Free Republic

Perhaps coincidentally, Proposal 3, a ballot measure to impose a mandate on Michigan utilities to obtain 25 percent of the electricity they sell from “renewable” sources — read wind turbines — will come before voters just seven weeks before another taxpayer wind subsidy is set to expire. It’s a federal “production tax credit” that gives windmill operators a $22 tax break for every megawatt hour of juice they produce. According to a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, this is so generous that during hours of low demand wind producers actually pay grid operators to accept their power, just to get...

The government is effectively subsidizing the killing of federally protected birds, according to a report which highlights a wide range of subsidies given to the wind industry. “If Congress extends the PTC, federal taxpayers will, in effect, be subsidizing the killing of federally protected birds,” writes Robert Bryce, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the report’s author. “Despite numerous violations, the Obama administration — like the Bush administration before it — has unofficially exempted the wind industry from prosecution under the Eagle Protection and Migratory Bird Treaty Acts,” Bryce continues. “By exempting the wind industry from prosecution under the...

<p>BOISE -- The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission says Idaho Power's long-term purchase agreement with wind farms means that it must buy electricity from the farms even when demand for power is low.</p> <p>The commission's decision, reached Thursday, is good news for Idaho wind farms but a loss for the state's largest utility.</p>

  FAIRFIELD — A Spanish utility that is the world's largest developer of wind power is testing ways to quiet its Herkimer County turbine farm, using a special software that is new to the U.S. Iberdrola Renewables decided to install the new software, which adjusts blade positioning to reduce noise, after tests at its two-year-old, 37-unit Hardscrabble wind project found turbines were exceeding sound limits imposed by the towns of Fairfield and Norway. This is the first use in the U.S. of the quieting software, developed by Gamesa, the Spanish company that built the wind turbines, said Bernard Melewski, a lawyer...

A panel of experts who were appointed to work toward noise level guidelines for wind turbines in Michigan had their work discarded when state bureaucrats didn't like what the panel was coming up with and made up their own rules instead. As a result, there is now no specific state recommended decibel level limit for wind turbines. This means wind turbines can operate at 55 dBA (decibels adjusted to reflect the ear's response to sound), which is the standard Michigan had followed for at least two years. The panel was promoting reducing that level to 40 dBA...

A lack of transparency by top Obama administration officials has prompted an environmental group to sue the Interior Department to determine whether wind power projects are killing large numbers of bats and birds. The American Bird Conservancy (ABC) filed the lawsuit Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia accusing the government of intentionally withholding the information and refusing to comply with requests for certain documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). “It’s ridiculous that Americans have to sue in order to find out what their government is saying to wind companies about our wildlife,” ......

Tiny Pacific nations which are most at threat from rising seas have vowed to dump diesel and other dirty expensive fuels blamed for causing global warming and replace them with clean sources. Using coconut biofuel and solar panels, Tokelau -- which consists of three island dots half way between New Zealand and Hawaii -- plans to become self-sufficient in energy this year.

ONE of the great popular misconceptions about climate-change sceptics such as Ian Plimer, Bob Carter, Cardinal George Pell and me is that we're all Big-Oil-funded, Gaia-ravaging, nature-hating emissaries of Satan. We can't look at a lovely pristine beach, apparently, without praying for a nice, juicy oil slick to turn up and wipe out all the pelicans and turtles and sea otters. But this isn't actually true. I love our beautiful planet at least as much as your $180,000-a-year (for a three-day week) climate commissioner Tim Flannery does. One of my great heroes is Patrick Moore, the Canadian co-founder of Greenpeace...

Only months after Coconino County's first major wind energy farm got up and running this winter, the utility buying its power says more wind farms here are unlikely -- at least for now. Cost is the bottom line, with the sun beating the wind on both equipment prices and time-of-day power production. This disadvantage for wind could have some implications for a handful of other big wind projects proposed in Coconino County. A worldwide glut of solar panels produced at lower costs (including from China) has cut solar panel prices to a fraction of their former cost. So Arizona Public...

A year ago, a Reno clean energy businessman warned the Public Utilities Commission that if it didn’t set a few standards for NV Energy’s wind rebate program, its customers could end up footing the bill for turbines that rarely produce electricity. One reason behind his concern: To be eligible for rebates, customers didn’t need to prove that the wind actually blows enough to justify installing a turbine on their property. “This could allow unscrupulous developers to sell turbines to unsuspecting customers who will not generate electricity from an installed turbine because there is no wind to power the turbine,” Clean...

