FAQs

Noise & Health

Good for Farmers?

WHAT TO DO
when your community is targeted

FAQs

Campaign Material

Photos & Graphics

VIDEOS

Research Links

Selected Documents

Press Releases

Alerts & Events

Store

Sign up for weekly updates
RSS

RSS Feeds and more

Keep Wind Watch online and independent!

Donate via Paypal

Donate via Stripe

add NWW to your search bar ]

National Wind Watch: Wind Energy News

[ RSS Preview ]
[ https://www.wind-watch.org/news/feed-full.php?nwsltr=1 ]

Historic cottage demolished in Wick to make way for turbines
28 March 2024
Scotland, Complaints, Wind power, Wind energy

A Victorian cottage near Wick railway station is in the process of being demolished to make way for the transportation of wind turbine parts through the town.

Bankhead Cottage is on the corner of Thurso Road and Bankhead Road and is described as a “two-bay rubble-built cottage with a similar three-bay structure abutting the rear elevation and W gable”, according to Canmore, a catalogue of Scottish heritage sites compiled and managed by Historic Environment Scotland. The cottage had, however, been extensively modified over the years and little resembled its original style.

Bankhead Cottage in a photograph taken in 1974 before it was extensively modified. Picture: © HES. Reproduced courtesy of J R Hume.

Energy company RWE says it has owned the property for a number of years and has consent from Highland Council for its demolition.

A spokesperson for RWE stated: “RWE is continuing to develop onshore wind, as it has an important role to play in helping deliver the UK and Scottish governments’ net zero emission targets in the coming years. The technology remains the lowest cost form of renewable electricity generation and RWE is increasing its already significant onshore wind portfolio to support national targets with three projects under construction.

“RWE has owned the property in Wick for a number of years and we have consent from the Highland Council to proceed with the removal works. The removal of the cottage will allow large turbine components to navigate the bend and deliver them to the Camster II construction site. In addition, it will help Wick Harbour to accept larger future turbines which can then be transported further afield.

“A future decision on the site has not yet been agreed upon, we will liaise with the Council and other local groups on suitable future uses. In the immediate short term, the land will be maintained with a mixture of hardstanding and grass.”

The property had sold in August 2008 for £130,000 and had been rented out as a three bedroom detached house for £600pcm. A recent tenant was Theodora Kennedy Hunt (Teddy Hunt) who had started various business in Wick that quickly foundered along with her promises of creating 20 local jobs.

The removal of the cottage will make the transportation of wind turbine parts much easier as lorries carrying large heavy loads try to negotiate the sharp turn from Bankhead Road onto Thurso Road.

Negotiating tight bends in Wick can be a major issue for the effective transportation of the wind turbine parts. This shows a lorry turning from Station Road and heading to the Halsary wind farm site during its construction. Picture: Peter Sutherland

A nearby stretch of Common Good land beside Wick river has also been earmarked for lease to wind farm developers, as reported in November last year. The proposed “ribbon lease” is a technical way for developers of renewable projects to get permission to transport large goods such as turbine blades which stretch beyond the boundaries of the public highway.

Each developer requires permission to “oversail” the land in question in order to secure the necessary funding to progress with such large-scale schemes.

Infrasound from wind turbines could be ‘a huge threat to the entire biodiversity’: doctor
27 March 2024
Germany, Complaints, Wildlife, Wind power, Wind energy

More than 70,000 wind turbines operate across the United States, and the U.S. government continues to approve offshore wind projects as part of its transition toward clean energy.

When wind turbines rotate, however, they generate not only electricity but also infrasound.

For Dr. Ursula Bellut-Staeck, this development represents “a huge problem for all forms of organisms,” including humans. The medical doctor and scientific author has been studying the health effects of infrasound for several years. She has been looking into infrasound as a stressor on the cellular level since 2015 and published a paper in 2023 on how infrasound affects microcirculation and endothelial cells [link].

Inaudible but Impactful

Infrasound is defined as a sound wave with a frequency of less than 20 hertz (Hz). The lower the frequency of the sound, the greater its wavelength and the harder it is to shield from it. Infrasound can penetrate walls, people, and animals.

“With ever larger wind turbines, the frequencies are getting lower and lower. This makes infrasound more problematic and dangerous,” Dr. Bellut-Staeck told The Epoch Times.

Today’s wind turbines reach frequencies as low as 0.25 Hz. The wavelength of this frequency is just under 0.86 miles.

Infrasound has another special feature. Humans cannot usually hear frequencies below 16 Hz, which marks the so-called lower hearing threshold. In other words, we cannot hear many of the sounds emitted by wind turbines. However, we may feel them in our bodies as humming or rumbling, as with a loudspeaker. The lower the frequency, the higher the sound pressure level (i.e., the volume) must be to feel or hear it.

Nevertheless, the mechanical forces emanating from the inaudible sound frequencies can have an effect on the cell and membrane structures, Dr. Bellut-Staeck said.

Transmitted via the Air and Ground

Wind turbines generate infrasound when the rotor blade brushes past the mast. The rotor blade pushes large air masses in front of it, which is then interrupted at the mast.

Infrasound is then transmitted not only through the air but also through the ground via the tower and can penetrate houses. Buildings, therefore, offer no protection. “On the contrary: Airborne and ground-borne infrasound can add up considerably indoors,” Dr. Bellut-Staeck said.

Impact on Endothelial Cells

Infrasound could also affect microcirculation, the blood circulation of the fine capillary network where oxygen and nutrients enter the surrounding tissues.

More precisely, it’s the endothelial cells located on the inner wall of the capillaries that react to infrasound, Dr. Ursula Bellut-Staeck said. She’s been studying microcirculation and endothelial cells since 2004. In addition to transporting proteins, these cells have many vital functions, such as inhibiting inflammation and controlling blood pressure. In a rat study examining the effects of infrasound, researchers noticed endothelial swelling and outer cell membrane damage within three hours of exposure to infrasound with a frequency of 8 Hz.

image-5600230

The surface of an endothelial cell. (Courtesy of Dr. Ursula Bellut-Staeck)

“Since around 2015, it has been noticed that people exposed to infrasound and vibration from technical emitters have shown symptoms that correspond to microcirculatory disorders,” Dr. Bellut-Staeck said. This effect was particularly noticeable after smaller wind turbines were replaced by larger ones.

Reported adverse effects of industrial wind turbines include weakness, dizziness, headaches, concentration and memory issues, ear pressure, cardiac arrhythmia, and sleep disorders, according to research cited in Canadian Family Physician.

Numerous animals have also reacted to wind turbines. It has been observed that they leave the vicinity of wind turbines. One study published in Scientific Reports showed that many bird and mammal species avoided wind farms and the surrounding areas, affecting distribution and migration patterns. Place-bound animals such as horses, cows, and pets are said to have shown changes in behavior, including signs of stress.

“The symptoms in animals cannot be [attributed to] a nocebo effect,” Dr. Bellut-Staeck noted, as official authorities sometimes suggest. In contrast to the placebo effect, the nocebo effect describes a negative health effect from expectations of negative consequences.

Dr. Bellut-Staeck pointed out that other technical systems also emit infrasound and could cause major problems. For example, in or near residences, this applies to heat pumps, biogas plants, and gas turbines. However, she expects large wind turbines to have the most far-reaching consequences for the environment and biodiversity—precisely because of their increasing number and size.

“Such chronic and impulsive low-frequency stressors can never be compared to natural infrasound pollution [like high surf and strong winds],” she said.

Are Whale Deaths Connected?

In 2023, official data revealed an increase in the stranding and death of whales along the U.S. East Coast. There was a temporal and geographical connection between this excess mortality and the geological surveying conducted for the expansion of offshore wind power. As a result, 30 New Jersey mayors signed a petition asking congressmen to help pause offshore wind power expansion activities until a full investigation could be conducted. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has stated, “There are no known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind activities.”

But Dr. Bellut-Staeck remains concerned by the low-frequency sound and vibrations of ship noise and other sounds. In the ocean, sound travels at 0.91 miles per second—four times faster than in the air. The depth of the oceans, therefore, offers no protection against sound.

“It doesn’t just affect orientation, but also the regulation of vital bodily functions,” Dr. Bellut-Staeck said. “The consequences for the animals here are also lack of energy, chronic inflammation, disruption of reproduction, excess mortality, and population decline.”

Vibrational Stress

As all organisms react to infrasound, Dr. Bellut-Staeck emphasized that “we may have a huge, previously unrecognized threat to the entire biodiversity.”

Dr. Bellut-Staeck, who does her research in Germany, where wind power is the largest contributor to the power grid, proposes that deep sound and vibration can act as a vibrational stress factor on endothelial cells. As many vital functions require intact endothelial cells, endothelial damage can have serious consequences, including contributing to vascular aging and atherosclerosis.

The German Federal Environment Agency, however, told The Epoch Times that it has not found any evidence that infrasound from wind turbines causes adverse health effects and that “how infrasound emitted by wind turbines affects endothelial cells has not yet been scientifically proven.”

International Studies Show Harmful Effects

Dr. Bellut-Staeck said there are currently no studies to clearly illustrate or prove the risk of infrasound, as most studies focus on acoustic, or audible, sound.

However, initial studies on the effects of infrasound indicate possible serious health problems. One study published in Environmental Disease concluded there was a high probability that people living near industrial wind turbines would experience harmful health effects due to anxiety, stress, and loss of sleep resulting from exposure to infrasound and other emissions. A German study also identified the toxic effects of infrasound exposure at a cellular level. Another study, published in PLoS One, documented brain activity changes following exposure to infrasound stimulation.

These studies emphasize the need for further research and a better understanding of the impacts of infrasound.

Right whales seem to not be a concern in new plans
27 March 2024
Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Wildlife, Wind power, Wind energy

Massachusetts fishermen say feds are hypocritical in Gulf of Maine wind energy designation.

A move to designate two million acres in the Gulf of Maine as a hub for wind energy is snagging a sharp hook from Massachusetts fishermen who say the development overlooks risks to the North Atlantic right whale.

A handful of Bay State fishermen advocacy groups are teaming with counterparts from across New England in criticizing the Biden administration’s plans to industrialize the area off the coasts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine.

The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management finalized the designation earlier this month, an action it says looks to support President Biden’s clean energy goals.

The area, which ranges from 23 to 92 miles off the coasts of the three states, has the potential to support generation of 32 gigawatts of clean energy, the bureau said. That amount of energy surpasses “current state goals for offshore wind energy in the Gulf of Maine: 10 GW for Massachusetts and 3 GW for Maine,” BOEM said.

Specifically, industrialization could lead to the deployment of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030 and 15 gigawatts of floating offshore wind energy capacity by 2035, according to the feds.

Local, state and federal officials over the years have mandated fishermen to follow a growing number of protocols to preserve the endangered right whales – in some cases, barring them from taking to certain waters.

Fishermen, however, say the industrialization of the two-million-acre area is “flatly inconsistent with a policy of endangered species protection.”

“Fishermen are disheartened that the WEA designation favors foreign energy developers over marine mammal protection,” the Gulf of Maine Fishing Associations said in a statement last week. “This preferential treatment is in stark contrast to the federal government’s aggressive campaign to burden commercial fishing needlessly with crushing restrictions to protect whales.”

The Bay State group’s part of the coalition include the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance; Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association; Massachusetts Fishermen’s Partnership; Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association; and Massachusetts Seafood Collaborative.

Initially, the feds looked to industrialize a much larger zone in the Gulf of Maine, but feedback from local residents, fishermen and other stakeholders led to a 80% reduction in the final designation for possible leasing.

“The resulting (wind energy area) avoids important areas for lobster fishing, North Atlantic right whale habitat, and other important fishing areas and habitats,” the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management stated in a release.

Katie Sinding Daly, senior vice president of law and policy at the Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation, said she believes the feds “did a thorough job of listening to concerns about protecting marine life.”

“CLF will continue to work with BOEM to ensure all possible protections for vulnerable marine wildlife and important habitats are built into the process as it moves toward leasing and construction of these floating turbines,” Daly said in a statement.

The designation continues a years-long effort by environmentalists to make offshore wind turbines a major source of power, with initial efforts in Massachusetts focused on areas south of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. The newly designated zone lies to the east of the state.

Fishermen acknowledged the improvements in the final designation but concerns remain around whether the offshore wind development will directly imperil “commercial fishing, sensitive habitats, and maritime communities that depend on the fishing industry.”

The designation came a day after a federal judge ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service was not in the right when it added a 200-square-mile wedge between state and federal waters to an existing closure that stretches roughly 9,000 square miles off the Massachusetts coast.

The closure, in effect from February to the end of April, is viewed as a measure to protect right whales.

There are fewer than 360 right whales left in the ocean, including only 70 reproductively active females.

Federal officials and scientific agencies say climate change is the biggest threat to the right whale contrary to a belief from opponents that offshore wind projects are to blame for a spate of whale deaths over the past year-plus on the East Coast.

Many have been struck by ships or become entangled in fishing gear, the leading causes of death, environmentalists say.

A female calf was found dead off of Martha’s Vineyard in late January, with officials reporting a rope was entangled around its tail. Weeks later, a New England Aquarium aerial survey team counted 31 right whales in shipping lanes east of Nantucket.

BOEM and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released final plans in January to protect the endangered species, including a strategy that would use artificial intelligence and passive acoustic monitoring to determine where the whales are at a given time and to monitor the impacts of wind development on the animals.

Angela Sanfilippo, president of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association urged the feds to proceed with caution in developing the Gulf of Maine designation based on how the construction and operation of the wind farms could further threaten the right whale.

“The noise and disruption caused by such developments are not fully understood, but they have the potential to affect the migration, feeding, and breeding patterns of these whales,” she wrote in a letter last November to BOEM. “The uncertainty surrounding these impacts calls for a cautious approach, considering the critical status of the right whale population.”

State police investigating shooting of wind turbines
27 March 2024
Pennsylvania, Wind power, Wind energy

Police are investigating after two wind turbines in Schuylkill County were shot at.

According to Pennsylvania State Police in Frackville, two wind turbines belonging to Avangrid Renewables in the area of Raven Run Road and Ringown Boulevard in Union Township were intentionally shot at with a firearm.

Anyone with information on the incident is being asked to contact state police at Frackville at 570-874-5300.

Tolowa Dee-ni oppose Windmill Energy
27 March 2024
Oregon, Wind power, Wind energy

The Tolowa Dee-ni Nation announced it has passed a Resolution opposing offshore wind energy. The Nation, which covers Del Norte County and much of southwest Oregon, urges the Department of Interior and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to halt all scoping and permitting for offshore wind projects, until a comprehensive and transparent procedure is developed.

The Tolowa Dee-ni is a federally recognized Indian Nation, one of 574 federally recognized tribes in the United States that depend on traditional places, foods and lifestyles. The Tolowa states observed and future impacts from climate change threaten access to traditional foods, marine foods offer sustenance as well as cultural, economic, medicinal and community health for future Tolowa Dee-ni generations.

The offshore wind energy project lacks tribal involvement and research, according to the Resolution. The Tribe states the (wind energy project) lacks studies or research about the environmental impacts the windmills will have on the ocean floor and marine species.

“The Federal government has a legal obligation to consult with Tribal Nations on any activities that may affect the lands and resources. We ask the Administration to incorporate the essential value of tribal co- stewardship, co-decision making and co-management of tradition lands and waters,” according to the Resolution.

Wind energy developments won’t be allowed within 35 km of Rocky Mountains
20 March 2024
Alberta, Wind power, Wind energy

Alberta sent a draft map to industry showing where renewable energy projects will and won’t be allowed.

