The Counter Cape Wind Blog

Proof at last ... aliens in UFOs are far more intelligent than we are

2009-01-11T17:10:00.007-05:00

by Peter Hitchens, Daily Mail, UK

If visitors from another galaxy really are going round destroying wind turbines, then it is the proof we have been waiting for that aliens are more intelligent than we are.

The swivel-eyed, intolerant cult, which endlessly shrieks – without proof – that global warming is man-made, has produced many sad effects. The collapse of proper education has made two whole generations vulnerable to rubbishy fads.

But the disfiguring of the country with useless windmills, and the insane plan to ban proper light bulbs, are supreme triumphs of this dimwit pseudo-religion.

Both schemes override facts and logic. During the current cold spell, observant persons will have noticed that there has been very little wind, a rather common combination. Thus, at a time of great need for power, wind turbines would be almost entirely useless for producing electricity.

They’re pretty feeble anyway. Even when they are working, sensible power stations have to be kept spinning, so that they can be flung into gear at short notice if the wind drops.

Yet, over the objections of reasonable protesters fearing for the ruined landscape, or dreading the annoying whine and whirr, the authorities have marched over the once-lovely hills and moors of Britain, planting grotesque and futile engines.

In intervals between erecting these daft objects, the Government (influenced by the awful EU) has also colluded in a plan to stop the sale of traditional light bulbs.

This is even though the supposed replacements are expensive, don’t reduce electricity use anything like as much as claimed, won’t fit many existing lamps, won’t work with dimmers, in many cases give off a light as cheery and bright as the baleful glow emitted by a decomposing dingo, won’t work in fridges, don’t last as long as claimed, and when they do go phut, must be disposed of with tongs because they contain deadly mercury vapour.

This is the price we pay for fanaticism, and for a low-grade political class without the courage to stand up against it. True, it takes a little nerve to oppose this lobby. But if you don’t have that sort of nerve, you shouldn’t be in politics in the first place.

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Counter Cape Wind Blog

Shut up and pay for your windmill

2009-01-03T11:06:00.001-05:00

by David Frum in National Post

Must we destroy the environment in order to save it? In the province of Ontario, the answer seems to be "yes."

This month, the Liberal provincial government of Dalton McGuinty will finish drafting its proposed Green Energy Act. The Act's early drafts call for a big increase in renewable energy production in Ontario. Sounds nice! How do we get there?

The plan contains two big elements: (1) a huge cash giveaway and (2) a brusque slap-down of local democracy.

Let's talk about local democracy first. Communities often resist wind and solar power for the simple reason that they ruin the beauty of local landscapes. When you think of wind power, for example, don't think of the solitary turbine that overtops the CNE grounds in Toronto. To meet the goals set out in the Green Energy Act, Ontario will have to build tens of thousands of these massive turbines, linked by a vast network of electrical transmission wires. Many hundreds of these turbines are proposed for my own beloved Prince Edward County.

When people in places such as Prince Edward County hear about "the environment," they think of their environment. They think responsible stewardship means protecting what is lovely and natural. To them, it seems perverse to ruin the landscape in the name of preserving the environment.

So they resist.

To deal with this resistance, the Green Energy Act proposes to strip local governments of their zoning powers. (In the draft's own words, the province will propose: "Streamlined regulatory and approvals processes that enable the rapid but prudent development of green energy projects across the province, reducing uncertainty and transaction costs to all involved.")

It is important to realize that local scrutiny is often the only scrutiny a wind project gets. Unless a project uses federal money or land, there is no federal environmental assessment. Smaller projects are exempt from provincial assessment as well, and bigger projects can count on a very friendly hearing. Not all localities will be ignored. There will be special consultation with First Nations/Métis communities (and a special piece of the action for them as well). But for everybody else, Ontario's message is: Shut up and eat your peas.

It's not only local landowners and vacationers who are expected to shut up. It's taxpayers as well.

Here we come to item (1), the huge cash giveaway.

The big inconvenient truth about "green power" is that it is hugely costly - triple the cost of coal power, almost double the cost of nuclear. Advocates of green power insist that the price will soon decline. This promise never comes to pass, for reasons that should be obvious after a moment's thought.

The big costs involved in a wind and solar projects are not the turbines and solar panels, although they are very expensive in their own right. The big costs are (i) acquisition of the vast amounts of land required to site the turbines and panels and (ii) the stringing of wires from thousands of small-scale power generators to the power distribution grid. These costs are more likely to rise than to fall.

Wind and solar suffer from inherent diseconomies of scale that can never be corrected. Unable to correct these costs, the province has decided instead to conceal them.

In the United States, wind power has been incentivized with lucrative tax credits: 2 US cents per kilowatt hour. (To put that subsidy in perspective, electricity from coal costs about 3 US cents per kilowatt hour.) America's lavish wind subsidy has been in place since 1992, yet even so, wind cannot compete: In 2007, wind provided less than 5% of America's electricity supply.

Ontario, however, has no need of tax credits. In Ontario, power generation is monopolized by a government owned corporation. Ontario can simply order its power generation company to buy wind power at a price profitable to the producer - and then average that cost invisibly into Hydro bills.

The new act will offer producers even more. Not only will the province buy their power at a guaranteed profit - not only will it index that profit for inflation - but it will guarantee producers the financing necessary to build the wind turbines in the first place!

Good deal? It gets better. The dreary part about borrowing money, even from the government, is that you do sooner or later have to repay it. Or do you? The explanatory language treats repayment as more a suggestion or guideline than an obligation: "The intent is that over time the market and community will meet all financial requirements for these projects."

In the name of the environment, the McGuinty government proposes to despoil the province's beauty and pillage the province's power consumers.

That's not green. That's dumb.
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Counter Cape Wind Blog

Research shows turbines are unreliable

2008-12-31T09:25:00.002-05:00

by Chris England,

Cookstown, Ontario

If my research into wind power provided me with the facts that turbines were a viable form of energy that reduced green house gas emissions, or would not raise my taxes or my energy bills, then I would be fighting to have them installed.

But the research that I have done points elsewhere. I'm a big fan of data, compiling, analyzing and extrapolating it. I did a lot of this in school for engineering technology and in my work in quality engineering.

Data from impartial sources is the best, it is not skewed to get the results you want.

Opinions are great, everyone has one, but impartial data is better, and it doesn't lie or provide doubts.

Here's data you might find interesting. A report issued by the Canadian Energy Research Institute in September 2006 demonstrates the cost associated with the different types of electricity production available in Ontario.

The cost is measured in cents per kilowatt hour. Nuclear costs six cents per hour, coal is 5.5 cents, gas runs at eight cents and wind costs 12 cents.

If that isn't enough, in a December 2007 booklet, the organization that regulates Ontario's power generation systems and infrastructure, called the Independent Electricity System Operator, stated that wind generation has a dependable contribution of 10 per cent of the listed installed capacity of the project.

For more information, visit www.theimo.com. Hard data beats opinion any day of the week.

If anyone wants copies of these publications, e-mail england_chris@hotmail.com.

Chris England,

Cookstown, Ontario
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Counter Cape Wind Blog

Developers should pay for wind turbine vandalism

2008-08-13T08:37:00.001-04:00

The Kingston Whig-Standard, Canada

Barrie K. Gilbert Wolfe Island
Brian L. Horejsi Calgary, Alberta
George Wuerthner Richmond, Vermont

North Americans are barking up the wrong tree by promoting wind turbine construction, regardless of where it is proposed to build the turbines.

Many people have tunnel vision, believing that wind turbine-generated energy is somehow linked to reversing the growth in, and impact of, greenhouse gas emissions.

There is no evidence anywhere that wind turbine energy is displacing fossil fuel dependence, or slowing the rate of greenhouse gas emissions growth. Wind turbine energy is a non-factor in the endless growth agenda of the fossil fuel industry, and likewise for gover nments promoting growth in, and dependence on, oil and gas consumption.

There can be no better example than North America of the failure of wind turbine energy to slow growth in anything. Wind turbine energy generation is fuelling growth in the human population and energy consumption. It is not doing the opposite.

Accompanying the myth that wind turbine energy will replace fossil fuel energy is denial of the ecological impacts and health effects of wind turbines by governments and promoters. The ugly reality is that wind turbines are a serious addition to the industrialization of quiet rural landscapes, places that people have long valued for quality of life, retirement and recreation.

The environmental costs imposed on wildlife and people have been systematically ignored by a political and regulatory system that has corrupted individual and societal freedom and environmental integrity by relegating these values to some distant offshoot of economic growth. The costs, and those who talk about them, are treated with contempt. How dare they influence a decision to give some landowner a chance to make a buck by carving his backyard and space into fragments with giant chopping machines?

Wind turbines are an assault on human well-being and act to degrade the human "gestalt." Promotion of wind turbine energy is a case of "greenwash" used to serve its proponents' commercial aspirations.

Wind turbines are today's version of a threatening monster being jammed down the throats of neighbours and localities. Nothing delivers a more intrusive and intense visual picture than the tower and blades of wind turbines. Turbines erode freedom of the human mind hour after hour, night after day, virtually forever, like a cellphone ringing incessantly that no one can turn off. To many people, this intrusion into their physical and physiological space has a mental effect analogous to the physical effects of a heavy smoker sitting next to you -essentially for life.

We do not subscribe to the managerial/market approach to democracy or conservation, with its deeply entrenched bias against human values such as an unadulterated horizon. This largely corporate view denigrates the value of freedom of the human spirit -the pedestal upon which human dignity, character and strength are built.

In an honest and fair regulatory and political environment, communities would bury wind turbine projects long before they got to the implementation stage. However, once forced on us by some corporate-created market economy, wind turbines, which wear on the human psyche, constitute "taking" from people by corporate promoters and their biased government collaborators.

We propose that each person impacted by a wind turbine receive, as a starting point for negotiations, $3,000 annually, to be paid by the developer, for the loss of private and citizen rights. The concept is simple: If the developer and some uncaring landowners want to destroy your rights and those of other citizens, and inflict on you suffering and mental distress, the good old "free" enterprise system that developers and local governments love to hide behind comes into play. Developers should pay for destroying part of your life.

The recent proliferation of wind turbine farms is just one more example of the aggression and destruction caused by the continuing expansion of an extremist private property and commercialism agenda. This is not freedom and it is not democracy. It is vandalism and oppression in the name of commercialism.

As citizens, we have the right and the obligation to reject wind turbine invasions as a corruption of our well-being, and we must marshal the courage to do so.

The Counter Cape Wind Blog

"Offshore Wind Farms = Insane"

2008-08-11T10:44:00.001-04:00

Just go for nuclear power

www.TimesonLine- London

YOUR article “Twisting in the wind” last week attempted to describe the fiasco that is the government’s approach to solving the energy needs of Britain.

Without a reasonably priced, reliable supply of electricity, government priorities such as the National Health Service, schools, employment and addressing the problems of climate change will all run into serious difficulties. All developed countries depend on a reliable electricity supply and Britain is no exception.

The UK government is set on a strategy that seems to be the result of little more than a panic decision. Who, after all, would even contemplate covering Britain’s wild and beautiful places with wind turbines and the associated pylons and cables, to end up with a system that will require even more generating capacity to provide electricity when the wind isn’t blowing? Is it any wonder that planning applications for wind turbines have run into opposition from the people whose lives are going to be blighted by these huge structures?

Offshore wind farms seem equally insane, given the difficulty in construction and the problems of access during bad weather. To install generating equipment in our stormy seas flies in the face of common sense.

As your article points out, the cost of electricity derived from wind power is very high. Who wants expensive, unreliable electricity?

The only technology that is currently capable of supplying our electrical needs is nuclear. France generates at least 80% of its electricity from nuclear power stations and provides both domestic and industrial customers with reasonably priced and secure supplies. Why on earth can’t our government simply get on with providing Britain with a similar system?

John Ryden
Wigton, Cumbria

The Counter Cape Wind Blog

Archaeologist calls windfarm ‘an act of vandalism’

2008-08-08T09:23:00.000-04:00

by George Topp

Hamilton Advertiser, Scotland

A LEADING Lanarkshire archaeologist has added his voice to those expressing concern that Europe’s largest windfarm is now to be built in Clydesdale.

Ed Archer, from Lanark, said this week that both Dr David Bellamy and local MP David Mundell were correct in pointing out that the creation of the windfarm at Abington was a “disaster.”

“It was a pity that the Scottish Government had disregarded their protests and South Lanarkshire Council’s opposition to the erection of the turbines,” he said this week.

Mr Archer went on to say: “I have also been involved in opposing this development alongside the West of Scotland Archaeological Service.

“Both Dr Carole Swanston and myself have indicated that the building of these turbines in an area of high archaeological importance is irresponsible.

“Work over the past decade has shown that the area earmarked for development was the birthplace of Scottish history.

“It was in this area that the earliest evidence of Man appearing in Scotland has been located, dating back 9500 years.

“If that is not enough, the area contains an extraordinary collection of prehistoric monuments varying from Standing Stones to henges to a complete Bronze Age village complete with its own cemetery.

“The setting of these monuments will be affected.

“But what is of great concern are the areas earmarked for development and what will be discovered and, subsequently, destroyed.”

He said that monuments of later periods were also to be found in the area.

These include Iron Age forts/Roman forts and roads and, finally, medieval settlements.

“The reason for this is that the area was an important north/south route leading from England to Scotland.

“In essence, this particular area of Lanarkshire was a cultural crossroads. To destroy it would be an act of vandalism for which future generations will not forgive us,” stressed Mr Archer.

The Counter Cape Wind Blog

Windmill profits portend an atrocity for Blue Mountain

2008-08-08T08:59:00.000-04:00

by Paul Carpenter
The Morning Call
Allentown, PA

August 6, 2008

In 1979, a math teacher in Roseville, Calif., fretted over a nephew named after him and two nieces.

News coverage about the accident at Three Mile Island had reached hysterical levels in California, and the three youngsters lived only seven miles from the plant.

When Neal Carpenter finally reached me -- I had spent 36 straight hours at the accident site -- he demanded that I get my family far away from TMI.

I was not worried because our house was upwind and I knew enough about nuclear dangers to know that everything depended on the wind. As for me spending time at the TMI plant, I was then employed by The Associated Press and I was covering the biggest news story of my life. You could not have pried me away from that story with a crowbar.

I could think of only one thing to say to my brother, which he recalled when we were talking this week.

''You were delighted to inform me that there was a twin to the Three Mile Island plant -- and it was Rancho Seco,'' Neal said.

The Rancho Seco plant had one of only a few operational reactors that were identical to the reactor that was melting at TMI, and it was near Neal's house and his children. So there.

Actually, Rancho Seco was safe because it was not being operated with criminal ineptitude. That is not hyperbole; the corporation that ran TMI was convicted of criminal charges for the misconduct that preceded the accident. No corporate officer, alas, was ever required to do any time in prison, but TMI was one of two grotesque anomalies, the other being Chernobyl.

Other nuclear power plants are run skillfully and safely. I have heaped praise on PPL for the way it operates its reactors, although I have bashed PPL for its transmission line proposals.

In any case, Rancho Seco's distinction as a TMI twin was not lost on California's hysterical voters, so a state referendum, 10 years after TMI, shut it down when it still had nearly 20 years to go on its license.

On energy issues, I often discuss California, which, for Pennsylvania, is the best example of what not to do.

And that brings up another, even older, memory.

As a boy, I traveled with my family (Neal was not yet born) on fabled Route 66 past the world's most spectacular scenery, including San Gorgonio Pass, with the San Bernardino Mountains on one side and the San Jacintos on the other.

Much of that beauty has been destroyed. Thousands of wind turbines, some 200 feet high, corrupt the San Gorgonio mountainsides. They cover 70 square miles in that section alone, and San Gorgonio is only the third largest wind turbine field in California, which has 200,000 acres devoted to the monstrosities.

Rancho Seco? It had room for a second reactor (PPL has two reactors on 115 acres), which could have produced more electricity than all of California's wind turbines combined .

Now, there are people who think it may be a good idea to build wind turbines on the Kittatinny Ridge (Blue Mountain). On Monday, a letter to the editor from Donald Heintzelman of Zionsville talked about the first such proposal.

Lower Towamensing Township, he noted, is considering a request to put windmills around the Blue Mountain Ski Area. Heintzelman said that would place them in the path of America's most spectacular migratory route for eagles, hawks and other raptors.

''As an ornithologist involved in raptor migrations... I am unconditionally opposed to the installation of all wind turbines on this internationally famous... migration corridor,'' he wrote.

I am unconditionally opposed to it for other reasons, as well.

To make as much electricity as a single 115-acre nuke plant, they'd have to denude a mile-wide swath on Kittatinny Ridge for its entire 250-mile stretch through Pennsylvania.

Think of it. All the beauty and wildlife of our Blue Mountain ruined when the same amount of juice could be generated from a site the size of a ball field. You can grasp the potential ugliness of it only by visiting San Gorgonio Pass today.

It will be beautiful only to those who make billions by building windmills.

The Counter Cape Wind Blog

Federal Renewable Energy Mandates Make Good Ad Copy But Lousy Policy

2008-08-04T14:17:00.000-04:00

It's increasingly obvious why Gore, Hansen and Reid are becoming more hysterical by the day. People are catching on that the hot air they're trying to blow up our shorts is no basis for economy-killing cap-and-trade rules or ecology-killing forests of unreliable wind turbines.

by Paul Driessen

T. Boone Pickens is being lionized for his efforts to legislate a transformation to "eco-friendly" wind energy.

We're "the Saudi Arabia of wind," he argues. We need to "overcome our addiction to foreign oil," by harnessing wind to replace natural gas in electricity generation, and using that gas to power more cars and buses. If Congress would simply "mandate the formation" of wind and solar corridors," provide eminent domain authority to seize rights-of-way for transmission lines, and "renew the subsidies" for this energy, America can make the switch in a decade, he insists.

Pickens' $58-million media pitch makes good ad copy, especially in league with Senator Harry Reid's absurd claim that oil and coal "make us sick." However, his policy prescriptions would bring new energy, economic, legal and environmental problems – and a price tag of over $1.2 trillion.

Hydrocarbon fuels built modern America, gave us the technologies and living standards we enjoy today, helped us eradicate diseases that plagued earlier generations, and boosted US life expectancy from 50 in 1900 to nearly 80 today. They still provide 85 percent of our total energy, and we could greatly reduce our reliance on oil imports if we would simply end the outrageous policies that keep our nation's abundant energy resources locked up.

We have enough oil, natural gas, oil shale, coal and uranium to provide power for centuries. We have a growing consensus that we need to drill, onshore and off. But partisan intransigence and ridiculous environmental claims prevent us from utilizing these American resources.

Wind contributes more every year to our energy mix. But it still provides only 1 percent of our electricity – compared to 49 percent for coal, 22 percent for natural gas, 19 percent for nuclear and 7 percent for hydroelectric. Moreover, we will need 135 gigawatts of new electricity generation by 2020, but only 57 GW are planned.

We can and should harness the wind. But 22 percent by 2020 is far-fetched.

Wind power is intermittent, unreliable and expensive (even with subsidies). Many modern turbines are 400 feet tall and carry 130-foot, 7-ton, bird-slicing blades. They operate at only 20-30 percent of rated capacity – compared to 85 percent for coal, gas and nuclear plants – and provide little power during summer daytime hours, when air-conditioning demand is highest, but winds are at low ebb.

Using wind to replace all gas-fired power plants would require over 300,000 1.5-MW turbines, covering Midwestern "wind belt" agricultural and wildlife acreage equivalent to South Carolina.

Building and installing these turbines requires 5 to 10 times more steel and concrete than is needed to build far more reliable coal or nuclear plants to generate the same amount of electricity, says Berkeley engineer Per Peterson. Add in steel and cement needed to build transmission lines from distant wind farms to urban consumers, and the costs multiply.

It also means many more quarries, mines, cement plants and steel mills to supply those materials. But radical greens oppose such facilities. So the Pickens proposal would mean letting existing power plants rust, and importing steel and cement, instead of oil.

Since adequate wind is available only 3-8 hours a day, we would also need expensive gas-fired generating plants that mostly run at idle, kicking in whenever the wind dies down. That means still more money, cement and steel – and still higher electricity prices.

A successful speculator and corporate raider, who critics say never actually found oil, Pickens has large natural gas holdings that position him to make billions from selling gas for backup electricity generation – especially if drilling bans remain in effect, keeping gas prices in the stratosphere. Launching the enterprise with the backing of federal mandates and subsidies minimizes his financial risk and attracts semi-free-market investors, by putting the risks

Pickens says we can't drill our way out of dependence on foreign oil. But that's true only if we keep our best prospects off limits to drilling. Open ANWR and the OCS, and the situation changes dramatically.

Unfortunately, greens and Democrats refuse to budge on these options – no matter how soaring energy prices batter poor families, workers, small businesses, Meals on Wheels and the automobile, airline, tourism, chemical and manufacturing industries. They're equally opposed to oil shale, coal and nuclear.

A single 1000-MW nuclear power plant would reliably generate more electricity than 2,800 1.5-MW intermittent wind turbines on 175,000 acres. Permitting more nukes would meet increasing electricity demand for a growing population and millions of plug-in hybrid cars.

Coal too offers affordable, reliable fuel for electricity and synthetic gas and oil, with steadily diminishing emissions. With 27 percent of the world's total coal, America is the Saudi Arabia of this vital resource, too. America needs more coal-fired plants, to avoid the widespread brownouts that analyst Mark Mills says will be commonplace if we don't build them.

Between 1970 and 2006, coal-fired electricity generation nearly tripled – while NOX emissions remained at 1970 levels, sulfur dioxide pollution fell nearly 40 percent below 1970 emissions, and fine particulates declined to 90 percent below 1970 levels. In a few years, power plants will emit only water and carbon dioxide, the two dominant greenhouse gases of Climate Armageddon hypotheses.

Al Gore, James Hansen and various legislators claim fossil fuels are destroying the planet. But they are increasingly on the fringes, whereas countless experts point out that we have far higher priorities than speculative climate monsters; the economic costs of climate bills like Warner-Lieberman would be staggering; and the global CO2 and climate benefits of US economic suicide would be imperceptible.

32,000 scientists have signed the consensus-busting Oregon Petition, saying they see "no convincing scientific evidence" that humans are causing catastrophic climate change. The American Physical Society reopened its debate, because many of its 50,000 physicist members disagree that evidence for global warming is "incontrovertible." The Manhattan Declaration has been signed by 200 skeptics "highly trained" in climate science. And Lawrence Solomon's book The Deniers makes a compelling case against climate hysteria.

China is building two new coal-fired power plants every month, to power electricity-hungry homes and businesses. India too is charging ahead with hydrocarbon-based energy. Its new National Action Plan on Climate Change disputes manmade global warming fears and says the nation is more concerned about saving people from poverty than from climate change. Oil-rich Arab countries are also looking at coal.

"Political leaders," says journalist Barun Mitra, "can no longer afford to sacrifice the poor today for the sake of the rich tomorrow." Neither in India, nor in China, Europe, Africa or the United States.

It's increasingly obvious why Gore, Hansen and Reid are becoming more hysterical by the day. People are catching on that the hot air they're trying to blow up our shorts is no basis for economy-killing cap-and-trade rules or ecology-killing forests of unreliable wind turbines.

We need to safeguard access to the opportunities created by abundant, reliable, affordable energy – as a fundamental right of people the world over.

2008 © Paul Driessen, senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise and author of 'Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death"

The Counter Cape Wind Blog

Throwing money into wind power

2008-07-17T18:41:00.000-04:00

by Scott Brooks
Mountain View Telegraph

From what research I have done, wind energy looks to be more of a euphemism, like ethanol, then a viable energy source. The problems of wind energy are as such:

Much has been written about Denmark's success as the world's wind power pioneer. But the regularly repeated claim that Denmark generates 20 percent of its electricity demand from wind sources is highly misleading. That 20 percent of electricity is not supplied continuously from wind power. Denmark's wind supply is so variable that it relies heavily on neighbors Norway and Sweden, taking their excess production.

In 2003, its export figure for wind power electricity production was as high as 84 percent, as Denmark found it could not absorb its own highly variable wind output capacity into its domestic system. The scale of Denmark's subsidies was such that in 2006-07, the government increasingly came under scrutiny from the Danish media, which claimed the subsidies were out of control. Overall, Denmark, a small, flat, windy country of about 5.5 million souls cannot be a model for the U.S. to follow.

Researchers in Denmark have gone a step further and put a value on this effect. They say that wind power shaved 1 billion kroner ($167 million) off Danish electricity bills in 2005. On the other hand, Danish consumers also paid 1.4 billion kroner in subsidies for wind power. The Danish government cut wind power subsidies that year. The result:

The building of wind turbines has virtually ground to a halt since subsidies were cut back. Meanwhile, compared with others in the European Union, Danes remain above-average emitters of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. For all its wind turbines, a large proportion of the rest of Denmark's power is generated by plants that burn imported coal. Moreover, because you cannot store any wind power that is generated when no one wants to use it, Denmark has to sell excess wind power to Sweden.

So the main problem of wind power is you don't have it when you need it and you have excess generation when don't need it. So without a cost-effective way of storing the energy derived from wind, this is like throwing money into the wind. And companies and individuals who promote wind do it mainly for the subsidies. Currently, wind receives 14 times and more the subsidy paid for nuclear and a whopping 53 times that of coal.

The current method of compensating for wind brownout is to build gas turbine power stations which parallel the wind energy facility and just add to the costs. They also increase natural gas and gas prices. But the real question when computing cost doesn't lie just with the turbines themselves, but rather how to get that electricity onto the grid.

Texans were already disturbed last month by wind power-induced brownouts. Now, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports, Texans "could be on the hook for $3 billion to $6.4 billion to build new transmission lines" to connect the state's rapidly-growing wind farms to the grid. And Texas already had an ambitious program to link wind development with new transmission lines the construction of which faces many of the same NIMBY obstacles as wind farms themselves.

So, directly connecting wind farms to the grid is not as cost effective as the "envirohawkers" would have you believe without adequate storage facilities. But then there's the problem of erecting a grid network.

That won't happen in the near future. The only reason energy producers would gravitate toward wind is if carbon taxing and subsidies force them to, and that would lead to consumers holding a big bag of costs. Under that plan, energy production would see a big drop, and it would severely impact the economy for decades.

Solar has somewhat better cost ratios, but it, too, only produces as long as the sun shines, and without an energy storage scheme would require gas turbine power backup, too. Mainline power facilities are not really capable of ramping up and down to compensate for energy variations. They are running at near full capacity except for maintenance downtime, if their reserves are down also.

It looks like the alternative energy folks are counting unhatched chickens that will come home to roost one day as vultures of prophesy. Unfortunately, it will be on consumers' bank accounts.
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Counter Cape Wind Blog

Wind turbine marketers are full of hot air

2008-07-11T11:03:00.001-04:00

by Neil Reynolds

theglobeandmail.com

Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain travelled to Oregon in mid-May to deliver the definitive climate change speech of his campaign. He spoke in Portland, at the U.S. headquarters of Vestas Wind Systems AS, a Danish company that markets wind turbines around the world. He started on a self-deprecating note. “Today is a kind of test run for this company,” he said. “They’ve got wind technicians here, wind studies and all these wind turbines. But there’s no wind. So now I know why they asked me to come and give a speech.”

It was perhaps his most perceptive statement of the day. Five sentences later, Mr. McCain made perhaps his least perceptive. “Wind,” he said, “is a predictable source of energy.”

Really? Define predictable. Wind turbines operate occasionally with remarkable efficiency at 100 per cent capacity. More often, they operate with 20 per cent capacity. Once in a while, they operate with subzero capacity — taking electricity from the grid to keep themselves running until they get hit again by a restless wind.

British energy consultant Hugh Sharman, based in Denmark, documented wind power’s capacity for subzero performance in a report published by Civil Engineering magazine in 2005. With more wind power per capita than any other country, Denmark (population 5.4 million) is the world’s showroom nation for this highly fashionable form of renewable energy.

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion (who used Earth Day to champion wind power this year) and legendary U.S. oilman T. Boone Pickens (who called this week for massive U.S. investment in wind power) illustrate the widespread popularity of wind power.

Although the United States and Germany generate more wind power in absolute terms, Denmark boasts the world’s greatest “wind density” — wind power per capita. With 19 per cent of its electricity now generated by more than 6,000 wind turbines, Denmark produces 80 times as much wind power per capita as Britain.

Why, then, does Denmark export almost all of its wind power — at a revenue loss? Why, then, does Denmark still operate all of its conventional coal-fired power plants? In a phrase, Mr. Sharman says, the reason is Denmark’s “wildly fluctuating wind power.”

It turns out that Denmark’s vast array of turbines often produce minimal electricity when demand is high, maximum electricity when demand is low. Basing his analysis on data from a single year (2002), Mr. Sharman reported that wind power produced less than 1 per cent of the country’s electricity supply on 54 different days. On one of these 54 days, the wind turbines took more power from the grid than they produced. (Wind turbines consume considerable electricity whether winds are blowing or not blowing.)

British author and energy analyst Tony Lodge makes the same point in a report by the Centre for Policy Studies, a London think tank. “Not a single conventional power plant has been closed in the period that Danish wind farms have been developed,” he says. “Because of the intermittency and variability of the wind, conventional power plants have had to be kept running at full capacity to meet the actual demand for electricity and to provide backup.”

Mr. Lodge says it is not practical to turn coal-fired plants off and on as winds rise and fall — because ramping them up consumes more fuel (and emits more carbon dioxide) than running them at a constant rate. Thus Denmark relies almost exclusively on coal-fired plants for its own consumption and exports its wind power at whatever off-peak price it can get.

Only 3.3 per cent of Denmark’s wind power gets “accepted” on the grid for domestic consumption. In 2003, Denmark exported 84 per cent of its wind-generated electricity at money-losing rates. And CO{-2}? In 2006, Denmark produced 36 per cent more carbon emissions than the year before.

Denmark has provided generous subsidies for wind power developments since the 1970s and now has a sophisticated wind-dependent industry that — think Vestas — flogs subsidized turbines to naive U.S. presidential candidates. The industry’s reliance on subsidies has apparently not lessened in the past 30 years. Mr. Lodge says Danish consumers paid $517-million (U.S.) in wind power subsidies in the first six months of 2007 alone.

