The Counter Cape Wind Blog

by Mark Harrington, Staff Writer, Newsday

April 27, 2007

An audience of Long Islanders gave a collective thumbs down Wednesday night to a draft report by a federal regulator seeking to set guidelines for the use of coastal waters for renewable energy projects.

A couple of dozen people, mostly wind-farm opponents, showed up for the gathering at the Melville Marriott held by the federal Minerals Management Service, which sought feedback on a draft of the program-wide impact statement for all such projects in federal waters.

Babylon Town Supervisor Steve Bellone criticized the report as a giveaway to energy companies. Charging that MMS had granted "virtually everything" one wind-energy contractor, FPL Energy, had requested, Bellone said, "My concern is that MMS is acting as more an expeditor than a regulator."

He called the wind-energy portion of the report "unsalvageable," and recommended MMS "tear it up and start over."

Laurie Farber, an expert on migratory birds and former conservation chairwoman of the Sierra Club's Long Island executive committee, expressed concern that language in the draft was less than concrete. The guidelines, she said, leave wiggle room with phrasings such as "may include," or suggestions to "avoid," rather than telling applicants, "you must or you will."

"That concerns me greatly," Farber said.

Tom Vanderberg, a member of the Save Jones Beach wind-farm opposition group, took similar exception to the language, arguing that its characterizations of "minor" impacts, for instance, could not be quantified and opened the door to abuse.

"The final [program guidelines] have to be more courageous," he said, "and less designed to let the industry write its own ticket."

MMS officials took note of the feedback but didn't respond to the criticisms.

But in what some saw as a change of position at the start of the session, MMS clarified that the Long Island Power Authority's proposed wind farm would come under the rules of the final program-wide impact statement. LIPA's project and the proposed Cape Wind project in Nantucket, Mass., are the only two projects that have been allowed to move ahead while the program guidelines were being devised.

"The projects will not get ahead of the program," an MMS official said. "Those projects cannot be built until this [national program statement] is finished."

# posted by NMG @ 3:30 PM

The Northern Times, UK
April 27, 2007
by Malcolm Rider, North Street, Dunbar

Myself and many like me will be stunned that the Assynt Foundation can even think about putting up wind turbines in the world renowned area of Suilven (NT and Letters, 6th April).

"It's to combat global warming" says Claire Belshaw of the Assynt Foundation. So the subterfuge, typical of any wind farm debate has already started. The community will be divided (is already) and the arguments will be acrimonious. As Francis Keith says: "A community needs a wind farm like a hole in the head". Once the genie is out of the bottle, it is very hard to put back in and the turbines are as good as built.

Far from helping the environment, the damage caused by wind farms is enormous. I would ask the foundation to send observers to our local "contribution" at Kilbraur, where the construction has just started. Numerous diggers, stone crushers, at least six massive trucks, site vehicles and the like are working away on what was until recently a quiet hill. It looks like a motorway construction site.

Watercourses don't know which way to run, having been blocked by the road construction, there are huge piles of excavated peat (which release large quantities of CO2 as they dry), piles of stones are scattered over the heather, and the work has only just started.

On top of this, the developers, having had three or more years of "careful" preparation (to protect the environment), after only a month on the hill are back asking for planning permission to double the size of the on-site quarry. Two medium holes are easier to ask for than the one very big hole it will be (the planners are sure to agree). And to make matters worse, the one big hole will entirely wipe out a plantation of young trees. Plant trees, we are told, to counter CO2 emissions.

So I'm afraid wind turbines on the Assynt Foundation land will do three things: destroy the iconic scenery, destroy the environment and divide the community.
The one thing they might do in addition is make (subsidy) money, which is what all wind farm developers really want.

Don't come up with the lame excuse of global warming. Say it straight. It's the money.

Newsday, NY April 25, 2007

by Mark Harrington

A stiff wind kicked up at Gilgo Beach in Babylon yesterday as Town Supervisor Steve Bellone took to a podium planted in the sand to launch an assault on LIPA's proposed windmill project.

Flanked by giant, tipsy photo simulations of the Long Island Power Authority's project and Babylon's own more stark depictions of the 40 turbines, Bellone declared it was time for LIPA to come clean on all elements of the project.

He said photos of the project on LIPA's Web site "are inaccurate and do not depict what the turbines will look like to the average eye." Asked whether the quarter-inch difference in the depictions mattered, Bellone insisted: "This is not nit-picking. What this is calling for is truth in advertising."

