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In the name of “green energy,” the Obama administration is using taxpayer money to subsidize a New Hampshire wind farm that is a subsidiary of a hugely profitable company. BAIF Granite Holdings was created earlier this year by Brookfield Renewable Power, which is a subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management of New York. That company, which runs clean energy operations around the world, has deep pockets. It reported net income of $454 million in 2009 and $3.2 billion in 2010. With that kind of backing, it is curious that the U.S. Department of Energy announced it would guarantee up to 80...

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.

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...

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...

Kudos to MSNBC, the usually reliable Barack Obama cable network, for staying on top of a story getting little play by the mainstream press, and even by their ‘fair and balanced’ rivals over at Fox News. It seems that some of that Obama-Reid-Pelosi stimulus money, which was supposed to be used to help create jobs here at home, may be helping to stimulate the Chinese economy instead. This would be on top of the help that the Chinese would get competitively if Obama’s cap-and-trade proposals are ever enacted. As reported by MSNBC, top Democratic fundraisers, union supporters and lobbyists with...

County roads could benefit from tax incremental financing on wind generators in northeastern Pottawattamie County, but local school districts would be the loser, according to at least one Walnut school board member. Shannon Griffith, school board president for Walnut Community Schools, said he had concerns about the plan and personally feels that it should not go forward. “This is taking money from two school districts to perform road maintenance in the county,” he said. “It is not the proper use of TIF law as far as I’m concerned, and I have made contact with our school attorney to take a...

Internet search engine giant Google is investing in a mammoth project to build an underwater "superhighway for clean energy" that would funnel power from offshore wind farms to 1.9 million homes without overtaxing the already congested mid-Atlantic power grid, the company said.

Jefferson City, Mo. (AP) -- Fertilized with federal stimulus money, 100 new wind turbines have cropped up among the soybean fields of northwest Missouri, and they're generating some high-voltage sparks in Missouri's U.S. Senate race. That's because the Lost Creek Wind Farm, which received $107 million in stimulus money, was developed by a company run by Tom Carnahan — the younger brother of Democratic Senate candidate Robin Carnahan and U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan. Vice President Joe Biden highlighted the project during a visit to Missouri in April 2009. Two weeks ago, the White House included it on a list of...

Democratic Rep. Russ Carnahan of Missouri is a rank-and-file Democrat. According to OpenCongress.org, he has voted with the Democratic Party 99 percent of the time since he assumed office in 2005, and was among those who consistently espoused the merits of the 2009 stimulus package. He has, in other words, been a good reliable Democrat for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Obama. And it seems the obedience has not gone unnoticed. Earlier this month, the White House released a report entitled, “100 Recovery Act Projects that are Changing America.” Number 18 on the list is Lost Creek Wind Farm...

"It has been a matter of policy in the wind farm industry to make the financing of it both opaque and complicated," said Mr Etherington. "In all countries across Europe the customer is not told how much they are paying for it, and the whole financing of the industry is coming out of subsidy on electricity generation." .....Recent research by Kroll, the international corporate security firm, has discovered examples all over Europe of so-called "clean energy" schemes being used to to line criminals' pockets rather than save the planet. Some involve windmills that stand derelict or are simply never built,...

STRATTON, Maine (AP) — A national environmental group says eight of its members who blocked the entrance to a western Maine wind power construction site have been escorted offsite and issued warnings. Maine Earth First! spokeswoman Emily Posner says about 50 people blocked the road to TransCanada's Kibby Mountain construction site Tuesday morning. TransCanada spokeswoman LeAnne LeBlanc says the protest was peaceful and work continues. TransCanada is building 22 wind turbines on mountains near where it's already built 22 turbines that are producing power. Maine Earth First! says projects like TransCanada's destroy mountaintops and don't offset fossil fuel use. Tuesday's...

First they lose the family throne, then word gets out that Patches was doing vodka shots after giving a talk on his history of substance abuse, and finally -- and most ignominiously -- the feds have approved a permit for a giant wind farm that will, horror of horrors, mar the ocean view at the Kennedy's Hyannis Port compound. How about this for a vituperative and wounded quote: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer and nephew of the late senator, said the decision will cost Massachusetts taxpayers "billions of dollars" over the next two decades....snip... This battle is far...

