Free Republic

BEIJING - China's Ministry of Commerce (MOC) on Saturday expressed its deep concern over the United States' anti-dumping and anti-subsidy probe into Chinese exports of wind towers. "The act will not only hamper bilateral cooperation in the field of new energy and harm the interests of US industries, but also go against global efforts to tackle the challenges of climate change and energy security," the MOC said in a statement on its website. The merchandise covered by the investigation is steel towers that support the engine and rotor blades for use in wind turbines with electrical power generation capacities in...

Let's try to understand wind power. Every wind farm needs backup generators to supply power when the wind fails. If there is no wind, zero electricity is produced by the turbines and all power comes from the backup generators (mainly coal or gas in my native Australia). If wind speed exceeds design capacity, the turbines are shut down to prevent damage, and all power comes from the backup generators. In freezing still air, the wind turbines take electricity from the backup generators to prevent damage from cold. And they draw power to get reconnected. When the wind blows strongly all...

The Institute for Energy Research (IER) is committed to free-market policy solutions for America’s energy needs. IER has repeatedly argued that reducing the federal government’s intervention in the energy sector would reduce prices for consumers and, especially in our current recession, would create thousands of good jobs for unemployed workers. In this context, a recent opinion piece on FoxNews by Steve Lockard—CEO of a company making wind turbines and a board member of the American Wind Energy Association—was quite ironic. Lockard was trying to appeal to conservative readers by claiming that the Congress was threatening to destroy American jobs through...

The story behind a story is often more interesting, but too often, we forget to ask questions needed to learn it.An example: The Keller school district is rightfully proud of its energy-efficient Timberview Middle School off Old Denton Road in Fort Worth. With its fruit and vegetable garden, geothermal heating and air conditioning, rooftop solar panels, white roof to absorb less heat, and waterless urinals, the year-old structure is billed as a school of the future .... Another component of the campus is its lone wind turbine, next to the athletic field by the concession building. Paid for with voter-approved...

A wind farm that was to be the first such large-scale operation in central Minnesota is about a year behind schedule. Edina-based Geronimo Wind Energy has the necessary permits to build the 95-megawatt wind farm. But the company hasn't been able to find a utility company willing to buy its energy. Geronimo spokesman Charlie Daum attributed the delay to a slow market. "That's really the only thing that's holding us back right now," Daum said, adding that the situation was "not a concern as much as a frustration." By now, as many as 60 turbines, each about 400 feet high,...

A couple have settled a High Court damages action against the owners and operators of a wind farm they say drove them from their farmhouse home with its "unbearable" noise... ...They blamed the "whoom whoom whoom" and the low frequency "hum" of giant turbine blades for their exile in a case that was closely watched by the wind farm industry. They said the "intolerable" noise disrupted their sleep, made them feel ill and was so severe that it warranted a reduction in council tax and rendered the £2.5 million farmhouse no longer marketable as a family home. Mr and Mrs...

An Indian tribe that wants to drill for oil is clashing with a Missouri company that seeks to install windmills on the grassy prairie here, in a fight over access to land that illustrates the growing tensions between developers of old and new forms of energy. The Osage Nation, which owns the mineral rights in the area, has drilled for oil for decades. The proposed wind farm would be located on a patch of this land where the Osage said they have discovered oil. The farm's turbines and substation would impede the extraction of the oil, the tribe said. "It's...

When the Netherlands built its first sea-based wind turbines in 2006, they were seen as symbols of a greener future. ... But five years later the green future looks a long way off. Faced with the need to cut its budget deficit, the Dutch government says offshore wind power is too expensive and that it cannot afford to subsidize the entire cost of 18 cents per kilowatt hour -- some 4.5 billion euros last year. The government now plans to transfer the financial burden to households and industrial consumers

As Jimi Hendrix may have put it: “And the wind cries bankrupt…” Minnesotans for Global Warming report that in the last 30 years, the United States has had 14,000 wind turbines abandoned. Apparently, once the subsidies and the wind run out, these 20-story high Cuisinarts are de-bladed and retired. This means more bats and migratory birds will live. From Minnesotans for Global Warming: “The symbol of Green renewable energy, our savior from the non existent problem of Global Warming, abandoned wind farms are starting to litter the planet as globally governments cut the subsidies taxes that consumers pay for the...