Large swaths of land near Alberta’s Rocky Mountains and foothills will be off limits for wind energy developments under the province’s new regulations for renewables projects.

Alberta sent a draft map on Thursday evening to industry showing where renewable energy projects will and won’t be allowed, which restricts developments in national parks and UNESCO heritage sites, and creates a buffer along the eastern slopes of the Rockies where wind projects would be forbidden.

It also provides more clarity on the government’s vision for keeping developments away from Alberta’s viewscapes – an area of debate and confusion since the province announced in late February that 35-kilometre “buffer zones” would be established around protected areas and so-called “pristine viewscapes.”

How is Alberta defining pristine viewscapes?

The government’s definition for its viewscapes focused heavily on the Rocky Mountains and heritage sites, Affordability and Utilities Minister Nathan Neudorf said in a Thursday interview.

“Globally, there is no uniform universal definition of pristine land because it differs in every single jurisdiction,” Neudorf said.

“When we talk about our pristine landscapes, I think most people immediately go to Banff and the majestic peaks, and we sought to protect our mountain ranges, our foothills, our UNESCO world heritage sites.”

Under the new regulations outlined in the map, Alberta’s UNESCO heritage sites and national parks will be no-go zones for all renewable developments, Neudorf said. To the edge of the Rockies, the province is implementing a 35-kilometre buffer zone in which no wind projects will be permitted, though solar developments will be allowed.

Alberta has also created visual impact assessment zones, most of which are isolated to southern Alberta, where all proposed renewable projects will be reviewed.

None of those zones are expected to affect ongoing oil and gas or forestry activity.

Southern Alberta is known for its windy and sunny conditions, making it a hot spot for renewables development.

There are currently several operating wind developments inside the province’s new no-go zone, including a 28-turbine Riverview wind farm and the 76 MW Castle Rock wind project just outside Pincher Creek. TransAlta also has several wind farms in the windy Pincher Creek area, including its 60-turbine Castle River project.

The province’s map is less restrictive than some had anticipated based off Alberta’s initial signals when it lifted the moratorium on new renewables projects on Feb. 28.

How does industry feel about the new guidelines?

The province is continuing to develop a final framework for renewable projects in Alberta. The full suite of regulations are expected to take shape by the end of the year.

But the map leaves several unknowns for industry, said Evan Wilson, vice-president of policy for the Canadian Renewable Energy Association (CanREA).

“I think this provides more clarity on the government’s intent than anything we’ve seen or heard before,” Wilson said. “But there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done to provide clarity for members who are making $100-, $200-, $300-million decisions on projects . . . We need more information than what is provided in a PDF map.”

The lack of rules to date has been criticized for creating uncertainty in the renewables sector. One developer of a solar project up for approval near Pincher Creek said last week it’s moving forward “amid a period of considerable policy and regulatory uncertainty.”

Jason Schneider, board member at Rural Municipalities of Alberta and reeve of Vulcan County, home to Canada’s largest solar farm, said reaction to the map from his peers in rural Alberta has so far been muted.

“I haven’t heard from any of our members with their hair on fire saying that they’re completely against it,” he said. “Hopefully we can get back to business.”

Releasing the map when the province lifted the moratorium more than two weeks ago would have saved a number of headaches, Schneider said, as debates swirled around the province’s definition of viewscapes and protected areas.

Neudorf said the province has been operating “as quick as reasonably possible.”

“We don’t want to rush things.”

What’s the expected impact of the new regulations?

It’s unclear how the final rules will affect ongoing proposals in Alberta.

The Pembina Institute, a clean energy think-tank, has estimated Alberta’s wind regulations would make 22 projects subject to a visual impact assessment or are in a no-go zone. Combined with the draft agricultural restrictions, 57 projects worth $14 billion could be affected, Pembina estimates.

Neudorf said Pembina’s estimates are possible, but developers have shown interest in changing the location or size of their projects.

“That’s kind of the point, is that we didn’t want a free-for-all where we sterilized agricultural land forever,” Neudorf said.

The Alberta Utilities Commission’s (AUC) review of renewable generation in the province, released Wednesday, said Alberta’s existing regulatory framework is “generally sufficient for the protection of environmental land.” It also said that if all renewable development needed to achieve net-zero occurred on prime agricultural land, less than one per cent of Class 2 land would be lost by 2041.

While many of the issues outlined in the AUC report have been ongoing for years, they didn’t justify the six-month moratorium, Wilson said. The report also recommended that if the province implements development no-go viewscape zones, that regulation should be “industry agnostic.”

“I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding around how well regulated the renewable sector is,” Wilson said. “There was no need for a moratorium to have these conversations . . . This is not the Wild West in terms of renewable energy.”

— With files from The Canadian Press

In-depth: Resistance to wind energy in two Wisconsin towns targeted by CCP-backed company
20 March 2024
Wisconsin, Wind power, Wind energy

A wind company backed by an entity of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has taken the first step to sue two small Wisconsin towns in response to their effort to pass ordinances written to protect residents’ health and safety.

But those local communities are fighting back.

“Our resistance is spreading like a turbine fire,” Martin Machtan, an attorney and executive director of Farmland First, told The Epoch Times.

Farmland First is an organization that aims to facilitate discussion among community members concerned about the reported coercive, predatory tactics used by industrial wind and solar companies to manipulate landowners into signing their property rights away in the name of green energy.

“These large-scale wind and solar projects do not happen without trillions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer funds and foreign capital,” Mr. Machtan said. “The U.S. government, foreign governments, and private equity also cannot build large-scale wind and solar without externalizing enormous health, safety, environmental, and decommissioning costs onto residents, towns, and counties.”

With the help of Farmland First’s advocacy, 16 towns in central Wisconsin passed health and safety ordinances in the spring of 2023 that set ground rules for companies seeking to build wind turbines up to 600 feet tall and as close as 1,250 feet from their homes.

The resolutions were written to mitigate the harm wind turbines have been reported to cause people, their land, and their natural environment, including wildlife.

Marathon Wind Farm (MWF)—named for its construction in Marathon County, Wisconsin—responded by filing a notice of claim against two towns: Eau Pleine, which has a population of around 750, and Brighton, with a population of approximately 600.

MWF is an EDP Renewables (EDPR) project.

MWF called for the wind ordinances passed by the local towns to be “repealed immediately” because they are “unlawful” and said they would cause “severe damage to wind energy systems.”

The company cited Wisconsin statute 66.0401, subtitled, “Regulation relating to solar and wind energy systems,” which states that “no political subdivision” may pass ordinances that exceed the restrictions stipulated by the Public Service Commission (PSC).

Mr. Machtan said what wind companies often fail to cite is the exception on which the towns are relying. The exception allows towns to pass restrictions that serve “to preserve or protect the public health or safety.”

He added that the PSC in the state is “pro-wind and pro-solar.”

“At least one county zoning administrator has said that it looks like the Public Service Commission rules regulating wind development in Wisconsin were written by the wind industry,” Mr. Machtan said.

Mr. Machtan said that the project is “almost universally unpopular,” and that much of his most useful information on the wind company’s business practices comes from those who have signed contracts, but now want out.

The purpose of the ordinances was not to stop the project, he said, but to protect the property values, health, safety, and the towns’ overall “rural way of life.”

The state and federal government, including the PSC, aren’t doing this, he said.

“It’s really hurtful to us,” he said. “The state, federal, and foreign interests are directly attacking our friends, our neighbors, and families in these beautiful towns.”

‘A Trojan Horse for China’

By foreign interests, Mr. Machtan means the Chinese Communist Party, which he connected to EDP Renewables.

EDPR’s principal shareholder is Energias de Portugal, whose largest shareholder is the Chinese State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), according to Market Screener.

SASAC’s webpage, under “What We Do,” states that it “performs the responsibilities mandated by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.”

“We are really concerned about private equity and foreign governments taking significant control of some of the best tillable land in the world,” he said. “These contracts transfer so much control of the land from the landowner or farmer to the company that holds the contracts that this almost feels like a Trojan horse for China buying local farms in many ways.”

Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) blamed President Joe Biden’s 2021 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) for the incursion, which gives tax credits to not only domestic but also foreign companies for wind and solar projects.

“Unfortunately, due to massive loopholes ripe for fraud and abuse, China is flocking to North America to take advantage of the tax incentives authorized in the IRA,” Rep. Posey was quoted as saying in a 2023 Forbes report. “Congress did not pass these tax credits to help boost China’s economy.”

However, according to Mr. Machtan, those tax credits are a “huge giveaway” to China.

Wisconsin community members gather to hear their options at a Farmland First meeting, in 2024. (Courtesy of Barb Machtan)

‘Already at a Breaking Point’

Isaac Orr, a policy fellow with the Center of the American Experiment—a free enterprise, limited government, and personal responsibility think tank—told The Epoch Times that one of the priorities for Republicans, if they retake the House and the Senate in the presidential election, needs to be the repealing of wind and solar subsidies found in the IRA.

“I call it the Inflation Production Act because wind companies get $27.50 for every megawatt hour of electricity that the wind turbines produce, so essentially we’re incentivizing energy sprawl at a federal level.”

Wisconsin is part of a 15-state electricity grid called the Midcontinent Independent Systems Operator (MISO), he said. The problem, he said, is that Wisconsin’s electrical grid is “already at a breaking point.”

“So, adding more unreliable generators isn’t exactly a recipe for success,” Mr. Orr said.

“Essentially, the agencies in charge of making sure the lights stay on at a federal level, like the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, identified the MISO grid as the most at risk of rolling blackouts in the near future because we’re retiring too many coal plants and depending on unreliable sources like wind and solar. It’s the Green New Deal for MISO, and it’s not going to end well.”

‘A Frightening Prospect’

Both Eau Pleine and Brighton have filed claims with their insurance companies, but because the projects are encouraged by state and federal government, those towns are concerned that the insurance company attorneys won’t vigorously defend the townships, Mr. Machtan said.

Electors of Eau Pleine asked Farmland First to promote a large turnout for an event to support town supervisors, he said, which took place last week.

“Litigation is a frightening prospect for town supervisors and chairs,” Mr. Machtan wrote on his Substack page, on which he began documenting the events in 2024. “Those elected officials are accustomed to dealing with things like road maintenance, not lawsuits from aggressive global capital.”

Mr. Machtan said the organization has pledged up to $30,000 to support legal funds and to lend its team of attorneys to step in for the insurance company if they “aren’t up for the task” of defending the towns.

Community members have come together to protest the wind project.

In one meeting last week, they crowded into a town hall to discuss the issue, prompting the local fire department to have to perform an emergency fire code assessment to determine its maximum capacity at 115.

“It’s very rare for people to show up to these town meetings at all, but we are now having people come from other towns because if Brighton and Eau Pleine fall, the others could follow,” he said. “There would be no protection.”

‘A Lopsided Fight’

Tom Wilcox is a member of Farmland First and chairman of the Town of Green Grove in Clark County, Wisconsin. He’s also on the Clark County Board of Supervisors and chairman of the Clark County Planning and Zoning.

To boot, he’s also a farmer and a tow truck driver.

A majority of what is involved in managing a town that size is buying gravel, grading roads—all of which are gravel except for the county roads—and plowing snow, he said.

“We haven’t seen anything like this before, so it’s a bit scary,” Mr. Wilcox said. “It’s a fight that sure seems lopsided to me.”

In February, Mr. Wilcox realized that if the wind company could go door to door signing people up who wanted turbines on their land, then he could do the same, only for people who didn’t want turbines on their land.

“We call it the landowner’s pledge,” he said.

While not legally binding, it’s a show of support for those who could be susceptible, such as his Mennonite neighbors whom he said are too friendly to tell them to “just go away and don’t come back.”

“When the wind company representatives return to their door, they can just say, ‘Hey, I’ve already signed this pledge, so I can’t possibly sign your contract,’” Mr. Wilcox explained.

It also documents the acreage of land owned by people who don’t want turbines to show to lawmakers, he said.

Mr. Wilcox’s goal is to get at least twice as many acres as what the wind company has signed up for in Clark County, which at this time is 11,000 acres.

He currently has 17,000 acres of land owned by people who are opposed to the wind turbines, he said.

Tom Wilcox, a Wisconsin community leader and member of Farmland First, at an event in 2024. (Courtesy of Barb Machtan)

‘A One-Way Street’

In anticipation of the inevitable proposal of joint development agreements (JDAs) with the towns, Mr. Wilcox has been working to ensure that the roads will be protected during construction, he said.

“These town chairs will probably enter into one of these contracts in their life, while the developers have more than likely done 10 in a week,” he said. “Well, who do you suppose is better at negotiating their position?”

Where he’s seen small towns get shafted is when the developer caps road damage in the agreement at a certain amount, he said.

Say a developer caps road damage at $100,000, Mr. Wilcox explained. “By law, I can charge actual damages times three,” he said.

It’s called awarding triple damages, he said, because a lot of the time people don’t realize that there’s going to be more than what is what is compensated for in the agreement.

“I think towns and counties are going to realize they are much better off not signing JDAs that will likely allow the companies to collar their costs at the expense of taxpayers,” he said. “We don’t have wind farms here, yet, and when they do come, I don’t want to learn this stuff too late,” he said.

Because of Wisconsin’s resource of sand mined for use in the petroleum, glass, and foundry industries, there are existing “nonmetallic mining” laws written to protect local and county governments so that when mines are closed, they can be reclaimed for use, whether it be for farming or construction.

Mr. Wilcox said there needs to be a clear reclamation plan from the wind companies.

Still, because many of the people involved in these contracts aren’t farmers, they don’t understand what kind of irreparable damage can be done to land, such as the removal of topsoil, he said.

“If there are no rules and you can come in and strip that black dirt, put it on a truck, and take it away, there’s no way to reclaim that back into farmland,” he said. “That’s a one-way street, and I’m astounded that people don’t understand that.”

‘Shoved Down Our Throats’

The counties and towns are met with the same line when they appeal to their representatives in the state capital of Madison, Wisconsin: “We believe this is a local issue that needs to be settled on a local level,” Mr. Wilcox said.

“And yet when we do that, it feels like we get kicked in the teeth,” he said. “Even though I think there is a clear path for us to fix it at a local level, they get mad when we do.”

Overall, Mr. Wilcox said he feels the wind projects “are getting shoved down our throats.”

“And they think we’re a bunch of hillbillies who are just going to shut up and take it,” Mr. Wilcox said. “But I’ve met all kinds of people since I’ve been in Farmland First who I’ve never met before, and I can’t believe the intelligence and talent that they have.”

Martin Machtan and Tom Wilcox at a Wisconsin farm free of wind turbines, 2023. (Courtesy of Tom Wilcox)

Martin Machtan and Tom Wilcox at a Wisconsin farm free of wind turbines, 2023. (Courtesy of Tom Wilcox)

‘No One Is Listening’

Trine Spindler, a dairy farmer, is the Marathon County Chapter chair of Farmland First.

She’s also a native of Copenhagen, Denmark, where wind energy was pioneered.

Because Denmark is made up of islands, most of the turbines are in the ocean, she said, and they are having the same problems with them that coastal regions are facing in the United States with the destruction of marine life.

“It’s not necessarily with the whales but with fish populations leaving and our smaller, water-based life,” she said. “They’re actually trying to reestablish mussel colonies around the base of these turbines because they have disappeared.”

Wind turbines are “hugely unpopular” for the same reasons they are in the United States, she said

Just as in the United States, there are different opinions, but when projects are planned in chosen areas, there’s always a fight over where they will go, she said.

“Now, Denmark is a lot more socialist than we are so government officials can put them where they want them to a certain extent,” she said. “The wind industry is backed over 50 percent by the government if not more, but, like here, local communities are fighting them.”