Bellone took LIPA to task for suggesting the project would cost ratepayers nothing because contractor FPL Energy would pay the costs, suggesting instead that Babylon's best estimate of a $556 million construction cost would be reflected in significantly higher rates. "Besides Shoreham, this will be the most expensive energy project Long Island has ever seen," he charged.

The supervisor noted that while the 140-megawatt capacity of the turbines is "technically" their highest-rated output, intermittent wind patterns mean the 40 turbines are likely to produce just 28-35 megawatts on average per year. "Are Long Islanders ready to pay more than a half-billion dollars to produce 28 megawatts?" he said.

Bellone suggested that LIPA focus on alternatives such as Islandwide conservation measures and stronger green building codes. He has also pushed for overhauling old KeySpan plants.

LIPA representatives didn't attend the meeting, but in a statement yesterday, chief executive Richard Kessel reiterated that the authority was "in the process of getting updated cost figures from FPL Energy" and will "make them public as soon as we get them."

On the photo comparisons, Kessel added, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but L.I. urgently needs to lessen its dependence on fossil fuels and it needs to do it soon."

The gathering was attended by several members of the Save Jones Beach Ad Hoc committee, the group that opposes the project, some of whose members live nearby.

Beachgoers at Gilgo yesterday took a mixed view of windmills. Tourists Marc and Sally Switzer of Cape Vincent, N.Y., near the Canadian border, said their town is considering land- and water-based turbines, as near as two miles from their home. "I don't think it would be an issue," he said. She added, "I personally think they're kind of nice looking."

But Jackie and Patrick O'Brien of North Babylon were adamantly against it. "To me it's just a total waste and it's an obscene-looking thing," he said.

Those for or against wind energy will get the chance to sound off tonight when the federal Minerals Management Service conducts a public hearing at 7 o'clock. at the Melville Marriott.

# posted by NMG @ 2:33 PM

April 24, 2007 by Peg Britton in Kansas Prairie

Electricity has to be used instantaneously, cannot be reliably stored and has to be kept within a narrow band of voltage and frequency.

Wind power always requires back up if we want lights to burn in our houses.

I have neither heard of, nor can I find where a fossil-fuel plant has been shut down anywhere in the world because there was plenty of wind power to offset it. Instead, it's the reverse of that.

The more wind farms that are built, the more "back-up" power sources are required in the form of coal or gas, hydroelectric or nuclear fired energy plants. More contaminants are spewed into the air.

Consider this: Kansas now has 5 wind farms and 18 more are in the planning or construction stage. Here's a map so you can see where there is a wind farm coming to your neighborhood.

Then, think about all the new/additional coal-fired and gas-fired plants the administration wants to see constructed in Kansas, with the bulk of them slated for western Kansas. All are necessary to back up the wind farms AND to supply other states with greater populations the energy they need. It's not just for Kansans.

For every wind farm that is built, a more reliable energy source has to exist to back up the farm's maximum potential output. It's a vicious circle we ought not to be participating in.

We're being duped and it's at OUR expense. Once again, our tax dollars are working against us.

# posted by NMG @ 2:40 PM

by Carol Smith, Billings Gazette, Montana.
Letter to the Editor

The (April 1) Gazette article about the challenges of integrating wind power was accurate but ignores underlying problems and glosses over the warts.

Jan Falstad said that wind had gone from being "technologically challenged and too expensive - to being a popular and mandated goal." Perhaps more accurately, it should have read, "Wind has gone from being technically challenged and too expensive - to being technically challenged, mandated and taxpayer subsidized."

If wind power were really popular, we would not need Gov. Schweitzer putting it in the law that we must buy it. Only uncompetitive sources of power are mandated. Only 3/10th of 1 percent of NWE's customer base willingly pay 50 cents per week extra to support "green power."

NWE and the PSC have long known about the fines ratepayers face because of the line imbalance caused by Judith Gap. Yet PSC Commissioner Jergeson, while acknowledging the errors of his vote on Judith Gap, just recently voted for 50 MW more of wind. I wish Falstad had asked him about this apparent discrepancy.

Fortunately, our commissioner Brad Molnar stood alone against both Judith Gap and the 50 additional megawatts because they shifted the risks and costs from the developers to the ratepayers. Eventually, he was joined by Commissioner Doug Mood. Unfortunately, the three Democratic commissioners decided that consumers would just have to bear it. And so we shall.

# posted by NMG @ 9:33 AM

by John Bell, Ashwood in The Age, Australia
[Letter to the Editor]

Dr. Diesendorf (BusinessDay, 13/4) is mistaken in his belief that renewable energy has "neither technological nor economic barriers".