There is a growing movement to end all federal subsidies for energy as the country’s national debt nears $15 trillion. One report released by a coalition of free-market analysts estimated there was $380 billion in government subsidies for energy in 2011. The Green Scissors 2011 report estimated that $53 billion was lost in oil and gas revenues from royalty-free leases in federal waters and another $6 billion a year in ethanol tax credits. Americans for Prosperity came to Michigan this Saturday as part of its Energy for America Tour. The tour continues Monday with stops in Portage at noon and...

RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) - Energy Northwest and four southwest Washington utilities have canceled the Radar Ridge wind power project, which had been proposed as the first major wind farm in Western Washington. Energy Northwest of Richland announced the decision Wednesday at a board meeting in Portland. About $4 million had been spent on the proposed project since 2007, about half of that from Energy Northwest.

A new book by Hoover Institution fellow Peter Schweizer details the startling extent of the cronyism that has pervaded President Obama’s “green jobs” push. According to Schweizer, 4 out of every 5 renewable energy companies backed by the Energy Department was “run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers.” Those companies’ “political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy,” Schweizer explains. “It brought them returns many times over.” Doug Ross spotted the relevant excerpt of Schweizer’s book (h/t Ben Domenech’s Transom): When President-elect Obama came to Washington in late 2008, he was outspoken about...

With a name like ‘Apogee Stadium,’ there should be no doubt that the University of North Texas (UNT) was aiming for the utmost in green building with its new football stadium, and now the U.S. Green Building Council has recognized those efforts with LEED Platinum certification, making Apogee the first newly constructed collegiate football stadium in the nation to achieve this honor. The push to build this 31,000-seat stadium to LEED standards was spearheaded by Lee Jackson, chancellor of the UNT System, who led an initiative to construct all future UNT buildings to meet or exceed the latest efficiency and...

You may have gotten wind of the seven North Dakota oil companies recently charged in federal court with the deaths of 28 migratory birds. The birds allegedly landed in oil waste pits in western North Dakota last spring; the maximum penalty for each charge under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act is six months in prison and a $15,000 fine, the AP said. But did you know that wind-power companies are responsible for more than 400,000 bird deaths annually, and not one has faced a single charge? The Wall Street Journal knows it, opining yesterday that the prosecutions are “bird-brained,” especially...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on 30 May that Germany, the world's fourth-largest economy and Europe's biggest, would shutter all of its 17 nuclear power plants between 2015 and 2022, an extraordinary commitment, given that they currently produce about 28 percent of the country's electricity. Underlining the government’s seriousness in changing the country’s energy matrix, Germany's Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau (German Development Bank) is to underwrite renewable energy and energy efficiency investments in Germany with $137.3 billion over the next five years, Germany Trade and Invest reported. Overall, the German government's 6th Energy Research Program has made an extraordinary $274.6 billion...

Windmills to shut at night following demise of rare batKathy Mellott - The Tribune-Democrat October 17, 2011 LILLY — Night operation of the windmills in the North Allegheny Windpower Project has been halted following discovery of a dead Indiana bat under one of the turbines, an official with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday. The finding marks only the second location where an Indiana bat has been found dead under a wind turbine. Two Indiana bats were found under turbines in the Mid-west, said Clint Riley, supervisor for Fish and Wildlife’s Pennsylvania field office. “While finding the dead...