Denmark wants to have the reputation of being the greenest country, she said, and government officials have to have a certain amount of wind turbines installed to achieve this goal.

“But it’s just a game to look good in my mind,” she said. “I don’t think they’re actually doing anything good for the environment.”

For Ms. Spindler, one of the biggest issues is that the townspeople of Wisconsin aren’t being heard.

“We don’t get any help from legislators or the county boards,” she said. “We have a huge amount of people coming out from local townships who are 98 percent to 2 percent saying, ‘We do not want this.’ And no one is listening.”

No one wants to speak out against green energy, she said, which is why she believes local media hasn’t given the cause a voice.

“We’re just regular people out here who are going to end up fighting these giant industries by ourselves and it’s scary and worrisome,” she said. “But we’re ready to take on the fight.”

The Epoch Times contacted EDP Renewables for comment.

Commissioners approve moratorium on new wind farm projects
20 March 2024
Indiana, Wind power, Wind energy

A moratorium on the development of any new wind farms in Madison County has been approved by the Madison County Board of Commissioners.

The Commissioners Tuesday voted to approve the recommendation of the county’s Plan Commission to put in place the moratorium

The county adopted a wind farm ordinance in 2002 and only one project has been approved since that time in northern Madison County.

Larry Strange, director of the Planning Department, said the ordinance should be reviewed.

“The ordinance should be reviewed prior to any new applications for a wind farm or battery storage facilities,” Strange said.

Commissioner John Richwine asked what time frame was included with the moratorium.

Strange said there was no limit on the length of the moratorium set by the Plan Commission, but anticipated having the ordinance reviewed within one year.

He previously said the application process for future wind farm developments should be similar to the procedures adopted in the county’s new solar energy ordinance.

“The wind ordinance should have the same level of scrutiny,” he said. “There should be a site development plan review that would have to be approved by the Plan Commission.”

The Commissioners also approved an amendment to the county’s solar ordinance.

The amendment changes the proposed three-mile buffer zone between any solar energy facility and local waterways to one-mile.

Strange said a one-mile buffer zone is sufficient.

Janet Mills proposes rolling back dune protections to build offshore wind port
19 March 2024
Maine, Wind power, Wind energy

Gov. Janet Mills wants to roll back protections for the sand dunes that partially make up the state’s preferred site for a landmark offshore wind terminal.

The Democratic governor’s bill, which was submitted this week by Rep. Gerry Runte, D-York, a member of the Legislature’s energy committee, is aimed at clearing the way for the terminal. The Mills administration picked Sears Island in Searsport over nearby Mack Point as its preferred staging ground for shipping wind components out to sea.

The state’s preference for Sears Island has been controversial, and it has been opposed by some conservationists plus an eclectic coalition of conservatives, progressives and tribes. Mills’ move to roll back existing environmental laws could add fuel to their arguments. The bill will give skeptics including fishermen another platform to oppose offshore wind in general.

Mills’ bill was made public late Wednesday. On Friday, Runte said he had been approached by administration officials within the last “couple of days” who told him they had recently realized that dunes on Sears Island posed an issue that the Legislature needs to resolve.

The measure would exempt a wind terminal from coastal sand dune protections. Maine Department of Transportation spokesperson Paul Merrill noted that the dune affected by the project is not naturally occurring and accumulated due to the placement of a jetty. Runte and the state are working on an amendment that protects natural dunes on the island, Merrill said.

“We’re only talking about a small portion of the overall land that’s defined for the work,” Runte said.

Coastal dunes are protected under the Maine Natural Resources Protection Act, which requires development to not interfere with dunes or increase erosion hazards beyond them. Sears Island is uninhabited and undeveloped, though environmental groups waged a legal battle through the 1990s on the heels of several commercial development ideas from governors.

The offshore wind terminal is yet another one. Mills aims to position Maine among the first states to deploy offshore wind, using floating technology that has been developed over nearly two decades at the University of Maine in Orono.

It is a key part of meeting ambitious state and regional climate goals, and the industry could add thousands of new jobs in Maine. Yet fishermen and their political allies are skeptical that their industry can coexist with turbines that will be in federal waters in the Gulf of Maine.

The Mills bill shows that the state is “making the mistake of designating a preferred location, and then trying to find the reasoning to make it happen,” Kyla Bennett, the science policy director for the Massachusetts-based Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which opposes the site, wrote in an email calling the new measure “despicable.”

“This is not the way this is supposed to work,” Bennett wrote.

Biden administration sued over Virginia offshore wind farm approval
19 March 2024
Virginia, Wildlife, Wind power, Wind energy

A conservative think tank on Monday sued the Biden administration in an effort to reverse approval of what would be the largest offshore wind farm of its kind.

The Heartland Institute filed the suit with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a nonprofit that advocates for an economically libertarian approach to environmental action and has denied the existence of human-caused climate change. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks to reverse the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) approval of Dominion Energy’s 176-turbine wind project offshore Virginia.

The groups’ lawsuit argues the approvals did not properly account for possible dangers to the North Atlantic right whale from construction of the project.

“This erroneous biological opinion issued by NMFS is a classic example of abdication of its duty to provide meaningful protection for an endangered species. Playing politics with such an iconic species as the right whale is an unfortunate example of the Biden administration’s allegiance to climate alarmism.”

The lawsuit echoes what has become a frequent argument by conservatives against renewable energy installations. Former President Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee for president in 2024, made similar claims in opposition to offshore wind installations.

However, data on whale deaths – and North Atlantic right whale deaths in particular – show no indication that offshore wind is driving deaths. Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on right whale deaths between 2017 and 2024 showed that vessel strikes caused the most deaths – 14 of 39 total – followed by 13 deaths from unknown causes and nine from entanglement in fishing gear. NOAA data on humpback whale mortality also showed 40 percent were caused by either entanglement or vessel strikes.

NOAA estimates as few as 360 North Atlantic right whales remain alive in the wild. In January, the Biden administration unveiled a strategy to protect the species during the offshore wind buildout process, which included ongoing consultations on avoiding the noise disruptions that have been a major contributor to habitat loss.

The Hill has reached out to NMFS for comment. BOEM declined comment.

Protest in Varna against wind facilities in the Black Sea
18 March 2024
Bulgaria, Wind power, Wind energy

Representatives of the fishing and tourism industries are protesting in Varna against the draft law on renewable energy in marine areas. Traffic in the area of the Palace of Culture and Sports was disrupted for 3 hours before noon on Monday 18 March.

At the same time, a round table on the development of wind farms in the nearby Black Sea is being organised by the Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD).

“The so-called CSD continues to lobby for the proposed law. We will show once again that the Bulgarian maritime community and the people living on the Black Sea demand the immediate withdrawal of this bill,” said Emil Milev, President of the Black Sea Sunrise Fishing Association.

Langworthy, state lawmakers, others call for Great Lakes wind turbine moratorium
16 March 2024
New York, Video, Wind power, Wind energy

At the end of 2022, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) released a feasibility study focused on wind turbine energy production in Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.

The 136-page study and 51-page white paper concluded that offshore wind production on the lakes isn’t cost effective, nor a unique and critical contribution to the states climate goals.

But Citizens Against Wind Turbines In Lake Erie (CAWTILE) are still fighting for their cause because the study does leave room for development down the road if technology improves.

“The concern is that they will come back,” said Patti Meckes, one of the CAWTILE advocates. “New York doesn’t stop at anything, they will circle back and try again.”

Meckes and CAWTILE have been fighting this fight for 15 years, and they want it to end.

“We want a permanent law that says no wind turbines in Lake Erie, not now, not ever,” Meckes said.

This direct message in response to a bill being proposed in the New York State Senate that would allow NYSERDA to issue 200Mw licenses to wind developers looking to build in Lake Erie or Ontario.

The bill is sponsored by Westchester and Hudson Valley senator Pete Harkham. His district is more than 360 miles away from Lake Erie.

“They cannot destroy any freshwater,” Meckes said. “Not Lake Erie, Ontario, Michigan, Huron Superior, none of it.”

U.S. Rep. Nick Langworthy is echoing the sentiments of CAWTILE advocates and calling on the governor to block any offshore wind turbines in Lake Erie and Ontario.

“Today, I am calling on governor hopeful to place a moratorium on Great Lakes wind projects and all proposals,” Langworthy said. “If she’s really still a western New Yorker, she will understand this helps no one in this community, this will not help them achieve their agenda.”

A spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul reiterated a previous statement sent to WGRZ in February that states in part “at present, Great Lakes wind does not offer a unique, critical, or cost-effective contribution toward the achievement of New York’s Climate Act goals. There has been no other update since the whitepaper was filed with the PSC.”

Langworthy has taken the issue to Washington, proposing a bill that would strip federal tax credits from any project.

“They’re not profitable, organically, only through the giveaways of taxpayer dollars,” Langworthy said. “So if we stripped the federal tax credits, they would all die natural deaths.”

Landmark wind turbine noise ruling from High Court referred to attorney general
16 March 2024
Ireland, Complaints, Wind power, Wind energy

The attorney general is studying a landmark High Court ruling on noise from wind turbines that could have implications for the operation of existing and future wind farms.

Officials from two Government departments, Housing and Environment, have joined the chief law officer in examining the judgement.

Wind Energy Ireland, which represents most wind farm owners in the country, also has experts scrutinising it.

The ruling found that turbine noise – even if within planning regulation limits – could be categorised as a nuisance.

That opens the possibility of compensation claims by people who say noise from turbines interferes with the enjoyment of their homes and daily lives.

In the case that gave rise to the ruling, nuisance was proven by two couples who lived close to a wind farm in Co Wexford.

The case heard they were constantly stressed and sleepless, that one of the couples split up largely because of it and one party was left suicidal and remained under treatment for depression.

High Court judge Ms Justice Emily Egan found they had established their right to receive damages from the company involved.

“This is wind turbine noise that an objectively reasonable person should not be expected to tolerate,” she said.

A second part of their case will consider the level of damages due and, significantly, whether an injunction should be granted against the wind farm.

If an injunction is granted, it may come in the form of restrictions on operating hours rather than a complete stop to operations.

The ruling is the first on the issue in Ireland and comes at a critical time in national plans to increase the generation of renewable electricity.

Ireland has about 4.5 gigawatts (GW) of onshore wind power installed in just over 300 wind farms.

Under the Climate Action Plan, the capacity must double to 9GW by 2030.

A spokesperson for Wind Energy Ireland said: “It’s a very detailed judgement and covers a complex area of project development.

“We are studying it closely to see what implications, if any, it might have for the development of onshore renewable energy in Ireland.”

The Department of Housing, which is responsible for planning regulations, said it was considering the judgement in conjunction with the Department of the Environment and the Office of the Attorney General.

The wind farm at the centre of the case is at Ballyduff, Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, owned by Meenacloghspar Wind, and has been in operation since 2017.

It received planning permission with conditions around the level of noise measured at the nearest house.

Over 51 days of hearings, evidence was presented on the causes and frequencies of noise, the weather and geographical features that influence it and how it is perceived by people.

The case focused chiefly on “aerodynamic noise” caused by the interaction of the rotor blades with the surrounding air which Ms Justice Egan characterised as “swish, whoomph and thump”.

Lawyers for Meenacloghspar said their client should be judged on their compliance with the planning conditions on noise levels, which was not in question.

Ms Justice Egan disagreed, saying the court did not have to restrict its assessment to planning compliance – a finding that may have implications in other cases.

She highlighted a lack of regulatory data in Ireland, and relied on the UK’s ‘Windfarm Noise Statutory Complaint Methodology’ for guidance.

Ms Justice Egan acknowledged the wider significance of the case.

“This case concerns the production of renewable energy which is clearly of vital importance to society, and to everyone who lives in it,” she said.

The fact that such activity was of public importance was not a defence, she said. However, it might have some bearing on the final outcome.

“The public interest must inevitably be a factor in the court’s assessment of an appropriate remedy.

“At the very least, it means that a generalised injunction ought not to be granted where a tailored injunction more suitable to the particular interference held to constitute nuisance is warranted.”

The plaintiffs in the case are couple, Ross Shorten and Joan Carty, and former couple, Margaret Webster and Keith Rollo.

The former have left the area since the court case began, while Mr Rollo also left after contemplating suicide.

Ms Justice Egan directed all parties to engage in mediation before proceeding to the second part of the case, although she acknowledged that earlier attempts at mediation had failed.

Current wind energy planning guidelines date to 2006 and are widely accepted to be out of date.

The Department of Housing published draft revised guidelines in 2019 but they were later withdrawn, partly due to disputes over the proposed guidance on noise levels.

The Climate Action Plan sets a timeline of the end of this year for completion of the updated guidelines.

The Department of Housing said: “The Department is working towards meeting this commitment.”

Feds announce possible location for Gulf of Maine wind farm
16 March 2024
Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Wind power, Wind energy

Maine’s lobster industry opposes plans for a commercial wind energy facility in a 2-million-acre swath of the gulf.

Federal officials announced Friday they have identified a 2-million-acre swath of the Gulf of Maine for a commercial wind farm.

The designated area ranges from about 23 to 93 miles off the coasts of Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts.

The area in green represents the part of the Gulf of Maine that federal officials have identified for an offshore wind farm. Credit: U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said the area is 80% smaller than the initial proposal and avoids lobstering areas, tribal fishing grounds, and the habitat of the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.

“(The bureau) is committed to maintaining strong collaboration with the states of Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire as we advance our efforts in the Gulf of Maine,” BOEM Director Elizabeth Klein said in a statement. “We remain dedicated to engaging with Tribal governments, federal and state agencies, ocean stakeholders, coastal communities, and all interested parties as we progress through our environmental review.”

The Maine Lobstermen’s Association, however, issued a statement opposing a wind farm in the gulf.

“(The association) remains steadfast in its position that no area of the Gulf of Maine should be industrialized with offshore wind,” the association said in a statement. “There are still too many unanswered questions about the impacts of offshore wind on the marine environment, commercial fishermen and our fishing heritage.”

Gov. Janet Mills, U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King, and Rep. Chellie Pingree signaled their support for the designated area in a joint statement: “The Bureau has heeded our concerns and the majority of the concerns of Maine’s fishing communities in its final designation of Wind Energy Areas for the Gulf of Maine. This decision preserves vital fishing grounds and seeks to minimize potential environmental and ecological impacts to the Gulf of Maine. We look forward to reviewing the final map in detail and urge the Bureau to continue to engage with Maine’s fishing industry, coastal communities, Tribal governments, and other key maritime users and stakeholders as the commercial leasing process moves forward.”

Offshore wind is a priority for the Biden administration, which has recently approved six projects. The first, a 12-turbine array 35 miles off the coast of Montauk Point, New York, called South Fork Wind, went online this week. It can produce 132 megawatts of power, enough for over 70,000 homes, officials said.

The Gulf of Maine wind farm would be much larger, with the potential to generate 32 gigawatts, according to the bureau, which said it’s exploring more opportunities across the country.

“(The bureau) also continues to take steps to evolve its approach to offshore wind to drive towards union-built projects and a domestic-based supply chain,” it said.

The Maine AFL-CIO supports the wind farm.

“Offshore wind has the potential to transform our coastal economies with thousands of well-paying union jobs, make Maine more energy independent, and substantially cut our climate pollution, but it’s crucial that these projects are sited properly so that our fishing communities are protected,” Cynthia Phinney, president of the Maine AFL-CIO, said in a statement.

Last month, Mills announced her recommendation to build a turbine assembly facility at Sears Island that could support the wind farm.

The bureau said it plans to conduct an environmental study of the potential impacts of a wind farm in the Gulf of Maine and gather public comments before exploring a lease.

