A bill that among other things considers expanding net-metering limits has been approved in the Vermont House. Utilities, however, don't like the possibility. According to the story in today's Rutland Herald, Central Vermont Public Service's lobbyist Kerrick Johnson said that expansion of net metering could affect utilities' bond ratings by adding an element of unpredictability.
He also noted that the power company has to continue contracting for enough electricity to supply its net-metering customers in case they need it.
Net metering is currently limited to 1% of a utility's maximum load and is allowed for generators up to 15 KW, or 150 KW for a multiple-metered "farm" system. On CVPS's system, net metering totals 0.07% of its maximum load.
But even that small amount of unpredictable power can be an expensive burden, according to Mr. Johnson.
It is odd, then, to have read on Wednesday that CVPS has arranged to buy the output from the 47.5-MW wind power facility proposed for Glebe Mountain in Londonderry and Windham by investment firm Diamond Castle–owned Catamount Energy and Japanese giant Marubeni Power International. CVPS says it will represent a seventh of their power load.
Yet they complain about the possibility of 1% of their load coming from customers' systems and having to continue providing power in case their generators aren't working.
Have the people of CVPS been blinded by the cut rate the Glebe Mountain developers have offered (made possible by taxpayer-financed subsidies), unable to consider what they're actually buying?
The power for one seventh of their load will be intermittent, variable, and unpredictable. Two thirds of the time, the output from the wind turbines will be below (mostly far below) their average output. If CVPS did not already contract for power to cover that, then they will have to buy on the expensive spot market. If they did have the power already, and the wind were to rise, they would have to dump the surplus, likely selling it at a loss.
If they think a few tiny net-metered customers are a burden, surely a facility the size of that proposed for Glebe Mountain will be a disaster.
Or maybe there's something in this deal that hasn't been made public.
tags: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, Vermont
February 24, 2006
February 23, 2006
Airtricity unable to maintain pyramid scheme
Irish wind energy company Airtricity has dumped its residential and large commercial customers, abruptly telling them last weekend to make other arrangements, as reported in the Sunday Times (U.K.) and elsewhere.
They had hoped to keep on building wind turbines fast enough that subsidies would cover the cost of providing reliable electricity to new customers who pay them for the belief that their electricity will be "cleanly" generated from the wind.
But first the Irish Grid stopped all new connections of wind turbine generators for 18 months, and then Airtricity was repeatedly being outbid wherever they turned for other sources to provide their growing list of customers.
The scheme could not be sustained. Eleven thousand customers received letters from Airtricity informing them that their contracts were no longer in effect.
tags: wind power, wind energy
They had hoped to keep on building wind turbines fast enough that subsidies would cover the cost of providing reliable electricity to new customers who pay them for the belief that their electricity will be "cleanly" generated from the wind.
But first the Irish Grid stopped all new connections of wind turbine generators for 18 months, and then Airtricity was repeatedly being outbid wherever they turned for other sources to provide their growing list of customers.
The scheme could not be sustained. Eleven thousand customers received letters from Airtricity informing them that their contracts were no longer in effect.
tags: wind power, wind energy
February 21, 2006
"Bush's Mysterious 'New Programs'"
"The long war," as the Bush administration now calls its program, is straight out of George Orwell's 1984:
War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.Nat Perry writes (click the title of this post) in Consortium News about the war on Americans, not just residents and citizens who might be suspected of violent acts of terror but anyone who is perceived to be undermining, i.e., critical of, this administration's -- this government's -- programs, as well as the business of its supporters.
[T]he White House still asserts the right to detain U.S. citizens without charges as enemy combatants.tags: anarchism, ecoanarchism, anarchosyndicalism, animal rights
This claimed authority is based on the assertion that the United States is at war and the American homeland is part of the battlefield.
"In the war against terrorists of global reach, as the Nation learned all too well on Sept. 11, 2001, the territory of the United States is part of the battlefield," Bush's lawyers argued in briefs to the federal courts. (Washington Post, July 19, 2005)
Given Bush's now open assertions that he is using his "plenary" -- or unlimited -- powers as Commander in Chief for the duration of the indefinite War on Terror, Americans can no longer trust that their constitutional rights protect them from government actions.
February 18, 2006
Noise and vibration from wind farms
From Hawke's Bay (Australia) Today (Feb. 18):
They call it the train that never arrives. It's a low, rumbling sound that goes on and on . . . and on.
Sometimes, in a stiff easterly, the rumbling develops into a roar, like a stormy ocean.
