even if you were convinced that large-scale wind could make significant contributions to the grid and that there would be correspondingly significant environmental benefits so that the industry needs or at least deserves government support, this promised return clearly goes far beyond that -- into the realm of piracy.
categories: wind power, wind energy
Even if you were convinced that large-scale wind could make significant contributions to the grid and that there would be correspondingly significant environmental benefits so that the industry needs or at least deserves government support, this promised return clearly goes far beyond that -- into the realm of piracy.
categories: wind power, wind energy
May 26, 2005
Gone with the wind
Letter in the Financial Times (London), May 24:
From Mr Hugh Sharman [Hals, Denmark].categories: wind power, wind energy
Sir, in your editorial ("Glowing green", May 16) you wrote that "Denmark, which relies on intermittent wind power for nearly 20 per cent of its power, has stability problems on its grid".
Although it is true that the wind power we have creates "stability problems", it is not true that we inhabitants of west Denmark rely on wind power at all.
Whenever west Denmark produces a lot of wind power, it simultaneously exports almost equivalent quantities along its strong inter-connections with Norway, Sweden and Germany.
In other words, in spite of wind turbines producing a quantity of power equivalent to more than 20 per cent of its domestic consumption, very little of this power is actually consumed in west Denmark. I have calculated that in 2003, more than 80 per cent of wind output was exported, leaving west Denmark to consume about 4 per cent of its power from its enormous capacity of wind turbines.
There is an added irony here. The Danish consumer pays the highest tariffs for electricity in Europe. Much of these are hypothecated for the support of windmill owners. However, the wind wind power is sold on the spot market at rates that are much lower.
Thus there is a direct transfer of wealth from Danish consumers to consumers in Sweden, Norway and Germany, every time 1kWh of electricity is sold in this way. During 2003, this net transfer of wealth amounted to more than £100m -- or £40 per inhabitant.
Familiarity breeds contempt
Along the lines of the previous post, the Press and Journal of Aberdeen, Scotland, tells of another neighbor who finds the turbines not just awful but distressing as well:
Noise from windfarm making life a miserycategories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
A recent settler in Caithness claimed yesterday his life is being blighted by ghostly noises from his new neighbours, the county's first large-scale windfarm. ...
[Frank] Bellamy said: "The problem is particularly bad at night when I try to get to sleep and there's a strong wind coming from the direction of the turbines.
"They just keep on droning on. It's a wooh wooh type of sound, a ghostly sort of noise. It's like torture and would drive anyone mad."
Mr Bellamy believes the noise is being transmitted through the ground since it seems to intensify when he lies down. ...
"a train that never arrives"
From a story in the Manawatu (New Zealand) Standard, May 22:
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
The hearing for the Te Apiti wind farm in September 2003 received 20 submissions -- 11 in support, 8 against and 1 which didn't specify.And from the Dominion Post (Wellington), May 25:
A year later the number of submissions to the Te Rere Hau hearing, in December 2004, had jumped to 71 -- 27 for, 38 against and 6 not indicating either.
Five months later, the hearing into the proposed Tararua 3 extensions received 340 submissions -- 106 in support, 230 against, and 4 not indicating either way.
Turbines were beginning to lose their appeal, especially in the Ashhurst area, where residents complained of noise from the Te Apiti turbines, a rumble that sounded "like a train that never arrived", as one submission to the recent resource consent hearing described it. ...Yet the industry insists that people only love them more after they're built!
"A lot of people think that we've done our bit for sustainable energy around here. When the second stage of the Tararua wind farm went up it looked like a fence along the top of the ranges, and the Te Apiti development changed many people's minds. They didn't know the turbines were going to be so big or that there would be so many of them." ...
One turbine was a feature; a wind farm was an eyesore.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
May 25, 2005
Wendy Williams in support of the coal industry
To the editor, Providence (R.I.) Journal:
Most legislators are oblivious to the world beyond their offices until someone in their own family is affected. That indeed makes for pathetic representation, but if Lamar Alexander and John Warner got interested in the wind energy debate only because their children have property on Nantucket Sound, so be it (Wendy Williams, "TR IV tilts for windmills," May 25).
And yes, Alexander's energy votes are usually determined by the energy lobby. In the case of developing Appalachian ridge lines for wind power, however, the energy lobby is all for it. For example, the firm of Gracewell and Giuliani, which fights emission limits among other burdens to their clients, is working on behalf of a giant wind facility proposed for Highland County, Virginia. There are two obvious reasons: Wind is turning out to be an attractive tax shelter, and while people think that wind turbines are cleaning the air the coal plants can go on polluting as much as ever.
Williams makes much of Knoxville and Memphis being the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America's top two "asthma capitals." Besides looking at the rate and severity of asthma, the ranking also considers pollen levels, public smoking laws, inhaler laws in schools, and the rates of poverty and lack of health insurance. General air quality is but one factor. As the American Lung Association's annual "State of the Air" report shows, Memphis and Knoxville do have pollution problems -- like most big cities -- but they are nowhere near the worst.
Williams also mocks Alexander's proposed funding of "clean coal" as a corporate give-away. She defends the corporate give-aways for wind power as relatively small, ignoring how much the 1.9-cents per kilowatt adds up over the planned 20-year life of a wind turbine as well as other benefits, such as accelerated depreciation and RPS schemes to force the purchase of wind-generated power and create a secondary market in green "credits."
Meanwhile, the main source of our electricity, coal, will continue to burn just as before (and Williams ignores the fact that most of our emissions come from other uses of energy, such as transport). Despite Williams' mockery, cleaning it up can make a real difference.
Scrubbers installed (against the owner's will) at the 1600-MW coal-fired power plant in Mt. Storm, West Virginia, remove the sulfur and nitrogen oxides and most of the mercury from its smokestacks. Once one of the dirtiest plants in the nation, Mt. Storm is now one of the cleanest.
An article in the New York Times business section May 22 described the single integrated coal gasification combined cycle plant in the U.S., owned by Tampa Electric in Florida. In gasifying the coal before burning it, 95% of the sulfur and mercury, and most of the nitrogen, is removed -- at a tenth of the cost of smokestack scrubbing -- and carbon can be captured as well. In addition, the plant generates 15% more energy from the coal and uses 40% less water than traditional plants.
Mining the coal to fire such plants of course remains a serious issue. Unfortunately, building giant wind turbines -- whose output is unpredictably variable -- is not going to reduce, much less end, the use of coal. If Williams is concerned about air quality, if Teddy Roosevelt IV is worried about the arctic ice cap melting, they should put their efforts into cleaning up the energy sources we use now and will be using well into the future.
Resigning oneself to, even to the point of advocating, "feel-good" wind turbines that won't actually change anything -- yet create many problems of their own -- is an environmental cop-out.
categories: wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
Most legislators are oblivious to the world beyond their offices until someone in their own family is affected. That indeed makes for pathetic representation, but if Lamar Alexander and John Warner got interested in the wind energy debate only because their children have property on Nantucket Sound, so be it (Wendy Williams, "TR IV tilts for windmills," May 25).
And yes, Alexander's energy votes are usually determined by the energy lobby. In the case of developing Appalachian ridge lines for wind power, however, the energy lobby is all for it. For example, the firm of Gracewell and Giuliani, which fights emission limits among other burdens to their clients, is working on behalf of a giant wind facility proposed for Highland County, Virginia. There are two obvious reasons: Wind is turning out to be an attractive tax shelter, and while people think that wind turbines are cleaning the air the coal plants can go on polluting as much as ever.
Williams makes much of Knoxville and Memphis being the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America's top two "asthma capitals." Besides looking at the rate and severity of asthma, the ranking also considers pollen levels, public smoking laws, inhaler laws in schools, and the rates of poverty and lack of health insurance. General air quality is but one factor. As the American Lung Association's annual "State of the Air" report shows, Memphis and Knoxville do have pollution problems -- like most big cities -- but they are nowhere near the worst.
Williams also mocks Alexander's proposed funding of "clean coal" as a corporate give-away. She defends the corporate give-aways for wind power as relatively small, ignoring how much the 1.9-cents per kilowatt adds up over the planned 20-year life of a wind turbine as well as other benefits, such as accelerated depreciation and RPS schemes to force the purchase of wind-generated power and create a secondary market in green "credits."
Meanwhile, the main source of our electricity, coal, will continue to burn just as before (and Williams ignores the fact that most of our emissions come from other uses of energy, such as transport). Despite Williams' mockery, cleaning it up can make a real difference.
Scrubbers installed (against the owner's will) at the 1600-MW coal-fired power plant in Mt. Storm, West Virginia, remove the sulfur and nitrogen oxides and most of the mercury from its smokestacks. Once one of the dirtiest plants in the nation, Mt. Storm is now one of the cleanest.
An article in the New York Times business section May 22 described the single integrated coal gasification combined cycle plant in the U.S., owned by Tampa Electric in Florida. In gasifying the coal before burning it, 95% of the sulfur and mercury, and most of the nitrogen, is removed -- at a tenth of the cost of smokestack scrubbing -- and carbon can be captured as well. In addition, the plant generates 15% more energy from the coal and uses 40% less water than traditional plants.
Mining the coal to fire such plants of course remains a serious issue. Unfortunately, building giant wind turbines -- whose output is unpredictably variable -- is not going to reduce, much less end, the use of coal. If Williams is concerned about air quality, if Teddy Roosevelt IV is worried about the arctic ice cap melting, they should put their efforts into cleaning up the energy sources we use now and will be using well into the future.
Resigning oneself to, even to the point of advocating, "feel-good" wind turbines that won't actually change anything -- yet create many problems of their own -- is an environmental cop-out.
categories: wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
Polly Toynbee on the despair behind embracing the wind
To the editor, the Guardian:
It's amusing to note that Toynbee calls it heroic to stand against the apparent popularity of nuclear power, but excoriates opponents of industrial wind power (not the 17th-century models!) by citing their apparent popularity.
She ably sees through the nuclear industry's propaganda, but sadly not that of the wind industry.
categories: wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
It's amusing to note that Toynbee calls it heroic to stand against the apparent popularity of nuclear power, but excoriates opponents of industrial wind power (not the 17th-century models!) by citing their apparent popularity.