“(The bureau) will continue to consult with all Tribal Nations, the fishing industry, and other stakeholders who have an interest in the region to understand their concerns with potential offshore wind energy development,” it added.

Maine Audobon said the designated area is away from the most “high-conflict wildlife areas.”

“We will pursue additional wildlife safeguards throughout the leasing process, but this announcement is a very important step in the right direction,” Maine Audobon biologist Sarah Haggerty said in a statement.

Farmers, regional communities devastated but developers delighted by Victoria’s renewables fast-track
15 March 2024
Australia, Wind power, Wind energy

Farmers and communities objecting to massive solar or wind farms would be forced to go to the ­Supreme Court under a radical Victorian plan to fast track renewable projects across the state, which the energy industry wants adopted nationwide.

The Allan government’s decision to accelerate the planning ­approval process for renewable energy projects has left regional communities deeply concerned, with the Victorian Farmers Federation condemning it as a “slap in the face after years of sham consultation”.

The changes will concentrate power in the hands of Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny, removing the requirement for applications to go before a planning panel, and block third-party ­appeals to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal, as the state moves desperately to meet its net-zero targets.

Set to be introduced from April 1, the measures are being touted by the government as providing investment certainty for the ­renewable energy industry by ­reducing the time taken from lodgement of application to a decision to four months.

But they effectively mean any person or community wishing to object to the Planning Minister’s decision will be forced to take the matter to the Supreme Court, at prohibitive expense.

The announcement comes after The Australian revealed on Thursday that Victoria’s offshore wind targets are likely to take longer to meet and be significantly more expensive than the state government has predicted – highlighting the pressure the state government faces to get onshore renewables projects moving in order to have any hope of meeting its target of 95 per cent renewable energy by 2035. As one of Australia’s most coal-dependent states, Victoria can ill-afford ­delays in developing renewable energy, with its two largest coal generators – Yallourn and Loy Yang A – set to retire in little more than 10 years.

Yallourn, which supplies about 22 per cent of Victoria’s electricity, is to close in 2028.

Stephanie Bashir, founder of energy consultancy Nexa Advisory, said the Victorian announcement should be the template for others – most ­notably NSW – to follow in the race to ­replace coal power.

“The announcement today from the Premier of Victoria is the exactly the action needed from the Minns government,” Ms Bashir said. “This will ensure (they) get the projects needed to close ­Eraring coal power station on time. This would also set us up for closures of other ageing power stations such as Vales Point, and accelerate the transition more broadly.”

VFF president Emma Germano said the green-lighting of major renewable projects added to a “poor track record” of consulting landholders and risked further alienating farmers.

“For the government to say they are genuinely listening to the concerns of these communities and then completely ignore them and fast-track the process smacks of arrogance,” she said.

Her comments come after the government stated in a March 2022 document justifying its offshore wind policy that it believed 70 per cent of the state’s agricultural land would be required for wind and solar if the offshore ­option was not utilised.

The country’s energy market operator has said it expects all of Australia’s coal power stations to be mothballed within 15 years, heightening the onus on new renewable energy projects being delivered.

Without sufficient new renewable energy capacity, Australia will see increased prices and a decade of unreliable supplies, the Australian Energy Market Operator has warned.

Aerial view of the Stubbo solar farm project which is under construction just north of Gulgong, NSW, part of the Central-West Orana renewable energy zone. Picture by Max Mason-Hubers

Developers have long said Victoria compares favourably to the likes of NSW, given the former has rules stating “affected people” are those within 1.5km of a wind farm. In NSW, people can object if they live within 8km.

“Victoria was already one of the best jurisdictions in the country. Everything they announced today will improve the ability of the industry to get projects off the ground,” said a senior energy executive who declined to be named.
Dmitry Danilovich – development director at Acciona ­Energia, one of the country’s largest renewable energy developers – said: “Today’s announcement is a welcome step towards getting more renewable energy into the electricity grid faster.”

The Conroy family: Will, 4, Jess, Isla 6, Anna, 8, John, and Jack, 10. The family fear the impact the proposed $750 million Meadow Creek Solar Farm will have on their farm at Bobinawarrah in north east Victoria.

Neighbors of John Conroy’s family cattle farm at Bobinawarrah, in northeast Victoria, proposed $750m, 570ha solar factory to be built at Meadow Creek in the King River catchment near Milawa.

Mr Conroy, spokesman for the Meadow Creek Agricultural Community Action Group, said the government’s decision to fast-track the planning process was “really concerning”. “They’re trying to take our voice away,” he said. “These solar factories are going to be in our backyards. We’re going to have to deal with them. We’ll be fighting the fires. We’ll be dealing with the run-off, the degradation of the soil, the negative impacts on the local ­environment.

“Why should we not have an appropriate timeline and opportunities to appeal any planning application, when these mainly international renewable companies could be planning these projects for three or four years, with highly paid professional people?”

Wangaratta Mayor Dean Rees shared Mr Conroy’s concerns, saying he regretted having supported a 323ha at Glenrowan West, 30km from Meadow Creek. “The government is not listening,” he said. “The government want to meet their targets and they just don’t care.”

Premier Jacinta Allan said: “Communities who support the project, or may have issues with the project, will have absolutely every opportunity to raise those views.”

Wind farm project loses appeal for second time
14 March 2024
Scotland, Victories, Wind power, Wind energy

A wind farm project in southern Scotland has been rejected at appeal for the second time.

The scheme at Garcrogo Hill and Barmark Hill, near Corsock in Dumfries and Galloway, would have involved the construction of seven turbines.

A previous bid for nine turbines was refused at appeal in August 2022.

A Scottish government reporter has ruled that revised proposals by Energiekontor UK should not go ahead either.

‘Range of benefits’

The company argued that the scheme could deliver a “broad range of benefits” and would help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

It appealed against Dumfries and Galloway Council’s failure to determine its application within the required time scale.

However, that was unsuccessful for a second time as a reporter concluded it should not go ahead.

She said it would not comply with the development plan for the area and she could not allow it planning permission.

Crashed truck carrying wind turbine tower closes I-84 in eastern Oregon
14 March 2024
Oregon, Accidents, Wind power, Wind energy

A truck transporting a large section of a wind turbine tower crashed on westbound Interstate 84, closing both directions of the freeway between exit 304 North of Baker City and exit 374 near Ontario on Wednesday.

The closure is also impacting eastbound traffic from exit 265 near La Grande to Ontario.

A photo shared by the Oregon Department of Transportation shows a semitruck on its side. A wind turbine section is blocking the roadway.

Transportation officials warned that the eastern Oregon stretch of I-84 would be closed for several hours. It’s unclear what caused the crash or if anyone was injured.

U.S. 30 and Oregon 245 are closed to non-local traffic and are not available as detour routes, the department said. Motorists can check TripCheck for updates.

[rest of article available at source]

Congress inserts conditions for Idaho wind farm in federal spending bill
12 March 2024
Idaho, Wind power, Wind energy

Signs opposing the Lava Ridge Wind Farm scatter farm fields on the road from the highway to the Minidoka National Historic Site. Rachel Cohen/Boise State Public Radio

Congress passed a federal spending package late into the evening on Friday that funds several key agencies through September, avoiding a government shutdown. Tucked inside one of the bills is a measure that specifically addresses a proposed wind farm in Idaho.

The appropriations bill for the Interior Department includes a section about the Lava Ridge Wind Project, proposed on public lands in the Magic Valley.

It says no funds in the package can be used for “granting, issuing or renewing a right-of-way” for Lava Ridge, until the Bureau of Land Management, in consultation with local officials, has analyzed alternative turbine designs to reduce impacts on wildlife, cultural resources and more. Additionally, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland would need to report back to Congress on the progress of these consultations.

Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a press release that this measure in the federal budget blocks “the out-of-touch Lava Ridge Wind Project until the Secretary of Interior consults with local elected officials and stakeholders and reports back to Congress.”

Analyzing alternative turbine designs and engaging with the community are key components of the review process for Lava Ridge that the Bureau of Land Management has been conducting for the past three years under the National Environmental Policy Act.

The agency formed a local subcommittee to discuss the project, which included county commissioners, that hosted public forums and collected more than 11,000 public comments on the draft environmental impact statement report.

However, a spokesperson for Simpson said the appropriations bill introduces a “new, separate requirement” for the BLM in its analysis of Lava Ridge, on top of the NEPA process.

There has been widespread opposition to the wind project from various groups, including local residents, ranchers, members of the Japanese American community and Idaho politicians.

In an emailed statement, LS Power, the company proposing Lava Ridge, said public engagement has been integral to the BLM’s evaluation of the project.

“This proposed legislation underscores the importance of local stakeholder perspectives in the BLM’s land use decisions,” said Luke Papez, senior director of project development at LS Power, before Congress passed the bill.

The BLM’s D.C. office declined to comment on this section of the appropriations bill and its implications for the agency’s consideration of Lava Ridge.

A final environmental impact report on the wind project was expected last month but was postponed until spring.

Minnesota eyes permitting reform for clean energy amid gridlock in Congress
12 March 2024
Minnesota, Wind power, Wind energy

New York, California, Florida, Illinois and Michigan have all enacted permitting reforms that make it more difficult for local governments to block wind or solar projects, and Minnesota passed a law last year that exempts certain large wind and solar projects from certificate of need permits.

Minnesota lawmakers are holding a hearing today to debate a proposed bill that would enact a series of changes to the way the state permits wind and solar farms, as well as the transmission lines needed to deliver the electricity they produce.

Last year, Minnesota passed a sweeping package of climate laws, including one that requires the state to generate 100 percent of its electricity from carbon-free sources by 2040. “We’re going to need quite a bit more renewable energy in our system to achieve 100 percent,” said Minnesota House Majority Leader Jamie Long, a Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) party member who authored the permitting bill. “So we need transmission and we need it fast.”

The Minnesota Energy Infrastructure Permitting Act, which was introduced last week, would reduce procedural requirements, consolidate environmental review authority for energy projects to a single state agency, limit certain contested case hearings and exempt all wind and solar projects and some transmission lines from certificate of need permits. The bill’s supporters say it could shave off as much as nine months from a process that can often take more than five years—and without scuttling the public input process, a top concern for environmental justice advocates.

The proposal is the latest legislative effort to streamline the regulatory approval process for clean energy projects—what’s more commonly referred to as permitting reform. It’s also an example of why state action could be key to advancing permitting reform this year, energy experts say, as Congress remains gridlocked on the issue.

At least 10 federal permitting reform bills are unlikely to gain any traction on Capitol Hill ahead of the presidential election in November. While progressives wish to speed up approvals of renewable energy infrastructure, Republicans—and some conservative Democrats—have refused to cooperate unless fossil fuel projects are given equal, if not better, treatment.

That standstill, however, hasn’t stopped at least six states from enacting their own versions of permitting reform in recent years, said Matthew Eisenson, a senior researcher for Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

New York, California, Florida, Illinois and Michigan have all enacted permitting reforms that make it more difficult for local governments to block wind or solar projects, Eisenson said, and Minnesota passed a law last year that exempts certain large wind and solar projects from certificate of need permits. Those permits require developers to show regulators that there’s a public need for their proposed projects and are often central to the arguments of legal challenges against them.

Massachusetts, Nevada and Wisconsin also have legislation that prohibits local governments from placing “unreasonable restrictions” on solar development, Eisenson added, but those laws have been in place since 2009 or earlier.

“I think state level action has an enormous role to play in renewable energy siting and the ability of states to achieve their climate change goals,” he said. “There is so much wind and solar in the queue right now in these states, and these projects bring major economic benefits to the communities and there is a lot of desire to help them get constructed.”

Infrastructure projects can take a notoriously long time to get approval, with designing and financing alone taking upwards of two years, and federal and state reviews adding another six even before construction begins, one energy expert told the Senate Budget Committee in July. Even after an energy project is complete, it can take several more years to connect that project to the power grid, according to a 2022 study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, or LBNL.

As a result, thousands of solar and wind energy systems have been waiting for years just to be hooked up to the grid, according to a separate LBNL report released last year. That report found that the number of interconnection requests from energy projects grew by 40 percent between 2021 and 2022, with 95 percent of those consisting of renewables. It also found that local opposition, not federal review, was the most common reason for clean energy project delays and cancellations during that time period, causing a third of the cancellations and up to 65 percent of the delays.

State-level permitting reform could be especially impactful in the Midwest, where a massive expansion of transmission lines—costing tens of billions of dollars—is already being planned, said Samantha Gross, director of the energy security and climate initiative at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy think tank. “A lot of the jurisdiction for this lies in the states, so tackling this at the state level … can actually do quite a bit of good without federal legislation.”

Transmission lines are among the most difficult projects to receive speedy approval, Gross said, because they tend to cross multiple states and jurisdictions, each of which have their own set of requirements the developer would need to fulfill. In fact, Gross said, she already knows of one transmission line currently under development in the Midwest that would immediately benefit from state level reforms.

The project—a lengthy transmission line called the Grain Belt Express, which would deliver electricity produced at wind and solar farms in Kansas 800 miles to Missouri and Illinois—has been delayed for more than a decade by the regulatory process and legal challenges.

“If those contiguous states had some permitting reform, you could probably get that project done,” Gross said.

The bill now before the Minnesota Legislature would likely speed up the construction of transmission lines, according to a report put together by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, after which the bill was modeled.
This story is funded by readers like you.

Our nonprofit newsroom provides award-winning climate coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep going. Please donate now to support our work.

Not everyone is behind the idea of permitting reform. One of its biggest critics has been environmental justice organizations. The groups worry that speeding up environmental reviews would make the public input process harder for disadvantaged communities, which have historically borne the brunt of the nation’s industrial pollution.

But Long said the changes in his proposal are largely aimed at reducing procedural steps, such as requiring an application go through two separate state agencies or requiring state commissioners to go through the lengthy voting process just to decide if an application is complete. “While we’re trying to remove unnecessary steps, sometimes duplicative steps, we’re certainly not trying to remove public input or stakeholder involvement,” he said.

Minnesota PUC Commissioner Will Seuffert echoed that sentiment, saying that the agency heard from more than 30 stakeholders when crafting its report, identifying areas of agreement on potential changes that wouldn’t impede public input. “Really what we’re trying to do is create administrative efficiency but maintain the core tenants of how we serve the public,” he said.

Ultimately, Long believes his bill will pass this year, largely because of Minnesota’s legally mandated clean energy target and the massive injection of federal funding from the Inflation Reduction Act for renewable energy projects. “We have a short session this year. We’ll be done by mid-May,” he said. “So I think you can expect the bill to move quickly in the next two months.”

Saint John Energy wind farm accused of freeloading at N.B. Power’s expense
12 March 2024
New Brunswick, Wind power, Wind energy

N.B. Power claims Saint John Energy’s new Burchill wind farm has been freeloading backup service from the provincial electrical grid and it wants to begin billing the municipal utility an estimated $334,114 per year for those costs.

It’s the latest flashpoint in a long-simmering dispute between the two utilities over the Burchill Wind Project.

In evidence submitted to the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board as part of its upcoming rate hearing, N.B. Power has asked permission to begin charging a “balancing” fee for having to deal with constantly fluctuating production levels from 10 wind turbines at the Burchill site on the western edge of the city.

“The Burchill wind facility is … creating currently unrecovered balancing costs on the system,” N.B. Power has written in evidence submitted to the board in support of charging Saint John Energy.

“If one of N.B. Power’s in-province customers procures wind power from another supplier, then in the absence of the wind balancing charges that customer would be imposing a disproportionate cost … on all other customers.”