Messrs. McCain, Dion and Pickens notwithstanding, winds do not blow predictably. Without an energy storage battery the size of Mount Everest, most wind-powered electricity will be wasted and will almost certainly increase a country’s carbon emissions — albeit inadvertently. When your power plant operates at only 20 per cent capacity (or less), you have to build four or five times as many plants as you need. For reliable backup, you still need either coal, gas or nuclear power — all of which are cheaper than wind.

The conclusion seems self-evident. Apparently it isn’t. Fortunately, you can test wind power for yourself. Go outside on a hot and humid day. Feel the breeze. Or don’t.

Counter Cape Wind Blog

The Hillary Clinton of wind power

2008-06-13T14:05:00.000-04:00

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Providence Journal

by PETER KENNEY

YARMOUTH, Mass.

THE FARTHER one travels from Cape Cod the better the Cape Wind project looks - 130 turbines rising 440 feet above the waters of Nantucket Sound in one the East Coast's busiest recreational boating and ground fishing areas, generating clean electricity when the wind blows or does not blow too hard at double the cost of other electricity, and all this for a mere quarter of a billion in tax- payer dollars as a subsidy; this is Nobel Prize-level innovation.

Seen from Boston or Providence those of us who support offshore wind but oppose this project in this location appear a bit odd. By the time that one reaches, say, Chicago, we are seen as deranged, sociopathic and really stupid. After all, opposition to the Cape Wind project comes only from wealthy waterfront property owners, Bunny Mellon being a prime example. And these cowards, these people who glory in their oversized carbon footprints only opposed Cape Wind by holding fundraisers at a wealthy Cape Cod private club. Really?

The man behind the Cape Wind project is Jim Gordon. I have heard him say publicly that he grew up on the Cape spending summers in Yarmouth. A recent Harvard Business School case on Cape Wind written by Prof. Richard H. K. Vietor tells us that Gordon spent Labor Day weekend of 2007 in his home in Yarmouth "two blocks from the Bass River." I spent Sunday afternoon of that weekend at a cookout at the Portuguese American Club in Falmouth, 28 miles and two blocks from the Bass River. Jim Gordon was there to talk about his clean-energy mission.

Gordon spoke of the rolling blackouts to come during the winter of 2007-2008, the ones that never happened. And he told the crowd how there will be no more gas-fired power plants built because of a dwindling supply of natural gas. He neglected to tell them that within months he would sign a deal to build a $400 million gas-fired plant in western Massachusetts, a plant that will burn oil when gas supplies run short in winter. His new plant will be in the Pioneer Valley Energy Park. Pioneer indeed.

But the real lie in this whole debate is the one characterizing opposition to Cape Wind. The people who started the Alliance to protect Nantucket Sound, originally an ad-hoc group of ordinary folks calling themselves SOS, Save Our Sound, preceded Bunny Mellon and Bill Koch and the other wealthy supporters of the Alliance by one year. My first gathering to raise money and awareness took place in a decrepit former food market-turned-art gallery on Main Street in Hyannis. Trades people, artists, musicians, teachers, town officials, small-business owners and folks from all walks of life came together to show their opposition to Cape Wind, throwing everything from coins to $20 bills into plastic beach pails as they were passed around.

Ordinary citizens created the Alliance and for a while the Alliance was hard pressed to pay its rent and its staff. Then, after the Alliance made enough noise, the wealthy summer folks took notice and pitched in. Is it hard to understand why the Alliance has had to spend millions of dollars fighting a man who has spent $30 million promoting his scheme? We who tossed a ten or a twenty into those pails welcome those who can afford to throw thousands, even tens of thousands into the battle. That is the value we all place on Nantucket Sound. Think about that in Chicago before telling us we are stupid or just NIMBY. Nantucket Sound is a backyard worth protecting.

Vestas, the world's largest maker of wind turbines, has recently gone on the record saying that shallow water wind power is twice as expensive as conventional power. They also say that a "tiny minority" are driving the debate and they urge the press and governments everywhere to place their emphasis on land-based wind power until technology lowers costs and improves reliability for offshore wind.

Jim Gordon has never owned property on Cape Cod. In March 1973 his mother bought the 1,000-square-foot house she still owns in Yarmouth. Jim would graduate from Boston University two years later. How to describe this man who wants to pillage Nantucket Sound? Is he a mythical figure, a legendary figure, or just another snake-oil salesman?

Jim Gordon does remind me of Hillary and Bill Clinton. Hillary told of being shot at by snipers and Bill declared "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." Hmmm.... Most people would say the Clintons lied. What else in Gordon's own words should we hold up for closer examination? Example: General Electric no longer makes the turbines Gordon says he will use and Siemens will not sell them for the U.S. They were the only two sources for these turbines. One hundred thirty towers with no turbines?

Jim Gordon's economics do not work, his site is unacceptable and his word is not worth much here on Cape Cod, where he has never lived.

Peter Kenney lives in Yarmouth, MA. He is a writer and television producer.

As criticism mounts, it’s time to deny Cape Wind and find a better alternative

2008-06-13T09:19:00.001-04:00

by Audra Parker

The Barnstable Patriot

The federal Minerals Management Service (MMS) has received an unprecedented 40,000+ public comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the “stalled” Cape Wind project - as described by one media outlet. Dozens of key groups and government agencies criticized the draft document which glossed over many of the serious threats the Cape Wind project would pose to public safety, marine wildlife and habitats, tribal and historic resources, commercial fisheries, and the local economy.

As U.S. Fish and Wildlife, a peer agency to MMS in the Department of Interior, judiciously noted in its comments, “We collectively have an opportunity before us to ‘do this right.’ Unfortunately, we have failed to do so."

Following an overwhelming display of project opposition at the March public hearings, Cape Wind is now attempting to spin a batch of seriously-critical comments into good news. Cape Wind's Mark Rodgers recently claimed that the vast majority of the public comments supported the project. But an MMS spokesperson has since confirmed that Cape Wind's claim is merely "their interpretation” of the comments available for review on the MMS website.

“If a respondent replied that he or she ‘favored the project,’ that has little use to us for analytical purposes,” wrote Drew Malcomb, MMS Chief of Public Affairs. “If the respondent replied that additional information or data exists on commercial fishing runs, for example, that would be of great interest to us and useful as we develop our final EIS.”

Interested in quality, not quantity, MMS will assign little value to the extensive national postcard campaigns - launched by Greenpeace and others - that make up a significant portion of the pro-Cape Wind comments.

In contrast, the critical comments of New England Fishery Management Council, National Marine Fisheries Service, Mass Division of Marine Fisheries, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which scrutinize understated negative impacts to fisheries and wildlife, will carry tremendous weight in the federal review of Cape Wind. For example, the New England Fisheries Management Council stated, “The Council remains concerned with the potential impacts this project may have on the habitat necessary to maintain healthy fish stocks and the impact the project may have on commercial fisheries.” The Passenger Vessel Association, the national trade group of U.S. flagged passenger vessels, described the DEIS as “woefully inadequate in addressing the threat that the wind energy facility poses to the ferries and their passengers.” Concerns for public safety were echoed by the Steamship Authority, Hy-Line Cruises, Barnstable Airport Commission, and the Mass Marine Trades Association.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation and Mass Historic Commission expressed strong concern for Cape Wind’s adverse impacts to historic resources as well as MMS’ failure to follow the historic consultation process. They also reminded MMS that the National Trust for Historic Preservation included Nantucket on its list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in 2000, and Cape Cod on its 1994 list to address the threat of incompatible development to the historic character of these areas.

The local Aquinnah and Mashpee Wampanoag Tribes condemned an inadequate DEIS that failed to acknowledge religious and cultural tribal interests. The Aquinnah tribe reiterated its opposition to Cape Wind on Horseshoe Shoal and stated that the “clear, unobstructed view across Nantucket Sound is of paramount importance to the ‘People of the First Light’ – the Wampanoag people…” And according to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, another peer agency to MMS, the DEIS “does not appear to give any weight to the cultural concerns of the [Wampanoag] Tribe…”

MMS will continue its review of the Cape Wind project - incorporating all of the comments it received before issuing a final EIS and ultimately, a Record of Decision on the project.

In the meantime, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound has called upon MMS to initiate a process known as "community-consensus management” to resolve the seven-year Cape Wind controversy. In that process, local stakeholders would work to identify a community-supported alternative to Cape Wind. State Senator Rob O'Leary and State Representative Demetrius Atsalis have made similar requests to MMS.

The DEIS has been harshly criticized, promising offshore alternatives have emerged, and the hope of achieving a community-supported alternative now seems possible. The time has come for Cape Wind to go from a “stalled” project to denied project.

The writer is director of strategic planning for the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound.

Reliance on giant wind "Foolishness"

2008-06-06T07:46:00.002-04:00

"...wind power doesn't work,"

by Save Central in Scoop Indpendent News
New Zealand

The failure of the 400 megawatt Otahuhu B gas-fired power station today has highlighted the foolishness of looking to industrial-scale wind farms for backstop solutions, says Save Central spokesperson Grahame Sydney.

A boiler tube fault means Otahuhu B will be out of action for at least four days, just as hydro storage levels reach lows not seen since 1992 and winter begins to bite.

The Government backs Meridian's 176-turbine Project Hayes as a solution to such energy shortages, having made an All-Of-Government submission in support of the Central Otago wind farm proposal currently before the Environment Court.

"Yet we are being provided with a graphic illustration here and now that reliance on wind power doesn't work," said Sydney, speaking from a becalmed Central Otago.

"It has been a calm few months nationwide - especially so in Central - so the contribution of the country's eight existing wind farms in averting an imminent energy crisis has been very poor. And with winter consistently calmer than other seasons, this is a scenario that is unlikely to change. The turbines simply don't turn often enough."

In the week ending 25 May, wind contributed just 30 megawatts, or 0.6% of the total energy consumed in New Zealand, from a potential 321.8 megawatts of installed capacity.

Sydney says the latest hydro and wind figures make a mockery of Energy Minister David Parker's insistence that we must rely more heavily on renewables as our energy consumption grows.

"The range of reliable base-load options available is considerable, yet Government still appears to prefer Think Big solutions which, dependent on fickle Mother Nature, can never provide security.

"But the bigger the scheme, the bigger the vacuum it leaves when nature refuses to comply with power company hopes."

Sydney added that he thought it "highly imprudent" of Parker to continue stalling on introducing energy-saving measures, not just in the face of looming shortages.

"Long-term, the sooner encouragement emphasises localised and smaller-scale solutions, and self-sufficiency, the better for all consumers - and the better we'll look to international eyes.

"We cannot afford to head down a bigger and bigger renewables trail at the expense of things which cannot be renewed - like our unspoiled and beautiful natural landscapes."

KEY FACTS
• If it proceeds, Project Hayes will be one of the world's largest wind farms.
• It will physically occupy 92 square kilometres of the Central Otago landscape with 176 turbines and 150 kilometres of oversize roading.
• Each turbine will be as high as the observation deck of Auckland's Sky Tower.
• Construction alone will cost $2 billion of taxpayers' money. This figure does not include transmission upgrades.

The Counter Cape Wind Blog

Offshore wind costs set to soar

2008-05-30T07:20:00.001-04:00

Power Engineering International

The construction of offshore wind farms is becoming more costly, creating further problems for the European Union in meeting its renewable energy target, reports the Financial Times.

An analysis from Cambridge Energy Research Associates (Cera) has found that the capital cost of offshore turbines is likely to increase by a fifth in the next two to three years, from €2,300 ($4600) per kilowatt to €2800.

Turbine prices have already risen by about 30 per cent in recent years, so the extra costs will be hard to bear.

"The sector could be at risk, given ongoing increases in capital costs, especially if government subsidies do not keep pace," said Matt Brown, senior director and head of European power at Cera. This would make it "more challenging" to meet the target proposed by the European Commission of generating 20 per cent of the bloc's energy from renewable sources by 2020.

Europe had about 1.1 GW of offshore wind generation capacity at the end of last year.
Shell recently highlighted problems in the sector when it pulled out of what was designed as the world's biggest offshore wind farm - the London Array in the Thames estuary. The company said it could get more value by investing in onshore wind farms in the US, where the wind market is growing rapidly after a slow start compared with Europe.

Paul Golby, chief executive of the electricity company Eon which, along with Shell and Denmark's DONG Energy, was a partner in the London Array consortium, called the economics of the project "marginal at best" because of such issues.

Mr Brown said rising prices could encourage other companies to reconsider proposed investments. "If [the offshore wind farm developers] face a squeeze, they could move their investment to other opportunities."

Offshore wind farms are seen as essential to meeting the EU target. Turbines sited off the coast benefit from stronger winds and are often bigger than land-based turbines, and can therefore generate more electricity.

But they are more expensive than onshore developments, as the turbines need to be
more robust, and because of the difficulties of siting them, particularly in deeper water, and of connecting them to the electricity grid.

Mr Brown said rising raw material costs, and demand outstripping turbine supply, had led to higher prices.

The offshore sector has to contend with another problem: competing with each other and with oil and gas companies for the specialised vessels needed to install turbines and other heavy equipment at sea.

Matthew Melville, chief underwriting officer at GCube, an insurance company specialising in renewable energy, said that smaller companies, relying on project finance to set up wind farms, would find conditions most difficult.

The Counter Cape Wind Blog

Alternatives Can't Deliver

2008-05-16T09:03:00.002-04:00

by Chances Varson
Pound, VA

Change is inevitable. Sometimes the winds of change bring fresh air, sometimes polluted air. We welcome fresh air; we fight polluted air.

Some of us remember outhouses and we welcomed indoor plumbing, but that brought about river and stream pollution. Rather than going back to outhouses, we devised controls, such as sewer plants, and in rural areas, septic tanks.

In the area of fossil fuel emissions, emotions seem to have obliterated logic. Pollution control laws have brought about necessary changes, much like that of sewage control laws.

Virginia and California are the only two states that must buy electricity from other states at the present time. Therefore, when the crunch of limited supply comes, as it will, these two states will be the first to suffer.

The experts looking into alternate energy sources are coming up with dismal solutions. The land requirement for alternate electricity production is astounding. The amount of wood required to produce 1,000 megawatts of electricity would require a forest of 1,000 square miles.

The Glen Canyon Dam that can produce 1,000 megawatts of electricity is backed up by a reservoir 250 miles square. That's why we stopped building dams in the 1960s - because they were drowning scenic canyons and displacing populations.

Those 30-story windmills produce 1.5 megawatts apiece. Getting 1,000 megawatts would require a wind farm 75 miles square. Research into organic biofuels is also dismal, resulting in a consumption of food grain contributing to the world food shortage with little or no energy results. We must conserve and use the energy sources we now have, while keeping a vigilant control through the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Environmental Quality. Otherwise, we may soon join California and regress to the energy equivalent of the outhouse.

The Counter Cape Wind Blog

Delaware: Report may doom offshore wind farm

2008-04-10T06:54:00.000-04:00

Senate panel's unreleased draft says Bluewater plan is too costly

April 10, 2008 by Jeff Montgomery in The News Journal

Delaware should kill a 25-year purchase proposal for offshore wind energy, according to a draft report prepared for a legislative committee reviewing the state's energy supply.

Democrats pulled back from releasing the report Wednesday to wait for a final review by the full Senate Energy and Transit Committee, but four lawmakers agreed to discuss various details with The News Journal.

The draft -- written by committee Chairman Harris B. McDowell III, D-Wilmington North -- says that Bluewater Wind's offshore energy venture in Delaware could be jump-started with public aid. However, if approved as is, the report could be the death knell for a state-mandated offshore wind contract between Bluewater Wind and Delmarva Power.

"Probably the report will determine what will be done" on the wind vote in the Senate, said Senate President Pro Tem Thurman Adams Jr., D-Bridgeville.

"I knew that this report would not be favorable to Bluewater," said William Zak, a member of Citizens for Clean Power and a supporter of the wind project. "I don't have any doubt this will wind up in court. Delmarva has fought this so tooth-and-nail that I'm sure they won't stop until they exhaust their last chance."

The draft was written after a series of public hearings before the Senate Energy and Transit Committee. McDowell said the hearings had been fairly conducted to provide lawmakers with more information about the complex wind deal, but some critics of the process said the hearings were a sham.

"What I think we have now is a question of how broadly supported Harris McDowell is in the General Assembly," Zak said.

Delmarva Power recently released details on a competing plan to buy land-based, wind-generated electricity that would cost roughly one-third to one-half less than the 300 megawatts that Bluewater wants Delmarva to buy under the 25-year contract.

Three state agencies and the controller general voted to table that proposal in December, to avoid a split vote that would have killed the plan outright.

Billions in corporate revenues hang in the balance. The debate over the Bluewater project has spread to other energy issues, jeopardizing a pollution-control plan that could generate tens of millions of dollars in aid for low-income electricity users.

The political struggle also has clouded the future of the newly formed Sustainable Energy Utility, a conservation and renewable energy program backed by McDowell. The report by McDowell's committee is expected to shape the General Assembly's position.

Sen. Karen Peterson, D-Elsmere, said the report was critical of the Bluewater plan.

"If they adopt this report, it's shaping up exactly as I said it was going to," said Peterson, who described the Senate hearings as an attempt to make sure Bluewater's project was "dead."

Senate Minority Leader Charles L. Copeland, R-West Farms, said the draft version concluded the Bluewater plan is "not a cost-effective solution."

Copeland added that the draft report by McDowell's committee recommended Delmarva Power purchase onshore wind power and Delaware offer Bluewater a one-time incentive to build the project without other state-imposed guarantees.

The aid, Copeland said, would be similar to New Jersey's recent offer of up to $19 million to support private offshore wind ventures. New Jersey's approach obliges developers to find their own buyers for electricity generated by Garden State turbines.

Bluewater submitted a proposal to New Jersey, but has not released details. The company did say that it did not believe offshore ventures are feasible without a long-term power purchase contract.

McDowell said late Wednesday he might schedule a closed Senate Energy and Transit Committee meeting as early as this week for a final review of the report and a decision on its release.

A resolution in the House of Representatives, where there is greater support for the Bluewater proposal, would order the controller general to support Bluewater. Rep. John Kowalko, D-Newark South, said he was "cautiously optimistic" the House would take up a resolution today. Although the PSC and state agencies supported the project, rules adopted for the Bluewater review required a unanimous approval, and Controller General Russell T. Larson said there was no consensus among the Legislature's four party caucuses.

The resolution, however, would require approval in the Senate, where opinion is divided. No energy plan can be approved without approval of both houses.

"I don't think you're going to see the General Assembly go through the year without some sort of resolution," Copeland said.

Sen. Bruce Ennis, D-Clayton, said Bluewater's project offers clear economic benefits to Delaware.

Lawmakers ordered Delmarva in 2006 to review its energy needs and to seek new, in-state sources of electricity to stabilize rates and improve system reliability. That vote followed deregulation of the state's utility industry and a six-year freeze on rates, followed by a 59 percent hike.

Delmarva has said it supports renewable energy and wind power but considers Bluewater's contract too expensive. The company recently sought bids from land-based wind suppliers in other states.

A summary the utility distributed to lawmakers on Wednesday said it had received bids for up to 1,697 megawatts of wind power from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Illinois and Indiana -- "more than enough" to meet the company's needs. Prices ranged from $47 to $61 per megawatt less than Bluewater's, or 51 percent to 63 percent of the offshore rate, Delmarva said.

Jim Lanard, a Bluewater spokesman, on Wednesday described Delmarva's comparisons as stretched, noting Delmarva had failed to use a "hybrid" proposal for the offshore rate that benefited from lower-cost backup electricity from a conventional gas plant. He said Delmarva's prices for onshore wind also failed to account for all costs, and benefited from better terms than Bluewater was required to meet under state-supervised negotiations.

"We're concerned that the delaying tactics of Delmarva Power are designed to try to get past the end of the legislative session," Lanard said. "And we are concerned that at some point our bid may become stale." The session ends June 30.

Lanard said Delmarva had failed to take into account jobs, environmental benefits and other gains offered by Bluewater's proposal. Sen. George H. Bunting Jr., D-Bethany Beach, said that large numbers of residents in his district support Bluewater, but added that the project could have a downside.

"A lot of them who support it, push come to shove, can afford it, but I have got a lot of people who I represent who don't know anything about this," Bunting said. If Bluewater's project pushes local electricity rates higher "there are going to be a lot of people who live pretty close to the edge who are going to have to have some kind of assistance."

The wind dispute already has snarled efforts by Gov. Ruth Ann Minner's administration to win approval for a new surcharge on carbon dioxide emissions from large state power plants. Delaware committed to the surcharge under a regional agreement to reduce emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases blamed for climate change.

But talks on the timing of the new charges and state use of proceeds that could top $100 million by 2014 bogged down when environmental groups supporting the wind project attacked a plan to earmark much of the money for low-income energy assistance programs through the Sustainable Energy Utility.

"We're working very hard to stop that," said Chad Tolman, a Sierra Club Delaware member who has actively opposed McDowell's hearings that led to the report.

"These things do get linked," Tolman said.
-----------------------------------------------

The Counter Cape Wind Blog

More failures of wind energy

2008-04-07T09:21:00.001-04:00

by Michael R. Fox Ph.D. in Hawaii Reporter

While wind energy is being wildly supported by many in the U.S., there have always been drawbacks to the performance and costs of these machines. The U.S. has had a heavily subsidized romance with them for nearly 40 years and too few of the state and federal policy makers have taken a close look at what the tens of billions in subsidies have actually done for the taxpayers.
These wind energy programs have made many companies such as Florida Power and Light very wealthy because of the heavy subsidies, tax credits, and accelerated depreciation allowance. Additional benefits come from local taxing authorities. This source of energy remains very unreliable and limited, having produced only about 1% of the nation's energy for decades.

Such companies are far less interested in windmills than in the legalized tax evasion programs at their disposal. There is little promise that this will improve in the future, for the simple reason that the wind remain unpredictable, unreliable, and intermittent. For example, during the years of 2002 and 2003, Florida Power and light owner of the majority of windmills in the US did not pay any taxes on revenues of more than $2 billion dollars. It was estimated that FPL took more than $1.2 billion in deductions during those two years, avoiding payments of hundreds of millions in taxes. You and I paid those for them.

Remarkably, even after all this time such tax evasion programs are wildly supported by state legislatures, Congress, the media, the greens, and too many state and federal agencies. Many states now have the onerous Renewable Portfolio Standards which require utilities to have a sizable fraction (often 20%) of their energy sales to be from "renewable" energy sources such as wind energy. That is, state legislators require that its citizens to pay the taxes for large corporations. We are not being protected from our own government's costly edicts.

In a sophisticated computerized electrified world the demand for highly reliable electrical voltages and frequencies are paramount. These are features which wind energy cannot provide. Variable wind energy provides notoriously unstable voltages and frequencies. Wind mills normally require very reliable backup energy from non-wind sources. The backup systems need to be operating in what is called "spinning reserve" so they can be available very quickly should the wind die down.

Simultaneously the European countries have indulged their weaknesses for politically correct wind energy as well. After many decades a number of them are beginning to get the whiff of something going wrong with this failed energy strategy. (http://tinyurl.com/4yfh7k).

The Brits seemingly have headed down this road even further than the US, with plans to expand their wind capacity 3-fold to around 25 GW(e). A large Columbia River dam in Washington can be of 1-3 GW(e) capacity for comparison. British utilities and companies won't build them unless those same massive subsidies are in place. The unspoken message here is that after 4 decades of windmills, they are still impressively uneconomical. They don't make enough energy and sales revenue to be economically viable. Currently just 2% of England's energy comes from renewables, with just 0.5 GW(e) coming from windmills. Just one turbine (of many) at Washington State's Grand Coulee Dam produces that much.

We must also keep in mind that all megawatts and gigawatts are not equal. They refer only to the capacity of the generators, not to the amount of energy they produce. The energy produced depends upon the availability of energy from the generator which in the case of windmills is usually 30% of the time or less. Today's nuclear plants, for example, are available about 90% of the time on an annual basis.

The new British plans call for the installation of more than 7000 wind turbines, which as Glover and Economides point out, is one every half mile around Britain's entire coastline. Talk about environmental eyesores and desecration.

More realistic wind groups in Britain are expressing serious doubts about this new program. Some of the problems include the warning that private capital will not be forthcoming, since the windmills are not economically viable and poor generators of revenues.

Another Brit, Dan Lewis of the British Economic Research Council, warns that the"British government is deluding itself on a grand scale". Jim Oswald, a British consulting engineer, advises that over-reliance on wind energy will result in major power failures across the nation and an increase of up to 50% in electrical bills. Also see this website (www.windaction.org) for a broader picture of wind problems.

The people of Germany are also expressing their own concerns about wind energy, for the same reason, unreliability. Additionally, the windmills are also proving to be unreliable due to mechanical failures. Windmill manufacturers' claims that they will last for 20 years is proving inaccurate. This unreliability is proving to be a deterrent to investors if not to the policy makers in Germany. Investing one's own money in these machines rather than millions in other people's money (OPM) called subsidies, clears the mind wonderfully.

The earthly heaven on Earth, as far as the windmill lobby is concerned, is Denmark. They manufacture a sizeable share of the world's wind turbines. We are also told that Denmark gets 20% of its energy from wind power. That is misleading. Because of the well known variability of wind, the Danes are heavily dependent upon Sweden and Norway who take much of the Danes excess production. In 2003 Denmark exported 84% of its wind production because it could not handle the highly variable energy in its own transmission system. The variabilities introduce voltage and frequency instabilities which can not be easily handled in Denmark.

As is the case in most parts of the world there are huge subsidies there, too. The subsidies in Denmark are so heavy that even the media are beginning to scrutinize the costs and subsidies of wind turbines. We can only dream of "what might have been" if we had had such a professionally vigilant media in our own nation for these past 30 years. Billions of dollars in subsidized wind powered boondoggles and the resulting legalized tax evasions might have been avoided. The many false promises would have been discovered sooner as well.

Click here for other reports by Dr. Fox.

The Counter Cape Wind Blog

Wind energy only green to foreign owners

2008-03-09T07:20:00.000-04:00

by Celty Kearney in Abilene Reporter News

The opportunity to leave a lovely legacy of untouched mesas and unscarred precious land lies in the hands of our government and local commissioners.

This mind-boggling decision is being foisted on Texans because of a crass lack of legislation regulating what could result in more destruction than an atomic bomb. Every ridge in our beloved land will soon be covered by Godzilla-like machines replacing every bit of nature with industry. What will be left for our future generations?

Wind energy is a feel-good scam. It does nothing to eliminate our dependence on fossil fuel. Do not be hoodwinked into thinking we are helping the environment here. What we are helping are the foreign-owned wind companies pad their pockets with our billions.

Energy expert H. Douglas Lightfoot of Nobodysfuel.com has announced evidence that wind power is simply not green. He says, "The public is not aware that when any wind power is being delivered to a fossil fuel powered grid, the fossil fuel plant does not shut down because it takes too long to start up again when wind power stops. Thus, when wind electricity is being delivered, fossil fuel is being burned and carbon dioxide is emitted. This is known as 'spinning reserve mode.'"

Spinning reserve mode is like having your foot on the gas and brake at the same time. It burns energy!

For 25 years, the folks in Palm Springs were told what a significant contribution wind energy could and is making to their energy supply. Since most people have little knowledge of how the electrical systems work, they are being misled as to the benefits, merits and capabilities of wind power. Unfortunately, most have believed what they have been told. But the truth was that the wind industries' actual production records were so dismal and at variance with what they projected, they lobbied the California Energy Commission into not having to reveal their production records anymore. After one resident's research, he discovered that if you take their average annual production of about 93.5 MW and subtract the 60 percent off peak generation (energy generated in the middle of the night), this leaves a minuscule amount of about 2.8 tenths of 1 percent that is meaningful -- if you can call it that -- that is generated when they really need it, after billions and billions of ratepayer and taxpayer dollars in subsidization.

"Unfortunately, the powers that be chose to believe the developers, without ever checking out their veracity or production records. Because of this hysteria for 'green,' it appears that they would rather put our power supply at risk and have the ratepayers pay triple than what is necessary for an illusion. While they have scraped miles and miles of desert, obliterated our views, rendered adjacent property valueless and impacted us with noise and dust for this minuscule amount of useless energy is beyond belief ... and have so far gotten away with it. The only transmission has been the dollars from our pockets to theirs," said a resident from Palm Springs.

Most are also unaware that wind power cannot be stored and cannot be called upon at will. When we need it, it does not match the "time of need profile." So, then exactly what good is it? Except to feel good!

Another sad fact is that there have been several wind farms across North America that have been documented to have killed thousands and thousands of birds and bats annually. However, in view of the strong political support bought by lobbyists hired by the wind farm companies, there currently is insufficient data to stop the construction of wind farms on a biological basis. Hopefully, our state elected officials will address this issue ASAP in the upcoming Legislative session along with finding a real solution for our energy needs instead of being "Al Gored" into this frenzy for being "fake green."
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The Counter Cape Wind Blog

KLEEKAMP HAS RUN AGROUND

2008-03-05T20:15:00.002-05:00

Response to opinion piece by Chuck Kleekamp published in the Cape Cod Times, March 4th, 2008.

by: Peter Kenney

Chuck Kleekamp is actually a fairly pleasant guy. At no point should any of what I say be taken as an argument against his decency or his character. But his statements in support of Cape Wind make me wonder where he received his engineering training. Chuck is always careful to point out that he is an engineer. Significant accomplishment, that... being an engineer. Does it make anyone infallible? No.

I would remind Chuck and others that Glenn Wattley, CEO of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, is also an engineer and a graduate of the Harvard Business School and has nearly three decades of experience in the fields of energy and energy management/consulting, including a stint in management at a renewable energy venture. He is a mechanical engineer with a degree from the Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Wattley was the 'Energy Guy' at Arthur D. Little (the global consulting firm) and a partner at Anderson, another brand name in the consulting world. Besides all that, Glenn Wattley has appeared as an 'energy expert' on national network television news programs and has been used as an energy expert by the federal government in complex tax cases involving various types of energy companies and investments. Wattley is usually identified by supporters of Cape Wind as a 'Coal Guy'. Presumably this makes him evil and untrustworthy. It also neatly avoids admitting the man's formidable experience and overall expertise in matters relating to all aspects of energy.