By definition, any generator that can only produce 30 to 40 per cent of its potential, for example, wind, and then not on command but at the whim of the wind, is not baseload plant.

Geographically diverse positioning of wind farms does not transform wind generators to "baseload plant". For example, in 2003 for one week in winter and during a week-long heat wave, a German retailer with 5500 MW of wind generators produced less than 10 per cent of rated energy output, requiring up to 98 per cent back-up - hardly "a small amount" of back-up, as Dr Diesendorf asserts.

Given Victoria has a generating capability of 10,000 MW, and assuming half of this were to be replaced with wind, some 7500 wind turbines would be required (2 MW size) at a cost of almost $30 billion. In addition, based on the German experience, almost 5000 MW of back-up power would be required, that is, a total installed capacity of 25,000 MW.

Eventually we may very well move towards a high percentage of renewable energy but this will occur only when the price of power is increased sufficiently to support the higher capital investment.

# posted by NMG @ 9:29 AM

By MAX SCHULZ,
New York Post, April 21, 2007

AS we mark the 38th Earth Day tomorrow, it's worth noting that this secular "religion" has led many Americans to fervently believe some things that just aren't true.

Environmentalist values plainly deserve a place in making public policy. But we shouldn't be guided by myths that are provably false.

Yet a recent survey by Zogby International for the Manhattan Institute found that, when it comes to energy and the environment, the public is more inclined to believe myths than to have a firm grasp of basic facts.

Polling 1,000 average Americans on assorted energy and environmental issues, we found a wide disconnect between what people "know" and what is actually true.

What are the myths propagated by the Church of Environmentalism? Consider the pronouncements from the greens' "Vatican": Last Earth Day, Greenpeace USA exhorted its followers to action because "our forests are being destroyed at an unprecedented rate." More, we must switch to "clean alternative" energies like wind power, because "we all know that fossil fuels contribute to global warming."

A lot of people agree. Nearly 67 percent of those in our survey said they believe human activity, such as logging and development, is shrinking our forests. It seems self-evident; after all, the population continues to grow, and we build more and bigger buildings. So why wouldn't we be losing forestland?

But it's not so. Yes, the United States lost forestland throughout much of the 19th century, as the new nation grew - but the amount of forestland stabilized throughout much of the 20th century.

You can thank technology and progress for that, not any government scheme to save trees. The fact is that our footprint over nature is shrinking - because housing and industry don't require anything approaching the acreage that farming demands, and we now need smaller and smaller spaces to provide the necessities of life.

Machines have replaced work animals (also cutting down the land needed for grazing). Crops deliver richer yields in smaller spaces. Today we harvest 80 million fewer acres of cropland than we did 60 years ago. And our overall per-capita timber consumption is half of what it was a century ago.

Result? According to the Forest Service, we have actually seen a net reforestation since 1985. We aren't losing forestland, we're gaining it.

Greenpeace's call for replacing fossil fuels with cleaner alternatives might make sense, but only if there were any realistic alternatives available. Presently renewable energies like wind power, solar power and ethanol aren't close to being able to substitute for the coal, natural gas and oil that make up the lion's share of our energy sources. Coal provides half our electricity today. Wind and solar provide less than 1 percent.

More, alternative fuels can be as land-hungry as agriculture. The typical 1,000 megawatt coal or nuclear plant might sit on a few acres. To generate the same amount of electricity with renewables would require 60,000 acres for a utility-scale wind farm, or about 11,000 acres of photovoltaic cells capturing the sun's light.

Ethanol, too, can't be produced in the massive quantities required to make a significant dent in our gasoline consumption - and its production depends on vast tracts of farmland, too.

Other myths?

* More than four of every five poll respondents said that our cities are getting dirtier. In fact, pollution has been slashed since 1970, and our cities are far cleaner today.

* A majority believes our chief supplier of foreign oil is Saudi Arabia. In fact, it is our friendly neighbor to the north, Canada. All told the Persian Gulf supplies just 17 percent of the oil we import, and just 11 percent of all the oil we use.

This Earth Day, Greenpeace and its fellow environmental ecclesiasts will once again call on their flocks to take action. By all means, let us safeguard the environment - but with steps rooted in fact, not myth.

Max Schulz is a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and author of "Energy and the Environment: Myths and Facts."