She ably sees through the nuclear industry's propaganda, but sadly not that of the wind industry.
categories: wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
May 22, 2005
Unaccountable
The New York Times today writes about the continued bullying of Latin America by the U.S., this time in trying to get the Organization of American States (OAS) to set up a committee for monitoring the "quality" of democracy in the different member countries. As the price of supporting the new secretary general José Miguel Insulza, the U.S. forced him to stand with Condoleezza ("revenge of the sith") Rice last month and state, "The elected governments that do not govern democratically should be held accountable by the O.A.S."
Now Rice is going around calling it Insulza's plan to attack Venezuela's government. Why does the U.S. hate Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez so much? Because he is popular. He rejects the banana republic assumptions of U.S. dominance in the region and has turned Venezuela's oil wealth to making life better for all Venezuelans rather than only a few.
As far as "elected governments that do not govern democratically," the glaring example is the U.S. itself. What is fight about the filibuster, i.e., the right of the minority to demand a larger majority than 51% for controversial votes, than a desire to remove perhaps the last barrier to absolute one-party rule?
Now Rice is going around calling it Insulza's plan to attack Venezuela's government. Why does the U.S. hate Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez so much? Because he is popular. He rejects the banana republic assumptions of U.S. dominance in the region and has turned Venezuela's oil wealth to making life better for all Venezuelans rather than only a few.
As far as "elected governments that do not govern democratically," the glaring example is the U.S. itself. What is fight about the filibuster, i.e., the right of the minority to demand a larger majority than 51% for controversial votes, than a desire to remove perhaps the last barrier to absolute one-party rule?
May 20, 2005
Embrace the Revolution
"Embrace the Revolution" is the name of the British Wind Energy Association's government-sponsored campaign to convice people that they really do like giant wind turbines as much as investors do. Calling these ineffective but hugely intrusive industrial machines "revolutionary" is like saying that war is peace, submission is freedom.
One of their tactics has been a continuous stream of surveys showing that two-thirds to three-fifths of the public want lots of giant wind turbines all over the U.K. They say this even as every single proposed facility faces strong and broad-based opposition. The embracers are obviously asking the wrong people (or by design the right people, for their purpose).
As BWEA's head of communications Alison Hill told an international meeting in London last November, "Most people don't understand climate change and they don't understand wind turbines."
And that is clearly all that their surveys show. Rather than address that shortcoming, the BWEA and its dupes are only trying to exploit it.
categories: wind power, wind energy
One of their tactics has been a continuous stream of surveys showing that two-thirds to three-fifths of the public want lots of giant wind turbines all over the U.K. They say this even as every single proposed facility faces strong and broad-based opposition. The embracers are obviously asking the wrong people (or by design the right people, for their purpose).
As BWEA's head of communications Alison Hill told an international meeting in London last November, "Most people don't understand climate change and they don't understand wind turbines."
And that is clearly all that their surveys show. Rather than address that shortcoming, the BWEA and its dupes are only trying to exploit it.
categories: wind power, wind energy
May 19, 2005
Incredible
"People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?" --Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Except there's many more than one such "son of a bitch" in the gang of pirates we're stuck with instead of a government. Too bad there's no other group to rally behind. Maybe we should ask George Galloway, late of the U.K.'s Labour Party, to come over and start a real opposition.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Except there's many more than one such "son of a bitch" in the gang of pirates we're stuck with instead of a government. Too bad there's no other group to rally behind. Maybe we should ask George Galloway, late of the U.K.'s Labour Party, to come over and start a real opposition.
Wind advocacy rather weak
The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) issued an amusingly inept response to Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander's Environmentally Responsible Wind Power Act of 2005.
I agree with them about the "siren song" of nuclear power, and I am glad to read that Alexander has worked with them to protect the Smoky Mountains and pursue cleaner use of coal.
While they criticize him for listening to energy lobbyists more often than good sense in supporting the current energy bill, however, they also criticize him for trying to insert this bit of good sense against the wishes of energy lobbyists.
What are their answers to Alexander's charges against the wind energy industry?
SACE correctly recognizes the seriousness of our energy issues, including reducing pollution and preserving wild places. But they forget to show how industrial wind power helps in tackling these issues. In fact, they can't. Giant industrial wind facilities are scarring our landscapes and ruining the lives of their neighbors. They are destroying wild places and the lives of animals on the ground and in the air. And they are not giving us anything in return.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism
I agree with them about the "siren song" of nuclear power, and I am glad to read that Alexander has worked with them to protect the Smoky Mountains and pursue cleaner use of coal.
While they criticize him for listening to energy lobbyists more often than good sense in supporting the current energy bill, however, they also criticize him for trying to insert this bit of good sense against the wishes of energy lobbyists.
What are their answers to Alexander's charges against the wind energy industry?
- A blindfolded person can tell the difference between the noise of a freight train and that of a wind turbine facility.
- Thousands of giant wind turbines will not scar the landscape as much as mountaintop-removal coal mining.
SACE correctly recognizes the seriousness of our energy issues, including reducing pollution and preserving wild places. But they forget to show how industrial wind power helps in tackling these issues. In fact, they can't. Giant industrial wind facilities are scarring our landscapes and ruining the lives of their neighbors. They are destroying wild places and the lives of animals on the ground and in the air. And they are not giving us anything in return.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism
May 18, 2005
"Utilities put cap on wind power"
An article in the May 18 Asahi Shimbun:
Just when it looked like smooth sailing for wind power generation, electric power companies, its main buyers, have placed limits on their purchases, citing the unreliability of the clean energy. ...categories: wind power, wind energy
Until recently, regional utilities have cooperated by purchasing all of the electricity generated by wind power suppliers.
But introducing too much of the electricity, whose supply can fluctuate wildly, can cause problems for utilities' power grids.
According to Tohoku Electric, which purchases about 40 percent of wind power generated nationwide, wattage can change between zero to 80 percent of its capacity within a single day.
Electric power companies worry a supply shortfall will result in blackouts, while excess supply may destabilize frequencies, which could cause malfunctions at factories, for example.
To avoid such risks, utilities control supply by monitoring shortages and sufficiencies and compensate by raising or lowering supply at thermal generators by means of computer-controlled systems.
If there is no wind, the utilities must rely entirely on other facilities. And even when wind power can satisfy all of the demand, they must continue operating thermal generators to be ready for any abrupt shortfalls in wind power. ...
May 17, 2005
"100 percent wind-powered"
The Sunday New York Times Travel section went to Boulder, Colo., and recommends an eatery that boasts it is "100 percent wind-powered."
The claim is amusing, since they're getting the same electricity their nonwind-powered neighbors are getting. They're just paying extra so they can say it's different.
categories: wind power, wind energy
The claim is amusing, since they're getting the same electricity their nonwind-powered neighbors are getting. They're just paying extra so they can say it's different.
categories: wind power, wind energy
May 16, 2005
Giant wind turbine foundations
From "Wind farms remain pricy propositions," The Citizens Voice (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.), May 15:
The Waymart Wind Farm, located in Clinton and Canaan townships in Wayne County [Pa.], contains 43 1.5-megawatt turbines ...categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
The blades are shipped from Brazil and the gearbox for each turbine is brought over on barges from Denmark.
Each turbine weighs 190 tons and requires a sturdy foundation to keep the structure stable.
At the Waymart site, the turbines rest on concrete foundations extending 30 to 40 feet into the bedrock. The foundations are reinforced by 14-foot and 12-foot diameter pipes, and the turbine is fastened to a bolt carriage that runs through the entire foundation.
May 14, 2005
Not so insignificant harm
From today's Herald Sun of Melbourne:
As noted in response to a similar comment about spinning reserve, yet another advocate seems to be asserting that wind power works great as long as it's not actually contributing anything of significance.
Yes, it's working great for the developers and green credit marketers. But it is destroying more and more of our last rural and wild places. It is destroying the lives of people and animals. For nothing.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
Andrew Richards, external affairs manager for Australia's biggest renewable energy company, Pacific Hydro, admits that as wind power generation increases, more work needs to be done on how it fits into the existing power grid.That is to say, if in the future there is enough wind power capacity installed that when the wind blows just right its output rises well above "just background noise," then other plants will be forced to operate at less efficiency, increasing their emissions. So, as long as wind power's presence on the grid is insignificant, there is no need to worry about its fluctuations causing greater emissions from coal plants.
But he rejects outright claims that wind farms can increase greenhouse gases because they cause existing brown coal generators to "throttle back" and produce higher emissions.
"Coal-fired power is at its most efficient at maximum load, there is no doubt about that," said Mr Richards, who also sits on the board of the Australian Wind Energy Association.
"But it is a bit of a furphy to say that wind power is causing greater emissions at this stage.
"With the current state of output from wind in Victoria, we are just background noise compared to demand fluctuations."
As noted in response to a similar comment about spinning reserve, yet another advocate seems to be asserting that wind power works great as long as it's not actually contributing anything of significance.
Yes, it's working great for the developers and green credit marketers. But it is destroying more and more of our last rural and wild places. It is destroying the lives of people and animals. For nothing.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
The Fenner wind farm show
Sue Sliwinski of the Sardinia (N.Y.) Preservation Group writes about the frequent developer-sponsored tours from around New York to the wind facility in Fenner. Her husband, Ed, went on one but thought he'd take a look the day before as well. He noted a mowed field near the turbines, the hay all taken in. On the tour the next day, they were led from the bus to stand under an operating turbine (known to be the quietest spot). But the only thing they could hear was a tractor in the nearby field. Someone went over to tell the fellow to turn it off for a bit, and with that noise gone the gravelly swishing of turbines was a relative relief. Then back to the bus and to the wining and dining part of the tour.
Sue has heard about other tours having to deal with that same tractor:
One time at Fenner, on a windless foggy day, he recorded the eerie screeching that many people have described. The sound may be from the whole assembly turning on the tower to unwind the cable inside, which becomes twisted from turning the blades into the wind. It was too foggy to see what was going on way up there.
Another noise he described hearing is like gunshots, an explosive popping as the towers cool in the evening after a sunny day.
On some of his early visits, Ed talked to a Fenner town supervisor, who told him, "The honeymoon is over." Major complaints from residents have been increasing, he said. He also mentioned a violation of the setback agreement of 2,000 feet from any home: The company did not consider it as applying to "mobile" homes.
