Letter to state rep about wind power

My state representative, Lucy Leriche, got back to me about my concern about her vote at the Northeast Kingdom Caucus meeting last week in favor of industrial development of our ridgelines. She clarified her position, which seems to be "trust the Public Service Board." I wrote back to her and clarified mine.

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As for the deliberation process, you must be aware that there have indeed been efforts to subject wind power facilities (which uniquely target the most protected features of our landscape) to Act 250 review rather than Section 248 review, or at least to incorporate the Act 250 processes into the PSB process. As I have read it, Section 248 recommends consideration of much of what Act 250 requires, but it does not require it, and all input, from, for example, the Agency of Natural Resources and particularly the people who actually have to live with the intrusive machines, can be dismissed for the "greater good" of the state.

As for interfering, is that not our duty as citizens? Are you suggesting that the wind power lobby does not "interfere"? When I first heard about the interest in building wind turbines on Kirby Mountain (where we moved from last fall), I thought that would be great. I had seen the pretty pictures and read about how great wind energy was. On the other hand, I had also seen wind facilities in Spain, and only an insane person could call them attractive. As I lay on my hammock looking up towards the Kirby ridge, I comforted myself that the knoll our property was on would probably shield us from having the turbines dominate our back yard.

Nonetheless, I looked into them. It very quickly became clear that there was a lot of hype, a lot of promises of how much power wind turbines will provide, but there were no data at all showing any real benefit. And while dodging that obvious lack (by totting up theoretical tons of CO₂ and other emissions avoided, though not showing actual data proving any such effect) there was an also obvious downplaying and outright dismissal of negative effects, such as habitat fragmentation and degradation, disruption and killing of birds and bats, erosion, noise, visual intrusion, etc.

I was ready to weigh the impacts against the benefits. I am a science editor and a writer. I can tell when language is being used to hide the truth or to misdirect. I can tell when there is no basis for a statement. Industrial wind power is not an argument over aesthetics. Wind turbines are machines that are supposed to make a tangible contribution to our electrical energy. Yet no promoter in the world is able to point to such a contribution.

At this point, I am usually asked, why, then, do so many utilities and politicians support it?

My perception is that it is a vicious circle. Politicians and utilities are under pressure to provide more energy and provide it cleanly. Environmentalists (some) endorse wind power as a solution. Big business sees an opportunity to reap subsidized profits and presents itself as green. Everybody is happy and so it goes on, because nobody is allowed to ask: Where is the evidence that wind power actually makes a significant contribution?

The result is the wanton destruction of the world's last rural and wild places. As long as they have wind, their value is only as an energy source. It is no different than mountain top removal for coal or the drive to extract oil from under the Arctic wilderness, except in this case a lot of so-called environmentalists are on board.

Even the promoters of wind acknowledge that it will not be a significant part of our energy mix. Even the most ambitious don't see wind power producing more than 10% of Vermont's electricity or 5% of the nation's. (And that's different from actually providing electricity, and different again from actually displacing the use of other fuels.) An associate of mine has asked if we are in such desperate straits that we are forced to develop Vermont's ridgelines. Ridgeline development should be the very last resort, when we have done everything else and are still desperate for the least intermittent trickle of electricity.

Wind power's theoretical contribution would be swiftly outpaced by growing demand or alternatively could be easily obviated by conservation and efficiency.

Forgive me for going on so long. You wrote that you have faith that if anti-wind concerns are substantiated the board will respond appropriately. Notice that the benefit of the doubt is already in favor of the wind developer, who is not held to such rigor concerning his claims of benefit (as he might under Act 250). To wash our hands of the matter as if the PSB were utterly impartial and independent of political pressure seems to me highly irresponsible. Unless, of course, one's faith is that they will indeed support the construction of wind power facilities on our ridgelines.

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tags:  wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont

Alaska governor is insane

A story in today's Boston Globe says that Alaska Governor Frank Murkowsi

wants the state to hire a public relations firm to change the perception of Alaska and its people as greedy for federal dollars and all too willing to plunder the environment for profit.