# posted by NMG @ 9:24 AM

April 21, 2007 by Claudia Cattaneo in Financial Post

Alberta power utility Enmax Corp. said yesterday it is building a huge new power station in Southern Alberta fired with natural gas, partly to help boost the provincial grid's reliability after Alberta's aggressive expansion into wind energy made it vulnerable to power disruption.

"We now have so much windpower generation that we need to fall back on reliable sources of power," said Peter Hunt, an Enmax spokesman.

"The problem with wind power is that the wind doesn't blow all the time, so the greater percentage of the system depends on wind, the more vulnerable to disruption the system becomes when the wind stops blowing."

The 1,200-megawatt station, which industry sources say would cost about $2-billion, would produce enough power to supply two-thirds of Calgary's needs.

Alberta expanded into windpower generation aggressively since deregulating its electricity industry eight years ago. With more than 4% of its power coming from wind farms in the southern part of the province, it is the national leader in the green-energy source.

But the growth turned out to be too much of a good thing and the provincial grid operator, Alberta Electric System Operator, slapped a ban last April on the construction of any more wind farms until the reliability issues are resolved.

While environmentally friendly, the typical wind farm in Southern Alberta can harvest wind only 35% of the time.

Electricity has to be used instantaneously, cannot be reliably stored and has to be kept within a narrow band of voltage and frequency.

Warren Frost, vice-president of operations and reliability with AESO, said the new station should solve some of the grid's variability challenges.

"It's good news for Alberta in terms of getting another source of generation," he said. "Alberta is continuing to grow at a phenomenal rate and another major investment in the generation of supply is a good thing."

While Enmax has not picked a site for the station, Mr. Hunt said it will be located close to wind power generation areas so it can quickly pick up the load when the wind starts to die down. The first phase is expected to be completed in the next three years.

An advantage of natural gasfired stations is that they can be turned on quickly, just like cooking gas. Coal-fired stations, on the other hand, need a long time to ramp up. [Click headline for full article.]

# posted by NMG @ 7:36 AM

Opinion
Western Morning News, Devon, UK

April 18, 2007

By Dr John Etherington, Pembrokeshire

Massey University, Palmerston, New Zealand, has recently published a survey showing that 80 per cent of people who live within 3km of wind turbines in Manawatu, near Palmerston, find them intrusive and 73 percent think them unattractive.

This is entirely at odds with the repetitive British Wind Energy Association claim that "Opinion surveys regularly show that just over eight out of ten people are in favour of wind energy" and that "There has never been any other result from surveys into wind energy, no matter where or when they were carried out."

The academic who led the survey said the results could reflect the reality of living with wind turbines as opposed to the ideology of renewable energy. Over half the survey forms were returned, suggesting a high level of concern - not surprising, as turbine noise is heard by 45 per cent of households living within 2 km of the Manawatu wind farm and 20 per cent of households living up to 8 km away.

Recently the ITV "Wales this Week" programme discussed windfarm development and a subsequent phone poll received a record number of calls which showed that 72 per cent of respondents opposed onshore windpower development.

Our politicians need to take the temperature of public opinion rather than fallaciously trust that a few UK windmills might alter the warmth of the planet.

# posted by NMG @ 10:03 AM

by Dona Tracy


Developer Jim Gordon, of the Cape Wind project, may have been thinking "It is sometimes better to apologize than ask for permission" when his company omitted the dredging of Horseshoe Shoal from their Final Environmental Impact Report to the State of Massachusetts. But when it comes to a project of this magnitude, 130 440' wind turbines and a 100' electrical platform slated for 25 square miles of the Nantucket Sound, a public waterway, off the coast of Cape Cod and the Islands an apology just won't cut it.

Click headline or here for full article.

Windpower is not a suitable source of energy.


by Bob Graham, Chairman of ‘Highlands Against Windfarms’, Scotland

Sheffield Today, April 14, 2007

"Windpower fails on three major issues, electricity supply, climate change and cost. It's Achilles heel is its intermittency and because of this all the winturbines in the UK only produce less than half the output of one conventional power station (about 560 Mw). Of course not a single fossil fuel or nuclear power station can close because of this intermittency."

"If, as has been suggested our emissions are causing climate change, windpower will not make the remotest difference. Even if all our electricity came from windpower this would reduce global carbon dioxide levels by about 0.5 per cent, an amount too small to measure."

"Finally there is the cost, currently windpower electricity costs more than double that from conventional sources. Every megawatt hour of windpower receives about £48 in ROC and CCle subsidy, paid for by us the consumer."

"Windpower is nothing more than green tokenism and vast areas of our landscapes are being trashed in the process."