Also see Pam Foringer's account of her life next to the Fenner wind power complex.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
Sue has heard about other tours having to deal with that same tractor:
"This caught my attention because there are other accounts of visits to other wind farms by developers and they're almost all identical:Ed Sliwinski has visited Fenner and another facility in Weathersfield several times on his own to record the sights and sounds. The lights at night are notably intrusive. They light up the top of the tower and the nacelle (the bus-sized generator housing at the top of the tower) as well as the blades near the hub. That's bad enough, but as the blades turn the reflected light does, too, making it even more distracting and industrial.
"Everyone boards a big fancy bus, the developers make rounds to chit chat with all along the way, they get to the wind farm, pull right up under a turbine, get out, and have to kindly request that the farmer over in the next field turns off his tractor because it's noise is louder than the turbine. Then after about 20 minutes it's time for lunch: back on the bus down to the nearest village where you probably can't even see the turbines anymore. There you listen to locals proclaim their pleasure about having them in their town, and more importantly the mayor or supervisor along with several leasers join you for lunch and verify every single wonderful claim made by the developers. Then they pile back onto the bus and sing rah-rah songs all the way home.
"No kidding -- I've heard the same exact story a number of times from different places. Every once in a while an article will turn up describing the day exactly that way, too."
One time at Fenner, on a windless foggy day, he recorded the eerie screeching that many people have described. The sound may be from the whole assembly turning on the tower to unwind the cable inside, which becomes twisted from turning the blades into the wind. It was too foggy to see what was going on way up there.
Another noise he described hearing is like gunshots, an explosive popping as the towers cool in the evening after a sunny day.
On some of his early visits, Ed talked to a Fenner town supervisor, who told him, "The honeymoon is over." Major complaints from residents have been increasing, he said. He also mentioned a violation of the setback agreement of 2,000 feet from any home: The company did not consider it as applying to "mobile" homes.
Also see Pam Foringer's account of her life next to the Fenner wind power complex.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
Lamar!
The Appalachian range in the mid-Atlantic states is being aggressively targeted for industrial wind development. The Allegheny Ridge alone, in the border areas of West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, is under assault by plans for at least 1,000 giant turbines. U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and John Warner of Virginia have introduced the Environmentally Responsible Wind Power Act of 2005. Here are some excerpts from Alexander's May 13 speech.
Our legislation provides for local authorities to be notified and have a role in the approval of the siting of tens of thousands of massive wind turbines that will be built in America under current policies. It also ensures that the federal government does not subsidize the building of these windmills -- which are usually taller than a football field is long - within 20 miles of a military base or a highly scenic location, such as a national park or offshore. ...categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
One part of our energy debate will be about wind power, which is the subject of our legislation today. This is because several of our colleagues have proposed something called a Renewable Portfolio Standard, or RPS, which would require power companies to produce 10 percent of all their electricity from renewable sources by 2025. These renewable sources are wind, hydro, solar, geothermal and biomass. ...
It is important for our colleagues to know that a Renewable Portfolio Standard or RPS is all about wind. ... Experts agree that the bottom line is that a requirement that electric companies produce 10 percent of their electricity from renewable energy, if it could be achieved at all, would mean that about 70 percent of the increase would come from wind. In other words, we would go from producing about 1 percent of our electricity from wind to 7 or 8 percent.
Testimony before our Energy Committee and most other sources suggest that to produce this much wind energy in the United States could require building more than 100,000 of new, massive wind turbines. We have less than 7,000 such windmills in the U.S. today, with the largest number in Texas and California.
Testimony also indicated that, even without the RPS, if Congress continues its sustained generous subsidy for wind production for the next 10 years, it will guarantee that the U.S. has about 100,000 of these windmills by 2025. According to the Treasury Department, this wind subsidy, if renewed each year for the next five years, would reimburse wind investors for 25 percent of the cost of wind production and cost taxpayers $3.7 billion over those 5 years. General Electric Wind, one of the largest manufacturers of wind turbines, has experienced a 500 percent growth in its wind business this year due to the renewal of the wind production tax credit last year.
I want to make sure that my colleagues know that there are serious questions about how much relying on wind power will raise the cost of electricity, questions about whether there are better ways to spend $3.7 billion in support of clean energy, questions about whether wind even produces the amount of energy that is claimed. My studies suggest that at a time when American needs large amounts of low-cost reliable power, wind produces puny amounts of high-cost unreliable power. We need lower prices; wind power raises prices. We will have an opportunity in our debates and further hearings to examine these questions.
But the legislation we offer today is about a different question: the siting of 100,000 of these massive machines.
The idea of windmills conjures up pleasant images -- of Holland and tulips, of rural America with windmill blades slowly turning, pumping water at the farm well. My grandparents had such a windmill at their well pump. That was back before rural electrification.
But the windmills we are talking about today are not your grandmother’s windmills.
Each one is typically [over] 100 yards tall, two stories taller than the Stature of Liberty, taller than a football field is long.
These windmills are wider than a 747 jumbo jet.
Their rotor blades turn at [well over] 100 miles per hour.
These towers and their flashing red lights can be seen from more than 25 miles away.
Their noise can be heard from up to a half mile away. It is a thumping and swishing sound. It has been described by residents that are unhappy with the noise as sounding like a brick wrapped in a towel tumbling in a clothes drier on a perpetual basis.
These windmills produce very little power since they only operate when the wind blows enough or doesn’t blow too much, so they are usually placed in large wind farms covering huge amounts of land.
As an example, if the Congress ordered electric companies to build 10 percent of their power from renewable energy -- which as we have said, has to be mostly wind -- and if we renew the current subsidy each year, by the year 2025, my state of Tennessee would have at least 1,700 windmills, which would cover land almost equal to two times the size of the city of Knoxville.
If Virginia were to produce 10 percent of its power from wind and the subsidies continue, it would probably need more than 1,700 windmills. These windmills would take up enough land to equal the land mass of three cities the size of Richmond, Virginia.
In North Carolina, to supply 10 percent of electricity from wind if the subsidies continue, it would take up the landmass of the Research Triangle -- the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area.
According to testimony before our committee, in Tennessee and Virginia, these windmills would work best and perhaps only work at all along ridge tops.
So, if present policies are continued, we could expect to see hundreds of football field sized towers with flashing red lights atop the blue ridges of Virginia, above the Shenandoah Valley, along the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, on top of Signal Mountain, and on top of Lookout Mountain and Roan Mountain in Tennessee and down the Tennessee River Gorge, which the city of Chattanooga has just spent 25 years protecting and now calls itself the scenic city. ...
What will this do to our tourism industry? Will 10 million visitors a year who come to enjoy the Great Smokies really want to come see ridge tops decorated with flashing red lights and 100-yard tall windmills?
What happens to electric rates when the federal subsidy disappears?
Who will take down these massive structures if we decide we don’t like them or if they don’t work?
Who is making the money on all this?
Why are some of European countries who pioneered wind farms now slowing down or even stopping their construction in some places?
Clearly there are more sensible ways to provide clean energy than spending $3.7 billion of taxpayers’ money to destroy the American landscape. ...
While we are debating the wisdom of wind policies, these massive turbines are being built across America, 6,700 of them so far, 29 of them in Tennessee. The Tennessee Valley Authority recently announced it had signed a 20-year contract with a group of investors from Chicago to build 18 huge windmills atop a 3,300 foot ridge on Buffalo Mountain in East Tennessee.
So the purpose of our legislation is to give citizens the opportunity to have some say in where these massive structures are located in their communities and to make sure that the Congress does not subsidize the destruction of the American landscape near our national parks or other highly scenic areas or build such tall structures dangerously close to our military bases.
First, the bill ensures that local authorities are notified and have a role in the approval of new windmills to be built in their areas of jurisdiction. This means that at the same time a proposed windmill is filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC would notify the local authority with zoning jurisdiction. ...
Second, our legislation provides protection to highly scenic areas and to military bases. It does so my eliminating tax subsidies for any windmill within 20 miles of a World Heritage Area (which includes many national parks), a military base or offshore.
Under the bill, placement of a windmill within 20 miles of such a site shall also require the completion of an environmental impact statement. Further, any windmill that is to be constructed within 20 miles of a neighboring state’s border may be vetoed by that neighboring state. In other words, if the neighboring state can see it, and don’t want it, they can veto it.
I believe that during our debates we will find there are better ways to produce a low-cost, reliable supply of American energy than by spending $3.7 billion over the next 5 years requiring power companies to produce energy from giant windmills that raise electric rates, only work when the wind blows, and destroy the American landscape. ...
In the United States of America, Mr. President, the wholesale destruction of the American landscape is not an incidental concern. The Great American Outdoors is an essential part of the American character. Italy has its art. Egypt has its pyramids. England has its history. And we have the Great American Outdoors.
While we debate the merits of so much subsidy and reliance on wind power, we should at the same time protect our national parks, our shorelines and other highly scenic areas, and we should give American citizens the opportunity to protect their communities and landscapes before it is too late.
May 12, 2005
Noise level not acceptable
Near Meyersdale in the Allegheny Highlands of southwest Pennsylvania, the wind facility with which Florida Power & Light replaced a forested mountaintop -- without any warning, as they own the land -- has had some troubles.
After Hurricane Ivan washed out roads and overwhelmed silt barriers in nearby towns in 2004, a few people wondered if clearcutting the ridge above their streams had aggravated the effect, since nobody could remember seeing or could find reports of such problems before. From calculations with the loss of absorptive ground cover and trees, they found that runoff from a severe storm would be 1.3 to 3 times what it would be had the ridgetop forest been left untouched.
A Danish worker was killed last fall while making repairs. Apparently nobody thought about locking the blades while he was up in the crane -- when they started turning they knocked the basket (and worker inside) right off. The chairman of the American subsidiary of Vestas (the Danish manufacturer of the turbines) responded, "These things just don't happen." Except they obviously do.
And the noise. A resident whose home is 3,000 feet or a bit closer (over half a mile) to the turbines got an engineer to measure the noise at his house. Over 48 hours, the noise level averaged around 75 dB(A), as described in this letter and shown in this graph (which mistakenly gives the distance as 3,000 meters (3 km) rather than 3,000 feet).
