Georgia Mountain wind project has applied for permit

The Georgia Mountain wind project has applied for a permit:

April 23, 2009 - Docket 7508 - Prehearing Conference - 1:30 P.M.

Before the Vermont Public Service Board, Hearing Room - 3rd Floor, Chittenden Bank Building, 112 State Street, Montpelier, VT

Petition of Georgia Mountain Community Wind, LLC, for a Certificate of Public Good, pursuant to 30 V.S.A. Section 248, authorizing the construction and operation of a 5-wind turbine electric generation facility, with associated electric and interconnection facilities, on Georgia Mountain in the Towns of Milton and Georgia, Vermont, to be known as the "Georgia Mountain Community Wind Project"

Of note, the project does not exactly specify what it entails. The petition describes 3-5 wind turbines of 1.5-3 MW capacity each. In his prefiled testimony, John Zimmerman gives the total rating as 7.5-12 MW.

As to the rest of the documents filed (click here), they too are a laugh, a charade of self-rationalization, misrepresentation, and evasion. For example, the noise impact study asserts a typical rural sound level that is above what it actually describes for a couple of sites tested. It asserts that only an increase of more than 10 dBA would be considered to be intrusive, when it is generally accepted that an increase of 5 dBA raises concerns. It cites the World Health Organization guidelines for community noise, ignoring the statements that "Noise with low-frequency components require lower guideline values" and "Lower noise levels may be disturbing depending on the nature of the noise source". It thus ignores (except for a throwaway line that it isn't a problem) the significant low-frequency component and the unique rhythmic and unpredictable nature of wind turbine noise. It goes without saying that the "noise impact study" completely ignored actual studies of wind turbine noise impacts, such as Nina Pierpont's "Wind Turbine Syndrome".

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, animal rights, human rights, Vermont

2-km Wind Turbine Setbacks for Health and Safety

PETITION

We, the undersigned, request, for reasons of safety and health regarding onshore wind energy facilities, that:

1. No large wind turbine generator shall be erected closer than 1,600 meters (1 mile) or 12 times its total height (hub height plus rotor radius), whichever is greater, from a neighboring property line or public road or path; and

2. No large wind turbine generator shall be erected closer than 2,000 meters (1-1/4 miles) or 15 times its total height, whichever is greater, from a residence, school, place of business, or health care facility.

Go here to sign.

BACKGROUND

Large wind energy turbines

• Are subject to stresses that often cause catastrophic blade failure, collapse, and fire.


• May shed and throw large pieces of ice over a great distance.


• Create intrusive shadow flicker over a long distance when the sun is behind the turning blades.


• Raise noise levels to a degree that is incompatible with the rural or wild environment in which they are typically sited.


• Generate a wide range of noises and vibration, day and night, that cause loss of sleep, headaches, tinnitus, irritability, dizziness, nausea, and other symptoms in people who live near them.

Large wind turbines therefore need adequate setbacks to protect the health and safety of nearby residents. A minimum distance of 2 kilometers (or 1-1/4 miles) between homes and the turbines is recommended by a number of noise and health experts.

In certain terrains, such as rolling hills, in quiet rural areas, and under some climatic conditions, greater distances of 3-5 km (~2-3 mi) are required to protect the health and welfare of neighbors. Any specified setback, however, must be part of a robust set of regulations to limit noise and protect the environment and landscape.

For more information, see

• "Noise and Health Effects of Large Wind Turbines"


• "Safe setbacks: How far should wind turbines be from homes?"

How to use this petition

Show it to your legislators and government officials in discussing regulation of the wind industry. Use it as a starting point for local zoning. Use it as a model for local petitions.

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms

Cooking with Dexter

environment, environmentalism, animal rights, human rights, vegetarianism

The Changes and Chances of This Mortal Life

I see President Obama, having surrounded himself with advisors well-schooled in the very principles and practices that have landed us in unending war and unraveling economy, doing what members of that class have always done-rewarding wealth, incompetence and malfeasance, shifting blame to the victims and passing the bill to the future. ...

New century, new president, new Congress. Same old, tired, failed ideas. Give public money to private interests. Reduce oversight and remove accountability. Feed the military-Industrial complex as much wealth as it demands; console the widows and orphans with condolence letters, casket flags and lies. Flog the myths of "Clean Coal" and "Energy Independence."