Scotland, one of Barack Obama’s models for his bogus wind power scam has literally seen the wind go out of her socialist politically correct sails. Scotland is the poster boy for the failure of wind power as a genuine source of energy. All of the high and mighty talk about wind as a viable alternative source of energy is now gone, not in the strong productive winds of the drawing board, but with the gentle breezes that are Scotland’s reality. The Scottish government’s ill-advised but politically correct “wind; not fossil fuel” scheme has so devastated the average Scottish household’s economy...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration offered new guidance Friday on where wind farms should be located to reduce the number of bird deaths while promoting increased use of wind power. A bird advocacy group that lobbied for mandatory standards said the new, voluntary guidelines will do little to protect hundreds of thousands of birds killed each year by wind turbines.

Taxpayers have put out billions in subsidies over the last three years for Barack Obama's green-energy stimulus program, which has produced such success stories as Solyndra, Beacon Power, and Ener1. But what happens when taxpayers subsidize efforts that actually produce electricity? As people in the Pacific Northwest have discovered, they end up subsidizing green-power generation -- and non-generation: CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Wind farms in the Pacific Northwest — built with government subsidies and maintained with tax credits for every megawatt produced — are now getting paid to shut down as the federal agency charged with managing the...

Analysis Two studies published this week calculate the astounding cost of Britain's go-it-alone obsession with using wind turbines to generate so much of the electricity the nation needs. Both studies make remarkably generous concessions that favour wind technology; the true cost, critics could argue, will be higher in each set of calculations. One study reckons that the UK can still meet its carbon dioxide emissions targets and save £140bn – but only if it dumps today's inefficient hippie technology. The other puts the potential saving at £120bn – pointing out that the same amount of electricity could be generated using...

A rush to green energy by spending billions covering much of the countryside with wind turbines would be an expensive blunder, a damning study has found. Professor Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University said the massive programme will cost consumers £120billion by 2020 through higher bills. This is almost ten times more than the £13billion it would cost to generate the same amount of electricity from efficient gas-fired power stations, according to the leading energy and environment economist. Professor Hughes said families are being forced to subsidise wind farms through their bills. Meanwhile business energy costs are also being driven up,...

You'd have to be a dim bulb -- perhaps one of those 13-watt compact fluorescents -- to believe that forcing utilities to purchase expensive offshore wind power will lead to economic prosperity. Yet this is precisely the reaction of the Boston press to a recent deal brokered by Gov. Deval Patrick. Gov. Patrick has been in a bind. With the Green Communities Act of 2008, the state legislature enacted a clean energy mandate requiring that 20% of Massachusetts' power come from renewable sources by 2025, joining 36 other states with "Renewable Portfolio Standards." Renewable energy, however, is expensive and especially...

The wind power industry is predicting massive layoffs and stalled or abandoned projects after a deal to renew a tax credit failed Thursday in Washington. The move is expected to have major ramifications in states such as Illinois, where 13,892 megawatts of planned wind projects — enough to power 3.3 million homes per year — are seeking to be connected to the electric grid. Many of those projects will be abandoned or significantly delayed without federal subsidies. The state is home to more than 150 companies that support the wind industry. At least 67 of those make turbines or components...

Hopes that a near-term extension of the production tax credit (PTC) for wind power would be included in legislation to extend the payroll tax cuts through the remainder of this year are nearly extinguished, as NAW has learned that congressional leaders have reached a tentative framework agreement on the payroll tax cut - but it does not contain a PTC extension. A House-Senate conference committee is expected to approve the deal, which will then go to the House and Senate as soon as today. Sources, who wished to remain anonymous, told NAW that both legislative bodies are expected to quickly...

...I want to believe in alt power, because sun and wind are free -- just as petroleum is free. It's only the extraction and distribution that cost...

Egypt currently has a total electricity capacity of about 23,500 megawatts, which the government hopes to increase to 58,000 megawatts by 2027. A prime potential element in increasing this electrical output? Renewables. One might think, given Egypt’s climate, solar? Wrong again – wind power, which currently contributes less than 1 percent to Egypt’s energy mix. In 2003 Egypt had its wind potential assessed and published a wind atlas, which found that with wind speeds of 7-10 meters per second, almost the entire nation was ideal for wind power installations, with the country’s best areas being along the Gulf of Suez...