N.B. Power manages and balances the electrical output from 13 wind operations in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and northern Maine and says Burchill is the only one not paying for the cost of balancing its output.

Burchill can generate anywhere between zero and one million kilowatt hours of electricity per day for Saint John Energy, depending on wind conditions. This forces N.B. Power to increase and decrease its own supply to Saint John Energy by the hour to offset those fluctuations.

N.B. Power proposes to charge $2.27 for every 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity the wind farm produces to pay for gaps in service it has to monitor for and deal with.

N.B. Power estimates that will result in a charge of more than $330,000 per year, an amount equal to about 10 per cent of Saint John Energy’s 2022 net income, the latest year for which figures are available.

Saint John Energy is not saying how much the charge, if approved, will affect the economics of the wind farm and savings it has been counting on from having it built.

“In keeping with our past practice and out of respect for the EUB and the ongoing hearing, we will not comment,” Saint John Energy spokesperson Jessica DeLong wrote in an email.

“We expect to make submissions to the EUB as part of the hearing process.”

The requested charge is just the latest point of contention between New Brunswick’s two largest electrical utilities over the Saint John wind farm.

N.B. Power was cool to the idea of a wind project in Saint John from the beginning, citing difficulties managing the up and down output from the numbers of wind turbines it was already dealing with.

In a significant blow to the project’s business case, N.B. Power rejected requests from Saint John Energy to use nearby transmission lines to economically transport wind power from the development into the city.

Saint John Energy proceeded with construction anyway, and 10 turbines were erected at the edge of the Bay of Fundy within a few hundred metres of N.B. Power’s existing Coleson Cove generating station.

They began producing power in the middle of last year.

To make the project work, however, Saint John Energy was forced to construct 20 kilometres of new power lines from the wind farm to an uptown substation on its own, including draping lines over the Reversing Falls.

That added several million dollars to the cost of the project over what paying a toll to use N.B. Power’s existing lines into Saint John was expected to be.

Raw feelings from that experience appeared to flare up again at an Energy and Utilities Board hearing in 2022 as N.B. Power applied for new tolls for the use of its transmission lines, including increased charges for managing wind energy.

N.B. Power lawyer John Furey accused Saint John Energy of dirty tricks at the hearing by financing two experts, one openly and one secretly, to testify against the proposals.

“I am shocked by it, frankly,” Furey told the board when the second expert who had registered as an independent participant acknowledged he had Saint John Energy as a client.

“We now have collusion … to create the impression for the Board that there is consensus,” Furey said. “It is absolutely unfair.”

The board agreed.

Saint John Energy apologized for that incident, but another fight over Burchill is all but certain at this year’s hearing, which is scheduled for mid-May.

Saint John Energy will not comment on how aggressively it intends to fight the Burchill fee but has been gathering all the information it needs to push back.

The lawyer representing New Brunswick Municipal Utilities at the hearing, including Saint John Energy, submitted 37 sets of questions to N.B. Power about its upcoming rate-hearing evidence.

The first 29 sets of questions seek more details about N.B. Power’s wind energy policies and charges.

Annulation historique des autorisations éoliennes
11 March 2024
France, Press releases, Wind power, Wind energy

[The Council of State rendered a historic decision on March 8 making authorizations for onshore wind turbines and the rules for renewing wind facilities illegal. This decision is the result of a request submitted by the Fédération Environnement Durable and fifteen associations.

The Council of State canceled all of the provisions concerning the three successive versions of the noise pollution measurement protocol intended to protect the health of neighbors. This decision not only concerns authorizations and current projects, but could also call into question existing wind farms.]

Le Conseil d’État a rendu le 8 mars une décision historique en rendant illégales les autorisations pour les éoliennes terrestres et les règles de renouvellement des parcs. Cette décision fait suite à une requête introduite par la Fédération Environnement Durable et quinze associations.

Le Conseil d’État a annulé l’ensemble des dispositions concernant les trois versions successives du protocole de mesure de nuisances sonores censé protéger la santé des riverains. Cette décision concerne non seulement les autorisations et les projets en cours, mais pourrait également remettre en cause les parcs éoliens existants.

Conséquences:

Motifs de annulation:

Reactions:

Impact sur l’avenir énergétique français:

La décision du Conseil d’État aura un impact crucial sur l’avenir énergétique français. Le développement de l’énergie éolienne terrestre se trouve désormais freiné, en attendant la mise en place de nouvelles autorisations et règles conformes à la loi. Cette décision soulève également des questions quant à la viabilité des projets en cours et à l’avenir des parcs éoliens existants.

Décision du Conseil d’Etat n°465036 du 8 mars 2024

Contact presse
Fédération Environnement Durable
Jean-Louis Butré
contact@environnementdurable.net
tel : 06 80 99 38 08
https://environnementdurable.org

Requérants
Fédération Environnement Durable
Belle Normandie Environnement
Vent de Colère ! Fédération Nationale
Fédération Anti-Eolienne de la Vienne
Collectif régional d’experts et de citoyens pour l’environnement et le patrimoine
Occitanie Pays catalan Energies Environnement
Alpes Provence Côte d’Azur Environnent
Collectif Allier Citoyens
SOS Danger Éolien
MorVent en Colère
Fédération Vent Contraire en Touraine et Berry,
Fédération Stop Éoliennes Hauts-de-France
Vent de Sottise
Pour la Protection du Pays d’Ouche
Echauffour Environnement

Apex pulls the plug on Tama County wind project
9 March 2024
Iowa, Victories, Wind power, Wind energy

After first leasing office space in downtown Dysart more than two years ago, the Virginia-based company Apex Clean Energy – better known by its commercial wind energy project name, Winding Stair Wind – has terminated its leases with Tama County landowners.

“Apex Clean Energy has made the difficult decision not to pursue the Winding Stair Wind project at this time and will be terminating the existing wind leases,” Drew Christensen, Apex’s senior director of public engagement, said in an email last week. “Because of insufficient leased land, Apex has shifted focus to other projects in Iowa and the broader Midwest. We sincerely appreciate the support of participating landowners and were hopeful to advance the project to operations. This would have brought long-term economic growth to Tama County and all its residents, as well as more homegrown energy as we work towards national energy independence.”

According to company documents, upon completion, the planned Winding Stair Wind project would have generated up to 210 megawatts of energy from approximately 50 to 70 turbines. Over the project’s 30-year lifespan, a local economic impact assessment conducted for Apex by a third party predicted the project would have provided more than $40 million in total school district revenue, more than $12 million in total county property taxes, more than $67 million in landowner lease payments and roughly 16 to 18 full-time wind tech jobs.

The project’s footprint occupied roughly the northeastern quadrant of the county from Buckingham in the north to the outskirts of Elberon in the south to Traer in the west while including the areas around both Clutier and Dysart.

The project generated a significant amount of local opposition ever since the first land agents with the Ames-based JCG Land Services began contacting landowners on behalf of Apex in the fall of 2021. The local coalition Tama County Against Turbines (TCAT) formed in direct opposition to it soon thereafter, and its members frequently attended county meetings and hearings to voice their displeasure with the proposal.

From development phase to bust

From July 2021 through June 2022, some 25 easements ranging in size from just under three acres to over 500 acres were filed with the Tama County Recorder’s Office between Winding Stair Project LLC and landowners. In total, the easements encompassed more than 3,380 acres.

During a Tama Co. Board of Supervisors meeting held in May of 2022, Christensen shared that Apex’s Winding Stairs Wind project would need “somewhere in the realm of north of 20,000 [acres]” to be viable.

In February of this year, landowners with Apex leases under the Winding Stair Wind project received letters informing them of the project’s terminated status. Several of those leaseholders were contacted by the T-R regarding the content of the letters, but each declined to comment at this time.

According to a Winding Stair Wind Lease Term Sheet used for discussion purposes and obtained by the Telegraph in early 2022, during the development term, landowners would receive an annual rent payment equal to the greater of $15 per acre or $2,000.

During operations – in addition to other payments – annual rent payments would equal the sum of $25 per acre, $0.75 per linear foot of installed access roads, $0.25 per linear foot of installed underground collection circuits, $4,500 per megawatt of nameplate capacity of turbines installed on the property, $2,000 per occupied resident located on the property, and $500 per above-ground junction box.

If the project had made it out of the initial development stage, Apex planned for a late 2025 or early 2026 operations phase which would have included a permanent operations building and warehouse.

Apex currently has two projects in operation in the state of Iowa, including the 121-turbine Upland Prairie Wind Farm in the northwest Iowa counties of Clay and Dickinson, and the 224.25 megawatt Great Pathfinder project near Altoona.

Oklahoma landowners exploring what can be done to prevent turbines being built near their homes
9 March 2024
Oklahoma, Wind power, Wind energy

A group of Oklahoma landowners are organizing to fight wind turbines being built near their homes.

A view in Lincoln County could be changing soon, and the people who live there aren’t too happy about it as the trees could one day be wiped out and replaced with wind turbines.

“If we want to preserve Oklahoma’s farmland and ranchland, we have got to take a strong look at this,” Saundra Traywick said.

Two private companies say they’re filling a clean energy “void” in part of Lincoln County. A group of landowners who live there are exploring what they can do to stop them.

“I’ve been on this property where we stand 30 years, and we’ve built it up,” Robbie McCommas said. “And we want to leave something to the generations coming after us.”

Apex Clean Energy left letters for landowners and has been recruiting them to their cause for months.

One of those projects is the Sandstone Hills Wind Project.

“The letters came to specific neighbors that are in what they call a target area,” Jeff McCommas said.

Some landowners told KOCO 5 that a recent meeting to get involved left them blindsided.

“The meeting happened about two weeks ago. To my knowledge, that has been the first acknowledgment for the wind energy to move in and do these turbines,” Jeff McCommas said.

The company plans to put 80-100 turbines in the area, and residents say the companies already have some owners on their side. The project’s website says it’ll bring in tax money and revenue for landowners, but not everyone is sold.

“I think this will con a lot of people into selling future value for current money,” Barry Miller said.

So, the landowners are planning a meeting for everyone against turbines to get ready and find a way to stop companies from setting up shop.

“We want to be able to take that petition to the county commissioners to let the county commissioners know that it’s time that you guys offer the help that you can,” Jeff McCommas said.

KOCO 5 reached out to the companies but did not hear back. The community meeting the landowners are organizing is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. on March 12 at the Chandler Interpretive Center.

Local fisherman file lawsuit over Morro Bay offshore wind energy projects
9 March 2024
California, Wind power, Wind energy

Central Coast fishermen filed a lawsuit over the planned offshore wind development off Morro Bay’s coast.

The lawsuit is against the California Coastal Commission, California State Lands Commission, three offshore wind developers and the vessel owners who are conducting offshore research in the area.

Sheri Hafer is a representative with the Morro Bay Commercial Fishermen Organization, one of the parties that filed the lawsuit.

Hafer said their concerns over the development grew when the California State Lands Commission issued a permit in December for survey work along the California coast.

She claims that work could endanger local marine life.

“There’s no monitoring of the wildlife to see the impacts on them, there’s no mitigation for the commercial fishermen in place,” Hafer said.

However, the federal government released the site’s environmental impact analysis in 2022, and found no significant impact.

The three floating wind farms will be about 20 miles off Morro Bay’s coast.

They’re expected to produce more energy than the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, which accounts for about 9% of the state’s energy portfolio.

It’s also estimated to bring about 600 jobs to both San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties in the near-term.

Hafer’s attorney, Bill Walters says he’s waiting to hear back from the parties involved in the lawsuit to see how to move forward.

The defendants of the lawsuit did not respond to KCBX’s request for comment in time for this story.

Pottawattamie County Supervisors approve wind, solar energy ordinance
9 March 2024
Iowa, Wind power, Wind energy

After months of debate and listening to public input, the Pottawattamie County Board of Supervisors recently approved new regulations for wind and solar energy projects.

“We have, I think, really done our due diligence on this, on the documents that are all presented to you, and it meets all of the public feedback that we’ve heard along with all of the board considerations that we put into this,” Planning and Development Director Matt Wyant said at the Feb. 27 board meeting.

The discussion about the wind energy ordinance has generated a lot of input from the community – for and against – in the nine months since the county first looked into amending it.

“There was definitely passions on both sides of the issue here, but we heard a lot more from residents who just really objected to having them put so close to their property lines or to their homes,” Wyant told The Nonpareil in an interview.

While devising the new ordinance, Wyant said it was important to keep in mind the county’s future growth opportunities.

“It’s our population that is really the factor in whether or not more windmills are placed in Pottawattamie County,” Wyant told supervisors. “We’re growing, we’re set to grow more, and we sure don’t want to hamper any of our small towns for their growth patterns nor our Council Bluffs airport’s (growth).”

While protecting Pottawattamie County’s smaller communities’ ability to grow, however, the new ordinance may have also knocked some wind from the sails of future wind energy projects.

“With this ordinance, how it’s worded, is restrictive for our project,” Matt Spaccapaniccia, a development manager for electrical genergation company RWE, told The Nonpareil. “It brings challenges, but I believe that we can move forward with the project in development.”

RWE’s wind turbines would generate $25 million for landowners and bring the county and its smaller communities $54 million in new tax revenue over 30 years, Spaccapaniccia said.

“We have landowners, many of them signed on to this project for years now, and continuing to get new landowners interested, and it seems like landowners are eager for a project here,” Spaccapaniccia said.

The new ordinance for commercial use wind energy systems states that wind turbines must be set back a minimum of three miles from communities, parks and recreation areas and the Council Bluffs Municipal Airport.

“We heard from the airport authority, we heard from companies out there at the airport that do the trainings and it is a big training hub for pilots, or future pilots, and we have to do what we can to make sure that we protect that availability,” Wyant told The Nonpareil. “We all see the shortage of pilots that’s out there, so having that good training hub, I mean, it brings a big benefit to our area.”

Turbines must also be at least 1,500 feet from lot lines or public rights of ways and half a mile from the closest non-participating homes unless the property owner agrees to waive the setback distance. Even then, the turbine still cannot be located closer than one and one-tenth its total height from a dwelling.

RWE currently has contracts with about 120 landowners that covers 20,000 acres and would generate 200 megawatts, Spaccapaniccia said.

“As of right now it’s a lower amount of buildable area (than envisioned), but through getting more and more landowners signed up onto the project, which has been happening more recently, which is good to see, it’s going to open up buildable acres for us,” Spaccapaniccia said. “And … more and more landowners signing onto the project will reduce those setbacks (which) will help us with buildable acres.”

Wind turbines cannot be taller than 412 feet, which is the height of the wind turbines that make up MidAmerican Energy’s wind farm east of Walnut.

“The board wanted to look at what the Walnut wind farm was currently at … so that was the height we went for,” Wyant said.

While most of the attention has been on wind turbines, the ordinance does include new regulations for solar energy systems as well.

“I think you do see on the solar impacts that they’re a lot less visually impactful,” Wyant said. “You might have a solar array farm on a 40 acre chunk versus spread out over 20,000 acres.”

For commercial projects, solar panels must be no lower than two feet off the ground and no higher than 20 feet. Additionally, the solar panels cannot be within 300 feet from a non-participating structure. There is no setback for participating property owners.

If a solar energy system is solely for personal use, ground-mounted solar panels cannot be higher than 15 feet, while panels affixed to a structure, like the roof of a house or barn, cannot extend higher than the height allowed by that district’s zoning regulations.

Setbacks for ground-mounted solar panels are 10 feet from another building or structure on the same lot. Solar panels are not allowed in the front yard setback unless they are at least 50 feet back from the edge of the county road right of way or 80 feet from the edge of a state or federal right of way.

Solar is more contained in delivering energy than wind systems, Wyant said.