As quoted in the letter, the EPA says that noise above 45 dB(A) disturbs sleep and noise above 70 dB(A) prevents sleep for most people. Every increase of 10 dB is technically a tripling of the noise level and generally perceived as a doubling of loudness. The A scale is weighted for the normal range of audible sound, but many analysts have determined that the C scale should be used for this kind of monitoring, because it includes some of the lower frequencies that are felt more than heard. Lower-frequency sound waves, as well as vibrations through the ground, travel much farther and are more disturbing than noise in the normal range of hearing. Ignoring them, as well as coming to measure sound only at rare moments, has allowed the industry to claim there is no problem even as people who live near the turbines become addicted to sleeping pills.
In Fenner, N.Y., the wind company has bought neighboring homes that people have fled. They have sold them in turn, and the deeds specifically forbid complaints about the turbines. Similarly, leases with landowners to site turbines on their property typically hold the company free from responsibility for a long list of common complaints, even as the same companies deny such problems exist and insist that everyone loves them.
My thanks to Todd Hutzell of Friends of the Allegheny Highlands and Dan Boone, Conservation Chair of the Maryland Sierra Club, for providing much of the information here.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
After Hurricane Ivan washed out roads and overwhelmed silt barriers in nearby towns in 2004, a few people wondered if clearcutting the ridge above their streams had aggravated the effect, since nobody could remember seeing or could find reports of such problems before. From calculations with the loss of absorptive ground cover and trees, they found that runoff from a severe storm would be 1.3 to 3 times what it would be had the ridgetop forest been left untouched.
A Danish worker was killed last fall while making repairs. Apparently nobody thought about locking the blades while he was up in the crane -- when they started turning they knocked the basket (and worker inside) right off. The chairman of the American subsidiary of Vestas (the Danish manufacturer of the turbines) responded, "These things just don't happen." Except they obviously do.
And the noise. A resident whose home is 3,000 feet or a bit closer (over half a mile) to the turbines got an engineer to measure the noise at his house. Over 48 hours, the noise level averaged around 75 dB(A), as described in this letter and shown in this graph (which mistakenly gives the distance as 3,000 meters (3 km) rather than 3,000 feet).
As quoted in the letter, the EPA says that noise above 45 dB(A) disturbs sleep and noise above 70 dB(A) prevents sleep for most people. Every increase of 10 dB is technically a tripling of the noise level and generally perceived as a doubling of loudness. The A scale is weighted for the normal range of audible sound, but many analysts have determined that the C scale should be used for this kind of monitoring, because it includes some of the lower frequencies that are felt more than heard. Lower-frequency sound waves, as well as vibrations through the ground, travel much farther and are more disturbing than noise in the normal range of hearing. Ignoring them, as well as coming to measure sound only at rare moments, has allowed the industry to claim there is no problem even as people who live near the turbines become addicted to sleeping pills.
In Fenner, N.Y., the wind company has bought neighboring homes that people have fled. They have sold them in turn, and the deeds specifically forbid complaints about the turbines. Similarly, leases with landowners to site turbines on their property typically hold the company free from responsibility for a long list of common complaints, even as the same companies deny such problems exist and insist that everyone loves them.
My thanks to Todd Hutzell of Friends of the Allegheny Highlands and Dan Boone, Conservation Chair of the Maryland Sierra Club, for providing much of the information here.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
"With us or against us"
An article in the New York Daily News Saturday quoted Richard Kessel, chairman of the Long Island Power Authority, regarding his desire to install giant wind turbines off Jones Beach: "Either you're with us or you're with OPEC."
Phillippe Cousteau, president of EarthEcho International, was right behind him.
This rhetorical formula is of course familiar from George W. Bush's simple-minded belligerence (which selectivity translates more to "Either you will privatize your national resources or you're with the terrorists"). Like that call to arms, Kessel's and Cousteau's call for wind power also is based on lies.
Although such grandstanding denies the possibility of dissent, let me just point out that only 2.3% of the oil used in the U.S. is for generating electricity. In fact we export three times that amount. (See the energy flow diagram at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.)
It's a bad sign when environmentalists sound like warmongers and show as little regard for the facts.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism
Phillippe Cousteau, president of EarthEcho International, was right behind him.
This rhetorical formula is of course familiar from George W. Bush's simple-minded belligerence (which selectivity translates more to "Either you will privatize your national resources or you're with the terrorists"). Like that call to arms, Kessel's and Cousteau's call for wind power also is based on lies.
Although such grandstanding denies the possibility of dissent, let me just point out that only 2.3% of the oil used in the U.S. is for generating electricity. In fact we export three times that amount. (See the energy flow diagram at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.)
It's a bad sign when environmentalists sound like warmongers and show as little regard for the facts.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism
Environmentalists hoisted with their own petard
Press and Journal (Aberdeen, Scotland), May 4, 2005:
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism
Scottish ministers are planning to give themselves unprecedented powers to push through controversial developments such as windfarm projects and the Aberdeen bypass, according to leaked documents.This kind of centralized planning to ignore public concerns is precisely what Friends of the Earth supports for putting hundreds of industrial wind power facilities throughout Scotland. Corporatized environmentalist groups worldwide argue urgency and "strategic significance" to ram the wind energy boondoggle into rural and wild areas despite widespread opposition. As opposition grows as more such facilities are built and more people see what they are, so does the call for national policies to force their continued building. When environmentalists thus sound like industrialists and land developers, they can hardly be surprised when their new friends apply such power-mad reasoning to other pet projects as well.
Environmental campaigners branded the move a "naked power grab" and claimed it would make it virtually impossible to object to a slew of controversial developments.
Under a new "streamlined" planning process, once ministers had declared a project as being of "national strategic significance" it would not be possible to challenge it on the basis of need.
Instead, planning inquiries would only be able to look at detail and location.
Environmentalists believe if projects such as nuclear power stations and associated nuclear dumps or motorways have been designated as part of the national planning framework, it would be impossible to stop them, regardless of public opposition. ...
Duncan McLaren, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said, "This is an unprecedented power grab which will centralise planning, reduce public involvement and allow the imposition of unpopular, socially unjust and environmentally unsustainable projects."
Business leaders back the executive proposals.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism
May 10, 2005
Wind turbine tower snaps in Oklahoma
After a week of operation, one of the 71 GE 1.5-MW wind turbines in FPL Energy's Weatherford, Okla., wind power facility snapped apart last Friday, May 6. The towers are assembled from 3 sections, and everything above the bottom section is now on the ground in bits. The wind speed at the time was variously reported to have been 12-20 mph.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
May 9, 2005
Industrial Wind Warriors Unite!
Organize! I just spent the weekend with industrial wind opponents from around the country. We're getting together to better protect the lives of wildlife and people from the useless ravaging of our environment that industrial wind is all about.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism
May 6, 2005
"Violating ridges"
[letter published in Burlington Free Press, May 5, 2005]
Barbara Grimes, general manager of Burlington Electric Department (Free Press, April 18), insists that there will not be a string of giant turbines from one end of the state to the other. But some proponents have said we could get 50 percent of our electricity from the wind, which would require precisely the endless string of towers that Grimes dismisses as "scare tactic."
Searsburg's 11 turbines, with a capacity equivalent to the 4 "foot-in-the-door" turbines proposed for East Haven, produce power equal to 0.2 percent of Vermont's electricity use, and it is less every year. To get to 50 percent would therefore require at least 1,000 giant new turbine assemblies, costing about $2 million each along with clearing and blasting of mountain tops and construction of new roads, substations, and high-voltage transmission lines.
And because wind-based production doesn't coincide with demand, they wouldn't even provide much electricity that we would actually use (e.g., western Denmark had to dump 84 percent of its wind production in 2003).
So, with little persuasive argument, she evokes "Vermont" values and the working landscape, as if that is not a feature everywhere that humans dwell. New Jersey has a working landscape. Vermonters old and new have worked for 100 years to restore and preserve the state's wild mountain ridges. The desire to violate them with collections of 330-foot-high steel and composite turbines -- for insignificant benefit except profits for a few -- is not what most people, wherever they come from, usually think of as "values."
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
Barbara Grimes, general manager of Burlington Electric Department (Free Press, April 18), insists that there will not be a string of giant turbines from one end of the state to the other. But some proponents have said we could get 50 percent of our electricity from the wind, which would require precisely the endless string of towers that Grimes dismisses as "scare tactic."
Searsburg's 11 turbines, with a capacity equivalent to the 4 "foot-in-the-door" turbines proposed for East Haven, produce power equal to 0.2 percent of Vermont's electricity use, and it is less every year. To get to 50 percent would therefore require at least 1,000 giant new turbine assemblies, costing about $2 million each along with clearing and blasting of mountain tops and construction of new roads, substations, and high-voltage transmission lines.
And because wind-based production doesn't coincide with demand, they wouldn't even provide much electricity that we would actually use (e.g., western Denmark had to dump 84 percent of its wind production in 2003).
So, with little persuasive argument, she evokes "Vermont" values and the working landscape, as if that is not a feature everywhere that humans dwell. New Jersey has a working landscape. Vermonters old and new have worked for 100 years to restore and preserve the state's wild mountain ridges. The desire to violate them with collections of 330-foot-high steel and composite turbines -- for insignificant benefit except profits for a few -- is not what most people, wherever they come from, usually think of as "values."
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
May 1, 2005
Meat in style
The New York Times published their Spring "Style" Magazine today, featuring plenty of animal corpses as de rigueur entertainment fare. Amanda Hesser goes to market to buy a dead chicken, as "young chickens are at their best this time of year." She says, "It is time to stop being squeamish," that bringing the "cycle of life" (meaning raising animals to kill them for your enjoyment) out of the shadows is "healthier" and a challenge to the industry. That's like saying it was better when the Nazis shot people individually rather than killing them en masse in gas chambers. It's still an industry of death. It's also rather creepy that the dead chicken in one of the photos for Hesser's piece is tied with the same fabric adorning the drugged-looking (human, female) model. Sex, food, death, beautiful victim. Spring chickens trussed up to fulfill the human appetite.