Say what you want about Duke Energy and the often-injudicious CEO James Rogers, but at least he is focused on his company’s profitability and the interests of shareholders. Last week he composed an op-ed forThe News & Observer of Raleigh in which he praised Democrat Sen. Kay Hagan and Republican Sen. John McCain for their introduction of the Foreign Earnings Reinvestment Act. The bill would give American companies a “holiday” from the 35 percent U.S. corporate income tax, enabling businesses to – as James Valvo of Americans for Prosperity explained – invest in capital and R&D, hire and train...

The more people know about the wind-energy business, the less they like it. And when it comes to lousy wind deals, General Electric’s Shepherds Flat project in northern Oregon is a real stinker. I’ll come back to the GE project momentarily. Before getting to that, please ponder that first sentence. It sounds like a claim made by an anti-renewable-energy campaigner. It’s not. Instead, that rather astounding admission was made by a communications strategist during a March 23 webinar sponsored by the American Council on Renewable Energy called “Speaking Out on Renewable Energy: Communications Strategies for the Renewable Energy Industry.”

Regulators have approved a deal for Chugach Electric Association to buy Fire Island wind power, a move that should allow Cook Inlet Region Inc. to go ahead and build a windmill farm on the island. There's been talk of building wind turbines on Fire Island, about three miles offshore from Kincaid Park on Anchorage's western tip, since the early 1990s. Now it looks like it's finally going to happen. "We expect that as soon as the ice is off the inlet in April we'll start mobilizing construction equipment out there. We expect first power sometime in September 2012," CIRI spokesman...

Green Jobs Are a National ScandalMore bankruptcies are to come. Solargate is just the tip of the iceberg.This cliché within a mixed metaphor reflects the madness of President Obama’s obsession with “green jobs.� It would be bad enough if this disaster were limited to possible criminality at Solyndra — the solar-panel maker that Obama stimulated with loan guarantees, despite repeated warnings about its rickety finances.“The true engine of economic growth will always be companies like Solyndra,� Obama proclaimed at its Fremont, Calif., headquarters on May 26, 2010. Not quite. Solyndra’s August 31 bankruptcy transformed 1,100 green jobs into pink slips...

Subsidies are the only thing green about the Solyndra scandalThe O Force has been running up America’s credit card by doling out cash to energy firms claiming to be green. Bosses at solar panel manufacturer Solyndra are busy taking the Fifth, and Obama administration officials are pleading ignorance over how an unsustainable enterprise was able to bag $535 million in taxpayer loot. In the coming days, Congress is likely to get to the bottom of exactly who knew what and when. There’s more to come with this scandal, but for now, one conclusion is clear already: You can’t outsmart the...

Our ever-campaigning president heads off to a fundraiser held by a politically connected businessman whose company took a $100 million stimulus tax credit. Solyndra didn't stop pay-for-play the "Chicago Way."

Scandal: Our ever-campaigning president heads off to a fundraiser held by a politically connected businessman whose company took a $100 million stimulus tax credit. Solyndra didn't stop pay-for-play the "Chicago Way." Tone-deaf somehow does not seem adequate to describe President Obama's silent indifference to the Solyndra scandal of his making as he rushes off to another fundraiser, a $25,000 per person affair in Missouri on Oct. 4 organized by another beneficiary of our stimulus tax dollars. Tom Carnahan, of the Missouri Carnahans, arguably that state's most prominent political family, is listed on President Obama's campaign website as a host of...

President Barack Obama will raise money in early October with a Missouri businessman whose company benefited from a $107 million federal tax credit to develop a wind power facility in his state. Tom Carnahan, a scion of Missouri’s most prominent Democratic political family, is listed on Obama’s campaign website as a host of a $25,000-per-person fundraiser to be held in St. Louis on October 4. His energy development firm, Wind Capital Group, was helped by a sizable credit authorized in the stimulus, for an energy project in northwest Missouri.

The seemingly endless expansion of wind power production in the United States has pushed large parts of the nation’s electric grid to the limits of its abilities. Now, in the Pacific Northwest, the power grid is pushing back. Wind power producers in Oregon and Washington State are likely to be the first casualties claimed in the impending morass triggered by calls for reverse rolling power outages at wind farms to keep the regional transmission system operating smoothly. Needless to say, wind investors are pissssssssed.