“So I do think you see a lot more support for the solar just for those factors than what you see on wind,” he said.

The new ordinance can be viewed on the Pottawattamie County website.

Mahoning County commissioners ban solar and wind farms in ten townships
9 March 2024
Ohio, Wind power, Wind energy

After holding a Feb. 15 public hearing, the Mahoning County commissioners on Thursday approved adding 10 more townships to the places in Mahoning County where “economically significant wind farm, large wind farm and large solar facility” cannot be constructed.

The commissioners approved their first ban Nov. 9 affecting Green Township after trustees there requested it. The commissioners held two public hearings before approving the resolution, which was made possible by an Ohio law called Senate Bill 52 that went into effect in October 2021.

More recently, the townships of Austintown, Beaver, Berlin, Canfield, Coitsville, Goshen, Jackson, Milton, Poland and Springfield passed resolutions asking for the ban. The commissioners held one hearing Feb. 15 at the Mill Creek MetroParks Farm in Canfield, where opinions for and against were heard.

The commissioners passed the resolution approving the 10 additional bans 3-0 Thursday morning during their regular meeting. No members of the public spoke on the issue, though it’s possible few people knew they were going to have that item on their agenda Thursday. The commissioners release their agenda for each week’s meeting the afternoon before the meeting.

The commissioners did not offer any comments on the ban before the vote or at any other part of their meeting, which took place in the regular meeting space in the basement of the Mahoning County Courthouse.

But after the meeting, Commissioner Anthony Traficanti said each of the townships passed its own resolution and held its own public hearing on the issue.

“Based on what the townships have asked us to do, we have done that.”

He said he let everyone speak at the county hearing who wanted to, even those who did not sign up to speak.

“Nobody was shut out. Everybody’s opinion was taken,” he said.

Commissioner David Ditzler said, “The process of approving the bans involved getting input from township officials on what they felt their communities wanted, and we followed through with it.”

The townships that didn’t express interest in banning the projects were Boardman, Ellsworth and Smith.

Gina DeGenova, Mahoning County prosecutor, said the resolution the commissioners approved Thursday goes into effect in 30 days.

If residents want to appeal it, they have to file a referendum petition within 30 days from Thursday, and it has to be signed by a number of registered electors residing in the county equal to not less than 8% of the total votes cast for candidates for governor in Mahoning County in the most recent election, she said.

Ditzler said the commissioners had three options concerning the proposals to ban large solar or wind-generating facilities in the various Townships: Do nothing, ban it or not ban it.

“Really, in my opinion, the proper thing to do was to do nothing, because each one would have had a hearing on a specific construction that they wanted to do,” not a ban or non-ban in each township, Ditzler said.

Traficanti said a township that has a restriction on solar and wind projects and changes its mind, can reverse it.

“Let’s say the trustees change,” Traficanti said. “You get two new trustees and they say ‘We’re for solar.’ They can pass a resolution and modify,” he said.

Bürger gehen gegen Windkraft in Warrenzin auf die Barrikaden
9 March 2024
Germany, Wind power, Wind energy

[Citizens take to the barricades against wind power in Warrenzin]

In der Region wird derzeit vielerorts über die Pläne für den Ausbau der Windkraft diskutiert. Auch in Warrenzin überlegen Bürger, wie sich sich dagegen wehren können.

Gegen den Vorentwurf 2023 des Regionalen Planungsverbandes Mecklenburgische Seenplatte, der Vorranggebiete für Windenergieanlagen ausweist, formiert sich auch im Demminer Bereich Widerstand. Denn „um bis zum Jahr 2045 die Treibhausgasneutralität in Deutschland sicherzustellen“, so das Dokument, müssen in der Planungsregion bis Jahresende 2032 „mindestens 2,1 Prozent der Regionsfläche für die Windenergienutzung zur Verfügung gestellt werden”.

Anblick von Industriegiganten

Und die „Potenzialfläche Nr. 4, Beestland“, mit einer Fläche von 301 Hektar haben die Planer zwischen Beestland, Barlin, Zarnekow und Warrenzin platziert. Drönnewitz ist durch den Wald zumindest etwas abgeschirmt, doch bei der Höhe der modernen „Windmühlen“ werden selbst die Anwohner in Upost, Wolkow, Deven und Dargun den Anblick dieser Industriegiganten „genießen“ können. Sie haben nun eine Bürgerinitiative gegründet, um sich dagegen zur Wehr zu setzen.

Einer der Betroffenen ist Jens Müller. Der Industriedesigner und Ingenieur war viele Jahre für Airbus tätig. „Ich habe 15 Jahre in Hamburg gelebt, doch ich wollte da weg, und habe mir gezielt einen Ort zum Leben gesucht“, berichtet er. Der Freiberufler hat in Beestland ein Grundstück gekauft, „und viel Geld und Lebensenergie investiert, um in dieser herrlichen Landschaft in einem schönen Haus leben zu können.“

Vogelzuggebiet mir Rast- und Futterplätzen

„Wir wohnen direkt an der Peene. Das ist ein Vogelzuggebiet mit wichtigen Rast- und Futterplätzen“, sagt Dagmar Geist. Lidia Heyne nickt: „Wir leben zwischen zwei Naturschutzgebieten, und wenn in diesem Bereich Windkraft den Vorrang erhält, dann wird der Naturschutz mit Füßen getreten.“ „Wir sind vor fünf Jahren aus Delmenhorst hierher gezogen“, erklärt ihr Ehemann Gerd Heyne, „wir wollten in der Natur leben. Und eigentlich ist Upost sehr schön.“

Windenergieanlagen passen da nicht hin, denn das seien ja auch touristisch wertvolle Gebiete, sind sich die Anwohner einig. Doch auf der Karte der Planer sei das Gebiet „nicht einmal hellrot“, was darauf hinweisen würde, dass es einentlich schützwürdig sei. „Wir haben auf den Feldern Kraniche und Gänse – so viele, dass man früh am Morgen manchmal sein eigenes Wort nicht versteht“, sagt Dagmar Geist. Viele Feriengäste kämen, um das zu erleben – „doch wenn die Windräder kommen, dann ist das natürlich vorbei.“

Hohe Bedeutung für die Natur

Jens Müller verweist auf die Potenzialflächenanalyse der Raumplaner aus dem Jahre 2018. Damals war festgestellt worden, dass es zwischen Beestland und Zarnekow „8700 Hektar unzerschnittenen landschaftlichen Freiraumes“ gibt, und dass sich diese Fläche in einem Rastgebiet von Wat- und Wasservögeln mit sehr hoher Bedeutung befindet.

Das Trebeltal ist nicht nur für Kraniche ein wichtiges Rast- und Futtergebiet. (Foto: Ralf Scheunemann)

„Der betroffene Bereich zwischen Trebel und Peene weist zudem eine hohe Konzentration von Großvögeln wie Seeadler, Fischadler und Rotmilan auf, die das Gebiet im Rahmen ihrer Nahrungsflüge queren“, heißt es in dem Papier. „Windenergieanlagen mit Höhen von bis zu 200 Metern und höher würden diese gegenüber hohen technischen Bauwerken sensible Landschaft erheblich beeinträchtigen.“ Der Landschaftsraum sei im regionalen Raumentwicklungsprogramm Mecklenburgische Seenplatte 2011 als Tourismusentwicklungsraum und nach dem Landesraumentwicklungsprogramm M-V 2016 als Vorbehaltsgebiet Tourismus ausgewiesen.

„Im Ergebnis der Gesamtabwägung weist der Regionale Planungsverband die Potenzialfläche zur Vermeidung artenschutzrechtlicher Verbotstatbestände und zum Schutz des sehr hochwertigen Landschaftsraumes nicht als Eignungsgebiet aus“, schrieben die Experten seinerzeit. Und nun soll all das nicht mehr gelten?

Während die Projektentwickler den Landbesitzern pro Windkraftanlange eine Jahrespacht von mehr als 200 000 Euro anbieten, befürchten andere Gewerbetreibende, dass ihnen die Windenergie den Boden unter den Füßen wegschlagen wird. „Viele Nachbarn betreiben Ferienwohnungen“, sagt Jens Müller. „Die leben vom Tourismus.“ Doch wenn sich 800 Meter weiter Windenergieanlagen drehen, dann ist das ganz sicher vorbei. „Aber das interessiert unsere Politiker nicht. Ich kann auch mein Haus nicht mehr verkaufen und wegziehen, weil das dann keiner mehr haben will.“

„Es wird entschieden, ohne vorher mit den Menschen zu reden, die von den Entscheidungen betroffen sind“, befürchtet Carmen Kieckhefel aus Beestland. In der Gemeindevertretung wurde über diese Planung breits heftig diskutiert, berichtet sie. Etwa 130 Anwohner waren anwesend, „das ganze Gemeindehaus war proppevoll, und das ist ja auch richtig, denn wir sind alle betroffen.“

Hohe Kosten für die Bürger

Die Leute haben es satt, betont Jens Müller: „Wir ertragen es nicht mehr, dass gegen die Bürger des Landes regiert wird.“ Die Energiepolitik bringe derzeit hohe Kosten für die Bürger, während die Gewinne in private Taschen fließen. „Die haben das große Geld, und deshalb machen die auch die Gesetze.“

Um sich Gehör zu verschaffen, haben die Betroffenen nun in Warrenzin eine Bürgerinitiative gegründet. Sie hat derzeit elf Mitglieder. „Wir sammeln schon Unterschriften, und wir denken auch darüber nach, Banner dauerhaft im Gemeindegebiet aufzuhängen, ähnlich wie in Beggerow“, sagt Lidia Heyne.

Nei til vindmølleparker
9 March 2024
Norway, Opinions, Wind power, Wind energy

Nedbygging av norsk natur går nå i rekord-fart. Norske distriktskommuner skriker etter flere arbeidsplasser og samtidig gir dårlig kommuneøkonomi i distriktskommunene motivasjon til å godta at naturen og tradisjonelle næringer må gi plass for ny industri.

Vi har spesielt sett det i mange år i havbruksnæringen, den gir sårt tiltrengte arbeidsplasser i distriktene og gir penger direkte i kommunekassen gjennom havbruksfondet. Dette gjør at mange kommuner føler de er nødt til å gi plass for denne industrien og tillater en stor nedbygging på havet i kystområdene, og tradisjonell bruk av områdene må vike.
Artikkelforfatterne Tor Mikkola og Isaura Paula Bruun i Nordkapp Senterparti. Foto: privat

Nå er det vindkraft som har fått innpass som en nasjonal satsing. Selv om det er slik at kommunene selv får bestemme om de vil ha denne industrien, så er lokkemiddelet millioninntekt i kommunekassen. Og skremselet er at hvis man sier nei, blir man regnet som en nei-kommune og at det vil få konsekvenser i annen satsing.

Det grønne skiftet handler i utgangspunktet om å få ned co2 utslippene. En stor satsing på å dreie energiforbruket fra fossile energikilder til elektrisk, har økt behovet for elektrisk energi i verden, med det kommer det et stort behov for stor satsing på produksjon av elektrisk kraft.

Satsing på vindkraft i nord er et «tohodet troll» som raserer naturen, og samtidig overkjører tradisjonell bruk av naturressursene som vi har levd av i generasjoner. Dette i kampen om å industrialisere den «siste» utmark.

Vindmølleparker med møller på over 200 meter som har et vingespenn på rundt 120 meter vil aldri kunne etableres uten store konsekvenser for natur og folks levemåte. Milevis med anleggsveier på over 5 meter bredde, støyforurensing og skyggeforurensing er noen av konsekvensene. Også avskalling av vingene sprer microplast i naturen og man har drap av store mengder fugler og innsekter. I tillegg har man forurensing ved uhell. Hver mølle inneholder store mengder olje og vi har sett at det ved brann eller lekkasjer, blir oljen spredd utover og gjør ubotelig skade på naturen, vi har til og med sett at grunnvann har blitt forurenset i områder med vindmøller.

De fleste vil ikke ha store monstre ute i vår vakre natur. De fleste blir syk av støy og skyggeforurensing nært inn på livene sine og de fleste er redd for de store forurensingene av naturen vår. Ikke minst så er det få som ønsker å ødelegge de gode naturressursene vi har i vårt langstrakte land.

Så hvorfor vil vi egentlig ha vindmøller, hvorfor blir mer og mer av vår natur og våre tradisjonelle levemåter ødelagt av denne industrien? Det er vanskelig å si hva en politiker legger til grunn, men penger i kommunekassen er nok en faktor, og ønske om tilgang til mer kraft for å bygge mer industri er en annen.

Til slutt må vi alle tenke på hvor mye noen millioner i kommunekassa betyr, om det veier opp mot dyrere strøm og statssubsidiert nedbygging av naturen vår. De fleste jeg kjenner som bor i Finnmark og i distriktene, bor her på grunn av nærhet til naturen og naturressursene, da vil det være å skyte seg selv i leggen, når man skal bygge ned den «siste villmark» for å gi oss «lys i husan»
Isaura Paula Bruun og Tor Mikkola
Nordkapp Senterparti

Wind farm noise constituted nuisance to nearby residents, High Court rules
9 March 2024
Ireland, Complaints, Wind power, Wind energy

A High Court judge has found that wind farm noise levels at certain times of the day constitute a nuisance to nearby residents. [download the judgement]

In a decision that is understood to have implications for the operation of wind turbines, Ms Justice Emily Egan held that noise levels from the two-turbine Ballyduff Windfarm at Kilcomb, near Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, amounted to an “unreasonable interference” with the enjoyment of two couples’ properties.

The cases are the first private nuisance claims from wind turbine noise to run in Ireland or the UK, the judge said.

The first action was taken by Margret Webster and her partner Keith Rollo, whose home is close to the wind farm that has been operational since 2017. A second action was taken by Ross Shorten and Joan Carty who owned another property close to the turbines but sold it after commencing their proceedings in 2018.

Both couples sued the wind farm’s operator, Meenacloghspar (Wind) Limited, seeking damages for nuisance.

The couples claimed they have been subjected to constant noise and nuisance from the wind farm that damaged their lives, health and the values of the properties.

The claims were fully denied by the defendant, with a registered address at Stillorgan Road, Donnybrook, Dublin 4.

The hearing of the first module lasted for 51 days, and the costs of the case to date have been estimated to be well over €1 million. Ms Justice Egan also visited the turbines and the properties.

Giving the court’s decision in the first module of the cases, dealing only with liability, the judge said the noise amounted to an “unreasonable interference” with the enjoyment of their property and were therefore entitled to damages.

There are frequent and sustained periods of noise “widely acknowledged to be associated with high levels of annoyance”, she said.

The judge accepted that in this case the noise level “occurs commonly and for sustained periods”.

Noise levels that exhibit these characteristics on a regular and sustained basis are “unreasonable and exceptional”, she said.

“I find that the plaintiffs’ complaints are objectively justified in that the noise interferes with the ordinary comfort and enjoyment of their homes. When it occurs, this interference is a substantial interference.”

While the noise is liable to annoy during the working day, higher prevailing background noise levels and the fact that the occupants are not trying to relax or sleep means it did not generally substantially interfere with the plaintiffs’ enjoyment of their property, she said.

However, she said, the noise “poses a nuisance” to the plaintiffs in the evenings and at weekends, when one could reasonably expect to be enjoying recreation in the garden or peace in one’s dwelling and at night and early morning when a “quiet environment is at a premium”.

The level of damages to be awarded, whether an injunction should be granted and, if so, in what terms, will be assessed by the court after the second module of the cases concludes.

The judge found the defendant had not breached the terms of the wind farm’s planning permission.

The court said that while the court was not satisfied the wind farm complies with the noise condition of its permission, this had not been pleaded in the case.

The court also rejected claims that the defendant was negligent towards the plaintiffs.

The judge said the case was before the court while existing planning guidance regulating the noise aspects of wind farm developments in Ireland (the Wind Energy Development Guidelines 2006) are under review.

Draft revised Wind Energy Development Guidelines published in 2019 have been withdrawn, the judge said.

In the absence of clear policy guidance from the Government on wind turbine noise, the assessment in an individual case “is a classic matter of degree on which the court must exercise judgment”, she added.

After giving her decision, the judge directed the parties to re-engage in mediation in an attempt to identify appropriate and proportionate mitigation measures.

In their actions, the plaintiffs have sought various orders requiring the defendant to cease operating.

They also seek orders restraining the defendant from operating the wind farm until it is constructed in a way such as to not cause undue and excessive noise, vibration and shadow flicker at their home.

They further sought damages including aggravated damages for nuisance, negligence, breach of duty and breach of their constitutional rights, including their rights to family life and the quiet enjoyment of their home.

The couples, represented by John Rogers SC, instructed by Noonan Linehan Carroll Coffey solicitors, claim their lives have suffered due to the impact of the noise, vibration and shadow flicker from the wind farm.

Their sleep has been disrupted, their anxiety levels increased, and their overall mental health suffered due to the noise and vibrations generated by the wind farm.

They said the noise was like a cement mixer or an aeroplane flying overhead without ever landing.

Mr Shorten and Ms Carty, with an address at Grange Road, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14, had claimed that their former house at Ballyduff was approximately 359 metres from the wind farm.

Dismantled Pemberton wind turbine won’t be replaced; Hull Wind II remains offline
8 March 2024
Massachusetts, Accidents, Wind power, Wind energy

The wind turbine at Pemberton Point taken down last month will not be replaced, and the seawall damage that occurred when the tower fell to the ground will be paid by the demolition company, town officials said this week.

Meanwhile, at the other end of town, Hull Wind II at the landfill remains offline, awaiting repairs to its computer system, according to Hull Municipal Light Board Chair Patrick Cannon.

“Once that work is completed, hopefully within the next couple of weeks, Hull Wind II should be back in service,” Cannon told The Hull Times, adding that there are no plans to replace Hull Wind I.

“It would be far too expensive compared to years ago [when the first one was built],” he said.

When both turbines were working to capacity, the electricity generated was equivalent to 11% of Hull Municipal Lighting Plant’s power portfolio. With the removal of the Pemberton turbine, the electricity for streetlights and traffic signals it previously generated now may have to be covered by the town’s budget.

Hull Wind I was commissioned in December 2001, and turbines of that vintage have a lifespan of about 20 years. Hull Wind II, which generates enough energy to power 800 homes on an annual basis when working at capacity, has been offline for some time for repairs, which have been completed except for the software issue.

Although Vestas, the company that installed Hull Wind II in 2006, opted out of its maintenance contract with the town some time ago when the agreement expired, another company was hired to perform the necessary maintenance on the remaining wind turbine.

Arrangements have been made for Vestas to reboot the computer, “because it’s their software,” according to Cannon.

While the subject of electricity rates came up at the light board’s February 29 meeting, no decisions have yet been made. There will be another related item on the March meeting agenda, Cannon said, at which time the recent rate study will also be discussed.

“We usually review the rates every three to five years,” he said.

Also at that meeting, the recommendation was made to send the bill for streetlight electricity to the town since Hull Wind I will not be replaced. When fully operational, Hull Wind I, which has been out of commission since April 2021, supplied enough electricity annually to power the town’s streetlights and traffic control signals as well as 220 homes.

“Moving forward, the town [would] pay this cost, which [would] be less money than it used to be because all the street lights are now LED,” Cannon said. “We’re doing the calculations now.”

Town Manager Jennifer Constable told The Hull Times in response to an email inquiry that she is “assessing the history associated with the town’s past agreement with the HMLP, as well as the town’s position going forward relative to this recommendation,” which was first introduced to her at last week’s meeting.

The town manager also said that the repairs resulting from damage to the seawall that occurred when Hull Wind I was demolished will be made at the expense of the company that dismantled the wind turbine.

“Kevin Mooney from Waterways Project Management assessed the damage on behalf of the town, and based on Kevin’s recommendations and discussion with the contractor, the repair was agreed upon,” Constable explained. “Atlantic Coast will perform the repairs in the next couple of weeks, and the work will be further evaluated by WPM.”

East Zorra–Tavistock rejects proposed wind farm project
8 March 2024
Ontario, Victories, Wind power, Wind energy

A wind farm project proposed for the Cassel and Innerkip areas of East Zorra-Tavistock ended before it began Wednesday after East Zorra–Tavistock council declared the township an “unwilling host.”

The unanimous decision was met with loud cheers from most of the standing room-only crowd, who had gathered in council chambers to hear presentations from Helmut Schneider, Prowind Canada’s vice-president of renewable energy, and David Cunningham, a local farmer who represented Wind Concerns EZT, a grassroots citizens’ group.

“I believe that renewable energy is important, and I also believe wind turbines may form a part of that,” township Mayor Phil Schaefer said to councillors and the roughly 120 people in the gallery before the vote, “but I don’t understand why the most valuable farmland in the township and the county would be proposed for a massive wind-turbine development.

“It produces energy, yes, intermittently, but it also produces division. It pits neighbour against neighbour and puts a price on friendship. I will support this resolution.”

During his delegation to council, Cunningham had suggested a resolution that would declare East Zorra–Tavistock as an “unwilling host” for wind turbine developments. The farmer was both relieved and surprised by council’s swift decision.

“A little unexpected,” he said. “I thought they might take a day or two to consider it and then vote, but (I’m) thoroughly happy with the decision. It supports the community.”

Rick Hommes, another member of the Wind Concerns group, also said council’s resolution was a surprise.

“I thought about it but never expected it to happen – and unanimous,” he said.

Speaking after the presentations, Coun. Scott Zehr said the response from residents about the proposed wind farm had been overwhelming. The councillor thanks Cunningham, Hommes and the other members of Wind Concerns EZT for their efforts.

“I think you guys did a great job of rallying the community and educating folks. From the amount of emails I received personally, people spoke up,” Zehr said.

That community effort, including the large crowd at the council meeting, was critical to swaying councillors to their cause, Hommes said.

“I am big on consensus and they saw a small sampling of what the community was saying,” said Cunningham, noting the campaign was a focused effort over a few months. “Since just before Christmas, our heads were down. We were like sponges trying to get as many facts as we could to keep the emotions out of it to focus on the vital few things we thought were important. The community rallied together quickly.”

Schneider, though, shared his disappointment with the resolution, saying he had hoped for more time to build relationships in the area.

“The reason we did not make an ask of council is that we felt it was important for (them) to get to know us and to see if we are sincere in our community engagement process. Do we use this process to make sure we build trust in the community? We did not ask for a council resolution, but it has been made and we have to deal with that,” he said.

Now, Prowind will regroup and see what council’s decision means for its proposed developments.

“We do have other developments in Oxford and Ontario and, for us, it is more comfortable to work with a willing host so that is what we will focus on,” he said.

Despite the company’s setback in East Zorra–Tavistock, Schneider said he did have a lot of support for the local project. The company had already inked 19 land-option agreements for wind turbines to date.

“I don’t think it is correct to assume that all the people in that room were in opposition because I did recognize several people who had written letters to council in support of this project. It is a bit of a false assumption, but the majority of people came here because they were requested to. We did not ask anybody to come and support us. We did not think there was a need for that because we didn’t have an ask for a resolution,” he said.

Coun. Steven Van Wyk did declare a conflict of interest so was not in chambers for the presentations, discussions or the recorded vote. He is employed by Stubbe’s Precast in Hickson, the company that supplied concrete to the Gunn’s Hill wind project and could have potentially done the same for the proposed project.

Prowind’s interest in building another wind farm project in Oxford County stemmed from the Independent Electricity System Operator’s prediction of an impending increase in energy demand in Ontario. The proposal involved two clusters of wind turbines in the Innerkip and Cassel areas. Prowind, an international renewable energy company with an office in Woodstock, was working with the Oxford Community Energy co-operative, which was founded as part of the Gunn’s Hill wind farm project in Norwich, on this latest proposal.

[rest of article available at source]

Norway ends dispute with reindeer herders over wind farm
6 March 2024
Norway, Wind power, Wind energy

Norway has reached an agreement with Sami reindeer herders that allows the country’s largest wind farm to stay in operation, ending a dispute over Indigenous rights, the energy ministry said on Wednesday.

Norway’s supreme court ruled in 2021 that the Storheia and Roan wind farms in Fosen in central Norway violated Sami rights under international conventions – prompting huge protests last year over the protracted process to implement the ruling.

An agreement was reached in December with one group of reindeer herders, in Fosen South, while a second group, Fosen North, had continued to oppose the wind farms.

Wednesday’s agreement encompassed the northern group of herders and operator Roan Vind, owned by Aneo, Germany’s Stadtwerke Muenchen and Nordic Wind Power, the Norwegian ministry said.

A spokesperson for the herders confirmed that a settlement had been signed.

“The deal contains additional land, which we are completely dependent on,” Elise Holtan Pavall of the North Fosen reindeer herder group told Reuters.

Roan will pay annual compensation for the continued operations, allowing the turbines to stand, the government said.
“This agreement secures the rights of reindeer herders at North Fosen both now and in the future,” Roan Vind CEO Roger Beite Faerestrand said in a separate statement.

The agreement includes the procurement of additional winter grazing rights and veto right for any plans to extend the wind farm’s operating licences past the year 2045.

“This means that the licensees cannot apply for an extension or renewal of the concession without consent from the North Fosen herders,” the ministry said.

Scots scientist charged over ‘enormous’ £7m wind farm fraud scheme
6 March 2024
Scotland, Complaints, Wind power, Wind energy

A Scots scientist has been accused of scamming wind farm investors out of £7.4million.

Dr Paul Dougan, a former renewable energy firm boss and Oxford graduate, has been accused of using investors’ cash to buy up a string of properties across Scotland and the UK in an “enormous” case brought by prosecutors in Northern Ireland.

The 54-year-old, from Glasgow, faces a catalogue of offences alongside an ex business partner.

He is accused of a total of 24 charges, including acquiring criminal property in the form of £7,396,791 of investors’ money.

Derry Magistrates Court heard on Monday that the prosecution was an “enormous case” amounting to more than 5000 pages.
The 25-year-old appeared at Derry Magistrate’s Court accused of animal cruelty
The case called at Derry Magistrate’s Court (Image: Belfast Live)

One of the charges states that Dougan was “knowingly a party to the carrying on of the business of Diamond Global Trading and Investments Ltd for a fraudulent purpose”.

Prosecutors say this involved the “dishonest obtaining of funds raised via two mini-bond sales which misrepresented the companies true capacity and readiness to construct and operate wind turbine sites and provide a return on investment”.

Dougan also faces charges of fraud by false representation and possessing and supplying articles for use in fraud.

He faces a further nine counts of transferring criminal property and seven charges of being an undischarged bankrupt acting as a director.

One of the charges allege Dougan transferred criminal property of more than £1.6million for the development of a block of student flats in Lancashire.

He is further accused of transferring payments of £585,000 and £70,000 for the purchase of a house in Skeldon East Ayrshire and a £500,000 house in Paisley.

The former director is also charged with transferring more than £22,000 for Erskine Church and £285,000 for a property in Glasgow’s west end.

Dougan, who was listed in court papers as now living in Glasgow’s Lambhill area, is understood to be a former Glasgow Caledonian University lecturer.

He has been listed as a Geoscientist on Companies House and previously been linked to around 30 companies – including mining, property and yacht firms.

Dougan is charged alongside former co-director Liam Ward, 57.

Ward, of County Derry, faces 17 of the same charges as Dougan, except for those relating to being an undisclosed bankrupt.

All of the offences are alleged to have been committed between January 2016 and June 2017.

The Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland confirmed in December last year that a decision had been made to prosecute the two businessmen on “a range of fraud charges arising from a police investigation into a renewable energy initiative” and both were issued with a summons to return to court.

When the case called this week, a defence barrister for Dougan told the court the case was “a complex matter” and parties needed time to read the 5,500 pages which had been lodged.

Prosecutors agreed to an adjournment and the case will recall later this year.

Southern Ocean wind zone cut to save whales, parrots
6 March 2024
Australia, Wind power, Wind energy

An offshore wind farm zone near western Victoria will be one-fifth of its initially drafted size to give the right of way to whales as the state races for “first wind”.

One of six areas earmarked around Australia’s coast, Federal Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen declared the finalised zone on Wednesday after consultation with local leaders, industry and community groups.

The Southern Ocean zone, located 15km to 20km off Victoria’s coast near industrial Portland, will span 1030 sq km rather than the initially slated swathe of more than 5000 sq km.

The curtailed offshore wind zone area in the Southern Ocean off western Victoria. (handout, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen)

No longer bringing the capacity to generate up to 14.6 gigawatts – the equivalent of three coal-fired plants – the Portland zone will generate up to 2.9GW of offshore wind, or enough to power two million homes [if it were dispatchable —NWW].

Announcing the decision with Victorian Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio, Mr Bowen said the zone had the potential to create “thousands of new, high-value jobs and help secure cleaner, cheaper more reliable energy” for regional Victoria.

The declared zone avoids South Australia’s lucrative rock lobsters after the state told the federal government to curtail the idea of a wind farm zone stretching from Warrnambool in Victoria to the Limestone Coast region.

Ms D’Ambrosio said the lower energy generation from a smaller Southern Ocean wind zone would be offshore by an already declared zone of 15,000 sq km off the coast of Gippsland.

“If it’s all full it can give us about 10GW of offshore renewable energy … five times more than what we actually need,” she said.

Victoria is going to auction for Australia’s newest industry to generate at least 2GW for 2032, with state targets requiring 4GW by 2035 and 9GW by 2040.

Mr Bowen said the latest zone would be important for the region, the broader electricity grid and Victoria’s largest energy customer – the Portland aluminium smelter.

Alinta Energy has proposed a $4 billion 1GW Spinifex development to power the smelter with green energy.

Other proponents in the zone include the 2GW Cape Winds, Flotation Energy’s 750-megawatt project and Green Energy Partners’ 1GW development, according to a project tracker.

The Southern Ocean zone would bring 1740 jobs to Portland and surrounds during construction, as well as 870 ongoing operational jobs, the ministers said.

But the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union reiterated its call for rules for local content, including manufactured goods and local steel for wind towers, instead of equipment from China.

The decision to significantly reduce the size of the wind zone answered concerns of environmental groups about the impact on marine life, including migrating Endangered Blue and Southern Right whales.

The wind zone will work around shipping routes, the ecologically significant Bonney Upwelling that brings cold nutrient-rich water to the sea surface and Deen Maar Island’s migratory parrots.

Victoria is aiming for “first wind” by 2030 to decarbonise a coal-dependent electricity grid, with all of Australia’s coal plants due to close over the next 12 years.

Friends of the Earth spokesperson Pat Simons said the Southern Ocean decision demonstrated that an ecologically sustainable offshore wind industry was possible.

[rest of article available at source]

100-ton wind turbine blades fall to pieces in Vietnam
6 March 2024
Vietnam, Accidents, Photos, Video, Wind power, Wind energy

Blades of a wind turbine totaling 100 tons fell off 140 meters and broke into pieces in the Mekong Delta province of Bac Lieu on Friday.

Residents of Hoa Binh District heard a loud noise at around 5 p.m. Friday and saw wing blades at Hoa Binh Wind Power No. 5 fell to the ground. No person was injured.