But worst of all is the beat. An insidious, low-frequency vibration that's more a sensation than a noise. It defeats double-glazing and ear plugs, coming up through the ground, or through the floors of houses, and manifesting itself as a ripple up the spine, a thump on the chest or a throbbing in the ears. Those who feel it say it's particularly bad at night. It wakes them up or stops them getting to sleep.
Wendy Brock says staff from Meridian Energy promised her the wind turbines at Te Apiti, 2.5km from her Ashhurst home in southern Hawke's Bay, would be no noisier than waves swishing on a seashore.
"They stood in my lounge and told me that."
But during a strong easterly, the noise emitted by the triffid-like structures waving their arms along the skyline and down the slopes behind the Brock family's lifestyle block is more like a thundering, stormy ocean. Sometimes it goes on for days. And when the air is still, there's the beat - rhythmic and relentless, "like the boom box in a teenager's car".
"It comes up through the floor of our house. You can't stop it."
Mrs Brock says she can feel it rippling along her spine when she's lying in bed at night. Blocking her ears makes no difference.
"It irritates you, night after night. Imagine you've done your day's work, then you go to bed, and there's this bass beat coming up through the floor and you can't go to sleep. You can't even put headphones on and get away from it.
"My older son sometimes gets woken up by the noise. He gets up and prowls around the house."
She tells of other Ashhurst residents who "feel" the sound hitting their chests in the Ashhurst Domain 3km from the turbines. She says one woman is so distressed by the sensation she has put her home on the market.
Not everyone in the village hears the infrasound -- Mrs Brock reels off the names of residents wondering what the fuss is all about -- but says those who do feel the sound are distressed by it and have nowhere to turn for redress.
There's little point complaining to the Tararua District Council because all it does is record each complaint and forward it to Meridian, and nothing ever happens.
"What are they (the council) going to do to Meridian -- fine them, or shut down the turbines?" asks Mrs Brock.
Meridian is dismissive of complaints about noise from Te Apiti.
"Infrasound is just not an issue with modern turbines," insists spokesman Alan Seay.
"We take it very seriously. We have looked into it seriously, but the advice we are getting from eminently qualified people is that it is just not an issue."
Many people claiming to be putting forward scientific argument about noise from turbines "are not qualified in this area of expertise. I have a problem with some of their statements", Mr Seay said. ...
Meridian is currently appealing noise restrictions placed on its proposed 70-turbine wind farm at Makara, near Wellington, where some houses will be about 1km away, and downwind of, the turbines.
John Napier lives on the Woodville side of the Te Apiti turbines, about 2km from the nearest one.
When they first began operating, he couldn't believe the roaring noise they made.
"We can hear it in our bedroom at night." ...
He doesn't hear the infrasound beat so much. It's mainly "a roar like a train going through a tunnel or over a bridge, but it never stops".
He complained to Meridian about the noise, and the company put a noise meter on his property for a couple of weeks, but wouldn't tell him the results.
"Wind farm companies say noise from turbines is not an issue, but it is an issue all right. I would be very concerned if I lived in Karori (near Makara, in Wellington)," Mr Napier said.
Harvey Jones, who lives in a valley 3km from Te Apiti, says there is an easterly wind blowing across the wind farm about 10 percent of the time. The wind goes across the top of the hill, but the noise from the turbines rolls down the valley. It sounds like a train constantly passing by, and the stronger the wind, the louder the noise. When there's a westerly blowing, he can even hear the turbines in Woodville, 6-7km away. ...
Low-frequency sound - sometimes called infrasound - is controversial.
Dr Geoff Leventhall, a noise vibration and acoustics expert from the UK who looked into infrasound at the request of Genesis Power, says "I can state quite categorically that there is no significant infrasound from current designs of wind turbines". ...
Engineer Ken Mosley, of Silverstream, has an entirely different view.
The foundations of modern turbines create vibrations in the ground when they are moving, and also sometimes when they are not moving, Dr Mosley says.
"This vibration is transmitted seismically through the ground in a similar manner to earthquake shocks and roughly at similar frequencies.
"Generally, the vibrations cannot be heard until they cause the structure of a house to vibrate in sympathy, and then only inside the house. The effects inside appear as noise and vibrations in certain parts of a room. Outside these areas, little is heard or felt.
"However, the low frequency components of the noise and vibration can cause very unpleasant effects which eventually cause the health of people to deteriorate to an extent where living in the property can become impossible."
Dr Mosley says that wherever wind farms are built close to houses, people complain about noise and vibration.
He quotes a scientist in South West Wales, David Manley, who has been researching noise and vibration phenomena associated with turbines since 1994.