But wait:

Ultimately, he wants to sway public opinion in favor of opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

So it appears that the idea is not to show that Alaska is not "all too willing to plunder the environment for profit" but simply to persuade the rest of the U.S. to let them.

tags:  environment, environmentalism

"terrorists with briefcases"

Usually smug capitalist cheerleader Ben Stein has written an impressive piece in today's New York Times. He describes the response to an earlier article about United Airlines "parent" UAL as it reorganized under bankruptcy court protection, firing tens of thousands of workers, cutting the pay of the remainder (by up to two-thirds) and terminating pensions. Meanwhile, it was spending $10,000,000 a month on lawyers, accountants, and investment brokers, as well as $18,000 a month to keep a hotel suite available for the new chairman whenever he happened to be in Chicago. After 37 months, UAL emerged from bankruptcy and provided hundreds of millions of dollars to reward its top executives. One of UAL's board members is chief executive of Delphi, which appears ready to embark on a similar program.

Stein writes about the 1950s president of General Motors, who was paid about 40 times the average wage of the line workers, 80 times with a bonus during his peak year. In most companies, Stein writes, 10 to 20 times was the norm. Today, the norm is hundreds,

"whether or not the company is doing well. The graph for the pay of C.E.O.'s is a vertical line in the last five years. The graph for workers' pay is a flat line -- in every sense. ... it isn't the free market at work. It's a kleptocracy at work."

Stein is quick to note that the management of most companies, even if they are ridiculously overpaid, are "still honest and hardworking" (working hundreds of times harder than the average wage employee in the company?).

For centuries, the idea has held that the stockholders own the company. They are the trustors. The trustors select directors who in turn hire a chief executive and other top officers and then keep an eye on them for the stockholders. They ... are all agents for the stockholders ....

But what has happened is that -- as in a corrupt, failed third-world state -- the trustees in too many cases are captives of the C.E.O. and his colleagues; they owe both their places on the board and their emoluments to the chief executive, and they exercise no meaningful restraint at all on managers. The directors are instead a sort of prætorian guard, protecting management from its real bosses, the stockholders, as management sucks the blood out of the company.

... Government, meanwhile, does nothing, or next to nothing. Courts, especially bankruptcy courts, do nothing. And the employees and stockholders and the whole society are looted. ... In the capitalist society, the most basic foundation is trust. But in today's world, trust is abused, mocked, drained of meaning.

And why doesn't government do anything to protect society, to protect individuals? It doesn't require much of a leap of insight to notice that the U.S. government is now modeled on the very kleptocracy Stein describes in business. Alas, Stein doesn't make the little leap, instead calling for President Bush (who?) to rally for

common decency for the workers and the savers and investors of this country, and an end to the hideous breaches of trust that build great mansions in the Hamptons and wreck a free society.

You might as well ask him to rally for animal rights, too. Two pages before Stein's article is an item about war profiteering. The value of stock in the six leading war contractors has increased 350% since (pre-Bush) March 2000. Elsewhere in the paper, an article described the intensive investigations triggered by the revelation of Bush's warrantless spying on his fellow citizens (for those of us who aren't "unitary executives" it's called voyeurism or stalking). But the investigations are not to find out the extent of the illegal program -- which most analysts suspect is a actually a massive data mining operation -- but rather to find out who told on them.

tags:  anarchism, anarchosyndicalism

Wind farms conk out in heat wave

The Adelaide (South Australia) Advertiser has a story today about the sorry performance of the state's 180 wind turbines during the January heat wave. Even if there were some wind, many of the turbines shut down because it was too hot. Then one of them caught fire. Although firefighters couldn't do anything about the turbine, at least they were there to put out the spot fires started by falling debris. Imagine such a fire amidst the brush of a remote ridgeline.

A $3 MILLION wind farm turbine caught fire while dozens shut down at the time South Australia most needed them -- when a heatwave left 63,000 South Australian homes without power last month.