Let’s say we all had to choose from the following list for an unbiased and technically sound forecast of what Cape Wind's wholesale cost for a kilowatt hour of electricity will be........

1. Jim Gordon (head of Cape Wind)

2. U. S. Minerals Management Service and/or the Army Corps of Engineers

3. Chuck Kleekamp

4. Glenn Wattley

TIME IS UP! My answer is… GLENN WATTLEY! And my prize, a prize shared by us all, is Nantucket Sound, without those 130 wind towers and their lights, bells, foghorns and whirling blades.

Now, who wants to go double-or-nothing? Gee, this is better than casino gambling: Will Cape Wind's electricity cost....

1. Less than conventional electricity?

2. The same?

3. More?

You guessed it.....MORE! Of course, we don't know how much more because Jim Gordon’s costs continue to rise and he does not know what his capital costs will be plus a lot of other things such as his charges for doing the retrofit work needed for him to stream his electricity into the grid (sub station in Barnstable and the Mirant plant in Sandwich). These are things guys such as Chuck Kleekamp- engineers- are paid to figure out.

In today's Cape Cod Times Chuck holds forth yet again about the virtues and savings of Cape Wind. I will give the man credit for perseverance. He is going to ride this boat right onto the shoals and no amount of evidence will get him to jump off. Kleekamp writes in the Times, "The first offshore project will replace electricity from fossil-fueled plants, avoiding consumption of some 100 million gallons of oil, equivalent to 20 Bouchard barges like the one that ran aground in Buzzards Bay or five liquefied natural gas tankers like the one disabled off Chatham, all delivering fuel to generate electricity."

Nice try, Chuck. Not one conventional plant will be shut down due to Cape Wind's production. Increasing demand for electricity plus the need for reliable backup power to compensate for the times when the turbines will not be turning mean that this claim is whole cloth, wrong. And, although I have asked dozens of times, no one has identified which plants will shut down according to the GORDON/ KLEEKAMP theory of reality. Not even Jim Gordon has answered this and I have asked him, personally.

Kleekamp ends his piece by saying, Likewise, it will avoid the emission of about a million tons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to taking 175,000 cars off the road each year. These are real savings."

No, Chuck, these are real mistakes...real unrealistic claims...and real nonsense. This last claim is bad science at its best. Cape Wind will not displace any CO2 emissions until it causes at least one conventional plant to shut down. Anyway, increasing demand for electricity will probably compensate for any CO2 reductions Cape Wind causes. And by the way, Jim's (Gordon) actual claim to the Minerals Management Service was for 880,000 tons of CO2, not about "...a million..."

I wonder if Chuck knows how federal RENEWABLE ENERGY CREDITS work? Be sure to read the next installment on this matter...it will be enlightening, so to speak.

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PART TWO- Renewable Energy Credits

Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) sound like a great idea to encourage the production of green energy. They were intended to help provide what is essentially investment capital for green energy ventures. In fact, the opposite may be true. For example, recently a major ski resort in Colorado scrapped its plans to build two wind turbines and opted instead to by RECs from other green energy producers to meet their green energy quota.

What is a Renewable Energy Credit? It is a credit issued by the federal government on a one-to-one basis for every kilowatt hour of renewable energy produced by any generator. This could mean wind, biomass, solar, etc. RECs may be sold or traded separately from the electricity for which they are issued. And, anyone in any industry can buy them. There are even companies who specialize in the sale and brokering of RECs. One such company is Element Markets of Sugar Land, Texas. Element Markets' web site says in part, "Producers of 'green' power can sell RECs as well as the power itself, increasing their profits, while other interests can buy or trade RECs for reasons ranging from improving corporate image to satisfying regulatory compliance." When RECs are traded the entity purchasing the RECs gains the right to claim environmental benefits.

Auden Schendler, executive director for community and responsibility at Aspen Skiing Company was quoted in the Aspen Times Weekly (Feb. 26, 2008) saying that lately he has been dubious of the legitimacy of the wind energy credits. He is having a hard time finding evidence that the purchases are actually causing new wind farms to be built. In 2006 Aspen bought RECs equal to its entire annual energy needs but remains on the grid buying whatever power its wholesaler delivers.

Even the American Wind Energy Association says on its own web site, "Those who are most efficient at generating renewable power will end up producing it, and those who are cannot efficiently produce it will purchase Credits on the competitive market." (The American Wind Energy association uses the word Credits to mean RECs.)

Twenty-five states plus the District of Columbia have federally approved Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPSs). Massachusetts is among those states. Each state having a portfolio mandates that an energy wholesaler as well as certain private institutions must be able to demonstrate that 3.5% of its total energy sales/use for the year 2007 is green. This requirement will rise by .05% per year until the maximum mandate of 5% is reached. But, what if there is simply not enough green energy being produced to satisfy this requirement? The American Wind Energy Association has the answer posted on its web site: "RENEWABLE ENERGY CREDITS, OR 'CREDITS', ARE CENTRAL TO THE RPS." They go on to say very clearly, "The Credit system provides compliance flexibility and avoids the need to "track electrons".

This is a chilling comment and it’s made by the American Wind Energy association. Let's follow one renewable energy credit from, say...Nantucket Sound to the bottom line of an annual report:

A kilowatt hour of electricity travels through a marine cable to the Barnstable sub station of NSTAR on Cape Cod. From there it travels to the Mirant power plant in Sandwich, also on Cape Cod and then into the grid. It is presumably purchased by ISO New England, a wholesaler providing power for the New England Grid. This kilowatt hour was produced by a wind turbine, part of a 130 - unit wind farm located on twenty-five square miles of Nantucket Sound, well within site of shore of within one of the east Coast’s most active recreational boating areas as well as within a significant local fishery and hard by shipping lanes. Also, its 440' tall structures are under the flight paths that take small aircraft between Cape Cod and Nantucket island. Now this one kilowatt provides an hour of electricity on the grid. It also gains its producer one REC. He needs as many RECs as he can get because the capital costs for his wind farm rose from $650 million as first projected to around $1.5 billion at actual time of construction.

This clean kilowatt actually has intrinsic value and add-on value also as the REC it produces becomes a valuable commodity. Hypothetically, since there is no cap yet on CO2 emissions, if Massachusetts does place a cap on emissions and, realizing that there is not enough green energy production available to stay under that cap allows payments in-lieu of compliance (penalty payments), the REC will rise to a value equal to the penalty payment. So, if the penalty payment is pegged at $50(x) of CO2 emitted. X would be stated as weight (pounds, tons, etc.). This means that each REC will be enormously valuable on the spot market....considerably more valuable than the kilowatt hour that gives birth to each REC.

Our green kilowatt hour from Nantucket Sound becomes an important player in New England's energy sweepstakes. What this means for Cape Wind, for example, and for Cape Cod is remarkable:

1. Cape Wind claims in its most recent federal review (MMS, January 2008) that it will displace 880,000 tons of CO2 emissions.

2. Cape Wind also says that it will use RECs as an offset against its costs: it will sell its earned RECs.

3. Electric wholesalers buy the cheapest power first, then buy a mix of other powers.

4. Electric wholesalers will buy some wind power, because there is only some available.

5. Cape Wind, if approved, financed and built, will be the only offshore wind producer in the United States, far from a major player in the overall energy market.

6. Any wholesaler who purchases Cape Wind's RECs will be able to use them to achieve compliance with their Renewable Portfolio Standards, regardless of how much actual green energy they buy and resell.

7. Cape Wind's RECs will be used by energy wholesalers to allow the cheapest producers in their power mix to continue in operation. Typically this will mean that the final benefit of the Cape Wind RECs will fall to the
worst polluters...old, non-conforming, obsolete coal-fired plants belching CO2 into our air.

Here is one local example of a massive purchase of RECs: Two years ago Harvard University signed a ten year contract with the Town of Hull on the Massachusetts coast south of Boston. Hull owns and operates two wind turbines for its municipal energy needs. In addition Harvard is known to have purchased as much as $2 million worth of RECs on the spot market. the Hull purchase alone is for $1.8 million. All this money is in addition to the University's estimated $40 million annual electric bill. This means that ISO New England will not have to "track" hundreds of millions of kilowatts of electricity and that they can continue buying huge amounts of electricity from CO2 emitting coal plants. So much for green. (Harvard University is subject to the requirements of the Massachusetts RPS.)

The inescapable facts are that Cape Wind will not only not displace any CO2 emissions, it will actually subsidize and guarantee them. Cape Wind will help the great polluters such as the coal plants at Brayton Point and Salem harbor to continue their profitable but toxic operations. The Cape Wind claim about displacing CO2 emissions is a cruelly ironic hoax, yet Cape Wind enjoys strong support among environmentalists. Most cruelly of all, Cape Wind continues to make what are now generally discredited claims that they can save our air while giving us cheap power. Reliable estimates by energy industry experts place Cape Wind's cost for electricity at between two and three times the average for other electricity sold in Massachusetts. Offshore wind power is much more costly land onshore wind power. Worst of all, Cape Cod is downwind of two of the worst sources of stack emissions causing air pollution in New England, two of the very coal-fired plants who will be protected by Cape Wind's profit making RECs. While Cape Wind supporters point to the fact that our air in summer conditions is often among the most polluted in New England they ignore the factual consequences of Cape Wind's proposed use of what is in fact merely an elaborate tax and compliance dodge- Renewable Energy Credits.

All Cape Cod has to do to reap this curious environmental windfall is turn over the center of Nantucket sound to a private developer. Have those in the environmental community who so ardently support Cape Wind's proposal actually thought this out to its several and frightening logical conclusions?

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Counter Cape Wind Blog

No Breeze: The Day the Wind Died in Texas

2008-02-28T19:05:00.000-05:00

by Jeffrey Ball in the Wall Street Journal

Dow Jones Newswires' Matthew Dalton reports:

Texas, a model of wind power's potential, now is a model of wind power's pitfalls too.

Minders of the Lone Star State's electricity grid had to cut power to some offices and factories Wednesday evening when the wind dropped-and with it, electricity produced from the state's many wind farms. The green juice slowed from 1,700 megawatts to the trickle of 300 megawatts.

"A cold front moved through, and the wind died out," said Dottie Roark, spokeswoman for the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which runs most of the state's power grid. "That happens."

Oh, well. Now that wind is big enough to be a real part of Texas' electricity mix, the state is coming to grips with one of wind power's biggest problems: the power flows only when the wind blows.

Maybe it's just a coincidence, but this glitch for wind power occurred the night before the House voted on a renewable-energy bill - a vote in which the Texas delegation mostly voted against more renewable-energy subsidies.

Nuclear, coal- and gas-fired plants run almost all the time. As efficient as wind turbines have become in recent years, they still need the wind to work. And reliably predicting just when the wind will blow is still tough, despite plenty of fancy technological advances.

Wind usually falls off with rising temperatures. But a sudden gust of cool weather can do the same. The people running the electricity grid need to stay on their toes to throw other forms of power on line when wind falters.

"Renewables are a very intermittent source of electric supply," says Larry Makovich, managing director at Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a Boston-based energy consultancy that recently published a bullish report on the prospects for renewable energy. "What you saw in Texas is a very dramatic example as to why that is the case."

This problem is only going to get bigger for Texas. The state has 4,600 megawatts of wind power. If wind blew all the time, that would be the equivalent of more than three nuclear plants. The state now is considering additional wind farms that could boost that figure ten-fold, say Texas' grid operators. That is, when there's a breeze.

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The Counter Cape Wind Blog

Cape Wind’s inconvenient economics

2008-02-21T14:43:00.000-05:00

Guest Commentary:
By Dona Tracy

Wicked Local Orleans

For years, residents of Cape Cod and the Islands have been promised that the Cape Wind project would lower their electricity rates. Remember: “The Wind is Free?”

Apparently this is no longer true since Cape Wind has stopped promising to save us money on electricity. While developer Jim Gordon and his spokesman, Mark Rodgers, will not directly answer the question about saving consumers money, they have publicly admitted that their “picture has changed,” even though they have allowed that misleading view to remain on the Cape Wind Web site.

The snapshot of savings was based on the practice of selling electricity into the wholesale spot market. Cape Wind used a study that projects the cost of fossil fuels versus allegedly free wind. This study was biased because it looked at only benefits and not the relevant costs. Furthermore, it became obsolete just months after it was done. Yet, Cape Wind still uses the spot market model and La Capra Study as justification for its long-held claim of lowering our electric bills.

Cape Wind’s cost will not be based on the wholesale spot market model; rather, it will come from what’s known as a power-purchase agreement with a utility. The resulting costs will be well above the wholesale market since a utility such as NStar or Cape Light Compact will need to cover all of its costs and pass them along to their consumers.

According to the recently released Draft Environmental Impact Statement from the federal Minerals Management Service, Cape Wind’s electricity would cost more than double the spot market. Backing that up is the fact that all major offshore wind farms in this country have been stopped due to high energy costs that would be passed along to consumers. U.S. offshore wind plants are simply not economically viable, in contrast to some in Europe, where costs are based on huge government subsidies. Note that the citizens of Denmark, whose wind farms have become the poster child for Cape Wind, pay the highest electricity rates in the world.
While many people seem to support the sacrifice of open spaces in the face of global warming, they might not if they had the facts and understood the paucity of benefits.

If the argument for Cape Wind’s necessity further depends on its ability to combat climate change then that premise must be proven by the developer. Weighing benefits versus costs seems to be based on the assumption that benefits are infinite and that costs are trumped by necessity. If human-caused CO2 is the most significant threat to biodiversity on our planet, then it remains to be seen just how Cape Wind would actually help affect the situation.

Meanwhile, it has been shown that enormous wind farms such as that proposed by Cape Wind kill thousands of protected birds and bats including endangered species. Those costs are real and documented, whereas the benefits are not.

In fact, energy efficiency (which kills no one) has been held up by the Kyoto Protocol as the best strategy to reduce greenhouse gases and global warming. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts also recognizes this with its new energy bill. It provides financial incentives to improve efficiency and reduce demand and CO2, favoring efficiency over the building of new power plants. The bill also promotes direct citizen involvement with incentives for solar panels and roof-top or small backyard wind turbines.

If each of us determinedly practiced energy conservation and planted a tree or two on our property, we could do more to reduce global warming than Gordon’s wind plant. And we wouldn’t ruin Nantucket Sound in the process.

So I call on Mr. Gordon to simply answer the question: Is the wind still free?

Dona Tracy is founding director of Wildcare Inc./Hudson Valley Raptor Center, a research, education, hospital and sanctuary devoted to birds of prey. She is a resident of Barnstable.

The Cape Wind MMS DEIS: Disaster on Arrival

2008-02-13T19:05:00.000-05:00

by Peter Kenney

The long-awaited Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) on the Cape Wind application to place 130 wind turbines in the waters of Nantucket Sound is finally out. Written by the United States Department of Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS), it endorses the project.

The report totals 2,000 pages of text, maps, and charts/graphs. It contains five appendices where the real substance of the report is to be found. After wading through this document completely three times -- and in sections many more -- I can only say it is embarrassing that such a document is actually credited to a U.S. government agency.

Whether one supports or opposes the Cape Wind proposal this DEIS is a disaster. More important, for those who know little of the Cape Wind proposal, or of the history of the project's public comment and government review, the MMS does not present a compellingly complete analysis of the Cape Wind proposal.

Although the MMS DEIS seems to clear the way for Cape Wind to build its Nantucket Sound wind farm, CapeCodToday.com will be printing remarks made by experts in the wind-energy/finance fields that identify many serious flaws in the DEIS and in the methods and information used to paint a healthy picture of the Cape Wind project. MMS's own peer review raises serious questions about how MMS arrived at the conclusions their report contains.

When down is up

Let us start with Appendix F, which deals with the economics of the project. It is authored by Robert S. D. Mense of the Economics Division of the MMS and is dated May 25, 2007. (The report was released in January of 2008.)

Mense begins by telling how he developed a Microsoft cash-flow spreadsheet to accomplish his economic analysis. In layman's terms, Appendix F is intended to be a thorough cost/benefit analysis. It should be noted that the project's proponent, Jim Gordon of Boston, said early and often in his presentations in support of the wind farm that one of the main reasons for supporting it was the fact that it would save money for electric consumers in New England.

His original claim was that Cape Wind would save $25 million across New England, or twelve cents per month per household. As the permit review process wore on, Gordon's costs predictably rose until now we see a very different forecast. When it became clear two or three years ago that Cape Wind's cost escalation had cancelled out its production savings, the new Cape Wind position became the "downward pressure" the wind farm would exert on regional and local energy prices.

Page one of Appendix F in the MMS report says in its fourth paragraph: "Economic performance was measured in terms of cost of energy..." This is a devastating statement in light of the fact that, on page 17 of Appendix F, Mense writes that Cape Wind electricity will cost 12.2 cents per kilowatt hour (KWH) but that the average price for a KWH of electricity from the New England grid for January of 2007 was 5.87 cents. In other words, Cape Wind's electricity will cost more than twice what it claims to be able to compete with. In order to read this cost data one must go to the last full page of text in Appendix F.

The simple fact is that, even according to MMS, Cape Wind's electricity will raise New England electric rates.

How is that for "downward pressure?"

The Case Against Climate Alarmism

2008-02-09T09:08:00.000-05:00

The Fluid Envelope

by Dr. Richard Lindzen,

[About the Author: Dr. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.]

The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations.

Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the Goebbelian substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well.

Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and previous warm periods appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages.

Since the beginning of the 19th Century these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don't fully understand either the advance or the retreat. For small changes in climate associated with tenths of a degree, there is no need for any external cause. The earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Recent work (Tsonis et al, 2007), suggests that this variability is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th Century. Supporting the notion that man has not been the cause of this unexceptional change in temperature is the fact that there is a distinct signature to greenhouse warming: surface warming should be accompanied by warming in the tropics around an altitude of about 9km that is about 2.5 times greater than at the surface.

Measurements show that warming at these levels is only about 3/4 of what is seen at the surface, implying that only about a third of the surface warming is associated with the greenhouse effect, and, quite possibly, not all of even this really small warming is due to man. This further implies that all models predicting significant warming are greatly overestimating warming. This should not be surprising. According to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the greenhouse forcing from man made greenhouse gases is already about 86 % of what one expects from a doubling of CO2 (with about half coming from methane, nitrous oxide, freons and ozone), and alarming predictions depend on models for which the sensitivity to a doubling for CO2is greater than 2C which implies that we should already have seen much more warming than we have seen thus far, even if all the warming we have seen so far were due to man.

This contradiction is rendered more acute by the fact that there has been no significant global warming for the last ten years. Modelers defend this situation by arguing that aerosols have cancelled much of the warming, and that models adequately account for natural unforced internal variability. However, a recent paper (Ramanathan, 2007) points out that aerosols can warm as well as cool, while scientists at the UK's Hadley Centre for Climate Research recently noted that their model did not appropriately deal with natural internal variability thus demolishing the basis for the IPCC's iconic attribution. Interestingly (though not unexpectedly), the British paper did not stress this. Rather, they speculated that natural internal variability might step aside in 2009, allowing warming to resume. Resume? Thus, the fact that warming has ceased for the past decade is acknowledged.

Given that the evidence (and I have noted only a few of many pieces of evidence) strongly suggests that anthropogenic warming has been greatly exaggerated, the basis for alarm due to such warming is similarly diminished.

However, the really important point is that the case for alarm would still be weak even if anthropogenic global warming were significant. Polar bears, arctic summer sea ice, regional droughts and floods, coral bleaching, hurricanes, alpine glaciers, malaria, etc. etc. all depend not on some global average of surface temperature, but on a huge number of regional variables including temperature, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, and direction and magnitude of wind.

The state of the ocean is also often crucial. Our ability to forecast any of these over periods beyond a few days is minimal. Yet, each catastrophic forecast depends on each of these being in a specific range. The odds of any specific catastrophe actually occurring is almost zero. This was equally true for earlier forecasts: famine for the 1980's, global cooling in the 1970's, Y2K and many others. Regionally, year to year fluctuations in temperature are over four times larger than fluctuations in the global mean. Much of this variation has to be independent of the global mean; otherwise the global mean would vary much more.

This is simply to note that factors other than global warming are more important to any specific situation. This is not to say that disasters will not occur; they always have occurred and this will not change in the future. Fighting global warming with symbolic gestures will certainly not change this. However, history tells us that greater wealth and development can profoundly increase our resilience.

Given the above, one may reasonably ask why there is the current alarm, and, in particular, why the astounding upsurge in alarmism of the past 2 years. When an issue like global warming is around for over twenty years, numerous agendas are developed to exploit the issue.

The interests of the environmental movement in acquiring more power and influence are reasonably clear. So too are the interests of bureaucrats for whom control of CO2 is a dream-come-true.

After all, CO2 is a product of breathing itself. Politicians can see the possibility of taxation that will be cheerfully accepted because it is necessary for saving the world. Nations have seen how to exploit this issue in order to gain competitive advantages. But, by now, things have gone much further.

The case of ENRON is illustrative in this respect. Before disintegrating in a pyrotechnic display of unscrupulous manipulation, ENRON had been one of the most intense lobbyists for Kyoto. It had hoped to become a trading firm dealing in carbon emission rights. This was no small hope. These rights are likely to amount to over a trillion dollars, and the commissions will run into many billions. Hedge funds are actively examining the possibilities. It is probably no accident that Gore, himself, is associated with such activities . The sale of indulgences is already in full swing with organizations selling offsets to ones carbon footprint while sometimes acknowledging that the offsets are irrelevant.

The possibilities for corruption are immense. Archer Daniels Midland (America's largest agribusiness) has successfully lobbied for ethanol requirements for gasoline, and the resulting demand for ethanol is already leading to large increases in corn prices and associated hardship in the developing world (not to mention poorer car performance).

And finally, there are the numerous well meaning individuals who have allowed propagandists to convince them that in accepting the alarmist view of anthropogenic climate change, they are displaying intelligence and virtue. For them, their psychic welfare is at stake.

With all this at stake, one can readily suspect that there might be a sense of urgency provoked by the possibility that warming may have ceased. For those committed to the more venal agendas, the need to act soon, before the public appreciates the situation, is real indeed.

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The Counter Cape Wind Blog

Wind farms: Blowing money on a fantasy

2008-02-07T13:48:00.000-05:00

By EDWARD HEATHCOAT AMORY

The Daily Mail, UK

Wind Farms: Ministers should cut off the funding tap, and use the money to help reduce our obscenely high electricity bills

My electricity company has just sent me a handwringing letter, explaining why, despite its best efforts to keep costs down, my bill is set to soar again this year.

The reason - apart from the usual rapacious profits enjoyed by our power suppliers - is a hidden subsidy paid towards the development of wind farms.

In the last financial year, electricity consumers were forced to pay a total of £600million in subsidy to the owners of wind turbines.

This figure is due to rise to £3billion a year by 2020 as vast areas of the most beautiful parts of the country will be pockmarked with 500ft high windmills.

The sudden growth in this area of energy supply is because the green lobby has convinced many that this renewable power source is the answer to our looming energy crisis.

But the truth is that not only do renewables provide a mere 1.3 per cent of the country's energy needs but also that this money is being wasted.

The subsidy system works on the principle of encouraging the development of new wind farms by forcing traditional energy companies to pay producers of renewable energy. The firms then recoup the money by charging consumers higher bills.

After an initial surge in the number of new wind farms, few are currently being built. The most obvious sites, far from human habitation, have already been filled and energy firms are now facing delays in obtaining planning permission to build in more environmentally sensitive locations.

As a result, the huge subsidy is concentrated in a small number of hands. There is a rising amount of money for renewable energy and if less is produced each turbine gets more of the pot.

At current subsidy rates, anyone who constructs a wind farm, which is expected to last for a minimum of 20 years, will have paid off their investment in only five years. From then on, its profit all the way to the bank.

John Constable, director of policy at the Renewable Energy Foundation, says that the system "has encouraged underperforming onshore wind turbines in low wind areas. Though of little engineering value, such plants attract speculators because they require little capital investment".

As a result, consumers will soon be paying billions in unnecessary subsidy to a bunch of sharp-suited businessmen who have spotted an opportunity for easy money.

But the wind farm disaster story does not, by any means, end here.

Even in the unlikely event that ministers managed to get the subsidy system right, there would still remain fundamental problems with wind power. First, the fact
that the turbines stand idle when the wind doesn't blow. This leaves gas or coal power stations to be switched on and off at a moment's notice to fill the gap - something that is very environmentally inefficient.

Second, even if you accept that it's worth desecrating some of the most beautiful parts of Britain in pursuit of a renewable energy policy, you then must transport the energy to a population centre. That means building an expensive infrastructure of new power lines.

The third problem is the potential threat wildlife (including rare birds colliding with the blades) and the damage to quality of life of those people who live near the wind farms.

The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors estimates that the price of house located close to a new turbine falls by 20 per cent, if the owners are able to sell it at all.

Of course, none of this much matters while the turbines are out of sight, but that could be about to change. Although Britain currently has nearly 2,000 onshore turbines; ministers have signed up to European targets on renewables that will mean 7,000 more.

The Government claims that most of these will be built offshore, but that's not true because the costs of building in deep water are still too high.

Finally, there is the revelation that wind farms stop the Ministry of Defence's radar working, so we can forget about early warning of an airborne attack.

Behind all this is one certainty: Britain is facing a looming energy crisis. Our ageing nuclear power plants, which currently provide 20 per cent of our energy, are nearing the end of their useful life.

The Government, having dithered for years, wants to build new ones but says that, unlike renewables, there will be no subsidies or price guarantees for the nuclear industry. If they really mean this, then the energy companies won't build any reactors, because the commercial risks will be too great.

That will mean Britain becomes even more dependent on gas power stations, at a time when our supplies of North Sea gas are running out.

We will have to import our supplies from unstable Middle Eastern nations, or from Russia, whose leaders have already shown they are happy to turn off the gas tap to make a political point. Britain could be held to energy ransom; even plunged into darkness.

Meanwhile we waste time fiddling with wind power. The solution in the medium term is a proper commitment to nuclear energy which, like wind power, doesn't generate greenhouse gases.

Also, we should be funding for research into wave and tidal power - surely the long-term answer for an island nation like Britain.

As for wind, ministers should cut off the funding tap, and use the money to help reduce our obscenely high electricity bills.
=================
Counter Cape Wind Blog

Supporting the Wrong Plan

2008-02-04T08:18:00.001-05:00

Letter to the Editor:

"Worcester Business Journal Editorial All Wet"

By John Grady, Grady Research of Ayer

Dear Editor,

Regarding the editorial that appeared in the Jan. 21 edition of the Worcester Business Journal in support of Cape Wind, consider the following:

Measuring wind power in megawatts (MW), or peak output, is incorrect in a most basic way, as when stated in the editorial that the Cape Wind project would produce 468 MW or "75 percent of Cape and Island energy needs." The correct measurement term is MW hours, which takes into account that the wind only blows approximately 30 percent of the time. So, over 24 hours, or say a month, the average output is about one-third of the peak, or equivalent to 154 MW from a conventional power plant that is consistently producing 24 hours per day. Cape Wind wants you to believe 154 is 468, and that it is always there. That is simply untrue.

New England demand is approaching 30,000 MW. The net 154 MW of Cape wind is about .0051 of it - one half of 1 percent. Think carefully about that trade: a 0.5 percent reduction in energy generated to defile the sound? Bad deal.

You laud the Cape Wind group for its tenacity. But why are they so tenacious when even the subsidized economics of wind are so marginal right from the start as compared to other sources? The reason is renewable energy certificates or RECs, which can be worth as much as the electricity. Those who own the source of energy can sell these RECs to utility companies. The RECs have nothing to do with MW generated, only "green capacity." More green energy supply actually dilutes the price of RECs, a perverse incentive if there ever was one. This is why politicians and lawyers maneuver ferociously to keep hydro out of the REC market. All other states count small hydro as green, why not here? It's because those who extol wind for its environmental aspects to your face would get a little less cash in the back room, apparently quite a worry for them.

Well-meaning, environmentally-concerned but technically inept people are cleverly tricked into supporting the wrong thing. Wind or solar can opportunistically displace a small amount of fuel. I am 100 percent for that, but let's keep the scale real.

Brussels steps in - to stop a wind farm

2008-02-04T08:06:00.000-05:00

By Christopher Booker

The Telegraph, UK

A delightful row has blown up in Scotland over the plan to erect 181 600ft wind turbines on the Hebridean island of Lewis.

For years we have been told how this largest onshore windfarm in Britain was going to help the UK to meet its now mandatory EU target to produce 20 per cent of our energy from renewable sources by 2020 - even though the 200 megawatts of electricity the turbines would intermittently produce represents only a quarter of the output of a modest-sized gas-fired power station.

But the £500 million scheme, which would involve building 100 miles of new roads, has aroused vehement opposition not only from the majority of the island's inhabitants but from an array of conservation bodies, led by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

They are horrified at the immense damage this vast industrial installation would do to wildlife over a huge area of specially-designated peatland, not least to Scotland's largest population of golden eagles.

Now the "Scottish government" (as it likes to call itself), which was shortly expected to give the go-ahead to this scheme, has been told by the European Commission that this would be in serious breach of various EU environmental directives.

So, on one hand, the EU exhorts us to build thousands more giant turbines, as the only way to fulfil our environmental obligations on renewable energy.

On the other, when a highly unpopular project is proposed to do just that, the EU turns round to say that this would be so environmentally damaging that, if the project goes ahead, the UK could face a colossal fine from the European Court of Justice.

If anyone suggests that, under the EU, you cannot win, who could disagree?

=========================================
The Counter Cape Wind Blog

Windfarm developers 'dupe' public

2008-02-02T16:01:00.000-05:00

The Press and Journal, Scotland

Developers seeking support for windfarm plans often dupe members of the public into believing turbines will save the planet — while failing to mention potentially serious side-effects, according to a new report.

The Views of Scotland (VoS) pressure group believes people often put their names forward in support of developments without fully understanding the technology. The group claims that some developments endanger rare species and natural carbon stores in peatland.
The group argues that modern methods of touting for support for wind over nuclear power amount to “a subversion of the planning system in a gung-ho attempt to secure consent whatever the cost”.

The VoS report — Strange bedfellows: Big Energy, Cash and the Green Lobby — claims developers are increasingly recruiting activists including Greenpeace members to back planning applications.

