Wind Power News: Opinions
These news and opinion items are gathered by National Wind Watch to help keep readers informed about developments related to industrial wind energy. They are the products of the organizations or individuals noted.
A sound policy for industrial wind power in Vermont?
Whether you call them wind farms or industrial wind generating plants, these industrial developments have caused divisiveness and controversy in almost every community in Vermont where they have been proposed.
Because electricity generation has special legal status for land use regulations, industrial wind projects are being sited in areas where other industrial developments — say, a mine that was lit at night and worked 24/7 — might never be allowed.
And because they’re lucrative investments, we can expect a gold rush by . . .
Unreliable wind power
In early January there was a story in the daily paper in Tulsa under the by-line of Barbara Hoberock, headlined “State Capitol gets wind turbines.” Included in the story were two pictures of workers on top of poles supporting what to me are windmill generators, a far cry from turbines. It may be that those making the installations are referring to them as turbines.
The story began with the statement that the installation had begun on January 5 of two wind . . .
McGuinty’s ill wind blows across Canada
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty recently did something so stupid when it comes to … uh … fighting global warming, it should warn all Canadians to keep an eye on their politicians, lest they do something equally dumb.
McGuinty struck a deal with South Korean industrial giant Samsung Group to manufacture wind turbines and solar panels in Ontario, plus pay inflated prices for 2,500 megawatts of so-called green energy for the next quarter century.
Samsung will invest $7 billion in return for untold . . .
What works in the city does not work in the country
This week Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound MPP Bill Murdoch showed yet again why every politician who tests him at the ballot box becomes cannon fodder. Simply put, he listens to people. He’s very good at it, in fact.
How else to explain the veteran politician’s extraordinary rant this week, in which he urged Toronto be hived off from the rest of the province?
Crazy, some will say. Sure. Crazy like a fox. Is he serious? Will Toronto ever be a province? Is there anything . . .
Don’t drown out awkward information
Official policy statements from Whitehall tend to be bland and full of sincere-sounding generalities, but just now and then something important, perhaps even revolutionary, can be glimpsed in their pages.
So it is with the latest paper from Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), The Noise Policy Statement for England, which was published on Monday. Through the carefully worded legalese of this document, it is recognised – somewhat belatedly, many would say – that noise in the air . . .
Wind power has its place in Maine – and that’s very far offshore
Our governor is proposing emergency legislation mandating the installation of what would amount to thousands of wind turbines within three miles of our Maine coastline (L.D. 1810: An Act to Implement the Recommendations of the Governor’s Ocean Energy Task Force).
This has been referred to as “offshore” wind development. It is actually “near-shore” wind development that would displace fishermen and disturb the treasured views of Maine’s fantastic coastline.
We should step back and look at the big picture while the opportunity still . . .
LURC’s public hearing on Sisk Mt. turbines is Wednesday
In 2008, the Kibby project was approved with 44 turbines, miles of roads and transmission lines and hundreds of acres of forest to be cleared. The Expedited Rule was doing its job for the developer, streamlining the necessary review since the location is part of over 14 million acres of land sited for wind development.
Now in 2010, TransCanada (TC) wants to expand the Kibby project and is proposing 15 turbines on neighboring Sisk Mountain, which overlooks the Chain of Ponds. . . .
Wind turbines: ‘Eco-friendly’ – but not to eagles
In all my scores of items over the years on why the obsession with wind turbines will be seen as one of the major follies of our age, there is one issue I haven’t touched on. The main practical objection to turbines, of course, is that they are useless, producing derisory amounts of electricity at colossal cost. (Yet the Government wants us to spend £100 billion on building thousands more of them which, even were it technically possible, would . . .
Angry anglers oppose NYPA GLOW Project
On Earth Day 2009, New York Power Authority (NYPA) President Richie Kessel unveiled plans to industrialize Lake Ontario and Lake Erie with near shore wind turbines clustered in 120MW to 500MW arrays in waters 150 feet deep, or less.
Some arrays would consist of 500 turbines towering 450′from the lake levels. NYPAs proposal was unveiled without input from the shoreline communities or businesses that will be the victims. Currently, Jefferson, Oswego, Cayuga and Wayne Counties are working towards unilateral opposition to . . .
Resident protests 700 wind turbines
It is with great dismay that I find I have to write this statement in response to the notification in the local daily paper that there’s a plan afoot to install up to 700 wind turbines just offshore in Lake Erie. I know that this is part of the provincial government’s Green Energy Act but just who is it going to be green for? In the first paragraph of the act, the government states that it will “boost investment in . . .