Adding to the drama, firefighters could not extinguish the blaze because the tower was too high at 67m [220ft].

Lack of wind and automatic shutdowns triggered by hot temperatures were to blame for the state's 180 turbines producing just 10 per cent of their maximum power capacity during the January heat wave, according to experts.

The experience proved SA could not rely on wind power to provide electricity when demand was greatest, the Electricity Supply Industry Planning Council (ESIPC) said.

"You never know if the wind will be blowing when you need it to or if wind turbines will shut down," ESIPC spokesman Brad Cowain said.

Operators of the Lake Bonney wind farm, where the turbine fire occurred on Sunday, January 22, said all of its 46 turbines had automatically shut down during the heat wave when temperatures exceeded 40C [104F].

... [Wind farm operator Miles George of Babcock and Brown Wind Partners] said the turbine fire ... had been caused by an electrical fault while maintenance crews were working on it after it had shut down.

Around 3pm, 40 CFS firefighters and six trucks rushed to the wind farm to extinguish the blaze but fire hose water couldn't reach the steel generator at the top of the tower.

Instead, the firefighters watched as fire destroyed the $3 million turbine – which weighs 75 tonnes -- and extinguished spot fires ignited by ashes from the turbine blaze.

... [D]uring Saturday's peak power demand wind farm output plummeted to just 2 per cent of capacity, producing enough power for only 3500 homes, according to ESIPC. This compared with the maximum capacity of 318MW to power 175,000 homes. SA leads the nation in wind farm energy with five established sites -- Starfish Hill, Canunda, Wattle Point, Cathedral Rocks and Lake Bonney.

There are numerous other approved wind farm developments including an AGL plan for 43 turbines at Hallet in the state's Mid North.

But AGL also plans to more than double the capacity of its nearby gas-fired plant, from 180MW to 430MW, at a cost of more than $100 million to ensure peak demand during hot weather can be met.

tags:  wind power, wind energy

Groups raise concern over efforts by wind industry to revise USFWS' interim guidance outside federal law

[press release]

Rowe, MA (February 10, 2006). National Wind Watch, Inc., the Humane Society of the United States, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, and Juniata Valley Audubon, Chapter of National Audubon Society, called on Interior Secretary Gale Norton and other federal officials to confirm whether the Fish and Wildlife Service intends to comply with the basic openness and accountability of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) with regard to the "collaborative process" being pushed by wind energy proponents to revise the Fish and Wildlife Service's (FWS) Interim Guidance on Avoiding and Minimizing Wildlife Impacts from Wind Turbines.

In a letter to Secretary Norton and others, the groups cited the critical importance of the FWS adhering to FACA requirements for public access and accountability given the "significant public controversy surrounding the impact of wind turbines on our nation's treasured wildlife -- in particular on bats and birds -- and considering the current rapid expansion of wind power throughout the country and the potentially devastating impact this expansion could have on wildlife if the turbines are not properly sited." In the letter, the groups stated "We are very concerned that if the FWS does not fulfill this FACA requirement, then the process will simply be an opportunity for the wind power industry to force its views on the agency, and will result in the agency revising its Interim Guidance in a manner that makes turbine siting and operation easier for the industry, but detrimental to wildlife."

The first meeting of the Policy Group for the collaborative was scheduled for February 9, 2006 in Washington, DC. The meeting was canceled when the Fish and Wildlife Service advised participants that it needed more time to evaluate the applicability of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) to the collaborative process.

National Wind Watch spokesperson, Lisa Linowes, was pleased with the FWS response to the letter but expressed concerned that the collaborative effort was permitted to go as far as it did. "The groups represented by the letter have consistently raised legitimate and important conservation concerns about industrial wind power projects. It is essential that there be a fair representation of our views and expertise," she said. The letter was submitted to the Interior Department by Meyer Glitzenstein & Crystal, a public-interest law firm in Washington D.C..

tags:  wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, animal rights

market scams, dead bats, and big business

Here are a few abstracts from Windpower Monthly's February issue.