Greenpeace UK chief scientist Doug Parr said: “Wind power is one of the bestavailable tools for humanity starting to tackle climate change.

“We support most windfarm applications that we scrutinise, but this is not blanket. Greenpeace is almost unique in being funded entirely by individual members and so is totally independent of companies and Government.”

VoS chairman David Bruce, however, argued that people “ignorant of serious environmental risks are being persuaded, often unintentionally, to sign letters of support for specific planning applications.”

He said the practice “smacks of new age colonialism by people travelling up and down the country seeking to impose their will by decree, regardless of the environmental cost.”
He added: “There was a time when Greenpeace fought to expose and put a stop to this kind of oppressive corporate bullying. It did not cover it up and it certainly did not campaign on its behalf. It does now.”

Jonathan Lincoln, founder of the Sustainable Energy Alliance, which is also criticised in the report, vehemently denied that he had duped anyone into signing petitions to aid planning applications while shielding wider environmental issues.

He said: “I provide information about a windfarm and discuss it in detail. We provide OS (Ordnance Survey) maps, full details of the application and are as open and honest as we can be, including the impact on the environment and the avian populations, before we decide to back an application.”

The Counter Cape Wind Blog

MMS Report on Cape Wind project opens door to 7 Million Dollar Contract

2008-01-20T09:35:00.000-05:00

By Dona Tracy, Citizen Journalist
Cape Cod, MA

Is the Massachusetts Audubon Society, with a mission to protect birds, selling them out for a contract worth over 7,000,000 dollars to monitor their deaths?

The saga of the Massachusetts Audubon Society and the Cape Wind project continues with the January 14, 2008 release of the MMS Draft Environmental Impact Statement and Massachusetts Audubon’s lack of follow through on its Challenge to Cape Wind and its permitting agencies, to “Get it right.”

According to a story written by reporter Beth Delay of the Boston Globe on January 15, 2008, just one day after the DEIS release, Jack Clarke, director of public policy and government relations for the Massachusetts Audubon Society is satisfied that the MMS Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the Cape Wind project has addressed the groups concerns, ““They (MMS) have done an adequate and thorough job of reviewing the potential environmental impacts with regard to avian life” he said.”

It would seem Mr. Clarke has conveniently forgotten “The Mass Audubon Challenge” clearly stated publicly in the media and on their Website:

Part I. The Challenge

“Recently, you may have read or heard about the Mass Audubon Challenge regarding the proposed Cape Wind project. In March of this year (2006), following extensive staff and board review of the project, Mass Audubon challenged Cape Wind and its permitting agencies to accept comprehensive and rigorous monitoring and mitigation conditions that will reduce the risk to birds and other wildlife. If these conditions are adopted, and remaining significant data gaps are filled with a finding of no significant threat to the living resources, Mass Audubon will support this Cape Wind project...”

What are these remaining significant data gaps that needed to be filled?

Movement of endangered terns and threatened plovers during the late summer to early fall migration. The abundance and distribution of migrating songbirds. Nighttime distribution and behavior of hundreds of thousands of long-tailed ducks in and around Horseshoe Shoal.

The Mass Audubon Challenge requires that these gaps are addressed with a finding of “no significant threat” and that their approval of the Cape Wind project is contingent on the closing of those gaps.

Of these three significant data gaps and for the sake of brevity let’s take one, ‘the abundance and distribution of migrating songbirds’ as an example to see if and how this gap was filled by the ‘adequate and thorough job’ attributed by Jack Clarke of Mass Audubon to the MMS while keeping in mind that millions of neotropical songbirds are under threat according to the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service. (“Neotropical migratory birds are at greatest risk of decline. Declines in some species are gradual while others are more dramatic. Some species including the Wood Thrush, Cerulean Warbler, Bobolink, Grasshopper Sparrow, and the Western Bluebird are declining sharply.” USFS) All bird species that migrate over Nantucket Sound are severely threatened by collisions with man-made structures in their flight paths, and the loss of critical habitat at both ends of their migratory routes.

[*Biologists estimate that over one billion birds are killed each year from aerial collisions.]

”Migratory birds often congregate in large numbers when traveling through bottlenecks, such as narrow costal plains of peninsulas. Many migrating birds, such as warblers and thrushes, migrate at night are attracted to lights, especially during inclement weather, At such times these nocturnal migrants can become disoriented and strike tall lighted structures, the Federal Aviation Administration requires lights on all structures of 200 feet or more. Cape wind turbines exceed that height and therefore lighting would be required.” Mass Audubon

The Executive summary of the DEIS (Draft Environmental Impact Statement) states in Table E-1 under Avifauna:

Construction Impacts; Minor,.... Operation Impacts: Minor to negligible

Where’s the Data?

Mass Audubon required 3-years of avian studies. According to their Avian Data Summary on Feb 21, 2006 on Migratory Passerines, the applicant had not met these criteria, and there was no indication that they will.

Thorough research of all the sections concerning passerines (Neotropical songbirds), shows that “no consistent three year study of spring and fall migration data at the project site was conducted”. Which, of course, begs the questions; How could the MMS find the impacts to be minor; and how could Mass Audubon, in turn, find the DEIS to be adequate and thorough with the contingency data need unsatisfied?

The model of scientific study for hazards to birds at an off-shore wind farm site used by the MMS (and to be used, apparently, by Mass Audubon if they get a monitoring contract) that cite Horns Rev in Denmark, did not include songbirds.

DEIS 9-4 Monitoring and Mitigation:

“It should be noted, however, that the assessments from this study were primarily focused on waterbird behavior and collisions, and potential effects on other kinds of migrating birds were not addressed. This study also made no attempt to quantify the effects of weather conditions, such as areas with fog, on potential collision rates.”

Mass Audubon did not conduct any songbird migration studies of its own but was critical of the data collected by the applicant for the U.S. Army Corps DEIS.

“Mass Audubon did not conduct any studies of songbird migration. The Applicant completed two seasons of data collection using radar – one each in the spring and fall migration periods. The summaries as presented are of limited value due to flaws in the analysis and because there was no replication by season.”

There was an additional Spring 2006 (April 18-June 3) radar survey added to the MMS DEIS which was, according to section 4-48 Description of Affected Environment, supposed to operate continually 24 hours a day; but didn’t due to- “equipment malfunctions”.

There were no Fall 2006 passerine migration studies done at all.

“The impacts of a large-scale wind energy facility may include disturbance, displacement, barriers to movement, collision and habitat loss. The scientific understanding of avian risks associated with wind farms is still evolving, and the precise level of risk to bird populations for any particular project is difficult to predict. Such risks are site-specific, and are also affected by the design, size, number, array and lighting of wind towers.” Mass Audubon

So, why has Mass Audubon dropped its requirement that the data gaps be filled as a critical part of their 'Challenge'?

Could it be Mass Audubon has now modified its 'Challenge'? And, If so, why?

Part II. of the 'Challenge';

“Adoption of an Adaptive Management Plan, which includes a rigorous three-year monitoring program in the event that the project results in significant adverse environmental impacts.”

“Mass Audubon challenges the state and federal permitting agencies, and Cape Wind to meet the following conditions for the proposed Cape Wind Energy Project. Mass Audubon will draft an Adaptive Management Plan with partner conservation organizations, and state and federal agencies, as appropriate, subject to peer-review. “

“Mass Audubon will excuse itself from certain aspects of the review panel when and if it participates directly in conducting field research related to the project that will be subject to the Review Panel’s review.”

The Adaptive Management Plan contract has an estimated worth of over seven million dollars.

Rumors are flying about a conflict of interest. “Seven million birds for seven million dollars?”

Is Mass Audubon underestimating the public’s ability to put two and two together?

===============================================================
Article Sources:

MMS DEIS

Mass Audubon: A Challenge Proposal Regarding The Cape Wind Energy Project

Massachusetts Audubon Society Website

Avian Use of Nantucket Sound Mass Div. of Fisheries & Wildlife, Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program

The American Bird Conservancy estimates that 80% of the birds killed at wind farms are songbirds.

*The towers we need for our cell phones and pagers, the lines that bring us power, the cars and trucks that help us travel, sources of energy, such as wind turbines, and event the windows in our homes and office buildings create obstacles for birds in flight. Collisions with these obstacles may cause the death of one bird or, in the case of communication towers, tens of thousands of birds in a single incident. Biologists estimate that over one billion birds are killed each year from aerial collisions. International Migratory Bird Day 2005: Collisions - Clearing the Way for Birds

Authors note: Industrial wind plants are proliferating. These towers are as tall as 40 story skyscrapers with moving blades the size of a football field traveling at over 200mph at their tips. Cape Wind proposes to erect 130 of these towers in 25 square miles (the size of Manhattan Island) in the Nantucket Sound, a critical migratory route and endangered species habitat. The turbines will be equipped with blinking lights, fog horns and a 100ft Electrical Service Platform, providing tired and disoriented migratory birds a hazardous place to land.

Feds Say Cape Wind Would Cost Two to Three Times Current Electric Prices

2008-01-19T13:37:00.000-05:00

BOSTON, Jan. 17 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/

Buried deeply in the federal Minerals Management Service (MMS) Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) is a whopping admission that Cape Wind’s offshore wind plant would produce electricity at two to three times current wholesale prices in the area.

The DEIS indicates electricity produced by Cape Wind is projected to cost $122 per MWh — more than double the recent price of wholesale electricity in the ISO New England electricity market that supplies part of the Cape and Islands’ demand. According to the report, ISO New England average prices were $66 per MWh over the last two years in southeastern Massachusetts.

That cost doesn’t include the state and federal subsidies that Cape Wind is lining up — over $1 billion in MA renewable energy credits and an additional $300 million from the federal Production Tax Credit. Add those subsidies in, and the average cost for a megawatt hour of electricity is three times the current average price, or over $190 per MWh.

Excessive long-term electrical rates led to the cancellation of several offshore projects last year. Following the termination of a multibillion-dollar project off the coast of Texas, the controversial Long Island Power Authority project was also shelved after reports showed that LIPA would absorb significantly higher rates at $290 per MWh. Similarly in Delaware, the Bluewater offshore proposal faltered on news that ratepayers there would see a premium of nearly $120 per MWh, or if commodities continued to escalate in price, the additional price per MWh could be as high as $550. Calculations by the Delaware Public Services Commission showed the project could increase electric bills by as much as $55 per
month.

Despite the high costs of other offshore wind projects and data just released by MMS, Cape Wind developer Jim Gordon misleads the public when he suggests that “the project is going to provide long-term value because we don’t have to contend with fuel costs.” Contrary to Gordon’s unsubstantiated claims, the DEIS itself reports that “none of the sites [including Horseshoe Shoal] appear to be profitable at today’s electricity prices.”

According to Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound CEO Glenn Wattley, “If Cape Wind builds it, the public will pay dearly. On top of massive tax subsidies, Cape Wind would have a devastating effect on the cost of electricity to the consumer. Without a doubt, our electric bills would go up.”

MMS DEIS Study Referenced: Appendix F: Economic Model (Description of Economic Model: Results and Discussion, pages 16-18; Peer Review, Comments of Lessly Goudarzi, pages 32-38)

Contact: Audra Parker 508.775.9767

Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound

PR Newswire

Cape Cod Times Online Readers Give Cape Wind Thumbs Down 55%-45%

2008-01-15T19:29:00.000-05:00

Federal Draft Fails to Sway Public.

The January 15, 2008 Cape Cod Times online poll asked;

"A federal review draft report Monday found no signifigant environmental harm associated with the proposed Nantucket Sound wind farm project. Do you support the wind farm?"

A total of 1126 votes were registered. The result?-

Hot Air and Wind

2007-12-21T06:51:00.000-05:00

Anyone who supports sound environmental policy and competitive energy markets should applaud the RPS’s temporary demise.

By Robert J. Michaels

National Review Online

December 20, 2007

The House of Representatives passed an energy-independence bill two weeks ago intended to make America more secure. Last week, the Senate rejected a provision in the bill establishing a “renewable portfolio standard” requiring all investor-owned utilities (but not municipal systems and rural cooperatives) to obtain 2.75 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2010 and 15 percent by 2020.

A renewable portfolio standard is irrelevant to promises of energy independence and security. Over 95 percent of our power comes from domestic or nearby sources: coal (49 percent), gas (20 percent), uranium (20 percent), and water (7 percent). None of these resources is insecure or held hostage by foreign actors.

Nor will the RPS advance “renewable energy” writ large. It will, in effect, be a wind-energy requirement. Wind’s technology is advancing, and it offers investors accelerated depreciation and a 1.9-cent per kilowatt-hour federal tax credit (extended to some other renewables in 2005). By contrast, solar energy remains uneconomic in most applications. Geothermal resources are regionally restricted and large enough to attract complaints from environmentalists in the permitting process. Biomass burners look like fossil-fueled plants, emit the same pollutants, and are sited under the same stringent standards.

Wind’s aesthetics and economics have changed. Bucolic images of windmills are fading as noisy newer models top 400 feet, and public resistance keeps states like Massachusetts from meeting their own renewable energy quotas. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, wind’s costs per kilowatt-hour hit bottom in 2002 and have since increased by 60 percent. In 2004, the levelized cost of a coal-fired kilowatt hour was 3.53 cents, compared to 4.31 cents for nuclear, 5.47 for gas and 5.7 for wind. According to a study by Gilbert Metcalf of Tufts University for the National Bureau of Economic Research, removing subsidies to nuclear and wind power takes the former to 5.94 cents and the latter to 6.64.

Wind’s seeming competitiveness does not reflect its dependability. Geothermal and biomass can be dispatched to deliver energy when it is needed, but wind turbines require moving air to produce their power. Avoiding blackouts requires production and demand on an electrical grid be equal every second, so operators need gas-fired “load-following” generators that can adjust instantly. If wind exceeds 10 percent of a system’s capacity, the costs of maintaining reliability increase disproportionately and interconnection charges may not cover them. An outage of a conventional generator will most likely be an isolated incident that does not affect the operation of other ones. Wind is more likely to stop blowing without warning over an entire region, so protecting wind turbines requires larger percentages of reserves.

Moreover, wind is least available when it would be most valuable. During the five highest load hours of 2006, California’s 2,300 megawatts of wind energy generating capacity produced only 12.2 percent of their nominal capacities. For planning purposes, Texas lists a wind unit’s “effective capacity” as 8.7 percent of its nameplate value.

Renewables may be costly, but RPS advocates see both environmental and industrial benefits. Those benefits, however, come at a higher price than necessary. An RPS reverses decades of improvement in environmental regulation, where cap-and-trade markets have replaced command regimes and regulators set allowable emissions by comparing costs and benefits. Instead, it forces the use of politically favored technologies rather than allowing market participants to choose their own methods of environmental compliance.

Utilities are investing in relatively few renewables because they can better comply with future emissions standards by building conventional generators equipped with newer control technologies. Some experts even believe that a combination of nuclear energy and carbon sequestration (extraction and underground storage of CO2 from the plant’s stack gases) can control greenhouse gas emissions more cheaply than renewables. The government can set carbon-reduction goals, but the market should determine the best ways of meeting them.

Nor is there any logic for a national RPS, particularly when over half the states already have their own. By any standard, renewables are a viable industry. They trade worldwide and international competition has improved their quality. Renewables have become a popular industry for venture capitalists, and corporate giants like General Electric, Wal-Mart, and Google have joined them.

Nor do renewables “create jobs.” The fact that constructing and operating renewable facilities requires more labor than conventional ones is a reason to prefer conventional technologies over renewables. Most economists would agree that today’s economy comes close to meeting their definition of “full employment.” Workers in the renewable industry are paid with funds that the public cannot spend on other goods.

An RPS impacts both regional power and electric power. Wind-poor (and coal-abundant) regions like the southeast may only be able to comply by purchasing credits from producers in other states. And the bill may disadvantage those buyers, because it has no provisions covering the delivery of sporadically available power that has to travel long distances. A national RPS allows pro-renewable states to raise the costs of doing business in states that prefer conventional power.

Finally, an RPS alters the balance between federal and state government by requiring state regulators to pass on the costs of plants built for federal compliance. Determining prudent investment has hitherto been exclusively a state activity, but the RPS shifts important retail regulatory decisions to Washington. States get nothing in return.

Anyone who supports sound environmental policy and competitive energy markets should applaud the RPS’s temporary demise. A national RPS is largely a transfer of wealth from electricity consumers to an already-subsidized wind power industry. The public at large pays the bill.

It is understandable that renewable-energy interests support a law that requires utilities to buy escalating amounts of power from them regardless of price. The mystery is why anyone else thinks it’s a good idea.

— Robert Michaels is a professor of economics at California State University, Fullerton, and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.

Counter Cape Wind Blog

Wind farm would sacrifice bay for profit

2007-12-09T17:54:00.000-05:00

southcoasttoday.com

By Michael Mulroy,

As I stood near my home on Sconticut Neck in Fairhaven looking southwest out over Buzzards Bay, I kept thinking, “It’s just not the same,” and in fact it wasn’t. It was the day after the radar tower at Round Hill in Dartmouth was taken down. I thought about the loss of this piece of history, and what it stood for: the remarkable story of Edward Howland Robinson Green, “Colonel” Green, his family, and of course his infamous mother, the “Witch of Wall Street,” Henrietta “Hetty” Green.

As I pondered this, I still kept thinking “No, it’s not the same.” That’s when it occurred to me that the difference was that this vista that I had looked out over so many times before now seemed somehow softer, less citified, less industrial.

“This is what it looked like before the tower,” I thought, closer to what Bartholomew Gosnold would have seen when he discovered Buzzards Bay, and though we had lost a piece of history, I knew that we had gotten back some of our history as well; the bay was now in more of its natural state. Get a good look, folks, because it may be gone forever if Jay Cashman can sneak a wind farm in under our noses.

Mr. Cashman’s attempt to sneak past the Massachusetts House of Representatives an amendment to the Ocean Sanctuaries Act as part of a recently passed energy bill shows just what kind of tactics he is willing to resort to in order to build his wind farm. This amendment would clear a major impasse for the development of large-scale industrial wind power plants along the Massachusetts coast.

The amendment was not filed by the House deadline, nor was it posted with other amendments on the House Web site prior to debate, but instead was slipped into a consolidated amendment by Rep. Robert DeLeo of Winthrop at the last possible moment, with only about 15 minutes for members to review. Some members voted for the energy bill without even knowing of the inclusion of the amendment.

It is also interesting to note that Mr. Cashman is a close personal friend of House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi, and that he sent a letter to the House clerk earlier this year to disclose the fact. How convenient that this letter should be sent, just in case further down the road eyebrows should be raised when something like this happens. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” (a quote from The Wizard of Oz).

In case you are not familiar with it, the Ocean Sanctuaries Act designates approximately 85 percent of Massachusetts state waters as ocean sanctuaries. There is good reason for this. We are fortunate to live in an area of some of the most pristine waters off the coast, but it is also a very fragile ecosystem.

Mr. Cashman and proponents of his project would have you believe that it would have no negative effects on the Bay. How is this even logical? First of all, the only way not to affect the Bay is to do nothing; in other words, things stay the same. I certainly can’t see how a large-scale industrial power plant could be positive for the condition of the bay, and to say it would have no affect at all is ludicrous.

The “windies” tout recent studies that show that bird collisions with wind towers are not as likely as previously thought, but what about what goes on beneath the surface? Putting up wind towers is not like putting candles on a birthday cake. They need a foundation. How much space will this take up, and what will it be made up of?

Mr. Cashman wants to build these towers in shallow, rocky areas, exactly the kind of habitat needed for lobster “nurseries” where young lobsters can hide from predators while developing. How will this affect them as well as other crustaceans, shellfish, small organisms and plants? There is much more to an ocean than just its surface, and there is much more to wind energy than just its surface.

Jay Cashman would have you believe that this project will free us from the yoke of dependency on foreign oil, drastically reduce your electric bill, save us from the terrorists, and make you one hell of an American! Talk about a play right out of the George Bush get-what-you-want-by-playing-on-their-fears playbook! Please! If you believe this, I’ve got some weapons of mass destruction I’d like you to see!

The Standard Times states, “No one has a good excuse for a NIMBY attitude when it comes to renewable energy” (Dec. 5). This is not about spoiling the view of some rich people. It is about one rich person, Jay Cashman, and him making himself richer. This is about much more than a “NIMBY attitude.” It is about preserving a natural treasure, Buzzards Bay. It is about preserving our history and our heritage. It is about preserving our livelihood and our way of life.

Jay Cashman would ask if we want clean, renewable energy projects to be a part of the commonwealth’s energy future. I believe the answer to that question to be a resounding “no,” not if it means sacrificing the bay to allow a large profit to Mr. Cashman, and energy savings that won’t amount to a hill of beans for the rest of us. “No” to big business that we can’t trust to be honest and above board, and “no” to politicians who represent the interests of only themselves and a few powerful individuals and not those of the citizens they represent.

The Counter Cape Wind Blog

[Far?] Offshore Wind at an Affordable Price

2007-12-06T23:24:00.000-05:00

by A. Siegel

http://www.ecogeek.org/

"Offshore wind is a relatively underexploited resource, with obstacles ranging from Cape Wind-like NIMBYism to the high infrastructure costs (and thus total costs) for installing systems out at sea. The idea of going toward floating wind turbines has been around awhile and BlueH Group looks to be one step closer to making that idea a reality...."

[Click headline for full story.]

Blowing a hole in wind power

2007-12-06T14:47:00.000-05:00

By John Dizard

Financial Times, London

December 3 2007

"A fair proportion of the readers of this column are rich, and many, if not most, of them will have nephews, who have been put on earth to test the patience of people with money. I mean not just actual children of siblings, but also metaphorical nephews, the sort of people who will be approaching the rich man with ideas for tropical nightclubs, “alternative” magazines, or independent films. Independent of box office success, that is, not independent of you."

"In recent years, alongside those business plans for clubs and straight-to-video films are a growing sheaf of proposals for renewable energy projects. While varied in location and technology, the angel-financed renewables proposals often have a couple of elements in common: sponsors with an insufferable sense of moral superiority, and a studied vagueness about technical and economic risks. This is a sort of anti-world of most energy industry planning, which tends to be neutral in tone, technically intense, and based on comparative micro-economics..."

The Counter Cape Wind Blog

[Click headline for full article]

Cape Wind's true colors

2007-12-03T07:28:00.000-05:00

The developer tries to ride roughshod over local communities.

Cape Cod Times
December 02, 2007

Cape Wind officials have spent the better part of six years framing themselves as the good guys — the green saviors of Cape Cod and the Islands.

They want you to believe their proposal to build 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound is a battle between those who want to save the Earth and those who made fortunes despoiling it. It's a simple — and effective — message, and yet anyone paying more than cursory attention to this important issue knows better.

Last week, Cape Wind appealed the Cape Cod Commission's denial of the developer's plan to run electrical transmission lines from Yarmouth to its proposed industrial site.

In its 32-page appeal to the state's Energy Facility Siting Board, the company asked the board to issue a "composite certificate of all individual permits, approvals, or authorizations which would otherwise be necessary."

In effect, the developer is asking the state to bypass local review of the mega project.

We don't always agree with the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, especially as it relates to some of the tactics it has used to oppose the project, but Susan Nickerson, executive director of the alliance, makes an excellent point when she says the appeal is designed to circumvent Yarmouth, Barnstable and Cape Cod Commission review of the project.

"This attempt at wholesale override of the local process is completely inappropriate," she said. "Cape Wind is trying to do an end-run around the towns of Cape Cod and the Islands. It apparently is unwilling to do what hundreds of other developers of good will have done: test themselves against the regional planning standards of the Cape Cod Commission and against local regulations designed to protect our communities... . Cape Wind's utter disregard for our local process is appalling."

The effort to bypass the Cape Cod Commission — and all home-rule scrutiny — demonstrates the company's arrogant attitude toward local regulators and reveals they are not as interested in the public process as they would have you believe.

Add to this the conventional power plant the same developers wanted to build in Chelsea and you start to see a picture of an opportunist looking to make money rather than an altruist looking to save the world via green power.

The company is now hoping that Ian Bowles, a supporter of Cape Wind who chairs the Energy Siting Board, will help them push their project through. That's politics. But it's pretty hypocritical of a developer who cries foul every time the opposition makes their own political maneuvers. The truth is, Cape Wind has been all about exploiting loopholes from day one.

Cape Wind wants to make money, pure and simple. There is nothing wrong with this essential capitalistic ideal, but the company's primary motive of padding its own pockets should not be lost in the fog of a complicated debate over a myriad of issues.

Wind energy developer pleads not guilty

2007-11-27T18:24:00.000-05:00

By Neal St. Anthony

Star Tribune

Wind energy developer Greg Jaunich pleaded not guilty Monday to federal charges that he overbilled Xcel Energy Inc. and the Minnesota Department of Commerce about $500,000 in 2003 and 2004 from two wind turbines his company owned in Minnesota’s Lincoln County.

A trial date is expected to be scheduled for next spring before U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson, according to a lawyer for Jaunich.

The government accused has Jaunich of bilking Xcel and the Commerce Department, which pays small wind developers a production incentive.

Jaunich’s lawyers have said the matter amounted to an administrative oversight by a busy developer who tried to settle a dispute that never should have become a federal felony charge.

The Counter Cape Wind Blog

Financial disclosure

2007-11-26T17:03:00.000-05:00

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Cape Cod Times Editorial

After six years, the public is still largely in the dark about Cape Wind's costs.

Regulators recently dealt a serious blow to a proposed offshore wind farm in Delaware, criticizing the plan as too financially risky to consumers.
The project could add as much as $55 to ratepayers' monthly bills, the News Journal of Wilmington reported.

The Delaware Public Service Commission criticized the developer's plans to pass along to ratepayers increases in the cost of commodities like steel. Conversely, if commodity costs go down, the price of wind power would not, the commission said.

"This is pretty much a nail in the coffin," said state Sen. Harris McDowell III, D-Wilmington, an opponent of the project.

The Delaware report also made a prominent mention of a failed plan to build a wind farm off the coast of Long Island. This summer, the power authority there stopped the project because costs quadrupled.

But what's significant about the news from Delaware is that the Public Service Commission used a team of independent consultants to determine the project's costs and their effect on consumers.

That's not the case with the Cape Wind project. So far, the developer has refused to provide financial data that would help the public consider the definition of economic viability. As a result, how can the public fully consider the project if it does not have the appropriate economic information on which to judge it? The point at which the project becomes economically viable is critical to the public's consideration of the project as this private venture seeks to use public lands.

U.S. Rep. William Delahunt said the Minerals Management Service, which is reviewing the Cape Wind project, should require more financial details about the project.

"Having full disclosure of construction and consumer power costs for each of the alternatives is at the heart of any public discussion," he said. "The people have a right to know this information since the project involves exclusive use of public waters and hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies."

Why is it so difficult to get the real facts on the costs of Cape Wind and its financial impacts on consumers? How can the government evaluate the costs and benefits of a project if the developer fails to disclose the costs?

"After six years of 'exhaustive' review of Cape Wind, we are still getting stonewalled," said Mark Forest, Delahunt's chief of staff.

In reviewing Cape Wind, the Minerals Management Service must form a team of independent consultants to review all costs associated with the project and their effect on consumers.

Cons to wind power vastly overlooked

2007-11-21T17:55:00.000-05:00

Published Sunday, November 18th, 2007

James L. Peterson, In Focus

Eight years ago, when my wife and I bought a 28-acre farm on the serene and beautiful Tucannon River near Dayton, we had no idea we were in the crosshairs of wind tower developers.

Later, despite being told we would not see the towers, we now look out our dining room window at 43 wind turbines.

About 14 miles northeast of Dayton, where Highway 12 crosses the Tucannon River, you start to see the desecration that the wind projects have wrought.

Drive southeast on Tucannon Road and view the horror of metal monsters flailing the air on the ridge tops all the way to the Umatilla National Forest.

At night, make the short trip from Marengo Junction on Tucannon Road up the northern side of the valley toward Pomeroy. At the top of the valley look southeast, south and west, and view the tragedy of intense strobing red lights that sweep across the horizon.

You can see the synchronized lights of the Hopkins Ridge project, and the even more upsetting erratic flashing of the tower lights of the Marengo I project.

This is visual pollution on an immense, invasive scale with virtually no regulations for its control.

The public has the right to establish policy and regulations regarding the placement of these machines. It is not simply a matter of private property rights. This type of pollution is just as offensive and destructive as feedlots, sewer plants and landfills....

The Counter Cape Wind Blog

[Click headline for complete article]

Ontario Blows It: Dealing with erratic wind power brings huge costs

2007-11-20T15:17:00.000-05:00

Tom Adams And FranCois Cadieux, Financial Post
Tuesday, November 20, 2007

For all its strengths, we now have enough information to conclude that wind power in Ontario is a disaster for consumers.

Ontario’s large wind farms completing one year of service generated on average 29% of what they could have under ideal conditions. The world’s best perform 50% better.

Moreover, the little output our wind turbines do generate comes in wild swings from high production to dead calm. Compared to all available generation technologies, wind power is uniquely intermittent. Over one-hour intervals, production changes for individual wind farms are as great as 73%, and 39% for the overall fleet. Over five-minute intervals, changes of 13% for individual farms have been measured.

Intermittency creates a major challenge for grid reliability, which requires instantaneous balancing of overall power generation to exactly match consumption. Combining nuclear generators, which have almost no ability to increase or decrease output, with intermittent wind power is particularly problematic. Balancing nuclear and wind power while keeping the lights on requires other, typically costly, generators to quickly ramp up, down or stand by. With one of the most nuclear-dependent grids in the world, Ontario is poorly suited to host wind power.

Predicting wind output changes has proven difficult, but one pattern is clear:Winds tend to be calm when consumers need electricity most. Ontarians use the most electricity in summer — the weakest season for wind. In July and August of 2006 and 2007, Ontario was frequently becalmed and average monthly output fell within the lowly 13% to 19% range. Although winter is the strongest season, on the coldest days, when we use most power, wind output tends to be poorest. Over the typical day, wind output peaks around midnight and bottoms out around 8 a.m., contrary to our daily consumption pattern.

The Counter Cape Wind Blog

[Click headline for full story.]