An acoustician and engineer, Dr Manley writes "it is found that people living within 8.2km of a wind farm cluster can be affected and if they are sensitive to low frequencies they may be disturbed".
Two GPs in the UK have researched the health effects of noise and vibrations from turbines. Amanda Harry documented complaints of headaches, migraines, nausea, dizziness, palpitations, sleep disturbance, stress, anxiety and depression. People suffered flow-on effects of being irritable, unable to concentrate during the day, losing the ability to cope.
Bridget Osborne, of Moel Maelogan, a village in North Wales, where three turbines were erected in 2002, is reported as saying "there is a public perception that wind power is 'green' and has no detrimental effect on the environment, but these turbines make low-frequency noises that can be as damaging as high-frequency noises.
"When wind farm developers do surveys to assess the suitability of a site they measure the audible range of noise but never the infrasound measurement -- the low-frequency noise that causes vibrations that you can feel through your feet and chest.
"This frequency resonates with the human body, their effect being dependent on body shape. There are those on whom there is virtually no effect, but others for whom it is incredibly disturbing."
Dr Mosley says wind-power generators in New Zealand are aware of such literature on turbine noise and infrasound from all around the world.
They call it the train that never arrives. It's a low, rumbling sound that goes on and on . . . and on.
Sometimes, in a stiff easterly, the rumbling develops into a roar, like a stormy ocean.
But worst of all is the beat. An insidious, low-frequency vibration that's more a sensation than a noise. It defeats double-glazing and ear plugs, coming up through the ground, or through the floors of houses, and manifesting itself as a ripple up the spine, a thump on the chest or a throbbing in the ears. Those who feel it say it's particularly bad at night. It wakes them up or stops them getting to sleep.
Wendy Brock says staff from Meridian Energy promised her the wind turbines at Te Apiti, 2.5km from her Ashhurst home in southern Hawke's Bay, would be no noisier than waves swishing on a seashore.
"They stood in my lounge and told me that."
But during a strong easterly, the noise emitted by the triffid-like structures waving their arms along the skyline and down the slopes behind the Brock family's lifestyle block is more like a thundering, stormy ocean. Sometimes it goes on for days. And when the air is still, there's the beat - rhythmic and relentless, "like the boom box in a teenager's car".
"It comes up through the floor of our house. You can't stop it."
Mrs Brock says she can feel it rippling along her spine when she's lying in bed at night. Blocking her ears makes no difference.
"It irritates you, night after night. Imagine you've done your day's work, then you go to bed, and there's this bass beat coming up through the floor and you can't go to sleep. You can't even put headphones on and get away from it.
"My older son sometimes gets woken up by the noise. He gets up and prowls around the house."
She tells of other Ashhurst residents who "feel" the sound hitting their chests in the Ashhurst Domain 3km from the turbines. She says one woman is so distressed by the sensation she has put her home on the market.
Not everyone in the village hears the infrasound -- Mrs Brock reels off the names of residents wondering what the fuss is all about -- but says those who do feel the sound are distressed by it and have nowhere to turn for redress.
There's little point complaining to the Tararua District Council because all it does is record each complaint and forward it to Meridian, and nothing ever happens.
"What are they (the council) going to do to Meridian -- fine them, or shut down the turbines?" asks Mrs Brock.
Meridian is dismissive of complaints about noise from Te Apiti.
"Infrasound is just not an issue with modern turbines," insists spokesman Alan Seay.
"We take it very seriously. We have looked into it seriously, but the advice we are getting from eminently qualified people is that it is just not an issue."
Many people claiming to be putting forward scientific argument about noise from turbines "are not qualified in this area of expertise. I have a problem with some of their statements", Mr Seay said. ...
Meridian is currently appealing noise restrictions placed on its proposed 70-turbine wind farm at Makara, near Wellington, where some houses will be about 1km away, and downwind of, the turbines.
John Napier lives on the Woodville side of the Te Apiti turbines, about 2km from the nearest one.
When they first began operating, he couldn't believe the roaring noise they made.
"We can hear it in our bedroom at night." ...
He doesn't hear the infrasound beat so much. It's mainly "a roar like a train going through a tunnel or over a bridge, but it never stops".
He complained to Meridian about the noise, and the company put a noise meter on his property for a couple of weeks, but wouldn't tell him the results.
"Wind farm companies say noise from turbines is not an issue, but it is an issue all right. I would be very concerned if I lived in Karori (near Makara, in Wellington)," Mr Napier said.