And Todd Purdum writes about Joel Salatin, an inspiring organic farmer in Virginia. He describes the farm as a "peaceable kingdom." But those animals, allowed to do what is natural to them, are raised for a very unnatural end, when Purdum must distance the reader from fostering the lives of cows, pigs, and chickens to write about "raising beef, pork and poultry." He quotes mid-20th-century novelist and farmer Louis Bromfield to describe Salatin as "the happiest of men, for he inhabits a world that is full of wonder and excitement over which he rules as a small god." This evil little god "harvests" over 10,000 chickens, 100 cows, 250 pigs, 800 turkeys, and 600 rabbits every year. What wonder and excitement must he see in so much slaughter?
The Salatins sell much of their "inventory" directly from a walk-in freezer on the farm, in which Purdum spots a "perfect six-pound chicken" among other parts and pieces of the various animals once tended "with such care." In what moral universe is an animal that has been deliberately killed in its prime "perfect"? Is an animal's worth, its "perfection," determined only by someone's desire to eat it? Only then -- killed and presented as "food," is its value fulfilled?
Again, the "cycle of life" is evoked to suppress the "occasional pang when it comes time to kill an especially kindly old cow." Sorry, bucko -- you are not God. Maybe your imagined god has a bottomless hunger for willfully spilled blood. But betrayal of the love and trust nurtured in these animals, cutting short the joyful lives you have given them, is not only a violent mockery of the cycle of life but also reveals all that "care" as a cruel charade.
categories: animal rights, vegetarianism, ethics
April 30, 2005
"The atheist"
An interview in Salon with Richard Dawkins:
'Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion. Both have implacable faith that they are right and the other is evil. Each believes that when he dies he is going to heaven. Each believes that if he could kill the other, his path to paradise in the next world would be even swifter. The delusional "next world" is welcome to both of them. This world would be a much better place without either of them.'
'Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion. Both have implacable faith that they are right and the other is evil. Each believes that when he dies he is going to heaven. Each believes that if he could kill the other, his path to paradise in the next world would be even swifter. The delusional "next world" is welcome to both of them. This world would be a much better place without either of them.'
"Cornell halts planning for wind project"
'ITHACA -- Cornell University decided not to proceed with its wind energy project on Mount Pleasant after more than four months of preparing to study the feasibility of eight 400-foot wind turbines. ...
'"They thought things over carefully, listened to community concerns and decided in favor of environmental policies and being a good neighbor."'
'"They thought things over carefully, listened to community concerns and decided in favor of environmental policies and being a good neighbor."'
April 27, 2005
No-impact construction?
Here is a picture from the construction of a relatively small industrial wind turbine in Moorhead, Minn., a 750-KW NEG Micon. The tower is 180 feet high, and each blade extends another 83 feet. Newer turbines are at least 1.5 MW, around 330 feet high total, and they are getting bigger (see "Giants of the Amazon"). Nonetheless, this 750-KW model required a foundation hole 44.5 × 44.5 × 10 feet deep filled with 24 tons of steel rebar and 300 cubic yards of concrete. A new road had to be built that was able to carry not only the usual heavy equipment and dumptrucks but especially the 500-ton crane used to assemble the turbine. Whenever anyone says they can just be removed when something better comes along, you can see that rolling your eyeballs and scoffing is the mildest appropriate response. In fact, when a decommissioning agreement is required, the company generally agrees only to remove the top few feet of cement from the platform.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
"No EISs for Vic wind farms"
"The Victorian Planning Minister has decided that an environmental impacts statement (EIS) will not be needed for proposed wind farms near Warrnambool at Drysdale [30-40 2-3 MW turbines] and Woolsthorpe [25-30 2-3 MW turbines] in the state's south-west."
Somehow, industrialists have convinced planners that these 400-feet-high power plants -- along with their roads, power lines, and substations -- are by definition environmentally friendly and therefore require no such scrutiny as they are constructed in relatively (or even totally) undeveloped areas.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environmentalism
Somehow, industrialists have convinced planners that these 400-feet-high power plants -- along with their roads, power lines, and substations -- are by definition environmentally friendly and therefore require no such scrutiny as they are constructed in relatively (or even totally) undeveloped areas.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environmentalism
April 26, 2005
"An ugly face of ecology"
George Monbiot has written an incisive critique of industrial wind power and its "green" supporters. It is in the Guardian (click the title of this post) as well as on his own site, where it includes notes.
Monbiot argues from the need to reduce carbon emissions, pointing out that wind turbines currently provide only 0.32% of the U.K.'s electricity. That represents the output from 888.8 MW of wind power, according to the British Wind Energy Association. The addition of the 67.5-MW Whinash Wind Farm would increase that to 0.34%. To get to the target of 10% would require the addition of 26,576 MW after Whinash (using the less-rounded figures from Monbiot's notes). No wonder capital is so excited. No wonder sensible people resist.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environmentalism
The people fighting the new wind farm in Cumbria have cheated and exaggerated. They appear to possess little understanding of the dangers of global warming. They are supported by an unsavoury coalition of nuclear-power lobbyists and climate-change deniers. But it would still be wrong to dismiss them. ...Monbiot is right to express discomfort with the pro-nuclear and climate-change-denying tendencies of many wind energy opponents. Yet ultimately they are defending the landscape against needless industrialization. Many opponents are indeed conservationists and defenders of wildlife without the baggage Monbiot decries. Even Greenpeace, adamantly pro-wind, has balked at the extent of the proposed facilities on the island of Lewis, as has almost every wildlife and natural heritage group. Many opponents recognize the problem exactly as Monbiot describes it and agree with his assessment of the futility of building ever more giant wind farms. How he concludes from this forthright analysis that industrial wind facilities are "necessary" is a mystery.
Wind farms, while necessary, are a classic example of what environmentalists call an "end-of-the-pipe solution". Instead of tackling the problem - our massive demand for energy - at source, they provide less damaging means of accommodating it. Or part of it. The Whinash project, by replacing energy generation from power stations burning fossil fuel, will reduce carbon dioxide emission by 178,000 tonnes a year. This is impressive, until you discover that a single jumbo jet, flying from London to Miami and back every day, releases the climate-change equivalent of 520,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. One daily connection between Britain and Florida costs three giant wind farms.
Alternative technology permits us to imagine that we can build our way out of trouble. By responding to one form of overdevelopment with another, we can, we believe, continue to expand our total energy demands without destroying the planetary systems required to sustain human life. This might, for a while, be true. But it would soon require the use of the entire land surface of the UK. ...
I believe the Whinash wind farm should be built. But I also believe that those who defend it should be a good deal more sensitive towards local objectors. Why? Because in any other circumstances they would find themselves fighting on the same side.
Monbiot argues from the need to reduce carbon emissions, pointing out that wind turbines currently provide only 0.32% of the U.K.'s electricity. That represents the output from 888.8 MW of wind power, according to the British Wind Energy Association. The addition of the 67.5-MW Whinash Wind Farm would increase that to 0.34%. To get to the target of 10% would require the addition of 26,576 MW after Whinash (using the less-rounded figures from Monbiot's notes). No wonder capital is so excited. No wonder sensible people resist.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environmentalism
April 25, 2005
Voices from Chernobyl
As so many in the U.K. and elsewhere are clamoring for nuclear power, the Guardian has published excerpts from Voices from Chernobyl, by Svetlana Alexievich (click on the title of this post). The stories are truly haunting. Even when working normally, a nuclear reactor is contaminating the air and water and producing an unresolvable waste problem. People point to the example of France, where 80% of their electricity is produced -- apparently safely -- by nuclear fission. Yet the extremely dangerous waste has yet to be dealt with, as it continues to accumulate at each of the 58 reactors. The ultimate plan is simply to bury it, as the Chernobyl "liquidators" did. Where, of course, is a big problem. And as France's nuclear plants age, many are questioning the huge expense of just maintaining them, let alone upgrading or building more.
categories: environment, environmentalism, nuclear energy, nuclear power
categories: environment, environmentalism, nuclear energy, nuclear power
Giants of the Amazon
Last night's Nature program featured "the giant of the Amazon," the Brazil nut tree, which can live for hundreds of years and reach a height of 160 feet. That's less than half the height of most modern wind turbine assemblies. And because even those giant wind turbines don't appear to have any positive effect on electricity use, manufacturers are making them even bigger. GE has recently come out with its "2x" series, ranging from 367 to 548 feet high, the blades chopping through 1.4 to 1.7 acres of air. These are the models planned for Gore Mountain in the Adirondacks and which environmentalists like Bill McKibben think would be a fine addition to the park's wilderness.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environmentalism
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environmentalism
April 24, 2005
"Industrial wind power is more than view issue"
To the editor, Albany (N.Y.) Times Union (published April 28, 2005):
Aesthetics is indeed an important issue, as Fred LeBrun wrote in his balanced assessment of the wind farm debate in the Adirondacks ("Wind farm plan splits activists," April 24). Opposition to industrial wind power, however, is about more than just the view.
Just as advocates shape their aesthetics by considering the project's benefits, so do opponents. When supporters of the Gore Mountain and other projects argue the necessity of reducing emissions of carbon and toxins, opponents point out that giant wind facilities do not in fact reduce such emissions.
Industrial wind turbines are all the more ugly because they are practically useless: an expensive intrusive boondoggle.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
Aesthetics is indeed an important issue, as Fred LeBrun wrote in his balanced assessment of the wind farm debate in the Adirondacks ("Wind farm plan splits activists," April 24). Opposition to industrial wind power, however, is about more than just the view.
Just as advocates shape their aesthetics by considering the project's benefits, so do opponents. When supporters of the Gore Mountain and other projects argue the necessity of reducing emissions of carbon and toxins, opponents point out that giant wind facilities do not in fact reduce such emissions.
Industrial wind turbines are all the more ugly because they are practically useless: an expensive intrusive boondoggle.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
Social value
Hudson River Sloop Clearwater executive director Andrew Mele is quoted by the Plattsburgh (N.Y.) Press-Republican in support not of restoring a mining property in the Adirondack State Park to its natural state but of erecting an industrial wind power facility on it: "We need to shift our sense of aesthetics to include the social value these wind turbines provide. They are tall and graceful and can be seen as beautiful."