Cape Wind developer pulls plans for oil-powered plant

2007-11-15T14:19:00.000-05:00

Chelsea project drew charges of hypocrisy

By Peter J. Howe
Boston Globe , November 15, 2007

After months of denunciation by many of the same environmentalists who have cheered his Cape Wind project, Boston energy entrepreneur Jim Gordon abandoned his plan yesterday for an oil-fueled power plant in Chelsea.

In a notice filed with the state Energy Facilities Siting Board, lawyers for Chelsea Energy LLC, a subsidiary of Gordon's Energy Management Inc., like Cape Winds Associates LLC, said the company "no longer intends to develop the project at the proposed site in Chelsea" and withdrew its applications for approval.

The move followed months of often harsh criticism of Gordon for proposing a 250-megawatt plant, large enough to serve about 180,000 average homes, just 1,000 feet from the main elementary school in economically struggling, predominantly-minority Chelsea.

Gordon, who has often described his 130-turbine Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound as one of the most important steps Massachusetts could take to combat global climate change, was branded a hypocrite for backing an oil-burning plant in Chelsea.

"There are a lot of reasons this didn't go forward, and I think a significant reason was that this was going to cut all the good will he'd built up with environmentalists with respect to Cape Wind," said Eloise Lawrence, an attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation, a Boston environmental group that fought Gordon on Chelsea Energy but backs Cape Wind.

Eugene B. Benson - counsel for Alternatives for Community and Environment, a group that focuses on battling pollution in poor and minority neighborhoods - said, "This victory by an environmental justice community is a victory for equity and fairness."

About 23.3 percent of Chelsea's 34,000 residents live below the poverty line, compared with 9.3 percent statewide, according to the Census Bureau.

Dennis J. Duffy, vice president of government and regulatory affairs for Energy Management, said that "we are now considering alternative uses of that site" in Chelsea and have made no decisions about building the power plant in another location north of Boston.

Duffy denied that Cape Wind political considerations caused Gordon's company to drop the Chelsea proposal.

"There were two very different projects to meet very different needs," he said.

Cape Wind, which has been mired in years of federal environmental reviews, would run year-round to generate the equivalent of at least half of the power consumed on Cape Cod.

The Chelsea unit would have run no more than 1,600 hours a year, or roughly 18 percent, to cover peak electric demands such as hot, summer afternoons or winter evenings.

In May, state Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Ian A. Bowles warned that the Chelsea project appeared unlikely to be able to get state environmental approval.

Delaware Power Co. says wind power is risky, costly

2007-11-07T14:49:00.000-05:00

By Aaron Nathans

The News Journal

6 November 2007

"Delmarva Power is taking its case against a proposed offshore wind farm to community groups, saying the plan is too risky and would be too costly to utility customers. Delmarva President Gary Stockbridge spoke to about 40 citizens at the public library in Bear on Monday night."

"In his address, Stockbridge said Delmarva customers can’t afford the cost of a long-term offshore wind power contract. A recent Public Service Commission staff report shows that the proposed 150-turbine wind farm 11.7 miles off Rehoboth Beach could add a significant premium to customers’ monthly bills, he said...."

The Counter Cape Wind Blog

[Click headline for full story]

Delaware Regulators Deal Blow to Wind Project; Report Criticizing Costs 'Pretty Much a Nail in the Coffin,' Senator Says

2007-10-30T16:26:00.000-04:00

By Aaron Nathans
The News Journal

A proposed offshore wind farm off the coast of Rehoboth Beach was dealt a serious setback Monday, after the Public Service Commission staff released a report criticizing the plans as too financially risky to ratepayers.

The project, in its current form, could add as much as $55 to Delmarva ratepayers’ monthly bills, the 91-page staff report said.

The Delaware PSC staff lauded Bluewater for offering to add a significant amount of pollution-free electricity to the grid, but contended that the 150-turbine proposal is far different from the 200-turbine version Bluewater submitted last year.

The staff criticized Bluewater’s willingness to pass along to ratepayers increases in the cost of commodities like steel.

Conversely, if commodity costs go down, the price of wind power would not, the staff pointed out.

“The consequence of the changes in Bluewater’s project is a drastic increase in the price impact for Delmarva’s SOS ratepayers,” the staff wrote, referring to residential customers...

...The PSC staff reiterated concerns brought up by Delmarva, including costs.

Delmarva spokesman Bill Yingling said his company thanked the PSC staff for looking out for consumers.

“Our analysis to date also confirms that the price and risks are far too high, and we support the conclusion that this project is not in the public interest,” Yingling said.

The report came as a relief to opponents of the project, including Sen. Harris McDowell III, D-Wilmington.

“This is pretty much a nail in the coffin,” he said.

The report also called for the cancellation of plans to build a natural gas plant that would back up the wind farm.

The report made a prominent mention of a failed plan to build a wind farm off the coast of Long Island. This summer, the power authority there stopped the project because costs quadrupled.

HIGHLIGHTS

According to Public Service Commission’s report:

• The Bluewater wind project could add as much as $55 to Delmarva ratepayers’ monthly bills.

• The PSC calculated a potential $1.7 billion increase over Bluewater’s original bid.

www.delawareonline.com

Click Headline for full story.

The Counter Cape Wind Blog

Windy claims for wind farms exposed

2007-10-29T17:03:00.000-04:00

By Andrew Bolt

Herald Sun, Australia

The latest VENCorp annual planning report has yet more bad news for wind farms.

To the usual problems — that when the wind don’t blow, the power don’t flow — add the fact that the ones already installed at great expense aren’t producing as much power as promised.

From pages 30 and 33 we read that VENCorp has had to revise future summer wind generation from 24 per cent to 23 per cent of installed capacity, and winter wind generation even further down — from 27 per cent to just 19 per cent of capacity.

This is “based on the analysis of actual half-hourly wind generation during peak times”. Ugly, expensive and next to useless.

Memo to Wilson: No wind, no wind power

The Counter Cape Wind Blog

Wind Backup Pollutes, Experts Say

2007-10-20T07:56:00.000-04:00

Natural gas plant would boost emissions, say Uni. of Delaware Professors.

By JEFF MONTGOMERY, The News Journal, Wilmington, Delaware

A multibillion-dollar proposal to supply Delaware with electrical power from offshore windmills would actually increase air pollution within the state, critics say.

Because winds don’t always blow strongly enough to generate power, windmills would require backup electricity supplies to meet anticipated demand. The pending offshore wind proposal includes a backup natural gas power plant that could also produce power for sale in other states.

Given the extra expense and pollution, even some who support the project are questioning the wisdom of building a conventional plant as a backup. They say Delaware could allow Delmarva Power to buy extra electricity from the regional power grid as needed to handle shortfalls.

In comments filed with regulators, University of Delaware professors Willett Kempton and Jeremy Firestone said consumers “should rightfully ask if building a redundant gas plant and getting locked into a 25-year contract makes sense at this point.” Both support the wind project.

“Standing alone, a natural gas plant, because it’s cleaner than coal, may do a little to reduce emissions, but not much,” Firestone said Wednesday.

The hybrid electricity supply proposals under review by the Public Service Commission, however, would add thousands of tons of pollution to Delaware’s skies from the gas-fired power plant. It would also bill Delaware ratepayers a green energy wind premium that was estimated at $2.2 billion over the next 25 years for a slightly larger, all-wind version.

“Clearly, the hybrid plant will have greenhouse gas releases,” said John M. Byrne, who directs the University of Delaware’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy and who supports aggressive conservation and small-scale “renewable” generation instead of a new wind plant.

“While these would certainly be less than a conventional coal plant, they are nonetheless an addition to Delaware’s inventory of emissions at precisely the time when we are supposed to cut them,” said Byrne, who was recently cited as a member of a working group for the Nobel Prize-winning United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The added pollution and extra cost have led some to question both the wind and the gas plant project. Delmarva and others called last year for conservation and better reliance on regional power supplies to meet future demands, instead of a massive new investment.

“I’m for smart metering and conservation,” said William Patterson Jr., a Dagsboro-area resident who retired from a career with the regional PJM power management agency in 1992. “Everyone is looking for the lowest cost, and as a customer I’m all for that,” provided Delmarva can assure that existing and future transmissions can provide adequate service.

Patricia Cavender, a Hockessin resident, says the PSC isn’t watching out for the public’s interest.

“One thing people seem to have forgotten is, the boards that regulate electric power were originally set up to make sure the electric companies stayed in business, they were not set up to be consumer advocates,” she said.

[Click Headline for full story.]
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The Counter Cape Wind Blog

Cape agency rejects plans for offshore wind farm

2007-10-19T14:46:00.000-04:00

By Patrick Cassidy

Staff Writer, Cape Cod Times

BARNSTABLE— There was no surprise in a unanimous decision by the Cape Cod Commission yesterday to deny a wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound.

The vote, 12-0, came after about an hour of sometimes contentious debate. It tops six months of back-and-forth between the commission, Cape Wind's developer and advocates for and against the proposal.

What's nextCape Wind can appeal the Cape Cod Commission's denial to the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board, Massachusetts Land Court or Superior Court. If the siting board rules in Cape Wind's favor, the matter also could go to court as the board and the commission vie for jurisdiction.

The U.S. Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service, the lead federal agency reviewing the project, is expected to issue a draft environmental impact statement on the project by the end of the year. And a report from the U.S. Air Force is expected any day now, according to Air Force officials.

To view the Cape Cod Commission's decision, go to:

www.capecodcommission.org

and click on "Link to Latest Information."

"Locally, I think it's the end of their 'it's-easier-to-apologize-than-to-ask-permission run,' " said Clifford Carroll, a vocal opponent of the project, referring to Cape Wind, after the commission hearing in the Chamber of the Assembly of Delegates at the Barnstable District Courthouse.

A six-member commission subcommittee assigned to review the project recommended the denial on procedural grounds citing insufficient information, and Cape Wind Associates' refusal to allow more time for the review.

[Click headline for full story.]
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Counter Cape Wind Blog

Trashing Nantucket Sound: A transparent Cape Wind ploy

2007-10-06T10:10:00.000-04:00

Susan Nickerson
Executive Director
Nantucket Soundkeeper/The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound

With the summer’s spate of stories on wastewater dumping in Nantucket Sound, one must ask what credentials the proponents of the Cape Wind project have in weighing in on this matter. Why do they scoff at the suggestion that Nantucket Sound is a pristine marine area that ought to be protected against a project of Cape Wind’s massive scale? Cape Wind and its supporters can’t hide their delight at this summer’s news stories about waste disposal in the Sound because it’s such great political cover for them.

The logic behind the strategy to trash Nantucket Sound seems clear enough: If it can be said that the Sound is too far gone to care about, why would anyone oppose an industrial project in its midst? What would it matter that the complex has a 10-story transformer substation with 40,000 gallons of transformer oil, surrounded by skyscraping steel towers that cover 25 square miles of publicly-owned sea bed? Of what worth is this resource that is already plundered?

Cape Wind’s characterization of Nantucket Sound as a lost environmental cause is a desperate move. But the “dumping grounds” saga is not so dreary a tale as Cape Wind, and their cheerleader group Clean Power Now, would like it to be. Certainly, the offshore discharge of waste is vile and must be ended. Efforts are under way to do so. A six-member task force focused on a “No Discharge Area” designation for Nantucket Sound has been hard at work for the past year assembling the data needed for the designation to happen. The group, to which the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound belongs, consists of town, non-profit, US EPA and MA Coastal Zone Management representatives. Its goal is to achieve this important designation by the end of next year.

At the same time the no-discharge effort is moving forward, two major players in reducing contributions to sewage dumping in Nantucket Sound – Hy-Line Cruises and the Steamship Authority – have said they are planning dockside pump-out facilities that are expected to be operational in 2008 and 2009, respectively. But the cost of these facilities is daunting, and public funds are needed to help expedite building of these kinds of commercial-scale pump-out stations.

As important steps toward securing the future of Nantucket Sound move forward, the Alliance, as "Nantucket Soundkeeper," in partnership with the School for Marine Science and Technology at UMass/Dartmouth, the Massachusetts Fishermen’s Partnership, Nantucket Marine Department, Martha’s Vineyard Commission, Tisbury Shellfish Department, Three Bays Preservation, Mashpee Water Quality Monitoring Program, Cleveland Ledge Lighthouse Foundation and Falmouth PondWatchers, are taking monthly water quality samples at 16 sites across Nantucket Sound to measure the health of its waters. Results to date show that water quality in Nantucket Sound is very high, with Total Nitrogen below 0.3 parts per million, or near natural background levels. For Cape Wind supporters to say otherwise is an easily exposed media ploy that suggests little understanding of the dynamics of the Sound.

Of far more importance right now is the Sound’s near-shore coastal water quality. It is seriously impaired around much of Cape Cod, mostly from septic systems. Without diminishing the importance of cleaning up the middle of Nantucket Sound, it is clear that the significantly larger problem remains proper land-side disposal of our own household and business wastewater, which eventually affects coastal water quality.

There is ample evidence that Nantucket Sound is ecologically important and worthy of our collective efforts to preserve it. The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound will not stand by while the Cape Wind cabal trashes the Sound in its quest to convince the public to support an industrial-scale project that is the real threat to this vital resource.

====================

Susan Nickerson is one of Cape Cod's most committed environmentalists and a recognized champion of land preservation efforts, Sue has 22 years of experience designing and implementing land and coastal water resource protection and education programs at the local, state and regional level; and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies. She was nationally recognized for her work from 1988-99 as executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod.

Sue now serves as the Executive Director of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound and Nantucket Soundkeeper, bringing her advocacy experience in natural resource protection to the ecologically rich waters that bridge Cape Cod and the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.
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The Counter Cape Wind Blog

When the wind doesn't blow, power doesn't flow even in Denmark

2007-10-05T15:00:00.000-04:00

Ignore the hot air: in Australia, wind power is nothing more than an expensive vanity.

Terry McCrann
The Australian

"IN the early hours of Saturday morning, two weeks ago, Denmark achieved something that makes John Howard's goals for lifting the use of renewable energy in Australia look pretty modest.

"At 12.17am, as steady winds swept in from the North Sea and most Danes were in their beds, the nation's wind farms churned out 70 per cent of the electricity being consumed across the country."

That's how The Australian's European correspondent Peter Wilson began a glowing piece on wind energy last week.

Where do I sign? Hallelujah! The world is saved. Just roll out the turbines. A future of clean, green, carbon-free electricity beckons.

Well, actually no. Wilson didn't manage to get around to detailing how barely 48 hours later, those wind farms were supplying all of 2 per cent of the electricity being consumed across Denmark.

From a bracing 2300MWh/h or so -- the output of two largish conventional power plants -- to less than 100 MWh/h, barely enough to keep the night lights burning. When the wind don't blow, the power don't flow.

So when that happened, where did the electricity come from? From Norway, from Sweden and from Germany.

All up, around 1500MWh/h for some hours. In effect, the three neighbours jointly running a very large conventional power station just to keep the lights on in Denmark.

There, in a nutshell, is the twin problem with wind. On average, across a year, you might get 30 per cent of its theoretical capacity, but often you get zero or so close to zero as not to matter. It happens frequently and at any time; and when the wind chooses, not you.

"Somebody", therefore, has to keep unused surplus capacity in some other form of generation equivalent to all the wind generation capacity. And keep it either operating, or able to at the flick of a switch.

Now, no, I didn't have those figures fed to me by the "competing power industries like coal and nuclear power", as Wilson's piece asserted, attacking an earlier critique I had written on wind power.

I have spoken to no one from the coal or nuclear industry, or indeed any other lobbyist, or indeed had any communication, before writing.

In contrast, Wilson quoted no fewer than four spinmeisters for wind and the huge taxpayer and consumer dollars that flow so evenly and strongly to the industry around the world, unlike the electricity flowing from it.

They were Anders Dalegaard, a project manager at the Danish Wind Industry Association; Isabelle Valentiny, communications director of the European Wind Energy Association; Stefan Gsaenger, secretary general of the World Wind Energy Association; and "(wind) industry association spokesman" Peter Rae.

Surprisingly, all of them thought wind was the absolute bee's knees.

Analyse the data on the Danish power network's website -- energinet.dk -- and you should be able to see clearly the two problems with wind power. The first is its low capacity factor.

As I had earlier noted, Germany's biggest power grid operator, E.ON Netz, over the year got an average of just 18 per cent of the rated capacity of its wind network.

This produced an interesting response from one of the windmeisters: the German windmills weren't in the right places. In contrast, other networks were over 30 per cent, with Denmark claiming 45 per cent for its offshore turbines.

The much bigger problem, which the wind-meisters neatly sidestepped, is that at times you get almost zero power out of the entire network.

As noted, 2500MWh/h one minute, less than 100MWh/h two days later. Another example, less than 10MWh/h -- effectively zero -- across all of Denmark for four hours straight. Back in February, less than 100MWh/h for 36 hours straight. If you were relying on wind, a day and a half with no power.

The obvious point about this is that power has to come from somewhere else to make up the difference. The less obvious but far more crucial point is that you need permanent surplus power-generating capacity somewhere for the full wind capacity. In your own grid or one to which you are hooked up.

So if, say, in Australia we opted for the next 10,000MWh/h from wind, we wouldn't just have to build 7000MWh/h of coal or nuclear or gas to "cover" for the 70 per cent on average that wind doesn't provide relative to its sticker capacity.

We would have to build the full 10,000 MWh/h of conventional power generation anyway, for when the wind doesn't blow at all! You can't rely on the wind blowing "somewhere"' to cover for the wind not blowing somewhere else.

Alternative gas power could be turned on when needed, but if you went for coal and nuclear they would essentially have to be ticking over all the time anyway. You can't just fire up the boilers the moment the wind stops blowing. Now, obviously, some games could be played at the margin. We mightn't need the full 10,000 MWh/h of conventional, we could probably get by with, say, 7000MWh/h -- another three Loy Yangs. We'd still essentially be getting one power station for the price of at least two.

Denmark has the biggest wind component in its power generation in the world. The reason it sort of works in Denmark, price aside, but can work only in Denmark, is that the country is small and connected to Norway, Sweden and Germany.

Indeed, Denmark's wind works rather well joined to Norway's hydro, because the hydro can be turned on and off.

But if the wind don't blow, it's still drawing power from Sweden's hydro and nuclear and Germany's coal and nuclear.

The key point is that extra power Denmark might need at points in time could be huge in its own terms -- 40 or even 50 per cent of total consumption.

But it will be tiny when spread around Norway, Sweden and Germany. They can accommodate a small neighbour hooked on wind. But there's no way they could accommodate a Germany with the same wind intensity. Without someone building surplus conventional power stations.

Indeed, when the wind doesn't blow in Germany -- which now gets high single digits of its total power from wind -- it goes to nuclear France.

And none of this touches on the grid challenges from having 2000MWh/h suddenly dropping to, say, 10MWh/h.

Nor does it explain how it would "work" in Australia. Yes, you can connect all the state grids; but if you had a huge investment in wind in, say, Victoria, you would still need equivalent coal/nuclear/gas somewhere -- as essentially idle surplus capacity.

Unless you were prepared to literally turn off the lights, and everything else, when the wind didn't blow.

Yes, Denmark's wind story has a huge lesson for Australia. That there is no way wind can make a sensible major contribution to mainstream power generation in Australia.

Or even to the very objective it is purportedly directed at, greenhouse gas abatement. It is just an expensive, feel-good vanity.
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The Counter Cape Wind Blog

Offshore windpower hits corrosion obstacle

2007-10-03T15:44:00.000-04:00

Friends of the Irish Environment Ltd

"A number of offshore wind farms around Europe have had to be shut down because of corrosion damage to gearboxes, rotor blades and other mechanical components, Norwegian engineering journal Teknisk Ukeblad (TU) reports. The problem is so severe that leading Danish manufacturer Vestas has stopped all sales of offshore turbines over 3MW, TU said in an article published on Thursday. Among the worst affected wind farms cited by TU are Nysted and Horns Rev off the Danish coast, Barrow in the Irish sea, and Kentish Flats in the Thames estuary."

"Anders Dahl, head of wind power for Swedish energy giant Vattenfall, told Ny Teknic (Sweden's equivalent to TU) warned that material defects posed a threat to the future of offshore wind. "The technology for these large wind farms is immature, and we need to develop more robust components," he said. Any solution to the problem is likely to involve technology associated with the offshore oil and gas industry, according to a spokesman for Sway, a Norwegian developer of floating wind turbines.A Vestas spokesman confirmed on Friday that gear boxes for one model of 3 MW turbine were currently being repaired and that no new turbines of that model were being supplied for use offshore. However, he refused to say whether corrosion was involved."
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Counter Cape Wind Blog

Cape Wind won’t lead to sound public policy

2007-09-29T07:17:00.000-04:00

By State Representative Demetrius Atsalis
The Barnstable Patriot, Friday, Sept. 28, 2007

The winds of change have certainly been at work over these past five years as we have witnessed the course of events surrounding the Cape Wind project and its plans to industrialize 25 acres of Nantucket Sound. During this time, dozens of public hearings, informational meetings, and debates have taken place. The fact that so much activity and attention has been given to this project is a good thing. However, the ever-growing fictional themes promoting this project continue to grow while misleading the public and this is not a good thing.

Proponents of the Wind Farm continually confuse the facts and attempt to redirect the law. This misdirection is not limited to all those promoting this ill-conceived project, but the lion’s share of my disdain for such action is clearly focused on Cape Wind, its backers, so-called environmental groups and the ever-present Conservation Law Foundation.

With so much money at stake, it should surprise no one that many people, campaigns and developers want a piece of this billion-dollar pie. With the pro-wind farm banner proclaiming universal peace, clean air, no more sick babies and energy independence, many backers seem blinded by the promises being made by Cape Wind.

For nearly five years, my position on the Cape Wind project and its location has remained constant. I wish to be on record, once again, as to that position. There is an absolute need to increase our production of green, renewable energy, inclusive of wind energy. In order to establish a uniform process for the siting of offshore wind projects, a national standardized policy is needed and long overdue.

However, this project is not the way to develop sound public policy. We need to be clear in this matter. This project is not about the war in Iraq. It is not about global warming. And this project is not about veiled promises of low-cost energy for all Cape Codders. This project is about incomplete public policy, money and opportunity.

I urge the Cape Cod Commission and all remaining public agencies to set the highest standard for all future wind projects and reject this project, its scope and size, until an enforceable uniform process is established. To do otherwise and allow this project to proceed would be the equivalent of delivering "the perfect storm" to public policy planning for our region and the nation.

Rep. Atsalis's column appears in the third issue of each month.
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Counter Cape Wind Blog

Renewable energy isn't practical

2007-09-28T17:46:00.000-04:00

by Kurt Williamsen

The Post-Crescent, Appleton, Wisconsin

Did you know that there's enough wind energy every day across the planet to power all human needs? Ditto for solar energy.

Knowing that I know this, what I say next may seem illogical: Wind and solar energy are not viable energy alternatives to power our country and likely never will be.

Don't believe me? You really need to know only two facts to realize this statement is correct:

During large parts of the year, neither the sun nor the wind is available to generate power within the United States. And, during those periods, power must be generated from conventional means — in the U.S., that mainly means coal or nuclear power.

Energy expert Ed Hiserodt explains: "The weather in the United States is often dominated in both summer and winter by what is known as a 'dome of high pressure.' Such a condition leads to winds that are 'light and variable' — certainly not of a quality to turn a wind turbine. …

"Most of our country is tied together in (an) electrical grid so that power can be routed from one area to another as demands change from place to place. Electricity is not stored on the grid. If a portion of the power comes from wind generation, there must always be a backup in the event this drops significantly — like perhaps to zero.

"These backup plants must be kept running, as it requires hours, if not days, to bring them up to a level where they can provide power."

These "spinning reserves" lead to a question: If the conventional plants are running anyway, why not get our power from them?

Because there are interruptions in the constancy of the sun's rays — caused by nighttime, precipitation and clouds — the same holds true for solar power.

The only way around the power-outage problem is to find an efficient means of storing the "renewable power" for future use when the plants are not generating electricity.

But there's a problem. Though there's been a concerted effort by countries around the world for more than 30 years, such a means has not been found — except in the rare areas of the world where something called "pumped storage" is practical — because the physics behind the problem make its solution virtually impossible...
[Click headline for full article]

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The Counter Cape Wind Blog

Land-use regulators deal blow to wind farm

2007-09-26T14:08:00.000-04:00

Cape Cod Times
By Patrick Cassidy
Staff Writer

September 25, 2007

Deny it.

That's the recommendation from a Cape Cod Commission subcommittee reviewing Cape Wind Associates' plans to run electrical transmission lines from 130 wind turbines it wants to build in Nantucket Sound through Yarmouth to an NStar facility in Barnstable.

"We're stuck having to make a decision based on information we don't have," subcommittee chairwoman Elizabeth Taylor said before the group voted unanimously against the project yesterday in the commission's offices on Route 6A.

Missing information and Cape Wind's refusal to grant a second extension for the decision prompted the denial, subcommittee members said.

An extension for the commission decision must be agreed to by both the applicant — Cape Wind in this case — and the commission. Cape Wind has already agreed to one extension of two weeks.

The commission, the Cape's land-use planning and regulatory agency, is reviewing the Cape Wind project as a "development of regional impact." Such a project must, under state law, be reviewed by the commission because of its size, or, if the agency agrees to do so, at the request of a member town.

Absent from Cape Wind's permitting application to the commission and information sent over the past week in two follow-up e-mails was a detailed emergency response plan in case of a hazardous materials spill.

Subcommittee members at yesterday's meeting expressed frustration over being forced to make a decision without that plan and other pieces of technical information that Cape Wind representatives say will come later.

In a prepared statement, Cape Wind vice president for project development Craig Olmsted said "the record before the commission is complete and exhaustive and is adequate to base its decision on."

"The information the commission has reviewed has, for the most part, been available for several years and any additional information requested by the commission has been submitted in a timely manner."

The subcommittee members disagreed.

And some of Cape Wind's responses, such as the company's refusal to pay $30,000 for a freshwater pond study and failure to develop an open space plan, were not enough to appease commission staff and members.

"We have again asked you for an extension that you have again denied," Taylor said. "We feel that this is clearly a failure to submit information."

Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rodgers said the company would wait for the full commission's decision to make a comment but said the company did not have any plans to agree to another extension.

The state's Energy Facilities Siting Board and secretary of Environmental Affairs, Ian Bowles, already have signed off on the project.

Earlier this year a Cape Cod Commission decision to deny a KeySpan pipeline project was overruled by the siting board, but that ruling was never challenged in court.

Patrick Butler, attorney for the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, a group opposing the wind farm, said the commission need not rely on decisions by other regulatory agencies, including Bowles' department.

"There is no requirement that you follow any findings in the secretary's certificate," Butler said.

After the vote Butler said commission staff and the subcommittee did an admirable job in reviewing the project.

But Cape Wind's decision not to grant an extension of the statutory time frame baffled him.

"I just can't understand for the life of me why they wouldn't grant additional time to do this type of review," Butler said.

The commission subcommittee will present its recommendation to the full commission on Oct. 18.

The U.S. Department of Interior's Minerals Management Service is expected to release a draft environmental impact statement on the project by the end of the year.

What happens next:

Oct. 18: Cape Cod Commission Cape Wind Energy Project subcommittee recommends the full commission deny Cape Wind's proposal to run transmission lines from 130 wind turbines through Yarmouth and Barnstable to the electrical grid.

Should the full commission deny the project, Cape Wind can appeal the decision to the commission and to the state's Energy Facilities Siting Board, which has already approved the project.

If the siting board overturns the commission decision, the commission can appeal and ultimately seek to overturn the siting board's decision in court.

Patrick Cassidy can be reached at pcassidy@capecodonline.com.

“Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not "Green"

2007-09-25T15:25:00.000-04:00

by Robert L. Bradley Jr.

[click on headline for full article]

Robert L. Bradley Jr. is president of the Institute for Energy Research in Houston, Texas, the author of the two-volume Oil, Gas, and Government: The U.S. Experience, and an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Executive Summary

A multi-billion-dollar government crusade to promote renewable energy for electricity generation, now in its third decade, has resulted in major economic costs and unintended environmental consequences. Even improved new generation renewable capacity is, on average, twice as expensive as new capacity from the most economical fossil-fuel alternative and triple the cost of surplus electricity. Solar power for bulk generation is substantially more uneconomic than the average; biomass, hydroelectric power, and geothermal projects are less uneconomic. Wind power is the closest to the double-triple rule.

The uncompetitiveness of renewable generation explains the emphasis pro-renewable energy lobbyists on both the state and federal levels put on quota requirements, as well as continued or expanded subsidies. Yet every major renewable energy source has drawn criticism from leading environmental groups: hydro for river habitat destruction, wind for avian mortality, solar for desert overdevelopment, biomass for air emissions, and geothermal for depletion and toxic discharges.

Current state and federal efforts to restructure the electricity industry are being politicized to foist a new round of involuntary commitments on ratepayers and taxpayers for politically favored renewables, particularly wind and solar. Yet new government subsidies for favored renewable technologies are likely to create few environmental benefits; increase electricity-generation overcapacity in most regions of the United States; raise electricity rates; and create new "environmental pressures," given the extra land and materials (compared with those needed for traditional technologies) it would take to significantly increase the capacity of wind and solar generation. [cut]

“...The Problems of Wind Power"

"...Of immediate concern to eco-energy planning is wind power, beloved as a renewable resource with no air pollutants and considered worthy of regulatory preference and open-ended taxpayer and ratepayer subsidies. Despite decades of liberal subsidies, however, the cost of generating electricity from wind remains stubbornly uneconomical in an increasingly competitive electricity market. Many leading wind-power providers have encountered financial difficulty, and capacity retirements appear as likely as new projects in the United States without major new government subsidy."

"On the environmental side, wind power is noisy, land-intensive, materials-intensive (concrete and steel, in particular), a visual blight, and a hazard to birds. The first four environmental problems could be ignored, but the indiscriminate killing of thousands of birds--including endangered species protected by federal law--has created controversy and confusion within the mainstream environmental community."

"Unfavorable Economics"

"Relative prices tell us that wind power is more scarce than its primary fossil-fuel competitor for electricity generation--natural gas, used in modern, state-of-the-art facilities (known in the industry as combined-cycle plants). That is because wind power's high up-front capital costs and erratic opportunity to convert wind to electricity (referred to as a low capacity factor in the trade) more than cancel out the fact that there is no energy cost for naturally blowing wind."