China changes tack on wind market structure and drops fixed purchase prices for competitive tenders:  Companies which a short time ago were rushing to develop wind projects in China are now having second thoughts after the government announced last month it would not be introducing a premium wind power tariff, as widely expected. Instead, the market structure will be a competitive bidding process controlled by government. "The zeal for wind development in China is likely to cool down," says Zhu Junsheng of China Renewable Energy Industries Association.

Plans for Scandinavian green certificates market hit icy patch:  Europe's first cross-border market for trade of green power certificates is looking unlikely to go ahead at the start of next year as planned. All eyes have otherwise been on Norway and Sweden to demonstrate that the environmental value of renewable energy is a commodity that can be sold separately from the physical electricity. Green certificate trade, increasingly common in America, allows a country with poor wind resources to buy cheaper wind power from a distant windy neighbour. [This echos the arrangement of powerful nations enriching themselves with the resources of weak nations. --KM] But Norway is still wrangling over the details, while a Swedish fear is that as long as Norway can produce wind power more efficiently than Sweden, Swedish subsidies to renewables will end up in Norwegian pockets. ... [W]ind industry views remain mixed on whether these are teething problems or a more fundamental flaw in the concept of green certificate trade.

GE Financial Services aiming to be world's biggest wind power investor:  With last year's purchase of seven small German wind farms and the commissioning of a 50 MW project in California, GE Energy Financial Services (EFS) has joined the list of institutional investors aiming to build substantial portfolios of wind plant assets. Right now wind is a "sweet spot" for new energy investment, says the company's Tim Howell. This year EFS is forming a dedicated team to focus exclusively on renewables, chasing deals in Europe and the US. We interview the men with the ambitions -- and the billions of dollars -- to make EFS the largest, most profitable owner of wind assets in the world.

Investigating mystery bat deaths in Canadian wind farm:  A leading Canadian power producer is launching two bat research programs after site monitoring at a southern Alberta wind farm revealed hundreds of bat mortalities. About 90% of the bodies were found during the fall migration in August and September. The mortalities were largely silver-haired and hoary bats, neither of which is a species at risk [small comfort if you or your mate is one of the individuals killed --KM]. The company is funding research to track bat behaviour and hopes the findings can be used to identify potential issues at other sites.

Merger of American power giants seen as benefit to wind industry:  A pending merger between US electricity majors FPL Group and Constellation Energy will create a giant among giants and has likely wide-reaching implications for the future of wind power development across the country. "Constellation has flirted with the wind industry and as a combination they'll be the leading players in the market," says Randy Swisher of the American Wind Energy Association. "It's very, very interesting." FPL assures that its intention to add up to 1500 MW of wind power to its portfolio remains unchanged. "A market with larger players and larger control areas is more attractive to the wind industry," adds Swisher. [This, along with the GE story above, underscores that industrial wind power is not an alternative to but increasingly a symptom of the same big-energy control that got us into the mess we're in. --KM]

tags:  wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, anarchism, ecoanarchism

More gearbox failures in wind turbines

The Associated Press reported yesterday from Minot, North Dakota, that a couple of three-year-old wind turbines haven't been operating for the past couple of months because of gear box problems.

"It's sad to see mechanical failures and we've had our fair share," said Bruce Carlson, president of the Verendrye Electric company. And Ron Rebenitsch, a Basin Electric engineer from Bismarck, added, "With the gear teeth stripping out, the turbine could run wild and self-destruct. Those turbines are under a tremendous amount of stress, and there are many parameters for a turbine to operate safely. It's a complex mechanical device, subject to failure."

"Gear box problems are not uncommon," said Randy Bush, a resource coordinator for Basin Electric. "At Edgeley, where they have a lot more towers, they have the same issues to deal with that we have."

Also see the log of problems of one New Zealand turbine in an earlier post.

tags:  wind power, wind energy, wind turbines