Ted Kennedy must be spinning in his grave! The Obama administration has given the green light for the nation's first offshore wind farm off the pristine coast of Cape Cod -- a surprise move in direct opposition to the wishes of the mighty Massachusetts political icon who helped propel the president to power. US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar made the announcement yesterday in Boston, capping a nine-year federal review process that pitted the liberal Kennedy clan -- whose Hyannis Port compound is near the future wind farm -- against fellow Dems and some environmental groups. A month before he died,...

Europe's largest windfarm was shut down after a blade snapped off one of the huge turbines, operators said today. All 140 turbines at the Whitelee windfarm on Eaglesham Moor near Glasgow are being inspected by engineers following Friday's incident. ScottishPower Renewables said mechanical failure or a lightning strike could be to blame for the breakage, which it described as 'highly unusual'. The 150ft, 14-tonne, fibreglass blade broke off in the early hours in windy conditions and landed at the base of its tower.

Future Fuels: Our secretary of energy pushes bio-refineries and windmills to oil executives at an energy conference as the administration announces a three-year offshore drilling ban. This is a policy for economic suicide. They don't qualify as an official group of victims, but carbon-Americans, as they have been called, did not have much to cheer about last week, when Energy Secretary Steven Chu addressed CERAWeek 2010, a premier industry conference hosted by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. With an economy struggling to regain sound footing, Chu advocated a starvation diet devoid of additional fossil fuels that are to remain under...

Opponents of land-based wind farms have a new ally in the form of MIT. Researchers there say that, far from mitigating global warming, land-based wind turbines actually increase the temperature around them.With the US Department of Energy expecting wind power to account for a fifth of the US’s electricity supply by 2030, the team used a climate model to analyze the effects of millions of wind turbines on the climate. Such a massive deployment could indeed make a difference, they found - though not necessarily a welcome one. Ron Prinn, TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Science, and principal research scientist Chien...

Energy: When even Chuck Schumer is upset with the White House, you know something's amiss. In this case, it's news that efforts to boost wind power with taxpayer stimulus dollars are filling foreign coffers and creating foreign jobs. According to the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, nearly $2 billion in money from the American Recovery and Investment Act has been spent on wind power. The goal was to further energy independence while creating American jobs. It has done neither. Of the money spent, according to the report, nearly 80% has gone to foreign manufacturers of wind turbines. "In all...

Energy: The government says wind power could supply the eastern half of the U.S. with a fifth of its electricity by 2024. Just don't try building wind farms where someone might see them. A claim is contained in a new study released by the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and technically it might be true. But we've heard these overblown predictions before, and experience around the world with heavily subsidized alternative energy has not worked out well. The area in question, called the Eastern Interconnection, is a grid extending roughly from the western borders of the Plains states through...

CHEYENNE — Wind energy development in Wyoming garnered unprecedented attention this year as the state wrestled with regulation, taxation and environmental protection issues. Developers brought online about 400 megawatts of wind-generated energy in Wyoming in 2009, pushing the state's wind industry past the 1,000-megawatt capacity mark for the first time. Karyn Coppinger of the Wyoming Power Producers Coalition, a trade group, said 2009 was a pivotal year for the industry because of the state's attention to wind policy questions. During the 2009 session, the Legislature allowed a sales tax exemption for wind projects to sunset, and lawmakers created a task...

Work on a West Virginia wind power project has been halted by a federal judge who sided with environmentalists' claim that the project would harm an endangered bat. U.S. District Judge Roger Titus issued the order Tuesday, citing potential harm to the federally endangered Indiana bat. John Stroud, co-chairman of one of the environmental groups that filed the lawsuit, Mountain Communities for Responsible Energy, said group members were "really delighted with the ruling." "We've been working on this for a while and the judge saw things our way, and we're really pleased," said Stroud, a rare book dealer who owns...