"Low capacity factors, and still lower dependable on-peak capacity factors, are a source of wind power's cost problem. In California, for instance, where some 30 percent of the world's capacity and more than 90 percent of U.S. wind capacity is located, wind power operated at only 23 percent realized average capacity in 1994. That compares with nuclear plants, with about a 75 percent average capacity factor; coal plants, with a 75 to 85 percent design capacity factor; and gas-fired combined-cycle plants, with a 95 percent average design capacity factor. All those plants produce power around the clock..." [cut]

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The Counter Cape Wind Blog

Wind-Driven Delusions

2007-09-24T14:03:00.000-04:00

By Alan Caruba
www.anxietycenter.com

“Wind-Power surge” was the headline of an article by Newhouse News Service reporter, Gail Kinsey Hill. “Demand for turbines generates higher prices” was the sub-title and it noted that, “The supply shortage comes as New Jersey officials have begun planning a windmill farm off the South Jersey coast.”

Now it’s worth keeping in mind that New Jersey is one of the East Coast States that is on record as not wanting to permit any drilling for oil or natural gas on its part of the continental shelf, presumably because the sight of any rigs might dampen property values or pose a hazard to the “pristine” environment. So, let’s see, a few oilrigs are bad, but miles of wind turbines are good.

Each one of the 1.5-megawatt turbines, the most popular size, will cost $2.5 million, including all turbine components and installation. How will utilities pay for them? They will “recover the expense through rate increases, but they first must ask state regulators for permission.”

Every megawatt of wind capacity “powers roughly 250 homes annually,” said the article, but failed to mention that only occurs when the wind is blowing. When it is not blowing, the electricity will have to be supplied by conventional means of generating electricity. To put it another way, no wind, no power, no really compelling reason to bother building a wind farm.

If you’re expecting the mainstream media to tell you the truth about wind power, I will be happy to come by and read some fairy tales to you.

Wind farms are one of those trendy, environmental fairy tales about “alternative” energy sources that will save us all from burning coal to provide electricity because, according the Great Big Book of Environmentally Bad Things, it’s “a fossil fuel” and it “pollutes.”

Okay, let’s build nuclear facilities. After decades of opposing nuclear energy the Greens have apparently decided it’s okay, but first we have to do one million environmental studies before actually building a new one.

There are a few, teeny-weeny problems with wind farms. First of all, from a purely aesthetic standpoint they are unsightly. There is nothing pretty or inspiring about wind farms.

A proposed wind farm, Cape Wind, slated to cover 24 square miles of federally controlled waters in Nantucket Sound has found some powerful opponents such as Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy who lives on the Cape. Loath as I am to agree with anything Teddy says, he’s right when he says the wind farm will destroy some of the most beautiful ocean vistas on the East Coast, not to mention being a danger to sea and air vessels. Even presidential candidate and former Governor, Mitt Romney, opposes this project.

Bird lovers hate wind farms. Back in April when the issue of federal tax credits for wind energy was all the rage, the American Bird Conservancy, quoted the National Wind Coordinating Committee whose own estimates reveal that, “this growing alternative energy source is killing between 30,000 to 60,000 birds a year.”

Yikes! “At the current mortality rate and growth rate of the wind industry,” said the bird folks “by 2030 a projected 900,000 to1.8 million birds would be killed per year by wind turbines, unless protective measures are implemented.” Considering how Greens go nuts over ordinary hunting and fishing, their indifference to this bird Holocaust is fairly astonishing.

Then there’s the problem with the way wind farms play havoc with radar that is used for commercial flight control and by the military as well. It turns out that, if you plant a wind farm anywhere within the proximity of an airfield, it “clutters” the signals needed to guide your flight from Phoenix to a safe landing. This is why the siting of wind farms is subject to Federal Aviation Agency approval.

Wind farms are quite possibly the dumbest way possible to produce electricity. Coal, uranium, natural gas, and hydro currently produces 97% of all the electricity used in the United States. Of these energy sources, coal accounts for half of all the electricity generated. It’s abundant and it’s cheap. Apparently that’s a bad thing.

Suffice it to say that to replace one traditional 1,000-magawatt power plant you need a lot of wind turbines that, in turn, take up a lot of space whether on land or at sea.

Picture in your mind that you’re driving along the shoreline of New Jersey, glancing over at the Atlantic Ocean…and seeing hundreds of wind turbines. These towers can stand over 400 feet into the air, have gigantic blades that make them into bird Cuisinarts, and, in the winter, they throw off big chunks of ice. In addition, the blades have been known to come loose. Lightning has a particular affinity for wind towers. Keeping a respectful distance is a good idea.

With wind power advocates pushing for more “renewable energy” by the year 2020, the energy projected would require between 50,000 and 100,000 towers, occupying some 7,500 to more than 10,000 square miles. That’s an area comparable to the entire state of Vermont.

So the “wind-power surge” may not be such a wonderful thing in either the short or long run. It is, like so many other strange environmental ideas, a fantasy, a delusion that sounds rational right up to the moment you begin to look at it closely. When you do that, the vision of hundreds of wind towers producing miniscule amounts of electricity—and only when the wind is blowing—seems, well, nuts!

Alan Caruba writes a weekly column, “Warning Signs”, posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com. His latest book, “Right Answers: Separating Fact from Fiction”, is published by Merril Press.

© Alan Caruba, September 2007
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The Counter Cape Wind Blog

Survey: Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory

2007-08-31T14:24:00.000-04:00

Michael Asher

Daily Tech.com

Comprehensive survey of published climate research reveals changing viewpoints

In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change. Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the "consensus view," defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change. Oreskes' work has been repeatedly cited, but as some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are becoming somewhat dated.

Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this research. Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, he examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007. The results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy. The figures are surprising.

Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."

The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the "primary" cause of warming, but it doesn't require any belief or support for "catastrophic" global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.

These changing viewpoints represent the advances in climate science over the past decade. While today we are even more certain the earth is warming, we are less certain about the root causes. More importantly, research has shown us that -- whatever the cause may be -- the amount of warming is unlikely to cause any great calamity for mankind or the planet itself.

Schulte's survey contradicts the United Nation IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (2007), which gave a figure of "90% likely" man was having an impact on world temperatures. But does the IPCC represent a consensus view of world scientists? Despite media claims of "thousands of scientists" involved in the report, the actual text is written by a much smaller number of "lead authors." The introductory "Summary for Policymakers" -- the only portion usually quoted in the media -- is written not by scientists at all, but by politicians, and approved, word-by-word, by political representatives from member nations. By IPCC policy, the individual report chapters -- the only text actually written by scientists -- are edited to "ensure compliance" with the summary, which is typically published months before the actual report itself.

By contrast, the ISI Web of Science database covers 8,700 journals and publications, including every leading scientific journal in the world.

Counter Cape Wind Blog

U.S. House Energy Bill: Rhetoric Over Reality

2007-08-27T14:21:00.000-04:00

By Robert Bryce

Energy Tribune

When it comes to energy issues, Americans are far more interested in rhetoric than pragmatism.

For proof of that, look no further than the massive energy bill passed by the House last month. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi heralded the passage of the 780-page bill, known as "A New Direction for Energy Independence, National Security, and Consumer Protection," declaring, “Energy independence is a national security issue, an environmental and health issue, an economic issue, and a moral issue.” (What? No mention of male-pattern baldness?)

The bill does nothing to increase energy supplies. It won’t cut oil imports, it won’t strengthen America’s creaky electricity grid, nor make America energy independent. Other than that, it’s great legislation.

Perhaps the most significant – and most controversial – element of the House bill is its requirement that by 2020, publicly traded power companies must get 15 percent of all their electricity from renewable sources like wind and solar.
Let’s put that in perspective.

In mid-2007 electricity demand was growing by 2.7 percent annually, and if it continues at that rate, electricity consumption in the U.S. will double in about 26 years. In late 2006 the North American Electric Reliability Council warned that this growing demand is not being met by increasing supply, and the U.S. may have a generating capacity shortfall of 81,000 megawatts by 2015. Just for perspective, the Three Mile Island Generating Station in Pennsylvania operates one 850-megawatt reactor. So the looming electricity shortfall in the U.S. is equal to the output of 95 reactors.

But keep in mind that those reactors are reliable sources of base load power. Wind turbines and solar panels are not. In fact, due to the intermittence of wind and sunlight, virtually every new megawatt of renewable energy must be backed up by conventional power plants. Thus, all of the new renewable sources will have little effect on overall emissions of carbon dioxide.

Nor will the new renewable electricity requirement do anything for “energy independence” because only a marginal amount of domestic electricity (about 2 percent) is generated by oil-fired power plants.
The House bill does nothing to decrease energy imports because it doesn’t allow any increases in domestic production of oil and gas. Regions known to contain billions of barrels of hydrocarbons, like the eastern Gulf of Mexico or the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, continue to be off-limits to prospectors.

But perhaps it’s wrong to expect the House to come up with any meaningful energy policy. After all, it is only responding to the whims of the American populace. A March survey by Yale University’s Center for Environmental Law and Policy found that 93 percent questioned said imported oil is a serious problem, and 70 percent said it was “very” serious. An April poll by CBS News and the New York Times found overwhelming support – 92 percent! – for laws requiring automakers to produce more efficient cars. But when asked if they would support a tax on gasoline in order to “cut down on energy consumption and reduce global warming,” 58 percent of respondents said no.

In other words, Americans still crave a free lunch when it comes to energy. They want lots of cheap gasoline, but they hate the oil companies. They say they are concerned about imported oil, but they don’t want to pay more for any of the energy they use.

Congress has responded to this muddle by passing two monster energy bills that are long on rhetoric but woefully short on substance. In June, the Senate passed a bill that could require the production of 36 billion gallons of ethanol and other biofuels by 2022. Now, the House and the Senate will have to work on a compromise bill that will be palatable to George W. Bush, who is already threatening a veto.
A veto may be the best possible outcome. Democrats can express their outrage, Bush can bash an unpopular Congress (a mid-August Gallup poll found 76 percent of Americans disapprove of the job it’s doing) and better still, Washington ends up abiding by the Hippocratic oath: first, do no harm. And when it comes to energy issues, that may be the most pragmatic move of all.
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Counter Cape Wind Blog

LIPA chief kills wind farm project

2007-08-23T13:26:00.000-04:00

BY MARK HARRINGTON

Newsday.com

Long Island Power Authority Chairman Kevin Law Wednesday said he will "terminate" a controversial project to install 40 wind turbines off the coast of Jones Beach, dealing a fatal blow to a plan alternately portrayed as an environmental necessity and an economic boondoggle.

The decision follows Law's review of a recently completed independent report on the economics of the $700 million project that he said showed its costs to be "significantly" higher than traditional forms of energy generation or even a new energy-efficient plant. Legislators and citizens groups have criticized the plan since it was proposed in 2003, but a small cadre of environmental groups, some with financial ties to LIPA, had been among its most ardent supporters. Recently, even some of those proponents have expressed surprise at the soaring cost of the project.

Law emphasized that the decision, which he will discuss with trustees at a Sept. 22 LIPA board meeting, doesn't mean an end to wind power proposals for Long Island. He will continue to pursue that source of alternative energy, he said, including possibly land-based windmills, at other locations. The Jones Beach location, he said, is off the table.

"While I'm a supporter of renewable energy, I've decided this project doesn't make any economic sense, and I will recommend to LIPA trustees that we terminate it," Law said in an interview with Newsday.

He said he'll work with local wind-energy advocates, including Gordian Raacke of Renewable Energy Long Island and Neal Lewis of the Neighborhood Network, to research possible wind proposals that "make economic sense." Law said he has already met with the groups to inform them of his plan.

Lewis Wednesday said he looks forward to going back to the drawing board on a wind-energy plan, agreeing the economics should have been discussed long ago.

"I think a number of things went wrong with the whole process," he said. "We indicated years ago that cost issues should have been brought out in a more forthright way."

Environmental activist Richard Schary, who has long criticized the deal's unknown finances, said his concern had always been that the project "was not about the environment."

Rather, he said, "it was about the money."

Other long-time critics hailed Law's decision.

"This is a victory for common sense," said Babylon Supervisor Steve Bellone, who Wednesday announced an effort to block placement of a planned transmission cable from the farm through beaches in his district. "It's a victory for the ratepayers of Long Island who ultimately would have borne the overwhelming burden of this costly, symbol project that ultimately would have delivered very little energy," Bellone said.

When LIPA first announced the plan, it estimated the cost to be between $150 million and $200 million. But LIPA did not disclose actual costs until Newsday filed a Freedom of Information Law request last year. Initially, LIPA denied the request, but on appeal it provided limited and outdated information disclosing that from FPL Energy's winning bid for the project in 2003 was $356 million. Newsday later reported that the cost had ballooned to $650 million by last October. LIPA, at Law's request this summer, disclosed the December 2006 cost to be just shy of $700 million.

In an April 2002 assessment, LIPA consultant AWS Scientific estimated energy from the wind farm would cost between 6 and 9 cents per kilowatt hour, then well above the 4.5-cent average LIPA paid. At the time, LIPA said advances in wind-power technology were continuously lowering the cost, so that electricity from the wind farm would be competitive with electricity from traditional sources.

But analysis since then by Dowling College's Long Island Economic and Social Policy Institute showed the cost would be more than six times that of standard power in the latter years of the contract.

Babylon supervisor Bellone by then had been banging the cost drum for more than a year, in August of 2006 calling the developer "the Halliburton of Wind Power."

A spokesman for FPL Energy declined to comment, noting, "We have not heard from LIPA relative to their intentions on the offshore project."
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Counter Cape Wind Blog

Experts Think LIPA's Wind Farm Won't See Daylight

2007-08-22T08:34:00.000-04:00

Newsday.com

BY MARK HARRINGTON

August 22, 2007

With a study reviewing the cost of the Long Island Power Authority's off-shore wind project due within days, experts are predicting its conclusions will leave the utility with little choice but to postpone or scuttle the project.

LIPA has yet to make a final decision on the plan, though its chairman, Kevin Law, has expressed concerns about the cost, though he supports renewable energy proposals. He declined to comment yesterday.

Amid a growing chorus of critics, LIPA earlier this year commissioned an outside consultant to study the costs of the wind farm in comparison to conventional energy sources and similar wind projects around the globe. Since then a chorus of opposition has grown, most recently including Long Island Republican State Sens. Owen Johnson (R-West Babylon) and Charles Fuschillo (R-Merrick), who cited the costs as they advised LIPA to cease any type of work on the project.

This summer, LIPA, at Law's request, revealed that the plan to build 40 turbines off the coast of Jones Beach had a projected cost of about $700 million as of December 2006 and predicted it could be $1 billion by completion. FPL's winning bid in 2003 was for $356 million.

"Those numbers should shock us enough to stop spending another nickel of ratepayers' money on this project," said Martin Cantor, director of the Long Island Economic and Social Policy Institute at Dowling College. The costs, he said, could mean there will be "little market for that power, leaving [contractor] FPL Energy with a huge investment to recover from ratepayers."

LIPA chief executive Richard Kessel has said the project is needed to reduce the region's reliance on fossil fuel-powered plants and foreign oil. "I think cost is very important but it shouldn't be the only factor," he said.

But even some longtime supporters have expressed uncommon concern about the costs, including Gordian Raacke, director of Renewable Energy Long Island, who said he was "shocked" when he saw the $700-million figure. He suggested LIPA shop around for more competitive proposals.

Another supporter, Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, yesterday suggested cost issues have been overblown, and future scenarios could change the equation.

"What sounds like a lot today may end up being cheap tomorrow if oil ends up being $90 a barrel."

But like Raacke, she suggested that LIPA inject more competition into the process, noting that the FPL bid is now 4 years old.
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Counter Cape Wind Blog

Skeptic suspects wind power is just hot air

2007-08-19T09:48:00.000-04:00

The News Journal. Wilmington, Delaware.

By PATRICIA CAVENDER

When the Delaware Public Service Commission ordered Delmarva Power to obtain local power sources, that was supposed to be a means of providing price relief for electric consumers. At least that's what the Delaware Legislature had in mind when they passed the legislation.

Somehow, eco-dreamers hijacked the price relief aspect of the plan, and the result is a pie-in-the-sky scheme to put a wind farm off the Delaware coast.
I'm all for conservation and saving the environment. But common sense dictates that we spend money on things that accomplish the intended purpose.

Efficient and long-lasting fluorescent light bulbs have a down side. They pollute when we dispose of them. The wind mills of 20 years ago caused lawsuits as neighbors objected to the noise they made. Many other magical devices, including perpetual-motion machines, proved to be frauds.

I have a really bad feeling about staking future energy availability on a proposal by a company to build an unreliable power source out in the ocean to transmit electricity to the mainland for distribution.

We have enough trouble with the 100-year-old technology that routes power from a Hockessin substation to our development. Every time there is a thunderstorm, we wonder how many hours we'll be without power.

I can understand why Delmarva Power is reluctant to negotiate for something that not only does not exist, but may very well never exist.

Before deregulation and Enron, when there was every assurance of repayment, investors lost a lot of money when two nuclear power projects were allowed to default on their loans. Four reactors in Washington state were unfinished and scheduled to be dismantled. Shoreham's $6 billion cost, 85 times the original estimate, stuck New York taxpayers with a bankrupt Long Island Lighting Co. Shoreham never opened.

Building ocean platforms isn't easy or cheap. In recent years hurricanes have destroyed a number of oil drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, reminding us that the ocean is a tough place to be in bad weather.

Aside from the formidable construction obstacles, who's to say the proposers of this wind farm won't retire in the middle of the project, leaving Delaware consumers and taxpayers holding an expensive empty bag.

Back during the last conservation go-round, my former house was a guinea pig to test conservation devices. The timer that controlled the electric water heater operation proved to save zero energy. Ditto the device that was supposed to make the refrigerator more efficient.

I guess the Styrofoam box over the attic stairway did something. I never noticed much difference with the vapor barrier and extra insulation in the family room crawl space. The ground-coupled geothermal heat pump cost two and a half times as much as a regular one. Add to that the destruction of the back yard to put in two 200-foot wells for the piping system.

Unfortunately, during prolonged hot or cold spells, the system couldn't dissipate heat or extract it fast enough to keep up with demand. So the electric resistance backup heat ate any savings in winter, and the air conditioning couldn't keep up during heat waves. I didn't see any dramatic energy savings.

When the heat pump electronics got fried by a lightning strike, it took three weeks in July and August to get replacement parts. It took about six weeks to get an overlooked part replaced when winter rolled around.

So you'll have to pardon me for my lack of enthusiasm for all-new, never-been-done-before eco-wonderful technology.

As for Bluewater Wind, does anybody but me remember the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes"?

Patricia Cavender lives in Hockessin and is a member of The News Journal Community Advisory Board

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Counter Cape Wind Blog

The E.U.'s Wind Power Self-Deception

2007-08-18T11:07:00.000-04:00

"The E.U.’s green dreams of cheap, planet-saving renewable energy have been hitting the brick wall of reality."

By Christopher Booker

The Energy Tribune

"Anyone who keeps half an eye on the world energy scene might have been seriously baffled by some of the recent news from Europe. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol agreement on climate change, no government in the world has been proclaiming its desire to save the planet from the evils of global warming more loudly than the European Union, now representing 27 nations."

"The E.U. has pledged, for instance, to go far beyond its agreed Kyoto targets for reducing its CO2 output, promising to cut its emissions by no less than 60 percent by 2050 (yes, you read that right: 60 percent, in little over four decades). To achieve this highly implausible goal, the E.U. particularly looks to generating its electricity from renewable sources; to this end, it has set itself a target of producing no less than 20 percent of its energy produced from renewables, as soon as 2020."

"To underline just how absurdly ambitious these targets are, the E.U.’s own latest figures (2005) show that the amount of its energy it is currently generating from renewable sources is less than 7 percent. This leaves a mighty distance to span if it is to achieve that 20 percent target by 2020. Furthermore, in the past two years, far from reducing its output of CO2, the E.U.’s carbon emissions have actually risen by 1.5 percent. Meanwhile, according to Department of Energy figures, the U.S., which the E.U. loves to revile for having failed to sign Kyoto, reduced its 2006 emissions by 1.6 percent."

"To understand how such a weirdly unreal situation has come about, it is necessary to appreciate two rather important features of this strange entity, the E.U. First, regardless of what the E.U. claims to be doing, it has only one real underlying agenda: to constantly extend the range of policy areas where it has the power to lay down the law for all member countries. To this end, it is always looking for headline-making issues which it can seize on to justify its “integration” process. Of these issues, none are more obvious than its constantly proclaimed desire to save the planet by “protecting the environment.” It is this above all which has led the E.U. to so ostentatiously embrace the cause of global warming...."

{Click headline for complete article.]
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Counter Cape Wind Blog

U.S. Manufacturers and Electric Companies Remain Firmly United Against Federal Renewable Portfolio Standard

2007-08-16T16:34:00.000-04:00

Renewable Portfolio Standard is an Electricity Tax on American Consumers

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Washington, August 3, 2007 - A proposal to require U.S. power companies to produce 15 percent of their electricity from renewable resources in roughly the next decade likely will cost consumers billions of dollars, with little chance of achieving such an ambitious goal, manufacturing and utility groups said on August 2.

On the eve of an expected House vote on a nationwide renewable portfolio standard (RPS), the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and Edison Electric Institute (EEI) expressed support for increasing electric generation from renewables, but said a federal mandate was the wrong approach.

"We are deeply concerned that an RPS will lead to higher electricity prices for all types of consumers, undermining the ability of U.S. businesses to compete in a global economy and reducing the take-home pay of American workers," said NAM President John Engler, noting that U.S. manufacturers account for a third of the nation's energy use and nearly 30 percent of its electricity. "Affordable and reliable electricity is essential to the long- term health of the U.S. economy."

"Everyone's in favor of renewable energy, but this federal mandate essentially is a tax on electricity for many businesses and consumers," added EEI President Tom Kuhn. "States already are working to increase the amount of electricity produced from renewables. The last thing we need is for Congress to impose a preemptive federal mandate that is neither cost-effective nor achievable nationwide."

Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia already have mandatory renewable electricity standards in place, and three more have established RPS goals. Yet every one of these state plans includes at least one resource that would not be eligible for credit under a federal RPS.

Utilities in states without sufficient renewable resources will end up complying with a federal RPS not by building wind, solar or other types of renewable generation, but by purchasing credits from other utilities or making payments to the federal government. These costs will be incurred on top of those associated with building new, non-renewable back-up generation that can run "24/7" or be dispatched at a moment's notice, an ongoing necessity due to the intermittent nature of most renewable resources.

As a practical matter, a federal renewable electricity mandate is a huge stretch. A 15-percent RPS would mandate a 400-percent increase in renewable electricity generation in just 12 years. Clearly, this isn't an achievable goal in many areas....

[Click here for complete article.]
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Counter Cape Wind Blog

Critics Urge LIPA to Scrap Wind Farm Plan

2007-08-09T09:04:00.000-04:00

BY MARK HARRINGTON, Newsday

August 8, 2007

With a report from LIPA about the financial feasibility of its off-shore wind-energy project due out in weeks, two state senators are calling on the authority to scuttle the costly plans immediately.

At the same time, one of the major backers of the wind farm, Gordian Raacke, executive director of Renewable Energy Long Island, said the near $700-million price tag to construct the wind farm is too steep, and he recommended the authority "shop around" for a better price.

"When I heard about the $700-million price tag, I was shocked," he said. "I said, 'This is getting ridiculous. I'm all for renewable energy, but I'm not willing to pay an unreasonable amount of money for it."

State Sens. Owen Johnson (R-West Babylon), chairman of the finance committee, and Charles J. Fuschillo Jr. (R-Merrick), chairman of the consumer protection committee, have scheduled a news conference at Jones Beach today to urge LIPA to end the plan for 40 off-shore wind turbines off those waters because of the cost.

"It should be stopped immediately," Johnson said. "It's only a bill for ratepayers and ratepayers can't afford it."

Johnson accused LIPA of neglecting its mission to reduce electric rates "under the guise of a financial scam of protecting the environment."

LIPA chief executive Richard Kessel issued a statement yesterday saying, "I certainly respect and value the opinions of Senators Johnson and Fuschillo," and noting the study he commissioned will "help address their concerns." The study will contrast LIPA contractor FPL Energy's estimated project costs against those of other such projects globally.

"When completed, that evaluation will be released to help guide any public discussions and future decisions regarding the offshore project," Kessel said. LIPA noted it has reduced electric rates over the past year.

Concerns about the cost of the wind farm arose after a series of reports in Newsday revealed the previously undisclosed, and escalating, construction cost of the project -- from an initial estimate of $356 million to $650 million last fall to $698 million in December.

Some have suggested the costs, which would translate to power at more than double or even triple that of standard power, leaves LIPA with little choice but to shelve the project.

"These grandiose, largely symbolic projects that place an onerous burden on ratepayers are unsustainable and will be rejected," Babylon Supervisor Steve Bellone said yesterday.

LIPA chairman Kevin Law, who sources say has been leaning against the project because of escalating costs, wasn't available for comment.

Raacke of RELI, noting wind power is generally among the least expensive renewable energy sources, said the $700 million price tag "doesn't reflect on the value of wind power as a good valid solution for Long Island, LIPA needs to look a little further."

Major Transformer Failure at Nysted, Denmark

2007-07-26T11:01:00.001-04:00

Windpower Monthly, July 2007

Danish offshore plant down

By Torgny Moller

The world’s largest offshore wind station, in the south Baltic Sea off the Danish coast Nysted, is offline, perhaps for several months, following a serious transformer failure on June 9. The transformer feeds the production of the four-year-old 165.6MV Rodsand plant of 72 Siemens 2.3 MV turbines into the Danish grid network. Located ten kilometers south of the large island of Lolland, the 140 ton transformer is being brought ashore for repair, probably in Germany or Sweden. It was supplied by Italian company Tironi.

The reason for the failure is not yet known, but a short circuit is probably to blame. The transformer platform’s owner and operator, local electric utility company SEAS-NVE, has been working on solving the problem, particularly the logistics of transporting the huge transformer ashore and getting it repaired. “The failure at Nysted is serious. At SEAS-NVE we have worked with grid connection of wind turbines in most of the world and what has happened here at Nysted is statically very unlikely,” says Steen Beck Nielsen.

Revenue losses while Rodsand is out of operation will be shouldered by the owners, electric power companies DongEnergy and E.ON. The transformer, which is insured, is still within its five year guarantee period. No decision has yet been taken about who will pay for the repair.

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The Counter Cape Wind Blog

"Wind's contribution to the global electric grid is all too often overstated."

2007-07-02T10:39:00.000-04:00

"Germany Wind Power Investing, Tiliting At Windmills"

June 30, 2007

by Elliot H Gue,
The Market Oracle

"...alternative power technologies aren't a true solution to the globe's energy problems. The best illustration of this is the long-time poster child of the alternative energy movement, wind power. Apart from hydropower, wind is the most economically viable, developed and feasible alternative energy source. But wind's contribution to the global electric grid is all too often overstated."

"Consider that Germany has by far the largest base of installed wind power capacity in the world, with more than 20,622 megawatts of generating capacity. To put that figure into context, the runner-ups are Spain and the US with a little more than 11,000 megawatts of generating capacity each; Germany is far and away the undisputed leader."

"But although I've long been aware of these statistics, I wasn't quite prepared for the sight of northern Germany's Baltic Sea coast. In the first day and a half of the cruise, we departed the German port of Travemunde and sailed close to the coast en route to Stockholm, Sweden."

"What was most striking was the prevalence of thousands of windmills located both onshore and offshore. We passed these offshore wind farms for hours; some were truly massive in scale."

"Germany's wind industry is the product of more than a decade of government subsidy. Specifically, the German government uses a feed-in tariff system that requires utilities to buy wind power and pay generous subsidized rates for that electricity. The result: Building wind farms in Germany is highly profitable."

"Germany's wind capacity has grown tenfold since 1997. Much of that capacity is located along the Baltic Coast in the North for the simple fact that it's windier in this region than in most other parts of Germany. Because offshore winds are steadier than onshore, many farms are located on the water."

"Given that Germany's total installed base of generation capacity is about 125,000 megawatts, wind power plants account for about 16 to 17 percent of total capacity."

"At first blush, these facts suggest that the nation's energy policy and wind power industry are a smashing success. But that brings us to the clever marketing trick used by many alternative energy firms; there's a major difference between the terms capacity and generation. Namely, just because a utility may own a plant with 1,000 megawatts of capacity doesn't mean that plant is operating at that capacity at all times."

"In fact, that's highly unlikely to be the case, particularly for wind power. That's because the speed of wind in an area at a particular point in time is unpredictable. Moreover, even relatively small variations in wind speed can mean large changes in power output from wind turbines."

"The rated capacity of a wind farm is far less important than how much those wind farms actually contribute to the grid in the form of generated electricity. If we look at Germany in that light, we get a far less impressive picture. Only 5 percent of Germany's electricity generation in 2006 came from wind. Bottom line: As impressive as offshore wind farms may be to behold, those strings of thousands of windmills located on the Baltic just aren't a particularly important source of power for Germany..."

[Full article here.]

The Counter Cape Wind Blog

"Offshore Wind Farm’s Cost Doubles"

2007-06-28T12:45:00.000-04:00

by MARK HARRINGTON

Newsday, New York

The projected construction cost to build a 40-turbine wind farm in the waters off the South Shore ballooned to $697 million at last year’s end, according to a June 25 letter from the winning bidder of the project, FPL Energy.

The cost - roughly double FPL’s initial winning bid of $356 million in 2003 - has cast a shadow over the project. FPL, noting it is still “very interested” in the project, told the project’s sponsor, the Long Island Power Authority, the ball is essentially in LIPA’s court. LIPA has yet to finalize a power purchase agreement needed for FPL to move ahead, and FPL said it had already spent “several million dollars” on the project.

While LIPA would not pay the cost of constructing the wind turbines, energy purchased by LIPA from FPL would cost more to help cover the construction costs. Newsday last year reported that based on the initial cost estimate of $356 million, LIPA would pay two to three times the regular cost for energy from the wind farm. The latest estimate pushes it well beyond those estimates. LIPA also would have to pay for cables to deliver the energy and other costs, which are estimated at $100 million.