# posted by NMG @ 9:53 AM

Humankind in the 21st century is suffering from environmental pollution and ecological destruction caused by unchecked industrialization around the globe. It is our obligation to do our best to minimize development and investment which would neglect the protection of natural resources remembering the Dutch philosopher Benedict de Spinoza who once said “even if the world comes to the end tomorrow, I will plant an apple tree today.” Accordingly, the environmental activists in Korea and abroad participating in the 2006 International Workshop on the Landscape Ecology and the Problem with Wind farms, declare the following three points which should guide our activities in the years to come.

1] The construction of and governmental support to those huge-size commercial wind farms must be reconsidered with prudence and deliberation, because they are the main source of various environmental problems including the destruction of natural landscape and the lives of inhabitants in local communities.

2] With a definite purpose to correct those prevailing fantasy-like views on wind energy, national governments and international organizations are sincerely advised to provide financial and institutional support to those scientific efforts to reveal the facts of environmental destruction by the massive profileration of wind energy, as well as its low efficiency.

3] In order to prevent the reckless expansion of those inefficient and destructive wind farm complexes into our precious and beautiful countryside, we must enhance public awareness and education by way of a global network media campaign which could help enlighten citizens, developers, public servants, and political leaders.

October 23, 2006

# posted by NMG @ 3:09 PM

By Stephanie Ebbert, Globe Staff | April 7, 2007

A week after receiving a blessing from Massachusetts environmental regulators, the long-delayed wind farm proposed off Cape Cod has been dealt an apparent setback by the federal agency that will make the final decision on the controversial project.

The Minerals Management Service, which had been scheduled to deliver a draft environmental report that would signal its intentions for the project this month, said the report is "taking longer than expected" and will not be ready before late summer.

The delay means that a final decision on the project will be postponed at least until summer 2008.

The delay, on one level, was seen merely as a sign of the complex issues confronting regulators as they consider the nation's first proposal for an offshore wind farm; the agency has also postponed the release of a draft of new regulations for all offshore energy projects. But some proponents worried that it might mean the project is running into trouble.

The project's developer, Cape Wind Associates, said the wind farm is being held to higher scrutiny than other energy projects would be.

"As it is, we're into the sixth year of permitting for Cape Wind," said Mark Rodgers, a Cape Wind spokesman. "We're having to pass a higher bar than any of Massachusetts' fossil fuel or nuclear power plants had to."

Cape Wind's plan to build 130 wind turbines in a 25-mile area of Nantucket Sound has whipped up controversy among residents of the Cape, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket, who fear that the project would industrialize the sound and threaten tourism. US Senator Edward M. Kennedy, former governor Mitt Romney, and former attorney general Thomas F. Reilly are among the powerful politicians fighting the project, and congressional efforts have nearly killed Cape Wind's chances several times.

Opponents said yesterday that the delay is appropriate: "It's the largest offshore development in the world, and it's not only complicated, but it is riddled with conflicts and problems, so this process should take time," said Ernie Corrigan, a spokesman for the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound that was formed to fight the project.

Nicolette Nye, a spokeswoman for the Minerals Management Service said in a statement that the delay is due to the fact that the agency is in uncharted territory.

"Offshore alternative energy is a new frontier for the nation," Nye said. "Thus the agency is proceeding with the review of the Cape Wind Energy Project in an appropriately deliberate and diligent manner."

Proponents and advocates for clean energy say the proposal should be embraced because it would produce about 79 percent of the daily power needs of the Cape and Islands, pollution-free.

"Given the extraordinarily lengthy environmental review this pioneering clean energy project has undergone, any further delay is unfortunate," said Sue Reid, director of the Conservation Law Foundation's Clean Energy and Climate Change Initiative

Reid pointed to yesterday's international findings on global warming as further evidence of a need to act quickly.

"That said, we hope the additional time will be used to ensure the environmental impact statement is robust and moves quickly to a final decision," she said.

Just last week, the state's environmental affairs secretary gave the project the green light. But the wind farm, planned for federal water, needs approval from the US government.

The Army Corps of Engineers had issued a largely favorable draft review and was completing its final review of the project's environmental impact statement in 2005. But the Energy Policy Act of that year transferred oversight of offshore energy projects to Minerals Management, the agency responsible for offshore oil drilling, and asked the agency to design regulations for such projects, which were suddenly being proposed along the nation's coastlines.

Cape Wind was the first wind farm proposed on the Outer Continental Shelf. A second proposal, off Long Island, is being reviewed by Minerals Management.