--Christopher Cooper, Common Dreams, April 2, 2009

Build more: Use more

How do we persuade people to drive less—an environmental necessity—while also encouraging them to revive our staggering economy by buying new cars? The popular answer—switch to hybrids—leaves the fundamental problem unaddressed. Increasing the fuel efficiency of a car is mathematically indistinguishable from lowering the price of its fuel; it’s just fiddling with the other side of the equation. If doubling the cost of gas gives drivers an environmentally valuable incentive to drive less—the recent oil-price spike pushed down consumption and vehicle miles travelled, stimulated investment in renewable energy, increased public transit ridership, and killed the Hummer—then doubling the efficiency of cars makes that incentive disappear. Getting more miles to the gallon is of no benefit to the environment if it leads to an increase in driving—and the response of drivers to decreases in the cost of driving is to drive more. Increases in fuel efficiency could be bad for the environment unless they’re accompanied by powerful disincentives that force drivers to find alternatives to hundred-mile commutes. And a national carbon policy, if it’s to have a real impact, will almost certainly need to bring American fuel prices back to at least where they were at their peak in the summer of 2008. Electric cars are not the panacea they are sometimes claimed to be, not only because the electricity they run on has to be generated somewhere but also because making driving less expensive does nothing to discourage people from sprawling across the face of the planet, promoting forms of development that are inherently and catastrophically wasteful.

--David Owen, "Economy vs. environment", The New Yorker, Mar 30, 2009

So the more electricity that is produced without burning those fossil fuels, the less fossil fuel will be burned, putting less greenhouse-creating goop in the air and therefore easing (or at least not exacerbating) global warming. Right?

No. Wrong.

Or at least doubtful.

Unless the expansion of wind, solar, and other renewable power sources is accompanied by some mechanism to reduce the demand for - and therefore the production of - electricity from coal and oil.

The reason, according to many experts (and not refuted by any) is that the human demand - or at least the American human demand - for electricity is effectively infinite. The more that is produced, the more that will be consumed, as our technological and innovative (and somewhat hedonistic) society creates more electronic gadgets. ...

There is, of course, another way to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases produced by power generation: use less power. That does not require slower economic growth, as demonstrated in one state - this one.

--Jon Margolis, "The wind and the warmth", Vermont New Guy, Apr 2, 2009

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont

More confessions: Wind is not an energy source

In a report prepared for NC WARN and released today, economist John Blackburn and attorney John Runkle state ("North Carolina’s Energy Future", footnotes to Tables 1-6):

Renewables are treated as a demand reduction rather than as capacity addition.

The authors' intention is to show that with modest efficiency improvements and expansion of renewables (primarily wind), Duke Energy and Progress Energy do not need to build any new coal or nuclear plants and can even retire existing ones.

Their calculations appear to ignore, however, that average wind generation values hide its highly variable and intermittent character. Utilities have to plan for the worst-case scenario, and with wind, that's about one-third of the time, when generation from wind is virtually nil.

It would actually be better for these authors' goals to leave the wind out. Because if wind is added, the utility has to add capacity to provide for the times when the wind is not producing (i.e., not reducing demand).

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Pickens: "I don't want to replace natural gas with wind"

From "Confessions of energy legends: wind power technically, economically inefficient -- can't really replace natural gas in electricity sector" by Tom Stacy, reporting on a "town meeting" in Ohio:

When asked what electricity generation fuel they envisioned for load balancing once the NG has been diverted to the transportation sector (a pillar of the Pickens Plan), Boone responded: "I don't want to replace natural gas with wind ... I would say that you use natural gas for power generation and a transportation fuel ... natural gas will last for 20 to 65 years. Then you're going to have to get on the battery." Not a positive word for wind.

The follow-up comment from AEP's [American Electric Power] Michael Morris was even more damning for the fading fame of the towering turbine: "Today wind is electrically inefficient and economically inefficient but it won't always be. We'll crack that equation -- Thank you."

Important confessions by two of the biggest promoters of wind energy: The Pickens Plan will not free up any natural gas for transportation; and wind is not ready to play a part in our energy supply.

Wind is a stalking horse -- for what? For Pickens, it's obvious: expanded consumption of natural gas. For AEP, it's probably to expand and upgrade transmission. (And with all that new very expensive transmission in place, most of the time being embarrassingly underutilized by wind, they'll just have to build a new nuclear or coal plant on it to make it pay.)

A final note -- even with efficient and economically and environmentally feasible storage, wind remains a diffuse resource. The fact remains that it requires huge machines over huge areas to collect a significant amount of it. Even if it were to work some day far in the future, it would remain an economic and environmental fiasco.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism