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 and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of National Wind Watch.
Toppling tax dollars for turbines
On February 1, an urgent alert was sent to supporters of wind energy. It stated: “The PTC is the primary policy tool to promote wind energy development and manufacturing in the United States. While it is set to expire at the end of 2012 … the credit has already effectively expired. Congress has a choice to make: extend the PTC this month and keep the wind industry on track…” The wind energy industry has reason for concern. America’s appetite for . . .
Don’t blow it, Ottawa: Mimicking Ontario’s guidelines for wind turbine setbacks is a bad idea
Ottawa is drafting guidelines for wind turbine setbacks from homes, apparently using Ontario’s minimum 550-metre separation as a model. Based on Ontario’s disastrous experiment with wind energy, this is a bad idea. That’s because the province’s plunge into renewable energy, aside from being a financial disaster as documented by Ontario’s Auditor General, has been a social disaster as well. Canadians, especially those living in rural areas, should be on guard from the moment provincial governments and wind developers show up . . .
‘Windfall’
Speaking of horror movies, the monsters are 400 feet tall in “Windfall,” easily the more haunting film of this week and a sublimely cinematic documentary by the film editor-cum-director Laura Israel. Her subject is the battle waged over wind power in the tiny upstate New York town of Meredith. What’s so scary? Industrial wind turbines, the fetish objects of the green-minded, those sleek, white, propellered and purportedly eco-friendly energy collectors that one might have seen dotting the desert outside Palm . . .
Wind lobbyist: documentary Windfall lies about wind energy
Windfall takes aim at clean, renewable wind power with misinformation. Wind turbines are safer than you think. Surveys routinely find that over 80% of Americans support wind power. And many local communities welcome it because of the homegrown jobs the industry creates. As one movie critic said: “The documentary isn’t big on hard data; instead, [Director Laura] Israel allows the majority of her interviewees to deliver anecdotes, speculation, anti-corporate conspiracy theories, and just a few statistics…the movie’s case relies more . . .
Exaggerating benefits of wind
I am writing in response to Avram Patt’s opinion piece that appeared in the Herald and Times Argus last week. While Mr. Patt made some interesting points, there are issues in his piece that must be addressed. For example, he asserts that there is a one-to-one ratio between wind power generated and the reduction of power generated from other sources. There is no reliable data to support this assertion. Here in the New England grid with the inefficient ramping of . . .
Fairhaven resident tours turbines in other communities
This past Saturday I took myself on a turbine tour. The first stop was Gardner where turbines are located at the local prison and on the grounds of Mt. Wachusett Community College. The first thing I noticed at the North Central Correction Facility was that the turbines were not spinning. The second thing I noticed was how close the turbines are to the prison yard and the parking lot. The turbines dominated the parking lot, but it wasn’t until I . . .
When a ‘windfall’ isn’t quite what it seems
Not even the most ecologically minded are always keen on the prospect of giant wind turbines near their homes. But Meredith, N.Y., welcomed “Big Wind” when it first came whistling through town. That’s what makes Windfall so interesting: The documentary is the story of an education. In some ways, Meredith seems a natural place for a wind farm. Situated in one of New York’s poorest counties, it’s in an agricultural area whose principal enterprise, dairy farming, has dramatically declined. But . . .
Windfall review by Roger Ebert
Driving from Los Angeles to Palm Springs, you pass through a desert terrain in which a new species has taken hold. Wind turbines grow row upon row, their blades turning busily as they generate electricity and pump it into the veins of the national grid. This wind farm is a good thing, yes? I’ve always assumed so, and driven on without much thought. A documentary named “Windfall” has taken the wind out of my sails. Assuming it can be trusted . . .
Wind energy, noise pollution: Living near wind turbines can be hazardous to your health
In his State of the Union address last week, President Barack Obama touted renewable energy and declared that he would “not walk away from workers” such as Bryan Ritterby, who is employed by a wind-turbine manufacturer in Michigan. But in their rush to embrace the wind-energy business, Obama and numerous other politicians are walking away from rural residents such as David Enz and his wife, Rose. A year ago, the couple abandoned their home near Denmark, Wis., because of the . . .
Wind power: Renewable resource, or another corporate scam?
A fascinating new film about one small-town political fight takes on the pseudo-green wind industry In telling the story of a small-town political fight over wind power, Laura Israel’s fascinating documentary “Windfall” at first seems like another entry in the long laundry list of post-”Inconvenient Truth” doomsayer environmental films. Indeed, “Windfall” has some of the rural, homespun feeling of Josh Fox’s Oscar-nominated “Gasland,” which helped ignite a national debate over the natural-gas extraction method known as fracking. Israel’s film also . . .