Indians and Europeans are a tolerant bunch, at least when it comes to milk, and it could all stem back to the same person who lived as long ago as 10,000 years, according to a Cambridge University study. While 68% of the world’s population suffers from lactose intolerance, many in India and Europe – as well as the Middle East and parts of Africa – have a genetic mutation that makes them lactase persistent, allowing them to digest lactose, the sugar in milk.All babies produce the gut enzyme lactase, but production usually shuts down before adulthood. For the intolerant majority,...

These pointless monstrosities will continue to proliferate until the Government sees sense. Three separate news items on the same day last week reflected three different aspects of what is fast becoming a full-scale disaster bearing down on Britain. The first item was a picture in The Daily Telegraph showing two little children forlornly holding a banner reading “E.On Hands Off Winwick”. This concerned a battle to prevent a tiny Northamptonshire village from being dwarfed by seven 410-foot wind turbines, each higher than Salisbury Cathedral, to be built nearby by a giant German-owned electricity firm. The 40 residents, it was reported,...

Texas Wind Energy Fails, AgainWhen the temperature rises, the wind slows down. Wednesday brought yet another unspeakably hot day to Texas and, alas, it was yet another day when wind energy failed the state’s consumers. Indeed, as record heat and drought continue to hammer the Lone Star State, the inanity of the state’s multi-billion-dollar spending spree on wind energy becomes ever more apparent. On Wednesday afternoon, ERCOT, the state’s grid operator, declared a power emergency as some of the state’s generation units began to falter under the soaring demand for electricity. Electricity demand hit 66,552 megawatts, about 1,700 megawatts shy...

About 80 gather to protest Vt. wind projectAP – Wed, Aug 24, 2011 MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — A large-scale wind power project planned for the northern Vermont town of Lowell is coming under fire from critics who say it's too expensive and environmentally damaging. Green Mountain Power, which is owned by Northern New England Energy Corp., a subsidiary of Canada-based Gaz Metro, is building the project.

While President Barack Obama wants to end subsidies that go to oil and natural gas companies, a new Department of Energy report shows that federal subsidies to clean energy are way up, with solar seeing a subsidy increase of 626 percent between FY 2007 and 2010 and wind getting a 946 percent increase. In April 2011, Obama repeated his call to end subsidies to oil and gas companies and said that “instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy, we should invest in tomorrow’s,” adding that “clean energy can lead to new jobs and new businesses,” and “[a]n investment in clean energy today...

American D-Day veterans are crying foul over a French initiative, approved last month by President Nicolas Sarkozy, to construct over one-hundred 525-feet wind turbines just off the Normandy landing grounds. According to Gérard Lecornu, president of the Port Winston Churchill Association of Arromanches, the giant structures, expected to be built seven miles from the beach, will be visible from the Normandy battleground beaches of Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. “Three million tourists come from the world over to the landing beaches. The first thing they do is look at the line of horizon from where the landings came,” he...

The federal government’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that conventional coal is less expensive than wind in its latest study of the cost of energy. Yet, a Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) study in February found that coal in Michigan was 22 percent more expensive than what the federal government states as the average U.S. coal cost. Some experts say that the reason for the discrepancy lies with an environmental agenda that seeks to artificially increase the cost of burning coal for electricity generation by requiring greater restrictions on its production of carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas. For example,...

"Renewable energy isn't something pie in the sky," Obama said during a speech at Cardinal. "It's not part of a far-off future. It's happening all across America right now. " ... It can create millions of new jobs and entire new industries if we act right now." Jeff Grabner, vice president and head of the company's wind business, told the Plain Dealer earlier in the week that Cardinal had been losing business to European suppliers who had underbid Cardinal, forcing the company to trim its workforce by 15 employees a year ago.

