Wind energy is not ‘Nebraska Nice’ 

There is a term used a lot in the Nebraska Capitol. “Nebraska Nice.” Wind energy is not Nebraska Nice. Wind energy is a scam that hurts people and animals, wastes billions in tax dollars, and isn’t “green” energy by any definition of the term. Industrial wind energy projects also make terrible neighbors and will utterly destroy the most environmentally sensitive part of our State.

Last week the Natural Resources Committee held an interim study hearing on public power. A portion of that hearing was devoted to “renewable” energy (wind energy). The chairman of the committee, Sen. Dan Hughes, supports wind energy, but to his credit, he ran an excellent hearing and was exceptionally fair to all who participated. Sen. John McCollister of Omaha is on the committee. He posted an op ed in the Omaha paper this week about how wonderful wind energy is. This probably explains why he left the hearing early and didn’t hear the many citizens who testified against it. I hope he shows more courtesy to his constituents than he did the people who took time away from work and family and drove hundreds of miles from all over the state to be at that hearing.

We are just beginning to understand the health effects on people and animals of the low frequency noise made by industrial wind turbines known as “infrasound.” The aerodynamic reflection from the blade when in alignment with the tower causes a “thump, thump, thump” that cannot be ignored. The sound, which is most disturbing at night, invades the quiet of our bedrooms and disturbs Nebraskans who are trying to sleep. The “shadow flicker” from the blades passing in front of the sun casts disorienting shadows in homes more than a mile from the turbine and causes vertigo and nausea and has been linked to migraine headaches.

Many industries in the U.S. receive some kind of government subsidy, but the wind energy industry is 100 percent reliant on federal subsidy known as the production tax credit. Wind projects don’t farm the wind, they farm tax avoidance credits as confirmed by Warren Buffet who admitted, “That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” Under the current policy, the industry is forecasted to reap $24 billion in subsidies between 2016 and 2020 or electricity production subsidies – nearly double the subsidies planned for any other renewable option. None of these figures include the significant benefits granted the industry in the form of state production tax credits, lower local taxes, and ratepayer-funded transmission. Our country is over $20 trillion in debt. Why are we paying this kind of money for an intermittent source of electricity that only makes power about 30% of the time?

Since wind power is intermittent, no amount of wind turbines installed in the U.S. will result in an existing “dirty” power plant being decommissioned nor will it negate the need to build reliable generation. Americans are being asked to pay for two energy systems, one that produces wind energy and the second that delivers reliable electricity. Obviously, this excess generation capacity costs money to build and operate and that cost gets added to the rate-payers bill. My legislative aide and I just spent ten days in Germany. The Germans are finding out the hard way how disruptive and costly reliance on wind power is. Catastrophic, cascading failure of the national power grid is now a daily struggle to prevent in Germany. Plans to decommission their last remaining nuclear power stations have been put on hold because of how unstable their power infrastructure has become.

Connecting a wind farm to the grid often requires new powerlines and the use of eminent domain to forcibly take land from people to build a power line across their ground for no other reason than to cater to the wind developer. Despite NPPD denials, reports from their own meetings clearly state the “R Line” has been, “…proposed chiefly to provide access for wind energy developments in Cherry Co…” This project will tear through the heart of the most sensitive part of Nebraska’s Sandhills.

Wind energy development in the Sandhills of Nebraska will cause damage to the ground (blowouts) that can never be mitigated or repaired. Wagon ruts from pioneers from over a century ago are still visible in the Sandhills. How can 20 semi-loads (just to put up the construction crane) cross the Sandhills without permanent damage? Countless more concrete trucks and loads of blades and tower sections will put a lasting scar on a place that has no equal in the world. Untold numbers of birds and bats are killed, including threatened and endangered species. The government even issues 30-year permits for the “taking” (killing) of bald and golden eagles. Siting hundreds of turbines in the Sand Hills with blades spinning at 200 mph at the tip presents a danger to flying creatures like nothing else.

The lost property value a neighbor to a wind turbine suffers is not compensated. Who would buy a house next to an industrial wind energy facility? The lost use of that portion of a neighbors ground inside the minimum safe distance from a wind turbine is not compensated. Wind Energy companies fight for the smallest set-back they can get to maximize the number of wind turbines they can build in an area with no regard for their neighbor’s property rights. Wind turbines run-off wildlife and spoil hunting in rural areas. They spoil pristine views and tourism. The promised boon in property tax revenue for local governments is over-rated and often doesn’t materialize as promised. Unless the local resident has the proper licensees and training certifications, the so-called “jobs” that are created by a wind energy development are taken by here-today-gone-tomorrow workers from out of State. One in four wind companies go bankrupt before their projects are even finished and are often bought by foreign investors. Much of the power wind energy does manage to generate in Nebraska won’t even be used in Nebraska.

To add insult to injury, much of the wind energy generated in Nebraska won’t even be consumed in Nebraska.

In the mad land rush to build turbines before the production tax credit runs out, local county governments are under a lot of pressure to approve the zoning and never think to require a surety bond be in place to fund the decommissioning costs for a wind turbine. As the turbine is retired and taken off line, many will stand there forever as monuments to greed and the short-sighted public policy that so often enables it.

Electricity should be above all reliable and as economical as we can make it. Wind energy delivers neither. Wind energy is very harmful to the environment it is supposedly built to save. The only “green” in wind energy is the color of the money their powerful lobbyists loot from the tax payers. We shouldn’t build industrial wind energy projects anywhere near where people live. We should think really hard about throwing billions of tax dollars at another scheme that can never stand on its own, and only benefits a few lucky people at the expense of everyone else. We should think very hard about something that will permanently destroy an environmentally fragile and very unique place like the Sandhills. At least Kansas was smart enough to protect about 11,000 square miles of their environmentally sensitive “Flint Hills” from the destruction wrought by industrial wind energy construction. We should do the same. Wind energy is a scam that hurts people. It’s not Nebraska Nice. Urge your State Senator to pass LB 504, my bill to protect the Sandhills.

Please contact my office with any comments, questions or concerns. Email me at tbrewer@leg.ne.gov or call us at 402-471-2628.