Isn't that exactly what every industrialist claims for his factory? Isn't that exactly what the oil companies claim as they salivate to dig up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? Sure, they say, there's a certain cost, but the claim of a "greater good" allows scoffing at any critical concern as "quaint," allows justifying any violation of aesthetics, morality, or just plain reason as "worth it." From unprovoked war in Iraq to power plants in wilderness areas, these are the social values so many self-styled environmentalists now promote.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
Isn't that exactly what every industrialist claims for his factory? Isn't that exactly what the oil companies claim as they salivate to dig up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? Sure, they say, there's a certain cost, but the claim of a "greater good" allows scoffing at any critical concern as "quaint," allows justifying any violation of aesthetics, morality, or just plain reason as "worth it." From unprovoked war in Iraq to power plants in wilderness areas, these are the social values so many self-styled environmentalists now promote.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
A note on wind power facility siting
The Barton (Vt.) Chronicle pinpoints the problem that industrial wind developers have in siting their plans. Because the machines are so big, noisy, and dangerous, they can't be erected where a lot of people live. So they are proposed in relatively remote and undeveloped areas -- precisely where such big, noisy, intrusive machines do not belong. The editorial also notes that once a relatively small "demonstration" project is installed, the logic for building more will be set: What was sought to protect will no longer exist. The salesman's foot is in the door.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
April 23, 2005
Environmentalists don't support industrial wind "farms"
The Berkshire Eagle ends an article about the federal energy bill and the nonsolution of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge with a quote from Amherst representative John Olver:
A comment on a blog entry by LA Weekly columnist Judith Lewis about the proposed Pine Tree wind facility outside of Los Angeles -- in which she laments the environmental issues but compares it to the alternative, a giant new coal-fired plant in Nevada -- might help explain to Olver why environment-minded people do not support industrial wind power:
Olver, who said global warming "is the most critical environmental issue of the 21st century," is worried that his constituents might agree with Michaels [of the Cato Institute, who argues that we are not running out of fossil fuel]. He seemed perplexed by Massachusetts residents' unwillingness to support proposed wind farms, including one in remote [sic] Fitchburg [a city of 40,000 people].Even if there were still centuries of fossil fuel left, we obviously can't keep digging it up and burning it like there's no tomorrow. Nuclear power, too, has very serious problems of digging, transport, pollution, and waste. Unfortunately, industrial wind power won't get us away from either of these power sources.
"For the environmentally conscious people in Massachusetts, the level of opposition to this is really quite startling," he said.
A comment on a blog entry by LA Weekly columnist Judith Lewis about the proposed Pine Tree wind facility outside of Los Angeles -- in which she laments the environmental issues but compares it to the alternative, a giant new coal-fired plant in Nevada -- might help explain to Olver why environment-minded people do not support industrial wind power:
The new coal plant ("Granite Fox") that Sempra wants to build in Gerlach is rated at 1,450 MW. It would be great to be make it (and the many more proposed new plants) unnecessary -- through conservation at the user end and increased efficiency at the existing producer end. Or, if we just want to try continuing on as we are, we could build wind turbines instead. At a 20% capacity factor for wind turbines in California, 7,250 MW would be required to equal the annual average output of the Gerlach plant. That's 500 MW more than is currently installed in the entire U.S. Two-thirds of the time, however, that massive wind plant (340-680 square miles) would be producing less than its average output, so you'd still need substantial frequent back-up from a more reliable source. And frequently ramping up and down those other plants diminishes their efficiency, increasing their pollution.categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
In short, it is unlikely that enough industrial turbines could be built to have a significant impact, and even then they wouldn't have a significant impact. Except in the negative.
April 20, 2005
Thoughts on theocracy
One realized upon watching the "Frontline" report about a Saudi princess executed for adultery how a privileged elite has fostered a harsh absolutist religion in their country to secure their power. They of course remain above the law, not bound by the strictures that keep everyone else enslaved. (The princess dared the rulers to kill one of their own, which they did, as keeping the illusion of absolute law and the corresponding righteousness of their power was more important than allowing a such a publicized unrepentant exception.)
One thought about the close ties between the Bush and Saud families, and the cynical and terrible use of religion that keeps George W in power, enriching his pals and impoverishing the nation (spiritually as well as materially). His is truly a medieval vision of the worst sort. It even includes crusades to gain control of the middle east from the forces of evil, mirrored at home in the battles against the armies of sin. Even the true believers must accept their diminishing fortune, even their death, as their painful duty in the great cause.
What is the endless reverential coverage of the death and funeral of John Paul II and the election of Benedict XVI in the Vatican City but an insistence that the story is not just relevant but important? This medieval anachronism is suddenly central to all our lives, legitimizing the "moral" concerns of our government that mask a blatant theocratic coup. They would have us so cowed to believe that God blesses the President and that therefore his actions need not be judged objectively, if at all. The Pope is the model, the Holy Roman Emperor that Adolf Hitler sought to resurrect in himself. He is infallible. Dissent is treason.
Normal human behavior is sinful, because individual thought is a crime, a threat to the sheiks who cling so jealously to their ill-got gains. They demand our submission. There is only one God: Its name is Power.
The great are great only because we are on our knees. --Max Stirner
categories: religion, theocracy, ethics, anarchism
One thought about the close ties between the Bush and Saud families, and the cynical and terrible use of religion that keeps George W in power, enriching his pals and impoverishing the nation (spiritually as well as materially). His is truly a medieval vision of the worst sort. It even includes crusades to gain control of the middle east from the forces of evil, mirrored at home in the battles against the armies of sin. Even the true believers must accept their diminishing fortune, even their death, as their painful duty in the great cause.
What is the endless reverential coverage of the death and funeral of John Paul II and the election of Benedict XVI in the Vatican City but an insistence that the story is not just relevant but important? This medieval anachronism is suddenly central to all our lives, legitimizing the "moral" concerns of our government that mask a blatant theocratic coup. They would have us so cowed to believe that God blesses the President and that therefore his actions need not be judged objectively, if at all. The Pope is the model, the Holy Roman Emperor that Adolf Hitler sought to resurrect in himself. He is infallible. Dissent is treason.
Normal human behavior is sinful, because individual thought is a crime, a threat to the sheiks who cling so jealously to their ill-got gains. They demand our submission. There is only one God: Its name is Power.
The great are great only because we are on our knees. --Max Stirner
categories: religion, theocracy, ethics, anarchism
April 18, 2005
Wind turbines no help to Vermonters
Today's Burlington (Vt.) Free Press includes an opinion piece by Barbara Grimes, general manager of Burlington Electric Dept.
(Grimes mocks the mention of Halliburton as an "interesting little scare tactic" -- it must have touched a nerve. The fact is. Halliburton's subsidiary KBR, the division which is also profiteering shamelessly in Iraq, is "in the vanguard of the development of offshore wind power in the UK" (according to their web site), working in close partnership with the above-mentioned Vestas.)
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
As it stands now, Vermont imports electricity worth about $200 million each year. These are hard-earned Vermont dollars that go out of the state's economy and benefit wealthy people far away.Turbine manufacturer GE is not local and Vestas is in Denmark, Enxco (Searsburg expansion, Readsboro, Lowell) is based in France, UPC (Hardscrabble in Sheffield) in Italy, Endless Energy (Equinox in Manchester) is from Maine, and the local companies behind industrial wind development are already in the power business, already raking in plenty of our electricity dollars. Their desire for more is not a compelling argument.
(Grimes mocks the mention of Halliburton as an "interesting little scare tactic" -- it must have touched a nerve. The fact is. Halliburton's subsidiary KBR, the division which is also profiteering shamelessly in Iraq, is "in the vanguard of the development of offshore wind power in the UK" (according to their web site), working in close partnership with the above-mentioned Vestas.)
Wind turbines properly placed in ideal wind spots so that we can produce our own energy in an environmentally and economically sound manner while providing good jobs for Vermonters is about as close to Vermont values as anything I can imagine. We believe in appropriately sited wind generation, which does not mean a continuous row from one end of the state to the other. That's just another ridiculous scare tactic designed to frighten the general public.David Blittersdorf of anemometer company NRG wants to see 50% of the state's electricity generated by wind. That would require precisely the endless string of towers that Grimes dismisses as "scare tactic." Even VPIRG's goal of 20% would require hundreds of turbines (see below). It would also require violating a lot of heretofore protected land. The facts and goals of the industry itself are quite enough to scare the public.
The reality is Vermont already has wind energy and the view is not ruined and tourism hasn't suffered. I really wish people who say they are opposed to any and all wind turbines in the mountains would go and take a look at the wind farm at Searsburg, owned and operated by Green Mountain Power. Though the new ones would be taller, people would still get a sense of how turbines really do fit into the landscape. The wind power from Searsburg enters the grid and provides electricity for Vermonters in a clean and renewable manner.Searsburg's towers are indeed much smaller. Significantly, they don't require safety lighting. Each tower in new developments is a couple stories higher than the whole assembly of one of Searsburg's machines. The blades reach 1 2/3 higher and chop through an acre of air -- more than 3 times those of Searsburg and correspondingly more noisy. Searsburg's 11 turbines, with a capacity equivalent to the 4 turbines proposed for East Haven, produce power equal to 0.2% of Vermont's electricity use, and it is less every year. To get to 20% would therefore require at least 400 giant new turbine assemblies; 50% would require 1,000 of them, costing about $2 million each and requiring new roads, substations, and high-voltage transmission lines. This is hardly a sustainable solution. It certainly does not protect the environment (each foundation, for example, would likely have to be blasted into the mountain rock and then requires many tons of concrete and steel). And because wind-based production doesn't coincide with demand, it wouldn't even provide much electricity that we would actually use (e.g., western Denmark had to dump 84% of its wind production in 2003).