A Pipestone wind-turbine blade manufacturing plant has been hit with a $490,000 civil penalty for a series of air quality, hazardous waste and stormwater violations. In a court settlement with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency last month, Suzlon Rotor Corp. agreed to settle the violations by paying the penalty and by completing corrective actions at its southwestern Minnesota plant. The consent decree was entered July 7 in Pipestone County District Court. The problems stem from a 2009 MPCA inspection, which found that sandblasting operations there far exceeded emissions standards for airborne particles. In addition, the agency determined the company failed...

Half of the EU’s electricity requirements could be fueled by wind power by 2050, according to a report by the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA), which has renewed calls for the Commission to impose a target for renewable energy beyond 2020. Wind energy currently meets 5.3% of the EU’s electricity consumption. EWEA’s report — called “Pure Power” — claims that figure could more than triple by 2020, arriving at 18.4% of EU electricity demand. The figure is an optimal one, and EWEA also admit that the rise could only be to 15.4%, which conforms to the broad consensus of projections...

Federal authorities are investigating the deaths of at least six golden eagles at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's Pine Tree Wind Project in the Tehachapi Mountains, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday. So far, no wind-energy company has been prosecuted by federal wildlife authorities in connection with the death of birds protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. A prosecution in the Pine Tree case could cause some rethinking and redesigning of this booming alternative energy source. Facilities elsewhere also have been under scrutiny, according to a...

More regulations on industry will hurt the flickering economyAmerica faces a European-style debt crisis, but you wouldn’t know it from observing what’s happening on Capitol Hill. At a Senate committee’s request, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Tuesday issued an analysis of proposed renewable (RES) and clean-energy standards (CES). The federal government has grown so large that it’s actually studying how to spend money to make electricity more expensive. In fact, it’s a White House priority. In his State of the Union address, President Obama called for 80 percent of America’s electricity to come from windmills and solar panels by...

While most countries claim to support huge carbon caps, in practice they have resisted implementing them. The reason is simple: fossil fuels provide nearly 90% of the energy we use--the cheap, abundant fuel that powers modern farming, manufacturing, construction, transportation, and hospitals. The use of fossil fuels is directly correlated to quality and quantity of life, particularly through the generation of electricity ; in the past two decades, hundreds of millions of people have risen out of poverty because energy production has tripled in India and quadrupled in China, almost exclusively from carbon-based fuels. To drastically restrict carbon-based fuels, countries...

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators laid down principles on Thursday for planning and paying for new power lines, part of a long-term policy effort to help the nation’s electricity grid grow enough to meet the demands of renewable energy and a competitive electricity market. The rule, which has been in the works for several years, is intended to push the organizations that manage the grid into cooperating with one another, so that developers can build power lines across several states and multiple electrical jurisdictions. Such cross-jurisdictional transmission lines are becoming more important as states seek to reach their goals of integrating...

Bats, as scary as they are to some, are one of the more useful mammals in creation. The diets of those species common in Pennsylvania consist of mosquitoes and other insect pests including the ones that damage crops. A colony of 100 brown bats can consume of a quarter-million insects in a single night. Science magazine has estimated the pest control service provided by bats can save farmers about $74 per acre. Well, the unattractive wind turbines built at the hectoring of the nature worshipers who've managed to convince most that they are the arbiters of all dogma scientific are...

California's attempts to switch to green energy have inadvertently put the survival of the state’s golden eagles at risk. Scores of the protected birds have been dying each year after colliding with the blades of about 5,000 wind turbines. Now the drive for renewable power sources, such as wind and the sun, being promoted by President Obama and state Governor Jerry Brown has raised fears that the number of newborn golden eagles may not be able to keep pace with the number of turbine fatalities. The death count along the ridgelines of the Bay Area’s Altamount Pass Wind Resource Area...

California's attempts to switch to green energy have inadvertently put the survival of the state’s golden eagles at risk. Scores of the protected birds have been dying each year after colliding with the blades of about 5,000 wind turbines.