Harvey Jones, who lives in a valley 3km from Te Apiti, says there is an easterly wind blowing across the wind farm about 10 percent of the time. The wind goes across the top of the hill, but the noise from the turbines rolls down the valley. It sounds like a train constantly passing by, and the stronger the wind, the louder the noise. When there's a westerly blowing, he can even hear the turbines in Woodville, 6-7km away. ...
Low-frequency sound - sometimes called infrasound - is controversial.
Dr Geoff Leventhall, a noise vibration and acoustics expert from the UK who looked into infrasound at the request of Genesis Power, says "I can state quite categorically that there is no significant infrasound from current designs of wind turbines". ...
Engineer Ken Mosley, of Silverstream, has an entirely different view.
The foundations of modern turbines create vibrations in the ground when they are moving, and also sometimes when they are not moving, Dr Mosley says.
"This vibration is transmitted seismically through the ground in a similar manner to earthquake shocks and roughly at similar frequencies.
"Generally, the vibrations cannot be heard until they cause the structure of a house to vibrate in sympathy, and then only inside the house. The effects inside appear as noise and vibrations in certain parts of a room. Outside these areas, little is heard or felt.
"However, the low frequency components of the noise and vibration can cause very unpleasant effects which eventually cause the health of people to deteriorate to an extent where living in the property can become impossible."
Dr Mosley says that wherever wind farms are built close to houses, people complain about noise and vibration.
He quotes a scientist in South West Wales, David Manley, who has been researching noise and vibration phenomena associated with turbines since 1994.
An acoustician and engineer, Dr Manley writes "it is found that people living within 8.2km of a wind farm cluster can be affected and if they are sensitive to low frequencies they may be disturbed".
Two GPs in the UK have researched the health effects of noise and vibrations from turbines. Amanda Harry documented complaints of headaches, migraines, nausea, dizziness, palpitations, sleep disturbance, stress, anxiety and depression. People suffered flow-on effects of being irritable, unable to concentrate during the day, losing the ability to cope.
Bridget Osborne, of Moel Maelogan, a village in North Wales, where three turbines were erected in 2002, is reported as saying "there is a public perception that wind power is 'green' and has no detrimental effect on the environment, but these turbines make low-frequency noises that can be as damaging as high-frequency noises.
"When wind farm developers do surveys to assess the suitability of a site they measure the audible range of noise but never the infrasound measurement -- the low-frequency noise that causes vibrations that you can feel through your feet and chest.
"This frequency resonates with the human body, their effect being dependent on body shape. There are those on whom there is virtually no effect, but others for whom it is incredibly disturbing."
Dr Mosley says wind-power generators in New Zealand are aware of such literature on turbine noise and infrasound from all around the world.
February 16, 2006
Danziger condemns wind energy deaths
To the editor, Barre-Montpelier (Vt.) Times-Argus:
If Jeff Danziger ("An apology, sort of," Feb. 5) is concerned that coal miners die for our electricity (let's ignore for now the fact that Vermont doesn't get any electricity from coal, and that workers die on wind turbines, too), then he should look into the cause of those deaths a little more.
Soon after the deaths in West Virginia that inspired Danziger's cartoon, there was a similar event in Canada. But those trapped miners survived and were quickly rescued, because they had safety arrangements and emergency equipment that their U.S. counterparts can only dream of.
Danziger rightly condemns mountain top removal, yet that method of digging up coal is safer for the workers involved.
Obviously, Danziger would like to see less demand for coal however it's procured. But he himself writes, correctly, that "wind power won't alter our reliance on coal and nuclear electric generation."
Admirable as his concerns are, then, support for wind power development has nothing to do with them. No promoter of wind power can show a reduction of other fuel use due to giant wind turbines on the grid.
Wind power development has no benefit except for the developers and their bankers who are taking advantage of misguided policy to shovel public funds into their private accounts. So Danziger's real message seems to be that clearing and blasting our own mountains for wind turbines is necessary as symbolic atonement for our energy sins, not for actually changing our energy use.
He won't have to live with the giant machines, of course.
tags: wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, anarchism, ecoanarchism, anarchosyndicalism, Vermont
If Jeff Danziger ("An apology, sort of," Feb. 5) is concerned that coal miners die for our electricity (let's ignore for now the fact that Vermont doesn't get any electricity from coal, and that workers die on wind turbines, too), then he should look into the cause of those deaths a little more.
Soon after the deaths in West Virginia that inspired Danziger's cartoon, there was a similar event in Canada. But those trapped miners survived and were quickly rescued, because they had safety arrangements and emergency equipment that their U.S. counterparts can only dream of.
Danziger rightly condemns mountain top removal, yet that method of digging up coal is safer for the workers involved.