Wind energy cuts our need of having to import power from outside the state. It cuts our reliance on others, and clearly puts the reliance back on ourselves, while supporting our economy and protecting our environment. If this doesn't reflect Vermont values, I'm not sure what does.So, with little more argument than that she wants to see more wind turbines built, she closes with the old values bullying. She had laid the groundwork earlier by mentioning she's a "native" Vermonter, implying that all "real" Vermonters think exactly as she does and everyone else ought to shut the hell up. She evokes the "working landscape" unique to Vermont, though it is a feature of all places where humans dwell. New Jersey has a working landscape. What is unique to Vermont are the wild mountain tops for which Vermonters old and new have worked for a hundred years to restore and preserve. The desire to violate that with not manured hay fields but collections of 330-foot-high steel and composite wind turbines -- for very little benefit other than profits for a few -- reveals an appalling set of values, wherever they come from.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
April 16, 2005
The hole gets bigger
One problem with ever-larger industrial wind turbines is the size of the foundation they require. In Bureau County, Illinois, 19 of the 33 turbines of the Crescent Ridge wind power facility near Tiskilwa have started to lean since the first was noticed last December. The holes dug for the foundations were already 30 feet deep, filled mostly with sand and topped with 6 feet of concrete and steel. Now they're injecting 16 5-foot-diameter columns of soil and grout into the hole to interlock under each existing concrete slab. The article (linked in the title of this post) mentions that in the west dynamite is used to blast out the holes for wind towers, as John Zimmerman, Enxco representative, has said would be required on the mountain ridges of the northeast U.S. as well. Many advocates claim that when wind turbines are no longer needed (or proved to be useless) they can be removed to leave the sites exactly as they were (ignoring the new or widened and strengthened roads, the clearcutting of forest, and new substations and transmission lines). That is obviously not so.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
April 14, 2005
Tit bits
"Wind Energy an Important Contributor to Kyoto Plan" (news release):
"Wind turbine on Tower Hill would be a beacon of hope" (letter):
"Windmill Deemed Not Tall Enough" (news item):
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
"The installation of a minimum of 4,000 megawatts (MW) of wind energyThat's about 4 billion dollars to (in theory only) cover 15% of only the increase in electricity use. In the U.S. that increase is generally assumed to be 2% a year, so assuming a similar rate in Canada electricity demand in 2010 would be 122% of what it was in 2000. 15% of that 22% increase is 3.3%. And electricity is only a fraction of total energy use, so industrial wind's contribution to the Kyoto plan is even further diminished. Even that very little something (based on the CanWEA's rosy assumptions of turbine performance) would require 3,000 turbines, each over 300 feet high, covering a total of 200-300 or more square miles. Besides the 4 billion dollars US for their construction, they would also require very expensive new high-voltage transmission lines. It seems obvious that conservation and efficiency would be a much more effective route. Of course, there's no profit for the energy companies in actually cutting back.
capacity in Canada over the next five years would produce enough electricity
to meet at least 15% of the projected increase in Canada's electricity demand
for the entire period between 2000 and 2010", says Robert Hornung, Canadian
Wind Energy Association (CanWEA) President.
"Wind turbine on Tower Hill would be a beacon of hope" (letter):
Not only will the wind turbine become a major tourist attraction, but because of its proximity to our new hospital, it can also act as backup emergency power.It should just be noted here that industrial wind turbines can not work without power from the grid. In a blackout, they are dead, too.
It can also act as emergency power for old-age homes and seniors' apartments in the case of blackouts, supplying power for elevators and respirators.
"Windmill Deemed Not Tall Enough" (news item):
[John Zimmerman, northeast U.S. Enxco representative,] said it will take time to perfect windmill technology ...The average residential customer in Vermont uses about 7,500 KW-h/year, so that's an awfully small house he's talking about: a third of the average. How many ever-larger turbines will industrialize ever more landscapes while the kinks of the technology (such as its dismal output) are still getting worked out?
So far, Rapoza said, the windmill has produced a total of about 3,800 kilowatt hours [over 18 months], and makes enough electricity to power a small house.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
Another wind turbine couldn't take it
Up in the Lammermuirs of Scotland, a blade on one of the 2.5-MW wind turbines in the Crystal Rig wind power facility "flew apart" last Thursday morning. The news is just now being reported (click the title of this post), and the BBC story that appeared today has already been removed from their web site (update: it has returned). The damaged turbine assembly was installed only 8 months ago. These giant propellers don't seem to be able to withstand much wind.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
"The beauty of wind farms"
To the editor, New Scientist:
David Suzuki ("The beauty of wind farms," Opinion, 16 April) reminds us of the importance of solving the problem of global warming. But the issue at hand was the charge that industrial wind farms make little significant difference to carbon emissions, which he doesn't even try to refute. Further, his illustration that beauty is in the eye of the beholder -- that factory smokestacks once filled people with pride -- underscores the lack of objective evidence in favor of "windmills."
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
David Suzuki ("The beauty of wind farms," Opinion, 16 April) reminds us of the importance of solving the problem of global warming. But the issue at hand was the charge that industrial wind farms make little significant difference to carbon emissions, which he doesn't even try to refute. Further, his illustration that beauty is in the eye of the beholder -- that factory smokestacks once filled people with pride -- underscores the lack of objective evidence in favor of "windmills."
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
April 11, 2005
Wind hearings end
Excerpt from today's Burlington (Vt.) Free Press editorial, concerning the proposed East Haven Windfarm:
When Champion Paper Co. sold its 132,000-acre holdings in the Northeast Kingdom, the land was split into three parcels: 22,000 acres on West Mountain went to the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources; 84,000 acres with conservation easements went to the Essex Timber Co.; and 26,000 acres went to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Vermont Legislature appropriated $4.5 million for the project in 1999 with a matching grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation. The federal government invested another $6.5 million in the lands.categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, conservation
"This area is truly exceptional," Decker wrote in his pre-filed testimony. "There are few places like it, if any, in Vermont or the Northeast. ... And it did not happen by chance. The so-called Champion Lands deal was a culmination of years of hard work, negotiation, collaboration and expense. ... The mountain peaks are the fundamental cornerstone to the remote nature and rugged character."
East Haven Windfarm's proposed "demonstration project," on an island of private property in the middle of the Champion Lands, would generate about 0.3 percent [more likely 0.2%] of the state's annual electricity needs. This small amount of power does not justify putting 30-story-tall, strobe-lighted turbines right in the middle of land that the state explicitly protected as wilderness. Industrial wind turbines do not fit into the vision for these conserved lands nor could they possibly be considered "very little" development.
April 7, 2005
Which side are you on?
M. David Stirling, in the Washington Times today, criticizes opponents of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). In contrast, he praises Dear Leader's "common-sense approach and balancing of environmental concerns with real human needs." He dismisses environmental concerns, describing how environmentally friendly oil drilling has become, and reminds us that we need the energy and it will create jobs and local revenue.
Critics of course also point out that it will do little to affect our energy picture. The U.S. currently consumes about 20 million barrels of oil every day, and according to the U.S. Geological Survey any ANWR production would peak at about 1 million barrels/day in 2025, or 5% of today's consumption. It will obviously not replace any current or future sources, and more importantly it is not enough to risk cutting back contracts for imports. We will still be buying as much foreign oil as before. (In fact, about 7% of the oil used by the U.S. is currently exported.) It is definitely not worth violating a nominally protected wilderness area.
These arguments and reaction are not surprising, however. I write because Stirling sounds just like those who support industrial wind power: "We need to construct this expensive tiny source of power on previously undeveloped sites, even in protected wilderness areas, because -- well, anyway it creates jobs and local revenue." Stirling should be comforted that even environmentalists are pro-industrial capitalists now.
Related to this mix-up is recent news about Richard Pombo, U.S. Representative from California and promoter of industrial wind power. The Los Angeles Times found out that his parents own a good part of the land on which the Altamont wind power fiasco is situated. Pombo has earlier proposed (as noted here) that federal environmental review not be required for "alternative" energy projects. The L.A. Times now reports that he also requested the Department of the Interior directly to suspend Fish & Wildlife guidelines for the Altamont sites. His parents received $125,000 in 2001 for the use of their land by wind energy companies.
Altamont is an embarrassing showcase for the industry because large numbers of raptors have been killed there. A lawsuit is going forward on behalf of the birds. A current compromise (noted here) proposal is to shut the wind turbines down for the portion of the year when a majority of the deaths occur. That might cut Pombo's parents' wind income by a third. Pombo denies any interest in his parent's affairs and even denies knowledge of his signed letter to Interior secretary Gale Norton.
The anti-environment Pombo echos another argument from advocates for industrial wind: "We don't need environmental regulations -- by definition we're environmentally friendly."
It's all business. The industrial wind crowd is no better than the arctic drilling crowd.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment
Critics of course also point out that it will do little to affect our energy picture. The U.S. currently consumes about 20 million barrels of oil every day, and according to the U.S. Geological Survey any ANWR production would peak at about 1 million barrels/day in 2025, or 5% of today's consumption. It will obviously not replace any current or future sources, and more importantly it is not enough to risk cutting back contracts for imports. We will still be buying as much foreign oil as before. (In fact, about 7% of the oil used by the U.S. is currently exported.) It is definitely not worth violating a nominally protected wilderness area.
These arguments and reaction are not surprising, however. I write because Stirling sounds just like those who support industrial wind power: "We need to construct this expensive tiny source of power on previously undeveloped sites, even in protected wilderness areas, because -- well, anyway it creates jobs and local revenue." Stirling should be comforted that even environmentalists are pro-industrial capitalists now.
Related to this mix-up is recent news about Richard Pombo, U.S. Representative from California and promoter of industrial wind power. The Los Angeles Times found out that his parents own a good part of the land on which the Altamont wind power fiasco is situated. Pombo has earlier proposed (as noted here) that federal environmental review not be required for "alternative" energy projects. The L.A. Times now reports that he also requested the Department of the Interior directly to suspend Fish & Wildlife guidelines for the Altamont sites. His parents received $125,000 in 2001 for the use of their land by wind energy companies.
Altamont is an embarrassing showcase for the industry because large numbers of raptors have been killed there. A lawsuit is going forward on behalf of the birds. A current compromise (noted here) proposal is to shut the wind turbines down for the portion of the year when a majority of the deaths occur. That might cut Pombo's parents' wind income by a third. Pombo denies any interest in his parent's affairs and even denies knowledge of his signed letter to Interior secretary Gale Norton.
The anti-environment Pombo echos another argument from advocates for industrial wind: "We don't need environmental regulations -- by definition we're environmentally friendly."