Energy Policy: The former governor of energy-rich Alaska calls the administration's bluff: End tax breaks for all forms of energy, she says, and let the free market pick winners and losers. End the ethanol pandering too. She isn't running, or riding, for president, at least not yet. But at a stop on her One Nation bus tour, Sarah Palin offered a winning idea for an economy strapped for energy and jobs and saddled with unsustainable debt. "I think all our energy subsidies need to be re-looked at today and eliminated," Palin told Scott Conroy of Real Clear Politics during a...

Chancellor Merkel is pinning her hopes on an expansion of wind power Germany's dramatic rethink over nuclear power has thrown up new problems, as the consequences of a retreat from atomic technology emerge. Just after Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster in March, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a review of energy policy and ordered Germany's oldest reactors to be shut down immediately, and perhaps permanently. Only a few months earlier, she had decided to keep the reactors running past their original shutdown dates. But only now comes the hard bit. Power companies have warned of higher prices because of the shutdown; Germany...

A combined power deal between Minnesota and Wisconsin will kick off the construction of a new dam in northern Manitoba. The deal is worth $4 billion and will see Manitoba Hydro sell 475 megawatts southward starting in 2015. To meet that demand Hydro will have to build the $5.6-billion Keeyask Generation Station on the lower Nelson River 175 kilometres northeast of Thompson. “This is the largest dollar sale of exports that we’ve had in the history of Manitoba Hydro in absolute dollar terms,” Premier Greg Selinger said Wednesday. “We like to think of it as Manitoba’s oil, but more sustainable...

President Obama frequently says Americans "need to end our $4 billion in annual taxpayer subsidies to oil companies." The latest Democrat bill would have repealed some $2 billion of what Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) and others call "subsidies" and "special tax breaks" for Big Oil. That’s baloney – shameless demagoguery that will inflict further damage on our struggling economy. Subsidies are cash payments from government to the private sector. Money is taken from the 51% of Americans who still pay income taxes – and transferred by legislators and bureaucrats to companies and activities that "deserve" or "require" these wealth transfers,...

Mark Duchamp writes in with this news from the Lerida, Autonomous Community (state) of Catalonia, Spain:A judge ordered the removal of 45 wind turbines on the grounds that planning laws were violated. There was no “general municipal plan” establishing a “reserva del suelo” – i.e. the land was not legally declared appropriate for the erection of wind turbines.The wind farm in the Serra del Tallat, located between Passanant i Belltall (Conca de Barbera) and Vallbona de les Monges (Urgell) ACN / Núria Torres Spanish Version:http://www.lavanguardia.com/medio-ambiente/20110517/54155159411/un-juez-de-lerida-ordena-desmantelar-un-parque-eolico-de-45-molinos.html English Version: http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=es&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lavanguardia.com%2Fmedio-ambiente%2F20110517%2F54155159411%2Fun-juez-de-lerida-ordena-desmantelar-un-parque-eolico-de-45-molinos.html According to another article going back to January 22nd, Spanish architects from...

Where does clean energy come from? Dirty places. Some of the cleanest energy sources -- wind turbines, for example -- come from some of the dirtiest places. Take those basic three-megawatt wind turbines -- the gleaming white towers that march in majestic phalanx over hill and dale, gracefully etching three-bladed Mercedes-Benz emblems against the azure sky (or those ugly, noisy, bird-killing scythes that desecrate land and water, take your pick). Where do we get one of those? The bank, first. Or the U.S. Department of Energy, for a subsidy from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. You'll pay about $4...

I've been thinking about the wind lately. And by thinking about the wind, I mean hating it, cursing it and blaming it for everything that goes wrong. There is a reason New Mexico in April is never featured on Tourism Department brochures. Who wants to see people picking sand out of their ears, fences piled high with tumbleweeds and fast-food wrappers dancing down the highway like members of the touring cast of "Cabaret"? In addition to picking up tons of grit and garbage from the Arizona state line and moving it over to the Texas state line and then moving...