“These numbers confirm our worst fears,” Babylon Supervisor Steve Bellone said. “How much more do they think ratepayers can take here?”

LIPA chief executive Richard Kessel, the project’s most ardent supporter, noted that wind farm costs aren’t the only ones rising. “While the offshore wind project costs have increased, so has the price of oil, which the wind park will use none of,” he said in a statement.

He noted that LIPA has commissioned a study, due out next month, to examine the costs.

When it first proposed the wind farm earlier this decade, LIPA estimated the cost to build it at between $150 million and $200 million.

But demands for wind turbines and related equipment have increased markedly since that time, as have costs for raw materials, construction equipment and labor, FPL noted. The FPL letter, provided to Newsday by LIPA, also notes a “reduced offshore market appetite” since 2003.

As previously reported, the prospect of LIPA sharing some of the risk for the project was discussed, but LIPA declined to accept “any commercial exposure” or construction-cost overruns. One such cost was a $75- million cancellation fee in the event FPL ordered turbine equipment but decided not to go forward with the project, the letter said. An FPL spokesman declined to comment.

Martin Cantor, director of the Long Island Economic and Social Policy Institute at Dowling College, said the latest estimate “should drive a nail in the wind-power coffin for LIPA” given the price of the power.

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency overseeing offshore energy projects, yesterday said a draft environmental impact statement for the Long Island project has been stalled because technical studies from FPL required to complete it have not been provided.

“MMS has not received the needed information to complete the draft EIS, so at this point we no longer have a projected release date” for the report, said spokeswoman Nicolette Nye.
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Counter Cape Wind Blog

Senate Plan to Tax Big Oil & Favor Wind Defeated

2007-06-22T16:47:00.000-04:00

"Dems Suffer Defeat On Taxing Big Oil, Renewable Energy"

BY SEAN HIGGINS

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

6/21/2007

Senate Democrats’ efforts to impose $29 billion in taxes on oil companies as part of larger energy reform bill collapsed Thursday when they failed to break a Republican-led filibuster.

Hours later a mandate that utilities get 15% of their energy from renewable resources by 2020, apparently also was out of the bill.

Jude McCartin, spokeswoman for Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., the provision’s lead sponsor, said time to add the renewables provision had run out now that the overall bill was headed towards a final vote, expected late Friday.

The provision had drawn opposition from Republicans who claimed it was tilted toward wind power and would hurt Southern states not suited for it.

[Click headline for full story.]

Counter Cape Wind Blog

Wales Public Official Comments on Wind Power

2007-06-21T08:10:00.000-04:00

June 19, 2007

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:
Huntington News,
Huntington, West Virginia

Many of us here in Wales, UK, have read the article on “Wind Turbines” in your paper on 14-6-07. It has been posted about by e mail. We in Wales UK are planning a national ANTI Wind Turbine demonstration on July 8th.

This horrendous industry will never ever halt global climate change it will only enrich its developers via the obscene level of subsidies being paid in Europe. Are there such massive subsidies your side of the Atlantic?

I enclose some facts as we see it over here:- WIND ENERGY is Kinetic. Mass(weight) of Wind(air) molecules multiplied by velocity (speed) going in to the circumference of turbine blades - minus the mass multiplied by velocity of it going out the other side.

Air is very light and speeds are even low in a storm - the energy available is thus very tiny. Some is lost as friction; transformer heat; noise energy and line voltage drops. Water is a thousand times heavier, thus a Wind Turbine blade has to be a thousand times bigger than a water turbine.

The only plus point is it is clean and free, but in real energy terms it is basically so low it’s farcical. A 400 ft tall Wind Turbine is rated at Maximum at TWO MEGAWATT or two thousand kilowatt. As Wind is so erratic it only averages 24% of 2MgW cutting output down to 480 kilowatts – or 480 single bar electric fires. In a year this sounds a lot :- 480 kw X 24 hrs X 365 days = 4,204,800 kwhrs. Seems big. In a year the UK uses 340,000,000,000 kw hrs.

The concept of big numbers is difficult for the brain to wrap itself around – imagine writing 340,000,000,000 and each figure “0” to be drawn ten times the size of its preceding “0” – try it on paper – after a few it gets so huge you can’t write it even on a large wall let alone paper. So 340,000,000,000 is a truly immense figure and by comparison 4,204,800 is really insignificant.

To power the UK we would in theory need 81,000 giant Wind Turbines desecrating the windy West of Wales and Scotland on land and sea. (Peak winter demand would mean over 100,000).Yet all the UK learned Institutes of Engineers have told the UK Government (which is not listening) that not more than 20% of erratic power could supply the National Grid without power surges causing black outs, and 20% would mean 16,200 giant wind turbines.

Even these would need all the existing Power stations (unless new Gas ones are built) running and burning uneconomically on standby “spinning reserve” - all consuming fuel and still emitting Carbon Dioxide, whether Coal; Gas or Oil, ready to swing in to full output when the wind dies down or simply gusts unsteadily. Meteorological weather records clearly show we get many such periods and even weeks of relatively calm especially on still frosty nights every year.

If we build new Gas Power stations to replace dirty coal we still have to run the main trans-continental gas pipeline gauntlet through the problem fraught Balkans or Middle East to satisfy the equation of Wind supported by Gas. Then there’s crippling costs – currently Carbon (coal) fired power as at Aberthaw (capacity 1,500 megawatt) sells its electricity at about £18 per megawatt in to the Grid.

We buy it at approx £71 per megawatt (7.08p per unit), yet Wind Power sells in to the Grid at £68 per megawatt which is 400% more than coal power via a massive SUBSIDY – although the politicians call it a number of names such as “Carbon levy” or “renewable obligation” etc but at the end of the day Wind Power is the highest ever subsidised commodity since the industrial revolution.

Currently over ONE THOUSAND Wind Turbines in UK supply less than 0.3% of UK electricity – in other words next to nothing – yet if that figure rises significantly the cost of energy will go through the roof, and ruin our economy – and without subsidy there would be no Wind Turbines – it’s as simple as that.

Also remember that electricity generation only accounts for one third of our carbon emissions – ONE THOUSAND GIANT WIND TURBINES only save 0.09% of our Carbon emissions and pollution is a global issue. The bulk of Carbon emissions come from vehicle exhausts; aircraft; domestic heating; factory and basic industrial processes. UK Government claims we could save 30% of our electricity by careful energy saving schemes.

We could cut down dramatically on vehicle exhausts if we really penalised heavy cars and the 90% of unnecessary 4X4 vehicles we see on school runs! These should be the easy immediate targets, while we are achieving these we need to urgently pursue other technologies – clean coal; tidal and even carbon sequestration – being anti wind desecration does not mean pro nuclear although Tony Blair’s New Labour Government is now clearly pro nuclear.

What is an interesting thought provoking FACT is that if the UK reaches all its ambitious Carbon Emission reduction targets in the future it will reduce global Carbon emissions by only four ten thousandths! Does anyone really think that that tiny fraction will alter climate changes in this vast planetary system? If so, what planet are you on?

Ioan M. Richard
City & County Councillor.
Swansea, Wales, U.K.
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Counter Cape Wind Blog

Wind Power Not All it Cracks up to be

2007-06-19T00:36:00.000-04:00

Industry analysts say growth in wind power is stressing the system.

KENNEWICK, Wash.- Growth in renewable energy threatens to cripple the northwest's power grid.

The constant on and off of wind power stresses the system.

Think of it the same as city driving versus highway driving, the accelerations in city driving are harder on your car.

Experts say that's stressing the grid so much they're almost to the point where they'll have to fix the grid before adding much more wind power.

"The notion of just building more wind turbines to produce more electricity is admirable, but there are some very serious constraints that fall into the area of transmission, how do you get it to the customer?" said Brad Peck with Energy Northwest.

It's unknown whether BPA will upgrade the grid soon and whether that would impact prices.

The BPA grid distributes power throughout the northwest.
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Counter Cape Wind Blog

High Price for Load of Hot Air

2007-06-18T13:47:00.000-04:00

by Professor Bob Carter

The Courier Mail, Australia

WITH understandable reluctance, Prime Minister John Howard recently donned the political hair-shirt of a carbon trading system.

On the same day, NASA chief Michael Griffin commented in a US radio interview that "I am not sure that it is fair to say that (global warming) is a problem that we must wrestle with".

NASA is an agency that knows a thing or two about climate change. As Griffin added: "We study global climate change, that is in our authorisation, we think we do it rather well.

"I'm proud of that, but NASA is not an agency chartered to, quote, battle climate change."

Such a clear statement that science accomplishment should carry primacy over policy advice is both welcome and overdue.

Nonetheless, there is something worrying about one of Griffin's other statements, which said that "I have no doubt . . . that a trend of global warming exists".

Griffin seems to be referring to human-caused global warming, but irrespective of that his opinion is unsupported by the evidence.

The salient facts are these. First, the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. Oddly, this eight-year-long temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2.

Second, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements, if corrected for non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, show little if any global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent).

Third, there are strong indications from solar studies that Earth's current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades.

How then is it possible for Griffin to assert so boldly that human-caused global warming is happening?

Well, he is in good company for similar statements have been made recently by several Western heads of state at the G8 summit meeting. For instance, German Chancellor Angela Merkel asserts climate change (i.e. global warming) "is also essentially caused by humankind".

In fact, there is every doubt whether any global warming at all is occurring at the moment, let alone human-caused warming.

For leading politicians to be asserting to the contrary indicates something is very wrong with their chain of scientific advice, for they are clearly being deceived. That this should be the case is an international political scandal of high order which, in turn, raises the question of where their advice is coming from.

In Australia, the advice trail leads from government agencies such as the CSIRO and the Australian Greenhouse Office through to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations.

As leading economist David Henderson has pointed out, it is extremely dangerous for an unelected and unaccountable body like the IPCC to have a monopoly on climate policy advice to governments. And even more so because, at heart, the IPCC is a political and not a scientific agency.

Australia does not ask the World Bank to set its annual budget and neither should it allow the notoriously alarmist IPCC to set its climate policy.

It is past time for those who have deceived governments and misled the public regarding dangerous human-caused global warming to be called to account. Aided by hysterical posturing by green NGOs, their actions have led to the cornering of government on the issue and the likely implementation of futile emission policies that will impose direct extra costs on every household and enterprise in Australia to no identifiable benefit.

Not only do humans not dominate Earth's current temperature trend but the likelihood is that further large sums of public money are shortly going to be committed to, theoretically, combat warming when cooling is the more likely short-term climatic eventuality.

In one of the more expensive ironies of history, the expenditure of more than $US50 billion ($60 billion) on research into global warming since 1990 has failed to demonstrate any human-caused climate trend, let alone a dangerous one.

Yet that expenditure will pale into insignificance compared with the squandering of money that is going to accompany the introduction of a carbon trading or taxation system.

The costs of thus expiating comfortable middle class angst are, of course, going to be imposed preferentially upon the poor and underprivileged.

Professor Bob Carter, environmental scientist at James Cook University studies ancient climate change

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Counter Cape Wind Blog

Cost of Wind Farms More Than Monetary

2007-06-17T08:04:00.000-04:00

by Jack Hunt

Special to the San Antonio Express-News

06/16/2007

The cancellation of a large offshore industrial wind project in South Texas sheds lights on the precarious path that advocates of this so-called alternative technology travel in pursuit of an energy nirvana ("Developer cites cost for pulling plug on South Texas wind farm," Tuesday).

The dollars and sense of this project simply did not add up last year, and they don't now. It is wise that the Australian-based inventors took a second look, put their checkbooks back into the desk drawer and averted what assuredly would have been a big money loser for them and the taxpayers and ratepayers.

The economics of wind farms are only part of the sad story, however. The subsequent pages of this story reveal that there are serious environmental and social costs associated with these enterprises. As an illustration, the proposed on-land projects at the Kenedy Ranch along the South Texas coast are saddled with many of these problems.

Experts suggest that the large wind turbines on the Kenedy Ranch may well create havoc in this pristine wildlife environment, which is located in the major migratory path for birds and bats in North America. Promoters of projects on Kenedy Ranch have asked for future electric interconnections for as many as 600 of these massive turbines covering as much as 30,000 acres of pristine coastline along the Laguna Madre and Baffin Bay.

The construction of these giant turbines — more than 400 feet in the air — will require enormous concrete and steel footing deep into the ground in an area prone to blowing sand and home to many sensitive and important species of plants and animals. Roads and other infrastructure associated with these giants will forever change the land.

It is important to recognize that Europe, the birthplace of modern-day wind-farm technology, is revising some of its most ambitious projects. The Netherlands and Germany have scaled back major projects after well-documented research suggests wind farms are not all they are promoted to be.

With that said, wind farm technology may have a place in the effort to develop alternative energy supplies. Random efforts, however, to score a quick buck or tax deduction by embracing this politically correct energy source are risky at best and can be very damaging in the short and long term.

State and federal governments would be well-advised to consider a reasoned public policy in developing industrial wind project technology. They can start by enacting into law a simple permit process to ensure the environmental concerns of the entire area are considered before the turbines go up and the human and natural environment brace for the aftermath.

No such law or regulatory structure exists in Texas. Shame on us.

Jack Hunt is president and chief executive officer of King Ranch Inc.
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[The Counter Cape Wind Blog]

Denmark Not So Green After All, Says EU

2007-06-15T13:46:00.000-04:00

The Copenhagen Post

June 14, 2007

Claims of Denmark’s exceptional environmental efforts are contradicted by EU numbers detailing the nation’s contributions to sustainable energy

Rows of windmills and international praise for our use of green energy sources create a picture at odds with the European Union’s own version of the country’s energy efforts.

EU data on sustainable energy casts a shadow over Denmark’s image as a global green leader, as the country was at the bottom of the 27-member union list for funding towards sustainable energy sources.

Opposition parties were quick to attack the Liberal-Conservative coalition, calling for an immediate change in environmental policies. Politicians were already scheduled to meet next week to re-negotiate the nation’s current energy agreement.

Anne Grete Holmsgaard, energy spokesperson for the Socialist People’s Party, said it was ‘absurd’ that Denmark’s funding for sustainable energy was placed so far under that of the other EU countries. ‘We risk losing our position as a leader in the field of green energy,’ she said.

Denmark’s dominant energy symbol, the wind turbine, has suffered under the current government, with the country losing 19 turbines last year - 28 were junked while only nine new ones were raised. The total wind energy produced nationwide was only 11 megawatts in 2006 compared with 600 megawatts in 2000.

Yet around 16 percent of the nation’s total energy production comes from sustainable sources, which puts Denmark near the top of that category amongst EU countries. But that figure dropped in 2006 for the first time in several years.

Lars Lilleholt said the Liberal party will likely vote to increase contributions to sustainable energy, but added the lack of space for new wind turbines presented a problem.

‘We have to find a balance between securing continued development and not sending consumers a huge energy bill,’ he said, pointing out that more spending on sustainable energy sources would result in higher utility prices.
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[The Counter Cape Wind Blog]

Alexander warns of wind-power bill in Senate

2007-06-13T17:24:00.000-04:00

By BILL THEOBALD
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON — Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander warned Tuesday that utility bills could jump dramatically in the state and that its mountains might be threatened if a proposal to require every state to generate a certain amount of wind power is included in an energy bill being considered by the Senate.

Alexander sent out a release and called a news conference to decry a proposal by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, even though the New Mexico Democrat's amendment requiring each state to generate a certain portion of its energy through renewable methods has not even been offered.

Bingaman is chairman of the Senate Energy Committee and will manage debate on the bill.

Alexander said the Tennessee Valley Authority estimates the proposal would add
$410 million a year to utility bills in the state. Alexander said building large wind farms would deface the beauty of the Smoky Mountains.

Most of the wind energy potential in the country is west of the Mississippi, Alexander said. The energy bill, H.R. 6, already has passed the House.

Alexander has long been a critic of wind energy, saying that the gigantic modern windmills scar the landscape and that the production of wind energy is not feasible without government subsidies.

Developer Nixes Texas Offshore Wind Project

2007-06-12T07:54:00.000-04:00

June 11, 2007 by John Porretto in The Associated Press

HOUSTON - Plans to build what would have been the nation's largest offshore wind farm in South Texas have been called off because the multibillion-dollar project didn't make economic sense, the developer said Monday.
John Calaway, chief development officer for Babcock & Brown Ltd., the Australian investment bank, said the company notified the state a month ago it was giving up its 30-year lease on nearly 40,000 acres in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Padre Island.

Calaway was chief executive of Houston-based Superior Renewable Energy when the agreement was announced 14 months ago. Superior was acquired by Babcock & Brown last summer.

"We just don't see the economics working offshore in Texas," Calaway said, noting the project cost would have been "in the billions."

He said offshore wind farms on the East Coast, such as a proposed project off the coast of Massachusetts, are more logical and potentially viable because of land constraints and higher energy prices in the region.

The now-defunct Texas project called for construction of about 170 turbines, each 400 feet tall, with the capacity to generate 500 megawatts of energy _ enough to power about 125,000 homes.

Babcock is moving on with an onshore wind farm in South Texas' Kenedy County, a $700 million-plus venture that calls for 157 turbines on thousands of acres, Calaway said. He noted the expense of building an offshore farm can be more than double the cost of one on land.

Like the nixed offshore project, Babcock's Kenedy County wind farm, slated to begin spinning late next year, has been criticized by some conservationists because of its potential to kill migrating birds and harm the pristine nature of the area, which is popular for hunting and fishing.

Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson said he was disappointed to see Babcock drop the project, but he was confident another developer would be found because of the ideal location and the ease of doing business with only one land owner _ the state of Texas.

In fact, Patterson said he spoke to a few potential suitors at a wind conference last week in Los Angeles. He said those entities were good prospects because they've built offshore wind projects overseas.

"They want to do a little more due diligence," he said.

Land Office spokesman Jim Suydam said the offshore lease had called for an annual payment of $80,000 plus a percentage of production that could have generated anywhere from $34 million to $100 million for public schools.

The state also has leased 11,355 acres off the coast of Galveston to a Louisiana company building a similar but smaller farm. That venture, with 50 turbines, is moving forward and could be operating in the next few years, Patterson's office said.

Texas last year gained acclaim by surpassing California as the nation's top producer of wind energy, and that capacity is forecast to grow rapidly in the next several years.

In a recent report, the Department of Energy said the nation's wind-power capacity increased by 27 percent in 2006, and that the U.S. had the fastest-growing wind-power capacity in the world in 2005 and 2006.

Still, despite wind farms now operating in 36 states, wind accounts for less than 1 percent of the U.S. power supply.

West Virginia Supreme Court Overturns Wind Project Decision

2007-06-11T16:30:00.000-04:00

Mona Ridder
Cumberland Times-News

MOUNT STORM — Residents of the Mount Storm area seeking an injunction against the NedPower wind turbine project adjacent to the Dominion Power Plant will have their day in court — circuit court, that is — according to an opinion handed down by the of Appeals on Friday.

The high court re-sponded to an appeal by the residents, including Jerome Burch, Levi Miller, Frank Fitzpa-trick, Charles Thomas, Richard Fiedler, Robert Hurley and John Mitchell, after Circuit Judge Phil Jordan ruled against them last fall by dismissing the case in which they cited noise, unsightliness and the devaluation of property as nuisances warranting a halt to the project.

At that time, Jordan said that the state Public Service Commission had already ruled by granting the project permits, which effectively removed it from the court’s jurisdiction.

The high court heard the appeal during its LAW Day program in Hampshire County in late April when attorney Richard Neely of Charleston argued on behalf of the residents and Samuel Brock of Charleston argued on behalf of NedPower.

Supreme Court Justices Robin Davis, Elliott Maynard, Larry Starcher and Joseph Albright disagreed with Jordan, saying in the opinion, written by Maynard, that the residents were entitled to their day in court on the nuisance complaint and that the PSC’s only jurisdiction was in siting the project.

Supreme Court Clerk Rory Perry said that the case will return to the circuit court jurisdiction where new proceedings will be held.

Jordan had no comment on the decision.

Brock said that he expects the case to move forward with a new hearing on the nuisance complaint.

“I expect it will proceed fairly quickly,” he said.

Neely, a former supreme court justice, said Friday that he plans “to litigate this case as hard as I can.”

“These things are worthless, they provide no significant contribution to the electricity needs of this country, they are a tax boondoggle,” he said of wind farms.

He added that the only reason wind is being considered is “because of the environmentalists.”

“They are against everything, they are against nuclear, gas, coal, oil,” he said.

Neely said the 200-turbine NedPower project at Mount Storm will serve only to “destroy the highest and best use of property in Grant County,” which he described as a refuge for people from Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia and other Eastern cities.

He said he will likely submit a motion to disqualify Jordan from hearing the case again.

He said that it could be heard by Judge Andrew Frye, the other judge serving in the circuit, or by someone else who is “completely neutral.”

The justices emphasized several points in their opinion, one of which is that “the circuit court has great latitude in fashioning an appropriate remedy.”

It can completely enjoin the construction of the project or create an equitable remedy short of complete injunction. It should be one that causes NedPower no more injury than is necessary to protect the plaintiff’s rights, according to the opinion.

“Finally, our decision in this case is merely that the appellants have alleged sufficient facts in their complaint to avoid a dismissal on the pleadings,” states the opinion. “In other words, the appellants should have their day in court. Beyond this, we offer no opinion on the ultimate success or failure of the claim.”

Justice Brent Benjamin dissented and is expected to write the dissenting opinion.

None of the appellants, nor representatives of NedPower could be reached for comment Friday.

Wind Developers = Vultures

2007-06-10T13:33:00.000-04:00

by Lindsay David Milsom

Dunraven Street, Glyncorrwg

South Wales Evening Post

9 June 2007

An application for the erection of four 410ft wind turbines to be erected on Corrwg Fechan Mountain has been received by the planning department of Neath Port Talbot Council.Corrwg Fechan is in the heart of the village of Glyncorrwg, where there is great opposition to these highly visible monstrosities being sited.

As chairman of the Glyncorrwg Action Group, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the very many residents of the village who have written to the planning department objecting to this outrageous proposition.

Our group has not only the support of the local residents but of many ex-pats associated with Glyncorrwg. These people have also written to the authority objecting to the proposals. They have written from as far afield as Canada and Australia. Our local politicians Dr Hywel Francis MP and Dr Brian Gibbons AM have also supported our objections.

We’ve received letters of support from two members of the House of Lords. I have
written to HRH the Prince of Wales and informed him of these developers gathering like vultures to prey on our little community.

If these turbines get off the ground, there is no doubt our house prices will fall. Our otherwise picturesque skyline will alter dramatically. Much of our rare wildlife will suffer.

Companies like ECO2, Gamesa and Airtricity should beware - we are not going to take these intrusions into our lives lightly. We will use every means at our disposal to thwart your plans.

Sparks between LIPA execs over costs

2007-06-07T17:11:00.000-04:00

by Mark Harrington in Newsday

Long Island Power Authority Chairman Kevin Law found out just how tightly held the cost of the proposed offshore wind farm is - even he couldn't worm it out of LIPA officials at a public meeting yesterday.

In a sometimes-tense exchange at a LIPA board of trustees meeting, Law told LIPA chief executive Richard Kessel that he had received a number of requests to disclose the controversial figure, and requested its release.

Kessel at first seemed to agree to provide it, saying he'd request updated figures from contractor FPL Energy, whose officials attended the meeting. "We will get that within a week or so, and we will make that public."

When Law pressed him on it, Kessel went on to say some figures had "certainly been reported in the press," then seemed to argue against the release. "It's difficult to negotiate a power purchase agreement when you're throwing out numbers willy-nilly."

Law ordered them released. "If we have the numbers to give and we're not violating trade secrets, I want to disclose them," he said.

Those in attendance were largely silent during the exchange.

Last year, LIPA initially refused a Newsday request for the figures under the Freedom of Information Law. When the newspaper appealed further, LIPA provided outdated figures showing the cost for the 40-turbine windfarm was $356 million in 2004. But the cost had increased "substantially" since then, according to the documents.

FPL told LIPA last fall that the target cost was more than $600 million, Newsday reported in April. A source briefed on the project recently said the target cost was in fact $650 million, with a range of $450 million to $900 million.
==========================================================================
The Cape Wind Project is now expected to cost over $1,000,000,000

Nantucket Sound Belongs To All

2007-06-06T14:51:00.000-04:00

"Gluttony Would Devour Our Rich Beauty"

By MARTHA POWERS

My View, Cape Cod Times

Those of us who have migrated to the edge of this continent to be in the presence of the ocean hold it dear. The wealthiest among us live right next to it, waking up with it and going to sleep with it. Yet, even those of us with little money can easily go to enjoy the same view that people pay lots of money for. How can we feel "poor"? This view belongs to all who cherish it and it gives us a very rich life.

Now the view is threatened in a major way with the large industrial development proposed by Cape Wind for Nantucket Sound.

Much magic happens at the shoreline. The tinkling of moon shells along the tide line as the incoming water gently lifts them, an osprey diving, tiny sparkling fish jumping, horseshoe crabs mating, ducks floating, all giving us an inkling of an enormous world under this surface, rich with life all interdependent on the rest. Millions have come to experience this ocean, as the Cape is a world-renowned treasure. It is not "my" backyard, but one that belongs to all.

Ocean gazing is a major activity here, enriching our souls, providing a backdrop for creativity, for expanding our boundaries, healing our sorrows, for opening our hearts to grace. It can thrill us with joy and inspiration; its vastness can hold our despair, our pain and confusion and give us back peace. Some feel our lives depend on it, this frequent nurturing and delight the ocean provides. This basic human feeling is so difficult to find words for, and almost impossible to explain to those asleep to it. Yet, that is our task.

For now, even this ocean and the web of life in it and above it are threatened by intrusion; a gigantic, experimental, money-making industrial development the size of Manhattan that would destroy so much of what is indescribably precious to us. Nothing like it has ever been done. Anywhere.

There are countless excellent reasons, detailed throughout the years of this discussion, to keep this enormous development from moving forward. The one most ridiculed is caring about the "view," even though that is what brings most of us to the Cape and Islands. Rich people are particularly derided, ironically, by those who support the developers in becoming excessively rich through this blatant exploitation of public waters.

How can you ask us to give up our view, our deep experience of one of the great natural places of the world, so that others can continue to live gluttonously, exploitively, using and misusing, consuming and wasting and reproducing as if there is no tomorrow? We are now on a fast track to no tomorrows, and I think most everyone knows global warming is a serious threat to all life. Should that not wake us up to using less and caring more for what we have?

There are plenty of alternative-energy resources to explore and support that are not destructive.

A developer is primarily motivated by money, and no amount of gobbledygook can separate him from that truth. When he wants to build the biggest, tallest, firstest, greatest of anything, you can guess there's a bit of ego involved as well. It is up to the rest of us, crippled by the lack of adequate language to hold our experience, to defend what matters in this world in any way we can.

There will always be developers whose goal will prevent them from feeling and seeing beyond their own needs. With each one defeated, many more pop up, and generation after generation will need to stand tall against their single-mindedness. They seem to forget who they are.

I say to this developer, and all who champion him: Take a few moments each day to go to the ocean's edge and gaze out, letting yourself melt into the vastness while opening your soul to the grace that is there for you. Come to your senses, breathing in the richness of life above and below the surface, connecting to the ancient mysteries held therein.

And to those who support this developer in his pursuit of riches, do you really want to give away something priceless that will be forever changed, destroying so much life and beauty in the process, and wrecking the experience of this ocean for many of us who come to this place to feed our souls? If you truly care about the environment, then this one, this intricate fragile ecosystem, needs our protection now.

Martha Powers lives in West Yarmouth.

Idiot wind

2007-06-05T08:02:00.000-04:00

by Henry S. F. Cooper Jr., Cooperstown, NY

The New York Times, June 3, 2007

Much of upstate New York, from north of Albany to Buffalo, from the Catskills to the Adirondacks, is in danger of being transformed beyond recognition by industrial wind parks. Some 50 of these wind parks are being planned and even built.

All of this is being done in the name of clean energy and saving the planet. But it isn't clear that wind power is such a panacea in the battle against global warming that developers of these wind parks should be allowed to run roughshod over some of our loveliest land. What we need are statewide siting guidelines that take other environmental factors, including visual impacts, into consideration.

One upstate project, 70 miles west of Albany, is the Jordanville Wind Power Project proposed by Community Energy, a subsidiary of the Spanish conglomerate Iberdrola. The project is not far from where I live in Cooperstown. About 70 turbines, as tall as 40-story buildings, are proposed near the top of a ridge where they will be visible far across the Mohawk Valley to the north and to the south down the length of Otsego Lake, the centerpiece of the Glimmerglass National Historic District. There are six national historic districts and sites eligible or listed, in the area, covering some 40,000 acres. One that is eligible but not listed is the Holy Trinity Monastery, the spiritual center of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. Another, Glimmerglass, includes the landscape that inspired the artists of the Hudson River School and novelists like James Fenimore Cooper (an ancestor of mine).

The effects nearer the turbines will be even more devastating. The towers loom all around; their blades, 150 feet long, cause the sunlight to flicker; the nacelles - the hub of the blades - make a high-pitched whine.

Real estate values, certainly for second and retirement homes, but also primary residences, would likely plummet, damaging the local tax base. The carnage among birds and bats is considerable.

The Jordanville project would be built on an unstable soluble layer of karst limestone riddled with cracks, fissures and caverns. It could affect local wells and fish hatcheries; springs in this area are the source not only of Otsego Lake but of the Susquehanna River, which starts there.

Of course, the sacrifice of much of upstate New York in the name of saving the planet would be admirable and noble if it was clear that wind power would play a major role in combating global warming. But a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences casts doubt on this theory.

Wind is an iffy resource. It blows hard enough to generate electricity about 30 percent of the time. When wind-power companies talk of a project supplying electricity to, say, 60,000 houses, which is what the Jordanville project claims, those homes are dark and powerless 70 percent of the time. Or they would be, if it wasn't for conventional power sources, which need to be kept on line to take over when the wind drops. Realistically, Jordanville will power about 18,000 houses or less. In the trade-offs between wind power and other environmental considerations, the less wind contributes to reducing global warming, the more important other environmental factors - including visual impact - become.