It's all business. The industrial wind crowd is no better than the arctic drilling crowd.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment
"Malone planners hear worries about wind-power rules"
The planning board of Malone, N.Y., is working to devise local laws for industrial wind turbines, which JP Morgan Chase–owned Noble Assets wants to construct 67 of.
Nor is the statement backed up by actual data. Leventhall's personal opinion, or peevishness that laymen are getting involved in the issue, does not refute his research for the U.K. Department of Environmental, Farming and Rural Affairs concluding that current noise regulations do not adequately protect the public from low-frequency noise, which he shows to be a serious annoyance and stress problem.
Though Leventhall has already dismissed the issue of infrasound and low-frequency noise regarding industrial wind turbines, he has nonetheless organized a conference on wind turbine noise in general at the Hotel Stuttgarter Hof, Berlin, 17-18 October 2005. Many papers have already been offered, a few specifically about infrasound and low-frequency noise. Clearly the noise issue is still very much alive.
(The news article linked to in the title of this post contains an obvious error, unquestioningly repeating Noble's description of their plan as 67 1.5-MW turbines on about 30 acres of land. Existing and other planned facilities use 30-60 acres per megawatt, so at a minimum Noble's would take up 3,000 acres.)
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
But things got a little nasty at the end of the 90-minute session when Noble's attorney Mark Lyons and Managing Director Chuck Hinckley questioned some of the findings Pierpont has published that claim low-frequency noise from wind turbines is a health hazard.It is doubtful that Lyons and Hinckley contacted Leventhall. Their quote is pulled right out of an unsigned British Wind Energy Association paper, where it is attributed to "personal communication," though when and to whom is not specified. Noble had even already used the quote in a newspaper ad (Malone Telegram, February 19, 2005).
Lyons said he and Hinckley contacted Dr. Geoff Leventhall, the man who wrote the study Pierpont gleaned information from, "and he said the study he did had nothing to do with wind farms.
"He said, 'I can state categorically that there is no significant infrasound from current designs of wind turbines. To say that there is an infrasound problem is one of the hares which objectors to wind farms like to run.'
Nor is the statement backed up by actual data. Leventhall's personal opinion, or peevishness that laymen are getting involved in the issue, does not refute his research for the U.K. Department of Environmental, Farming and Rural Affairs concluding that current noise regulations do not adequately protect the public from low-frequency noise, which he shows to be a serious annoyance and stress problem.
Though Leventhall has already dismissed the issue of infrasound and low-frequency noise regarding industrial wind turbines, he has nonetheless organized a conference on wind turbine noise in general at the Hotel Stuttgarter Hof, Berlin, 17-18 October 2005. Many papers have already been offered, a few specifically about infrasound and low-frequency noise. Clearly the noise issue is still very much alive.
(The news article linked to in the title of this post contains an obvious error, unquestioningly repeating Noble's description of their plan as 67 1.5-MW turbines on about 30 acres of land. Existing and other planned facilities use 30-60 acres per megawatt, so at a minimum Noble's would take up 3,000 acres.)
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
April 5, 2005
"Wind blamed for damage to prototype wind turbine"
Not a parody. That's a real headline from New Zealand. It wasn't the fault of the turbine design -- it was the wind! (See "Prototype blades blown away" for the story of the March 10 mishap, where the whole blade and gearbox assembly was torn off.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
April 3, 2005
The stray voltage issue
I just learned from a campaigner in New York who has talked to Scott Srnka, the dairy farmer in Lincoln, Wisconsin, whose cows have suffered very serious problems since a nearby industrial wind power facility was installed, that Srnka at one point disconnected the grounds of the turbines and his herd immediately started recovering. As soon as the wind company found out and repaired them, the herd's problems resumed. The company chose not to take Srnka to court for his vandalism, obviously fearing the airing of evidence.
See earlier post, "Stray voltage -- or dumped electricity?"
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, earth first
See earlier post, "Stray voltage -- or dumped electricity?"
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, earth first
Industrial wind, corporate vandalism
In the Burlington (Vt.) Free Press today:
Many well intentioned people champion industrial wind power, but it baffles me when those who label themselves "environmentalist" or "green," or who otherwise consider themselves to be politically progressive, seem so eager to do business with the same huge profit-driven corporations that have already done so much to destroy the planet. GE, one of the biggest manufacturers of military weapons and nuclear power plants, is also the US manufacturer of industrial-size wind turbines. GE got into the business by buying the wind division of the Enron corporation. War profiteer Halliburton is involved in the construction of off-shore wind facilities. Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase own wind energy companies, as reported by the New York Times on March 22. Citizens for Tax Justice, a labor and consumer rights group, has noted that FPL Group, the parent company of the biggest wind energy company in America, paid no federal income tax in 2002 and 2003 on more than 2 billion dollars of profit, thanks in large part to the tax evasion schemes of industrial wind.
Blasting Vermont's lovely ridgelines to ram monstrous turbine assemblies into the earth, along with clearcut wide strong roads through wild areas and ever more power lines strung about, is a violent assault, despoiling all life around it. There seems remarkably little concern from the pro-industrial wind crowd regarding the further loss of habitat for other species and the inevitable deaths of many birds and bats. It seems that the big-wind supporters have bought into the rapacious corporate mindset of "think big." The US government is granting subsidies for industrial wind not because it gives a damn about green energy but because it benefits corporate America, as always. It is the same mentality, ironically, that applauds drilling for oil in the pristine Alaskan wilderness.
What ever happened to "small is beautiful"? Vermont is a small state. Why not instead promote small windmills, such as at the Danville School? We could advocate for and more generously subsidize even smaller windmills for home use along with solar panels, microhydro, and insulation to save heating fuel, as the purchase and installation of most of these things are beyond the means of many Vermonters. What about the use of biodiesel from non-genetically modified crops? Why aren't unnecessary recreational gas-guzzlers and polluters heavily taxed instead of relentlessly encouraged? Why are SUVs not required to be more environmentally friendly? Conservation would save much more energy than giant wind facilities could ever generate. Alas, none of this will happen easily, if at all, because it won't benefit big business.
We have made a dire mess of this planet, and trashing and industrializing Vermont's mountains is simply adding to it. And the saddest part is that industrial wind facilities won't close down one fossil or nuclear fueled power plant after all that "necessary" destruction of Vermont's most valuable resource. The gargantuan turbines will be only an empty symbol for those people who need to easily assuage their consumerist guilt, most of whom will probably not be living anywhere near the noisy brightly lit monsters.
I sometimes wonder if the "progressive" supporters of big wind realize exactly what they are opening the door to and who will be profiting from the further industrialization of Vermont. Though there are no easy answers or quick fixes, we need to step back from the abyss of this high-testosterone approach and try to create more peaceful, imaginative, harmonious, and decentralized ways of employing renewable energy in Vermont.
Many well intentioned people champion industrial wind power, but it baffles me when those who label themselves "environmentalist" or "green," or who otherwise consider themselves to be politically progressive, seem so eager to do business with the same huge profit-driven corporations that have already done so much to destroy the planet. GE, one of the biggest manufacturers of military weapons and nuclear power plants, is also the US manufacturer of industrial-size wind turbines. GE got into the business by buying the wind division of the Enron corporation. War profiteer Halliburton is involved in the construction of off-shore wind facilities. Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase own wind energy companies, as reported by the New York Times on March 22. Citizens for Tax Justice, a labor and consumer rights group, has noted that FPL Group, the parent company of the biggest wind energy company in America, paid no federal income tax in 2002 and 2003 on more than 2 billion dollars of profit, thanks in large part to the tax evasion schemes of industrial wind.
Blasting Vermont's lovely ridgelines to ram monstrous turbine assemblies into the earth, along with clearcut wide strong roads through wild areas and ever more power lines strung about, is a violent assault, despoiling all life around it. There seems remarkably little concern from the pro-industrial wind crowd regarding the further loss of habitat for other species and the inevitable deaths of many birds and bats. It seems that the big-wind supporters have bought into the rapacious corporate mindset of "think big." The US government is granting subsidies for industrial wind not because it gives a damn about green energy but because it benefits corporate America, as always. It is the same mentality, ironically, that applauds drilling for oil in the pristine Alaskan wilderness.
What ever happened to "small is beautiful"? Vermont is a small state. Why not instead promote small windmills, such as at the Danville School? We could advocate for and more generously subsidize even smaller windmills for home use along with solar panels, microhydro, and insulation to save heating fuel, as the purchase and installation of most of these things are beyond the means of many Vermonters. What about the use of biodiesel from non-genetically modified crops? Why aren't unnecessary recreational gas-guzzlers and polluters heavily taxed instead of relentlessly encouraged? Why are SUVs not required to be more environmentally friendly? Conservation would save much more energy than giant wind facilities could ever generate. Alas, none of this will happen easily, if at all, because it won't benefit big business.
We have made a dire mess of this planet, and trashing and industrializing Vermont's mountains is simply adding to it. And the saddest part is that industrial wind facilities won't close down one fossil or nuclear fueled power plant after all that "necessary" destruction of Vermont's most valuable resource. The gargantuan turbines will be only an empty symbol for those people who need to easily assuage their consumerist guilt, most of whom will probably not be living anywhere near the noisy brightly lit monsters.
I sometimes wonder if the "progressive" supporters of big wind realize exactly what they are opening the door to and who will be profiting from the further industrialization of Vermont. Though there are no easy answers or quick fixes, we need to step back from the abyss of this high-testosterone approach and try to create more peaceful, imaginative, harmonious, and decentralized ways of employing renewable energy in Vermont.
-- Joanna Lake
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, corporations, anarchism, ecofeminism, green, progressive, conservation, environmentalism
March 31, 2005
"The Wild Palms of Etowah"
Joe Bageant writes from Etowah, Tennessee, one-time "rubberized hair capitol of the world," in praise of holy madness -- giving crazed inspired voice to the divine monster . . . a so-called "must read."
"Elevating carnage to cultural protocol is very dangerous. And official rationalization of it is disastrous. Why isn't someone talking about these things?" We have no examples. We have no ideals. We have only corruption and self-justifying silliness in service of capitalism as it runs further and more terribly amok.categories: animal rights, human rights, anarchism
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