Obviously, Danziger would like to see less demand for coal however it's procured. But he himself writes, correctly, that "wind power won't alter our reliance on coal and nuclear electric generation."
Admirable as his concerns are, then, support for wind power development has nothing to do with them. No promoter of wind power can show a reduction of other fuel use due to giant wind turbines on the grid.
Wind power development has no benefit except for the developers and their bankers who are taking advantage of misguided policy to shovel public funds into their private accounts. So Danziger's real message seems to be that clearing and blasting our own mountains for wind turbines is necessary as symbolic atonement for our energy sins, not for actually changing our energy use.
He won't have to live with the giant machines, of course.
tags: wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, anarchism, ecoanarchism, anarchosyndicalism, Vermont
February 15, 2006
El caso eólico
It's prison for Celso Perdomo and his fiancée Mónica Quintana in the Canary Islands, as reported yesterday by Madrid's Cadena Ser.
Perdomo was regional director-general of industry from 2003 to 2005. Quintana was a Gran Canaria council member. Perdomo is accused of embezzlement of public funds, taking bribes, and influence peddling. Quintana is accused of embezzlement and taking bribes.
"El caso eólico" began with the arrest of industrialist Alberto Santan for insider trading. So far, seven people -- from both industry and government -- have been arrested for secretly arranging the development of wind turbine facilities before public notice. The amount of the bribes is reported as 12 million euros.
Meanwhile, here in the U.S., today's New York Times describes the "gold rush" of big-money interest in wind power.
Most of the article is about General Electric's Energy Financial Services but also mentioned are Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase, who have purchased wind energy companies.
Not mentioned in the article is why such a marginal source of energy is such an attractive investment, namely, that most of the investment is actually made by us taxpayers. Out of the pockets of the many and into the pockets of the few. It's wind profiteering, not "ecomagination." It's business as usual, which should cause pro-wind "environmentalists" to wonder how anything will change. Of course, they benefit from all the jobs clearing the way for the big-wind juggernaut consulting for the charade of "sensitive siting," so resignation is the norm.
And to help things along even more, the U.S. Department of the Interior has essentially pre-approved the construction of wind turbines on federal land, where we already subsidize private ranching and mining and drilling. The attempt to end the protection of endangered species, led by California wind advocate Richard Pombo, will also help.
Remember, George Bush was a pioneer as governor of Texas in looting the public treasury and raping public lands to make Texas a "showcase" of large-scale wind power -- all for the financial benefit of his friends at Enron.
It should be amusing that the most "successful" capitalists always turn out to be the most on the dole. But it's no laughing matter when they so carelessly destroy lives and land.
tags: wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, anarchism, ecoanarchism
Perdomo was regional director-general of industry from 2003 to 2005. Quintana was a Gran Canaria council member. Perdomo is accused of embezzlement of public funds, taking bribes, and influence peddling. Quintana is accused of embezzlement and taking bribes.
"El caso eólico" began with the arrest of industrialist Alberto Santan for insider trading. So far, seven people -- from both industry and government -- have been arrested for secretly arranging the development of wind turbine facilities before public notice. The amount of the bribes is reported as 12 million euros.
Meanwhile, here in the U.S., today's New York Times describes the "gold rush" of big-money interest in wind power.
Most of the article is about General Electric's Energy Financial Services but also mentioned are Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase, who have purchased wind energy companies.
Not mentioned in the article is why such a marginal source of energy is such an attractive investment, namely, that most of the investment is actually made by us taxpayers. Out of the pockets of the many and into the pockets of the few. It's wind profiteering, not "ecomagination." It's business as usual, which should cause pro-wind "environmentalists" to wonder how anything will change. Of course, they benefit from all the jobs clearing the way for the big-wind juggernaut consulting for the charade of "sensitive siting," so resignation is the norm.
And to help things along even more, the U.S. Department of the Interior has essentially pre-approved the construction of wind turbines on federal land, where we already subsidize private ranching and mining and drilling. The attempt to end the protection of endangered species, led by California wind advocate Richard Pombo, will also help.
Remember, George Bush was a pioneer as governor of Texas in looting the public treasury and raping public lands to make Texas a "showcase" of large-scale wind power -- all for the financial benefit of his friends at Enron.
It should be amusing that the most "successful" capitalists always turn out to be the most on the dole. But it's no laughing matter when they so carelessly destroy lives and land.
tags: wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, anarchism, ecoanarchism
February 13, 2006
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.
()()()()()()()
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.
()()()()()()()
tags: wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
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.
tags: wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
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