So why then are we destroying large tracts of upstate New York in the name of an uncertain energy source? In part, it is because the Spitzer administration, even more than the Pataki administration did, is increasing subsidies and tax credits for these alternative energy companies. Indeed most wind companies concede that if it weren't for government support, they wouldn't be in business.

The Spitzer administration has introduced wording to the Clean Economic Power Supply Act that would revamp utility siting law. Its Article X would speed approval for industrial wind parks, in particular by circumventing home rule and the State Environmental Quality Review Act, the cornerstone of the state's environmental laws, which is responsible for determining whether local ordinances conform with state environmental law when a town or municipality accepts or rejects a project.

But what we need to do is strengthen the siting provisions in the Clean Economic Power Supply Act. Three bills that are before the State Senate would impose moratoriums on wind projects while siting guidelines are established and the effects of a project on neighboring areas are assessed. One of the bills would give New York's commissioner of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation a veto on approving turbine siting. All these bills are steps in the right direction; they have critical elements that are worth incorporating into the new Article X legislation, to assure burdened upstate towns that community character and historic and scenic resources will be protected.

Wind has a role to play, but perhaps not as strong a one as other clean energy sources, especially those like safer nuclear energy and cleaner coal, which provide not erratic but constant energy. We need to think carefully about where we place wind farms and whether the benefits outweigh the losses. But more important, we can't let wind power, and projects like the Jordanville one, distract our attention and financial resources from better solutions for saving our planet. Wind may be something of a red herring hidden inside a pork barrel.

Henry S. F. Cooper Jr., the author of several books about space exploration, is the president of Otsego 2000, a local environmental group.

Cape Cod Commission asserts right to full review of wind project

2007-06-01T18:05:00.000-04:00

Barnstable Patriot: 6/01/07

Makes distinction between review and regulation

By Edward F. Maroney

What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas, but what happens in federal waters in Nantucket Sound that may affect the core resources that the Cape Cod Commission is charged to protect won’t happen without Commission review.

That, at least, is the position the county agency took yesterday afternoon when it voted unanimously to “review and regulate” the land-based and near-shore elements of the 130-turbine power generation project but also “review the impacts, both positive and negative, of the entire project” as they relates to the environmental, economic and cultural values named in the Commission’s enabling legislation.

Following the advice of their Boston counsel, Eric Wodlinger, but challenging him on some matters as well, the members rejected Cape Wind’s contention that its project should be reviewed under the 1996 Regional Policy Plan, advising staff to apply the 2002 version in its preparation of the Development of Regional Impact review. A scoping meeting held with the state in 2001 did not start the clock on review, Wodlinger argued.

Commissioners agreed that the agency cannot require Cape Wind to acquire a lease from the federal Materials Management Service for use of Nantucket Sound beyond the three-mile limit, or a Chapter 91 license from the state for use of near-shore waters, before undergoing DRI review. Wodlinger pointed out that these depend in part of local licensing from the Town of Yarmouth, where Cape’s wind’s cable will come ashore, and town permits cannot be issued until the Commission’s work is complete.

Members made it clear that acquisition of those licenses would be part of the order of conditions that would issue with any DRI approval – if such is forthcoming.

Wodlinger said the Cape Wind proposal cannot undergo DRI review until the company demonstrates ownership of or an easement or lease for land under which its cable will run through Yarmouth to a power station in Barnstable. He said no evidence has been presented that Cape Wind has contacted private property owners along the route to acquire these rights.

Commission members agreed the application would be incomplete until such information was received. Wodlinger pointed out that, should Cape Wind run into trouble getting approvals, it can go to the state Energy Facilities Siting Board and make a case to be given the power of eminent domain.

The Commissioners’ decisions were reached minutes before the Patriot’s deadline late Thursday afternoon. Further information about next steps, as well as a response from Cape Wind’s attorney, will follow.

Edward F. Maroney is Associate Editor of The Barnstable Patriot.

Bird protection in bill could foul wind farm

2007-05-30T16:06:00.000-04:00

By DAVID SCHARFENBERG, STAFF WRITER
Cape Cod Times

The wind-energy industry is objecting to federal legislation that seeks to protect birds and bats from wind turbines, arguing the measure would place unnecessary burdens on clean-energy projects.

The Energy Policy Reform and Revitalization Act, a wide-ranging energy bill introduced this month, would create new standards for the placement and construction of turbines and mandate post-construction monitoring of their effects on wildlife.
Mark Rodgers, a spokesman for Cape Wind Associates, the Boston-based firm proposing 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound, said his company already has performed much of the due diligence contemplated in the bill.

But he said he was concerned about a provision that would forbid construction of new turbines until the Department of the Interior drafts the regulations prescribed by the bill.

"Any kind of de facto moratorium on renewable energy at a time we need to take action on global warming and energy independence is blatantly poor public policy," he said.

The legislation, introduced by Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., the chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, calls for development of the regulations within six months of passage of the bill. But wind energy industry officials say they are skeptical that federal regulators will move that quickly.
Supporters of the bill said careful regulation is important with a relatively new industry.

"I think, from our perspective, setting reasonable federal standards for the development of new energy resources makes sense," said Charles Vinick, president and chief executive officer of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the chief opponent of the Cape Wind proposal.

The bill, which touches on everything from gas and oil drilling to solar power, is scheduled for a committee vote next Wednesday, said Allyson Groff, a spokeswoman for the Committee on Natural Resources.

Rahall said, in a statement, that he is open to changes.

"The provisions contained in H.R. 2337 are not anti-wind, but rather, are aimed at allowing this industry to grow in a manner that is compatible with federal laws such as the Endangered Species Act," Rahall said.

"With this noted, however, these provisions are not locked in stone," he added, "and I will be working with interested members (of Congress) to seek to address their concerns."

The perils of wind turbines made national news when the Altamont Pass Wind Farm, one of the first in the world, killed large numbers of birds after operations began in California in 1981.

The industry has made several adjustments since then, building larger turbines, spaced farther apart, with slower-rotating blades and smooth surfaces not suitable for perching.

A recent study released by the National Research Council found that fewer than 0.003 percent of human-related bird deaths are caused by wind turbines — a fraction of the deaths caused by house cats allowed to roam outside. The council is part of the National Academies, which also comprise the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine. They are private, nonprofit institutions that provide science, technology and health policy advice under a congressional charter.

Gregory Wetstone, senior director of government and public affairs for the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group, said the wind industry takes the issue of bird mortality seriously.

But the wind provisions of the Rahall bill could scare away investment, he said. "This would strangle wind power in the United States," Wetstone said.

Do commercial ‘wind farms’ work?

2007-05-29T17:22:00.000-04:00

by Dr. Thomas D. Arkle Jr. in Saipan Tribune

....GE boasts that the span of their rotor blades is larger than the wingspan of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet. The typical 1.5 megawatt assembly is two stories higher than the Statue of Liberty. Wind power stations are not "parks." They are industrial and commercial installations.. Many people are drawn to wild places to avoid such reminders of human industrial might. Many communities depend on such tourists, who will now seek some other, as yet unspoiled, retreat.

On Saipan, a 150 megawatt facility would require 100 towers with a typical 1.5 megawatt generator on top. This would cover an area of nearly 6000 acres. If spaced appropriately and in 4 parallel rows, this would cover a site 5 miles long and 1 mile wide (including required setbacks). It would cost between $700 and $800 MILLION dollars to build over a 6 year time period and at the end, by national statistics (from the U. S. Energy Information Agency) would actually deliver about THREE (3) net megawatts to the community!

Other considerations:

Wind towers require a large amount of energy to operate. Other electricity plants generally use their own power, and the difference between the amount they generate and the amount delivered to the grid is readily determined. Wind plants, however, use electricity from the grid, which is NOT accounted for by any current manufacturers (Vestas, GE, and NEG Micon) in their output figures. Among turbine functions that USE energy:

-Yaw mechanism control (to keep blades perpendicular to wind and untwist cables)
-Blade pitch control (to keep rotors spinning at a regular rate)
-Lights, controllers, communication, sensors, metering, etc
-Heating, cooling or dehumidifying the nacelle
-Oil heater and pump and cooler in gearbox
-Hydraulic brake (to lock blades in high wind)
-Thyristors to regulate connection and disconnection to the grid
-Magnetizing the stator (up to 10 percent of rated capacity used here)

Using the generator as a motor (to help start blade rotation in low wind - the grid magnetized stator must work to help keep the 40 ton blade assembly spinning, along with the gears that increase the blade rpm some 50 times for the generator, not just at cut-in [15 mph], but at least some of the way up to full rated wind speed [30 mph]

It is estimated that EACH turbine may consume as much energy as it produces (under less than perfect wind conditions) in its own operation. Under these conditions, the plant as a whole, which may produce only 25 percent of its rated capacity annually, would be using nearly all of the electricity it produces unless wind speeds were nearly constant at 30-40 mph at all times.

[Click headline for full article.]

Wind, wave and solar power targets will not be met, says White Paper

2007-05-24T13:21:00.000-04:00

by Tom Stevenson in 'The Telegraph' UK

"The Government has admitted it is likely to miss its own targets for renewable power generation. Problems with incentives to energy generators, planning curbs and difficulties connecting renewable power to the national grid mean Britain will not be getting 20pc of national energy consumption from renewables by 2020."

"The energy white paper yesterday restated the Government's commitment to promoting wind and tidal power to cut Britain's carbon emissions and increase security of supply."

"But, although renewables' contribution to total electricity generation has more than doubled since 2002, the Government admitted that alternative energy still represents only 4pc of electricity generation."

"Because renewables are more viable for power generation than for transport or heating, meeting the overall energy target means an even higher proportion of electricity must be fuelled by wind, wave and solar power. The current rate of progress makes that unlikely, the Government said."

"Lionel Fretz, chief executive of Carbon Capital Markets, a fund manager, said: "There's no brave new world or big new proposition. It's all pretty uninspiring."

[Click headline for full story.]

D.C. focus on wind, wildlife

2007-05-21T17:40:00.000-04:00

[from the Cape Cod Times]

Wildlife advocates hoping for a stronger voice in regulations concerning wind energy development on land and sea are expected to testify Wednesday at a hearing before the House Natural Resources Committee in Washington, D.C.

While the Cape Wind proposal isn’t specifically on the agenda, you can bet that folks on both side of the proposal will be interested in the aftermath of the hearing.

At issue will be the proposed “Energy Policy Reform and Revitalization Act of 2007,” filed by U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va.

Among other things, this legislation would require very specific standards for “siting, construction, monitoring, and adaptive management” of wind farms to “avoid, minimize, and mitigate adverse impacts on migratory birds and bats.” The standards would apply to land and offshore wind farms.

The Environmental Protection Administration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and now the National Research Council have gone on record saying there is a need for more site-specific information from scientific experts to properly assess impact on wildlife, rather than industry-generated impact reports. Supporters of wind farms in general have described the legislation as an “anti-wind bill” and warn it would place onerous new regulations on wind turbines.

"Scheduled to start at 10 a.m., the hearing will be webcast live on the committee’s Web site at http://resourcescommittee.house.gov.

Wind, wave economics

2007-05-19T14:30:00.000-04:00

Cape Cod Times Editioral

If the gigantic Cape Wind project proposed for Nantucket Sound way back in 2001 did nothing else, it has focused attention on how the nation's offshore acreage is used. Porter Hoagland of the Marine Policy Institute at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution sought to clarify the issues for subcommittees of the House Committee on Natural Resources, which recently held a hearing.

An Interior Department official said at the same hearing that "there existed no clear authority within the federal government" to review and oversee projects in federal offshore waters before Congress handed the job to the Mineral Management Services (MMS) in 2005. Since then, MMS has been scrambling to develop regulations for wind, wave and ocean current energy projects — a draft is expected this summer.

It's not an easy job, Dr. Hoagland emphasized. When everything is considered — fishing, aquaculture, shipping, recreation, environmental conservation, not to mention wind speed, distance from electricity transmission — ocean space with the right qualities, "like good cropland..., may be a scarce natural resource."

It sounds odd, to think of the boundless ocean as a scarce resource. But yes, space must be carefully allocated, legal interests established and enforced. To do that, economic value must be attached to both commercial uses (wind farms, fishing, shipping, etc.) and noncommercial uses (recreation, conservation, aesthetics).

Still more complexities await: federal and state fisheries authorities, navigation authorities, environmental authorities and even historic preservation authorities all have a voice in how the ocean is used. In particular, the Coastal Zone Management Act requires that use of federal waters must be consistent with use of adjoining state waters.

Hoagland urged Congress to clarify the economic analysis of competing uses. How do you put a value on a view? How do you put a value on environmental conditions?

Wind energy is subsidized, and a pending bill would extend similar help to tidal and wave energy projects. At the same time, MMS is required to get a "fair return" for the use of federal ocean space. That seems contradictory, but Hoagland points out that power produced by burning coal or oil enjoys "implicit subsidies," such as the free discharge of carbon dioxide and other pollutants, with subsequent public costs to health and the economy. Those costs must be better understood so all power production receives the same subsidy — or none.

As the MMS is developing a foundation for good ocean-use decisions, it must carefully evaluate the Cape Wind project, not only in the context of environmental standards, but also economic ones. Unfortunately, MMS has so far refused to share its economic viability model for the Cape Wind project. If it continues to withhold that information, its review will be less than credible.

"Over here in Europe, we understand what a big con this whole thing is"

2007-05-18T13:08:00.000-04:00

Eric Jacobson sheds light on a few of the many errors in the pro-Cape Wind editorial by Wendy Williams in Wednesday's Christian Science Monitor. Click on the headline for the full article posted on E. Schwaab's 'Cape Cod Living' blog.
--------------------------------------------------------------

"Response to Science Fiction Writer Wendy Williams"

by Eric Jacobson

I notice that ‘science writer’ Wendy Williams has penned quite a piece in favour of Cape Wind. As a resident of the UK (though a US citizen) I have some practical experience with ‘wind energy’.

Regrettably, Williams’ article is replete with questionable assertions. Indeed, I counted no fewer than three in just one paragraph:

Thus Ms. Williams:

"…[T]he ambitious Massachusetts endeavor would help stabilize New England's aging power grid…"

This is the first time I’ve seen anyone actually assert that wind energy ‘stabilizes’ a grid. If Ms. Williams could explain how a stochastic energy source can ‘stabilize’ anything, I’d be much obliged. Now, it may be that the laws of physics are different in the Cape Cod area—but I confess that I’ve only seen evidence for it in the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. Back in the real world, wind power invariably destabilizes regional and national grids—and the higher the percentage of wind electricity on the grid, the greater the instability. Over here in Europe, I’m afraid the Danish and German electrical engineers would roll their eyes over Ms. Williams assertion; the Germans in particular, after last winter’s blackouts (made all the worse by grid instabilities) might make some fairly pungent remarks as well...

[Continued here.]

Supporters of wind turbines need a reality check

2007-05-17T13:14:00.000-04:00

By Arthur Hooton,

The Charleston Gazette, 16 May 2007

Excerpt:

Advocates of industrial wind seem to fall into two camps: the dreamers and the schemers. The dreamers are engineers who think they can invent their way out of the inherent flaws of industrial wind by trying to make the turbines ever larger and more efficient, while hoping an industrial-scale electricity storage system will eventually present itself. They’ve had this same dream for over 30 years now. The schemers know it’s not going to happen, but they’re quite willing to lobby for legislation that guarantees a payoff to anyone with money to invest.

Imagine if Congress enacted a law requiring 20 percent of all goods coming into the United States be transported on cargo sailing ships to cut pollution caused by marine diesel engines. The dreamers would build massive, carbon-fiber-hulled ships equipped with titanium masts and Kevlar sails; and the schemers would make sure that investors got tax breaks, credits and subsidies for each ton of cargo hauled. When the wind didn’t blow, diesel powered, ocean-going tugboats would be dispatched to pull becalmed vessels into port with no net change in pollution and with major disruptions in product deliveries. Because the cargo sailing ships didn’t have engines on board, owners would still get tax credits, and consumers could blissfully believe that their goods were being delivered by clean and green energy. That’s the real story behind Big Wind. It’s called consumer fraud and the state of West Virginia does not have to be a party to that fraud.

Arthur Hooton lives in Pendleton County and is a member of Friends of Beautiful Pendleton County, a citizens group that has intervened in the site certificate application process initiated by Liberty Gap Wind Force for construction of an industrial wind facility on Jack Mountain.

Wind Project Should Not Continue

2007-05-16T18:12:00.000-04:00

South Coast Today, My View-

By RAY SURPRENANT, Fairhaven. Mass.

Let's look at why the proposal to build industrial wind turbines should not go ahead. It all centers on the setback issue. In 2004, the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative ignored the University of Massachusetts and had a group of companies involved in the wind industry conduct the feasibility study for Fairhaven.

The area under consideration would not be able to support a wind project using the standard of 1,200 feet set by UMass.

The wind and power companies contracted for the study did not do a noise study, and they recommended to the town that they establish a 400-foot setback for industrial wind turbines, which the town adopted on their advice. They have no expertise on this matter, and they should have had UMass come in before any setbacks were recommended.

UMass does all of the noise studies for the MTC with few exceptions, one being Fairhaven. In my opinion, the only conclusion that one can reach is that if UMass came in and the standard recommendations were adopted, the project would not have been able to go forward. It is unfortunate that up to this point we have listened only to the developer and to the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative. The MTC has strong ties to the multi-billion-dollar wind industry. Only agencies with no ties should be involved in making recommendations.

One of the arguments advanced by some is that these turbines don't give off much noise. The problem with this analysis is: This is the biggest wind project in the history of Massachusetts. Yes, it's even larger than Hull's. The two turbines being proposed are two very large turbines. The larger turbines give off a lot more noise.

To give a comparison, these are Vespar V82, and they are 1.65 megawatts as opposed to the one in Buzzards Bay, which is only 660 kilowatts or .660 megawatts. The two turbines being proposed are almost three times larger than the one in Buzzards Bay. The industrial wind turbine in Buzzards Bay is 248 feet tall, and these are 400 feet tall.

It is well documented by different studies that the location of these turbines in a quiet area and close together will also contribute to the amplification of the noise. Also, the higher the turbine, the further distance that the noise travels. Noise from a turbine travels away from the turbine, not down below the turbine.

We have the making of the perfect storm in regards to the amount of harm that could be inflicted on our residents. A community should never compromise the quality of life of its citizens for a small amount of financial gain.

Wind farm worries have large personal impacts

2007-05-09T18:05:00.000-04:00

Submitted to Hays Daily May 7, 2007 by J.P. Michaud

By now, my name is probably recognizable to many in town as one of the more outspoken opponents of the wind energy development in Hays. I belong to all three of the groups described by Paul Faber in his editorial: I feel the siting of this project is entirely inappropriate, I have little faith in the ability of wind power to make any meaningful contribution to renewable energy, and I am outraged by the devious and undemocratic process by which this project has been foisted on unsuspecting citizens.

I have researched extensively the dangers of industrial wind energy, helped establish our website, and organized our community presentation on May 2. But all this has not been accomplished without tremendous personal cost; financial, professional, psychological and medical, and I am sure the same can be said for many others in our group.

If you have the read the letters submitted to the Hays Daily by Jeannie Riedel, Sheryl Butler, Jacinta Faber, Tim Davis, Gary Hammersmith (below) and others, you already have some insight into the personal impact this project is having on people’s lives – and its construction hasn’t even begun. So this time I want to speak to the personal impact on my family and on our whole outlook on our future here in Hays...

[Click headline for full story.]

Group goes to court over wind farm

2007-05-08T15:17:00.000-04:00

Bath, New York – A legal action aimed at stopping a Town of Cohocton wind energy project will be heard Tuesday in state Supreme Court in Steuben County.

Judge Marianne Furfure is scheduled to hear arguments brought by Cohocton Wind Watch. The anti-windmill group contends that the Town of Cohocton did not comply with the State Environmental Quality Review Act when it modified its zoning law to allow a project proposed by developer UPC Wind.

Wind Power Continues to Produce Crosswinds of Controversy

2007-05-04T09:56:00.000-04:00

by James Ferrabee
Institute for Research on Public Policy

From Barton, Vermont, to the German border with Denmark and from the shores of Lake Huron, to the Romney Marches of southern England, wind power advocates are fighting crosswinds from local residents.

In Barton in mid-January, a referendum overwhelmingly rejected the wind power turbines that were planned near this upper Vermont community. Vermont is one of the most scenic US states and it depends heavily on tourists and seasonal residents to keep its economy moving. It is also a state where the voice of environmentalists is heard loud and clear.

In Germany, where one-third of the world's current wind power is generated, doubters have provoked a loud debate. The company that owns the grid that includes nearly half the wind-farms in Germany reported its wind farms generated only 11 percent of their capacity. The company said the winds vary so much the wind farm had to be backed 80 percent by the conventional power grid.

A report sponsored by the German Energy Agency* was also critical of wind power and suggested that carbon dioxide emissions reduction could be achieved more cheaply by other means. The debate inside government circles is quite heated, because the Greens hold 55 seats in Germany's four-party coalition government.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair was quick to install wind power in the southwest of the country when he was first elected, amid much controversy, but in the north and southeast of the country voters are biting back. Residents of Caithness in the north vigorously fought a wind-farm proposal.

And in the wealthy garden county of Kent, south of London, every elected body in the area, including twelve parish councils, two district councils and two county councils, rejected a wind-farm in Romney Marshes.

The main objections of those opposed to wind farms is their unsightliness, the noise they generate, their lack of efficiency and their high cost for seemingly low returns.

The supporters of wind power make the point that citizens are in favour of environmental causes but not when they affect them. This is called the NIMBY - not-in-my-back-yard - syndrome.

"It's no longer NIMBY. For some people it's NOPE - not on the planet earth - it's BANANA, build absolutely nothing anywhere," complained Ontario Energy Minister Dwight Duncan last year. He told CanWest News Services that the NIMBY phenomenon is a "threat to the province's energy security."

But in Ontario some damning criticism has come from agencies concerned about renewable energy resources. One of them is Energy Probe, which conducted a seven- month study of wind production and consumer demand that was published in November 2006.**

It found that so far the capacity factor is 22 percent; periods of very low or no production were particularly common during high demand periods; high but highly variable wind production during low demand periods was common; and in most months the hourly production pattern on average declined during the peak hours of 4 a.m. to 8 a.m.

It concluded: "Energy Probe is concerned that a clean and promising generating technology is burdened with unrealistic forecasts."

There are cancellations or delays on many projects. The plan for the Saugeen Shores of Lake Huron was cancelled. A proposal in the scenic Blue Mountains was abandoned, and there is a 12-month delay in the start-up of a second project north of Orangeville that would add 88 turbines to the 45 already there.

The loudest and longest debate over a wind-farm has been in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where there is a proposal to build 130 turbines in the scenic Nantucket Sound. The debate has continued for five years and involves, among others, Senator Ted Kennedy and his family, who oppose the project.

The famous Hyannis Port resort where they play is a few miles from the proposed project. Last summer, the residents of Nantucket voted 66 percent against the project.

Even in Quebec's Gaspé Peninsula, where Hydro Quebec is planning one of the largest wind-farms in the world, opposition led by the unions (including the hydro union) has popped up in Rivière-du-Loup, one of the larger cities.

There is no saying how far the protesters will go in Germany, Canada or the US, but they seem to have gathered steam in the last few years. This is one of the few serious blows to the environmental movement in the last decade, caused not by lobby groups or governments, but by the people most affected, those in the nearby towns and cities.

* DENA (Deutche Energie-Argentur, or German Energy Agency), "Integration into the National Grid of Onshore and Offshore Wind Energy Generated in Germany by the Year 2020."2005.

** Tom Adams, "Review of Wind Power Results in Ontario: May to October 2006." Energy Probe, Toronto, November 2006.

James Ferrabee was a senior correspondent for Southam News in Canada and overseas for 39 years. He writes a monthly column for the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP) and can be reached at jferrabee@citenet.net.

"The End Is Not Near", by John Stossel, ABC News

2007-05-03T14:39:00.000-04:00

Watch "Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity" on a special edition of "20/20" Friday, May 4th at 10 p.m. EDT

The Global Warming Myth?
-- Instead of Panicking Over Climate Change, Learn to Adjust to It

By JOHN STOSSEL
April 20, 2007 —

"The heavy breathing over global warming is enough to terrify anyone.
Last week the Washington Post interviewed a 9-year-old who said the Earth is "just starting to fade away." In 20 years there will be "no oxygen" he said, and he'll be dead. The Post went on to say that "for many children and young adults, global warming is defining their generation." How sad."

"Thirty-six years of consumer reporting have taught me to be skeptical of environmental scares. Much of what the media scares us about turns out to be myths."

[Click headline for full story.]

Excerpt-

"The fundamentalist greens imply if we just conserved energy, and switched from fossil fuels to wind and solar power (they rarely mention nuclear power -- the most practical alternative), we would live in a nonglobal-warming fairyland of happiness. But their proposals are hopelessly impractical."

The downside of wind power: impacts on birds and bats

2007-05-02T12:30:00.000-04:00

"The House Natural Resources Committee, Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Oceans, Chaired by non-voting, Delegate Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam), held an oversight hearing entitled, Gone with the Wind: Impacts of Wind Turbines on Birds and Bats."

"Witnesses testifying at the hearing included: Representative Alan Mollohan (D-WV); Dale Hall, Director, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS); Conservation Scientist, Bat Conservation International; Director, Birds and Pesticides, American Bird Conservancy; Partner, Meyer Glitzenstein and Crystal; and the Director of Conservation Policy, National Audubon Society."

"Representative Mollohan testified that, “Wind-energy developers have targeted the mountain ridges of my state of West Virginia, and for a number of years I’ve expressed my deep concern about their projects. Among the reasons for my concern are the environmental impacts of these massive projects, including their impacts on the natural beauty of my state, and their impacts on wildlife.” As an example he cited the Mountaineer project that consists of 44 turbines, each 340-feet high 50 feet higher than the tip of the Capitol) and spread out over 4,000 acres of mountain ridges..." [Click headline for full story]

Cape Wind is Not a Done Deal

2007-05-01T11:36:00.000-04:00

By AUDRA PARKER
April 30, 2007

My View, Cape Cod Times

The state's recent determination that Cape Wind's environmental impact report is adequate and the subsequent media coverage of this project "milestone" would have us think that the construction barges that will transport the 130 turbines and the pile drivers that will drill these 18-foot diameter behemoths into the seabed are on their way.

Headlines like "State Approves Cape Wind Plan" and "Cape Wind backers enter 'final lap' " leave the public thinking that Cape Wind is a reality. But these sound bites don't convey the true status of this project or the fact that a federal agency, the Minerals Management Service (MMS), and not the state, has the final word on this project.

In fact, MMS is only at the beginning of its review of Cape Wind. A draft environmental impact statement is still to come with a long road ahead from there to a final decision. MMS just announced that this review is taking longer than expected in an effort to conduct it "in an appropriately deliberate and diligent manner."

By contrast, the state made a rush to judgment on Cape Wind, taking just 30 days to review Cape Wind's massive environmental report, and as little as seven days to study all of the public's comments before reaching a decision.

While Cape Wind complains that its project is being scrutinized more than any other energy plant and that opponents are merely being obstructionist, the federal review process has raised critical issues, especially for a project that is the first of its kind in the nation. After all, it is being proposed in a heavily conflicted and environmentally sensitive location, and was first proposed in a regulatory vacuum.

Questions that weren't even on the table in the beginning of the process are now being addressed. Would the 130 turbines cause radar interference for the many vessels navigating Nantucket Sound? What would be the effect of 40,000 gallons of transformer oil rapidly hitting our beaches in the event of a spill from Cape Wind's transformer substation? Is south of Tuckernuck Island, an area to the southwest of Nantucket, a better location for a wind plant?

On the state side, the recent decision represents but the start of a series of state reviews. Cape Wind needs to get a consistency determination from the Mass. Office of Coastal Zone Management; a Mass. Highways permit; a water quality certificate and either a license or a variance under the Chapter 91 waterways licensing program from the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

This latter program, based on a legal principle that dates back nearly 2000 years, holds that the air, sea and shore belong not to any one person, but rather to the public at large. And Cape Wind, recognizing that getting a variance under this law is a daunting task, has already challenged DEP's initial determination that they require a variance.

At the local level, Cape Wind needs a host of authorizations as well, including approval from the Cape Cod Commission and from both Barnstable's and Yarmouth's conservation commissions.

At this point, Cape Wind has only one conditional permit, for the transmission cable, from the Mass. Energy Facilities Siting Board, and a certificate of adequacy from the state on its environmental report.

So for those wondering how close this project is to becoming a reality, consider the myriad local, state and federal permits that govern this project, and MMS' recent announcement of a longer and more thorough federal process — one that will ultimately determine this project's fate. On top of this gauntlet of reviews, there is still the fact that Cape Wind needs to secure financing for this $1 billion capital investment.

Cape Wind has to obtain each and every one of the 20-some-odd local, state and federal permits that govern this project. Those who recognize that Nantucket Sound is simply the wrong location for such a project because fishermen's livelihoods would be at risk, residents and tourists that travel through Nantucket Sound would be in danger, and the very heart of the Cape and Islands would be irreversibly changed still have many opportunities to make their voices heard.

One permit denial by any one of the reviewing agencies preserves Nantucket Sound as it was intended to be when it was first designated a state ocean sanctuary in 1970. One permit denial also leaves the door open to find an appropriate site for an offshore wind project that would actually help grow this important industry rather than bog it down with a controversial and irresponsibly sited project.

Audra Parker is director of strategic planning for the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound.

Wind Opponents Slam Federal Report

2007-04-29T15:30:00.000-04:00

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."

Global Warming a Lame Excuse for Turbines

2007-04-27T09:55:00.000-04:00

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.

Windmill fight goes on

2007-04-26T14:33:00.000-04:00

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.

"We’re being duped and it’s at our expense"

2007-04-25T14:40:00.000-04:00

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.

Wind power unpopular, mandated, subsidized

2007-04-24T09:33:00.000-04:00

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.

Lots of hot air, but where is the power?

2007-04-24T09:29:00.000-04:00

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.

GREEN MYTHS: ENVIRO 'FACTS' THAT AREN'T

2007-04-23T09:24:00.000-04:00

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."

Alberta turns to natural gas after wind lessens reliability

2007-04-23T07:36:00.000-04:00

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.]