Authorities of the district were seen on site Saturday morning to examine the accident.

The blades, each of which is 80 meters long and three meters wide, broke into many pieces in an area of 50 square meters.

The project was being developed by Hacom Bac Lieu Energy.

The blades also damaged a storage house of a local fish farm. There were three people in the house when the blades dropped but no one was hurt, said Nguyen Van Kien, owner of the farm.

Wind turbine blades are made by light materials such as plastic and fiberglass. The inside of a blade was exposed after the fall.

The turbines in the project have been suspended after the incident.

The rotor, which weighs dozens of tons, created a hole of five meters deep.

The incident also broke the project’s internal power line.

Security guards were deployed to keep local residents from entering the area.

The project has a price tag of VND3.7 trillion (US$150 million) with a capacity of up to 80 megawatts.

It is built on an area of 30 hectares with 26 turbines that can generate 280 million kilowatt-hours a year.

This is the largest onshore wind power plant near the sea in the Mekong Delta region.

Bac Lieu Province has 10 wind power plants, eight of them operational.

Surprise discovery of wind farm project in Philippine reserve prompts alarm
6 March 2024
Philippines, Wind power, Wind energy

Image by francesbean via Flickr

Conservationists have expressed alarm over the surprise discovery that a Singapore-based company has started construction of a wind farm inside the Philippines’ Masungi Georeserve.

The Masungi Karst Conservation Area (MKCA), declared a strict nature reserve and wildlife sanctuary since 1993, is home to more than 400 wildlife species. The site is located in Rizal, a province about 60 kilometers (37 miles) south of the Philippine capital, Manila.

“This development entails widespread road construction and raises significant concerns for local wildlife, particularly threatening birds and bat populations,” the foundation said in a statement on Feb. 12. The group estimates that 500-1,000 hectares (about 1,200-2,500 acres) of the MKCA could be affected by the project, as it would require extensive road networks that may lead to forest clearing, vegetation damage, and visual disruption of the natural landscape.

The MKCA, previously commercially logged and barren, has been undergoing forest restoration since 1996 through a joint-venture agreement between the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and Blue Star Construction and Development Corp., owned by the founder of Masungi Georeserve Foundation Inc. In 2016, when the foundation was formally established, Masungi also opened to the public as an ecotourism site, generating revenue to support ongoing restoration efforts in the area.

Of the more than 400 flora and fauna species that call Masungi home, around 70 are endemic to the Philippines, including the Luzon tarictic hornbill (Penelopides manillae), which is nationally listed as vulnerable, and the Luzon mottle-winged flying fox (Desmalopex leucoptera), one of the world’s largest bats and internationally categorized as vulnerable.

In an online signature campaign against the construction of the wind farm, the group said this “misguided energy development” is the latest threat to Masungi, which already faces illegal logging, land grabbing, quarrying, and violence against its forest rangers. These challenges exist even though Masungi is part of the 26,000-hectare (64,500-acre) Upper Marikina River Basin that was declared a protected landscape in 2011.

The Masungi management said this venture “marked a disturbing violation” of a 1993 administrative order by the DENR prohibiting industrial or commercial uses of Masungi. The organization added that the wind farm project also shows a “blatant disregard” for the area’s designation as a strict protection zone in its own management plan.

As per the Philippine environmental impact statement system, projects that plan to operate in ecologically sensitive zones like Masungi need to obtain an environmental compliance certificate from the DENR prior to commencing activities.

Over four years of developing the Rizal wind farm, Vena Energy said that, “being mindful of its environmental impact,” it has secured various Philippine government permits, including an environmental compliance certificate, protected area management board clearances, and a certificate precondition, following an environmental impact assessment study and consultations with Indigenous peoples.

“Vena Energy assures the public that it continues to maintain open dialogue with stakeholders and is always willing to work with concerned parties to achieve the common good,” Angela Tan, the company’s corporate communications chief, told Mongabay in an emailed statement. The company has not responded to a request to verify its permits.

Coincidental discovery

MGFI says it was never formally informed of the project, which is reportedly nearing commercialization. Instead, georeserve staff discovered the project during routine monitoring of the site. MGFI advocacy officer Billie Dumaliang and her team periodically fly a drone over the reserve to monitor land changes, whether these are caused by fires, clearings, or new structures. In late 2023, they said, they were shocked to see four drilling rigs.

Zooming in on the photos, they discovered that RWEC was behind the drilling. “We immediately searched for their contact so that we can reach out to them and find out more about the project before reacting,” Dumaliang told Mongabay in an email on Feb. 21. “Nonetheless, we were surprised because as designated caretakers of the area, we were not informed of any wind development underway within the Masungi Karst Conservation Area.”

Hoping to persuade the company to relocate, MGFI did not publicize the issue until Feb. 12. This was after two meetings with company representatives where MGFI told them “they are on the wrong track.” According to MGFI, though, the company remains determined to build the wind farm inside Masungi, claiming it will undertake “‘mitigation measures.”

“However, mitigation is superficial if the site selection is wrong in the first place,” Dumaliang said, further expressing disappointment over what she describes as the company’s failure to adhere to emerging environmental, social and governance principles in the alternative energy industry. “There are many other places to build colossal wind turbines – why do it inside a sensitive karst ecosystem and wildlife sanctuary which cannot be replaced?”

Wind power push

The Philippine government has promoted wind energy development to help meet its target of increasing the share of renewables in the country’s energy mix from 32.7% in 2022 to 50% by 2040. As of 2022, the country’s wind installed generating capacity stood at 427 megawatts, projected to rise to 442 MW by 2025. Since the enactment of a renewable energy law in 2008 up until November 2023, contracts have been awarded to 239 wind power projects. This includes RWEC’s 603 MW (potential capacity) project spanning Rizal and Quezon provinces, listed by the country’s energy department as in the predevelopment stage.

MGFI said wind energy development shouldn’t be pursued at the expense of the environment. “The transition to renewable energy and nature-based solutions such as reforestation and biodiversity conservation should go together. There should be no conflict between the two if the transition to renewable energy is done in a responsible manner,” Dumaliang said.

“If renewable energy development falls under the usual trappings of greed and capitalism, then we risk doing more damage than good.”

The group, along with 30 other civil society organizations, has demanded the revocation of RWEC and Vena Energy’s permits in the MKCA “on scientific grounds and the lack of public consultation.” It’s also seeking outright rejections for similar applications in this wildlife sanctuary, which is meant to be off-limits to industrial and commercial activities.

Wind turbine collapse at Mekong Delta flagship farm
5 March 2024
Vietnam, Accidents, Wind power, Wind energy

A wind turbine suffered a major collapse earlier this week on a flagship renewable energy project in Vietnam’s Bac Lieu province, according to local media reports.

The incident occurred on the Hoa Binh 5 wind farm, operated by local developer Hacom Bac Lieu Energy in a region of coastal flatlands in the Mekong Delta, according Vietnamese news website Dan Tri.

A broken tower resulted in the nacelle and blades falling crashing to the ground.

The blades “broke into many sections, and were seriously damaged”, according to the news report which cited information from a regional government committee.

Debris was said to be spread for an area covering almost 100 square metres.

Photos appeared to show mangled blades and the main turbine section half-submerged in a paddy field near to the broken tower.

The incident, which occurred close to a hamlet called Vinh Moi in rural Hoa Binh district, did not result in any reports of loss of life or injury but damage to property is still being assessed, Dan Tri reported.

Initial reports in Vietnamese news outlets estimated this damage at about 200bn Vietnamese dong ($8.1m).

The wind turbine, which was one of 26 on the project, was described as 140 metres in height, without further identification. Blades were described as 80 metres long.

Hoa Binh 5 wind farm started operations in October, 2020, with turbines with a mix of 3MW, 3.3MW and 4MW according to available project data.

Hacom Bac Lieu Energy did not immediately reply to requests for information.

According to the local news reports, the chairman of Hoa Binh District People’s Committee reassured locals that the developer was looking into causes, but Hacom Bac Lieu Energy company did not make a statement of its own.

The coastal regions of Hoa Binh district and the wider Hacom Bac province have attracted a growing flow of wind power investments in recent years.

Hoa Binh 5 has a capacity of 80MW, but three more wind farms have added a total 270MW of capacity in this district in recent years.

The wider Bac Lieu province, with strong and fairly stable costal winds, has emerged as the leading wind power province in the Mekong Delta. It has eight wind farms currently in operation with a capacity of nearly 470MW, and two more expected to start s soon to bring combined capacity to 660MW.

Neighbors say Dominion Energy wind turbine project causing issues in Virginia Beach
5 March 2024
Virginia, Complaints, Wind power, Wind energy

Residents in the Croatan neighborhood of Virginia Beach are annoyed.

Dominion Energy recently started the on-land portion of their Offshore Wind Turbine Project. The company plans on building 176 turbines about 20 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach.

When fully constructed in 2026, the “Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Commercial Project” will provide clean and renewable energy to their grid, cutting down on millions of tons of carbon emissions.

“We come ashore at State Military Reservation, it goes underground through SMR, through Naval Station Oceana, and once we get past Oceana it transitions to overhead,” said Jeremy Slayton, a spokesperson with Dominion.

To achieve this goal, the company needs to drill underground lines on land, which will lead out to the Atlantic Ocean.

However, neighbors say this construction is becoming a nuisance.

“Essentially they’ve created an industrial complex next to a residential community,” Patrick McClaughlin, who lives just blocks away from the site, said.

It’s not just loud noise the residents fear, but the vibrations from the drilling, which they say is 24/7.

“I physically felt the bed moving like there was an earthquake, and I thought is there an earthquake am I losing my mind?” Deb Higgans, another resident, said.

Some are even seeing new cracks appear in their walls, which they don’t think is a coincidence.

“I’ve just started talking to other neighbors here and probably half of the neighbors I’ve talked to here are seeing new cracks in their houses. It’s making me wonder are we gonna have foundation issues from this? What are the long-term ramifications?” neighbor John Knight said.

Many residents told WTKR they were not expecting the construction from this project to be such a burden when Dominion started.

Others say they didn’t even know there was a project going on until they heard it, literally.

“In the middle of the night, I felt a big shake, and a mirror in my bathroom splintered into 100 pieces,” Knight said.

Slayton said the company is permitted for both daytime and nighttime work.

He also said they are monitoring the vibrations to make sure they stay within normal levels. They just got permission to install a second monitoring device.

“So far our monitoring has not identified any unusual levels in our work. But we recognize that our neighbors may hear and feel some of our activity,” he said.

Slayton said Dominion had several community open houses and meetings, met individually with neighbors, and held meetings with civic organizations all before this construction took place.

However, if residents have concerns, then he said Dominion Energy representatives are on hand to come down to the neighborhood and talk to them about the construction.

“They can meet them at their house, or they can meet as part of the civic organization to talk them through the construction process,” he said.

But the neighbors who talked to WTKR on Sunday said right now, all they’ve had are phone calls and would love it if a representative came down to talk with them about it.

“I appreciate that the project is huge, it’s been approved and it’s started. I just feel like we should’ve been made aware of what’s going on,” said resident Julie Brown.

The onshore portion of the project in this area is expected to be complete later in the year.

If residents would like a representative to come to their home, they can call 844-319-2065 or email info@coastalvawind.com.

Ted Hughes: Former poet laureate’s estate backs campaigners fighting giant wind farm on Calderdale moorland
5 March 2024
England, Wind power, Wind energy

The Mytholmroyd-born poet was famous for his evocation of the natural world, inspired by the Calder Valley landscape he grew up in.

Stop Calderdale Windfarm, marshalling objections to Calder Wind Farm Ltd’s proposals for a 65-turbine wind farm on more than 2,300 hectares of land at Walshaw Moor above Hebden Bridge, says the Ted Hughes Estate – run by poet’s widow Carol Hughes – is behind their campaign.

Calderdale Wind Farm Ltd says the wind farm could be England’s biggest if it progresses and has submitted a scoping report to Calderdale Council.

Plan of Walshaw Moor Estate showing location of the
65 turbines proposed by Calderdale Wind Farm Ltd

Stop Calderdale Windfarm says it has been given permission to use some of Ted Hughes’ work on its website

A spokesperson for the campaigners said: “No one understood and appreciated the landscape of Calderdale better than Ted Hughes, or wrote about it so evocatively.

“We’re fighting to save his literary heritage as well as the countryside and wildlife he loved.”

The spokesperson said Hughes was committed wildlife campaigner who strongly opposed proposals for a windfarm at Flaight Hill, above Pecket Well, 30 years ago.

The group says organisations including the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England, Upper Calderdale Wildlife Network, the RSPB, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and Lancashire Wildlife Trust are opposing the scheme on nature conservation grounds.

Steve Ely, director of the Ted Hughes Network at University of Huddersfield, local cartographer Christopher Goddard, celebrated photographer Martin Parr and award-winning travel writer Horatio Clare, who lives in Hebden Bridge, are all also expressing concern and registering support to the campaign, it says.

The group says the proposed turbines would be visible for many miles, with each taller than Blackpool Tower.

The 65 turbines would be capable of generating up to 302MW of renewable electricity and establishing a £75 million community benefit fund, the company argues.

Renewable energy investors WWRE, working in conjunction with Calderdale Wind Farm Ltd, says it could generate enough renewable energy to power up to 286,491 homes per year, include planting of 300,000 new trees across the Walshaw Moor Estate and enhanced flood mitigation measures to help reduce the risk of flooding, and stopping grouse shooting there.

EDF wind farm to pay £5.5 million to vulnerable customers after overcharging grid
5 March 2024
Scotland, Wind power, Wind energy

Energy company EDF will pay £5.5 million into a fund designed to help vulnerable customers after regulator Ofgem found that it had overcharged the grid.

Ofgem said that EDF’s Dorenell Windfarm Limited (DWL) charged “excessive prices” when it was asked to reduce its output. “Ofgem considers that DWL charged excessive prices to reduce output where this was required to keep the system balanced, and the breach pushed up costs for consumers,” Ofgem said in a statement on Monday.

The regulator said that some of the assumptions used by the company were higher than necessary to recover its costs. Meanwhile its prices “did not properly reflect the financial benefits of reducing its output”.

The business told Ofgem that it thought it had complied with the rules, but accepted the regulators’ findings and will pay £5.5 million towards its voluntary redress fund a scheme set up to help struggling households. Ofgem director of enforcement Cathryn Scott said: “Another win for customers through Ofgem’s robust enforcement work has been secured.”

“This company has accepted its error and has agreed to make a significant payment to put it right. Customers particularly those in vulnerable situations will rightly benefit from over £5 million as a direct result.”

“We hope this sends a clear message that licence breaches will simply not be tolerated.”

The Dorenell wind farm has 59 wind turbines and is just off the A941, south of Dufftown, Moray, in the north-east of Scotland. A spokesperson for the wind farm said: “Dorenell Windfarm Limited takes compliance seriously and aims to comply with regulations at all times.”

“DWL reviews its practices regularly and adapts as necessary. At all times throughout this review, DWL has engaged actively with Ofgem and cooperated fully to resolve the issue.”

“DWL accepts it made an unintentional breach of the Transmission Constraint Licence Condition (TCLC). As a result, DWL has changed its bid pricing policy to avoid any future breaches.”

Get the Facts
CONTACT DONATE PRIVACY ABOUT SEARCH
© National Wind Watch, Inc.
Use of copyrighted material adheres to Fair Use.
"Wind Watch" is a registered trademark.

 Follow:

Wind Watch on X Wind Watch on Facebook

Wind Watch on Linked In Wind Watch on Mastodon