Personally, I'd love to have a big windmill generator in my back yard, since there is plenty of wind in this part of the country.  It would help take the edge off my electric bill even if the windmill only supplied power to my hot water heater.  But the wind doesn't blow constantly or even predictably, so I would be unable to depend on it.  On a really cold day or a really warm night, the wind probably won't be there.  To run my kitchen appliances on a calm day, I would have to have an enormous battery bank and a very large inverter.  (See the commentary about locomotive batteries at the top of this page).  And even if the wind blew all day and all night, I'd have a hard time generating power as cheaply as I could buy it from the local electric utility.

I am astonished to hear lately that many liberal environmentalists are opposed to windmills because they are unsightly or because they sometimes kill birds.  But if they can be used to reduce your electric bill, wouldn't they look really good?  Isn't this the "renewable energy" the environmentalists are so excited about?

The use of windmills as an alternative to petroleum and nuclear power is utterly futile, considering that the total amount of electricity generated by solar and wind power is equivalent to the energy output of only one medium-sized coal mine, or the equivalent of about 76,000 barrels of oil a day. [1] [2]

Overview articles:
(Scroll down for the latest news, or click here.)

News from Denmark about Industrial Wind Turbines.  The "sad news" for the shareholders of two Danish companies will undoubtedly be "happy news" for those around the world who have experienced the nasty effects created by industrial wind turbines (IWT).  Those nasty effects of IWT are significant and ignored by eco-warriors and politicians who are "climate change" advocates and believe IWT are one of the ways to achieve "net-zero" emissions.  Examples of those nasty effects are far and wide and include:
  [#1]   The health effects of the audible and inaudible noise of those swishing blades as well as shadow flicker have been noted in hundreds of studies which show conclusively a good percentage of the population are affected in a negative way.
  [#2]   The slaughter of birds and bats including the possible effect on some "at risk species" has been studied globally and IWT have been labelled as a major cause of those deaths and the resulting harm to nature.
  [#3]   Offshore wind farms have been found in various studies to have a damaging effect on commercial fishing and certain species as well as disorienting whales due to infrasound noises.
  [#4]   The detrimental effect on property values where IWT are located within sight of residential homes which leads to reduced "taxable" values in the municipalities where they are located.
  [#5]   The added cost to ensure power availability to back-up IWT due to their intermittent and unreliable nature requiring 90% support from coal or natural gas generation to prevent grid blackouts.

Low-Density Intermittent Energy isn't Renewable. 
  ·   Nuclear is 3-5 Million times as energy dense than Solar or Wind.
  ·   Wind turbines are killing raptors and bats by the millions.
  ·   Wind Turbines are impacting humans with Low-frequency noise and light flicker
  ·   Off-shore Wind impacts Whales and interferes with radar and is more expensive and subject to expensive corrison matainance.
  ·   Renewables destablize our Grids; forcing expensive peaking power to ramp up, with higher pollution start and stop inefficiencies.
  ·   Wind takes 17 times the materials to make same amount of power as Nuclear

The "New Energy Economy": An Exercise in Magical Thinking.  For wind, the boundary is called the Betz Limit, which dictates how much of the kinetic energy in air a blade can capture; that limit is about 60%.  Capturing all the kinetic energy would mean, by definition, no air movement and thus nothing to capture.  There needs to be wind for the turbine to turn.  Modern turbines already exceed 45% conversion.  That leaves some real gains to be made but, as with combustion engines, nothing revolutionary.  Another 10-fold improvement is not possible.

There Has Never Been An Energy Transition.  It is widely believed, I think, that we are in the midst of an energy transition from fossil fuels to "green" energy sources.  But, for better or worse — I think it's just fine — that isn't the case.  At Watts Up With That?  David Middleton offers charts that indicate no such transition is in progress.  This one shows worldwide energy consumption in million tons oil equivalent.  As you can see, the contributions of "green" energy sources (wind and solar) continue to be trivial.  [Chart]  I would add that this chart actually overstates the contributions of wind and solar.  Those sources are used almost entirely because of government subsidies and mandates.  In many cases, they are more trouble than they are worth to operators of the grid, who in the end have to rely on reliable energy sources in any event.

Overview of Bats and Industrial Wind Turbines.  Some interesting facts about bats:  a) bats are prodigious insect eaters as each bat can consume its entire body weight of insects every day, b) bats are not only critical to agriculture due to their powerful insect control, but also as pollinators and seed distributors, c) bats make up about one fifth of the world's mammal population, d) there are 1200± species of bats worldwide, and 45± species in North America, e) the White Nose Syndrome (WNS) only affects about three (3) species of bats, f) WNS originated in upstate New York, so its worst effects are in the Northeast, g) the fact that WNS has killed high numbers of certain bats, makes the remaining bats much more valuable — not only to agriculture, but to the entire ecosystem, h) the wind industry has not been able to come up with any meaningful way to prevent high quantities of bats deaths (other than shutting down the turbines).  [Numerous additional links.]

Wind and Solar Energy:  Good for Nothing.  [Scroll down]  Some real-world examples will further illustrate the point.  Texas has a huge wind generation system with a capacity of 17,000 megawatts.  On August 31, 2016 at noon, output from the wind system fell below 1% of capacity.  The Texas wind system frequently has swings of thousands of megawatts within a few hours.  It often produces at less than 5% of capacity.  On September 1, 2017, between 4 P.M. and 6 P.M., California experienced a record demand of a bit more than 50,000 megawatts.  By 6 P.M., two thirds of solar generation was lost.  By 8 P.M., all solar generation was lost, but demand was still 46,000 megawatts.  On August 2, 2017, the normally reliable California summer sunshine was interrupted by tropical monsoon weather in Southern California.  Solar generation declined by half, and fossil fuel generation had to be mobilized to replace the lost solar.

Wind and Solar Require Massive Subsidies.  It is difficult to fully itemize the subsidies provided for wind and solar energy.  Many subsidies are hidden in the tax code or are an indirect consequence of the privileged treatment given these sources of electricity.  A fundamental difference between wind and solar and traditional energy sources is that wind and solar are intermittent and erratic.  The weather affects both wind and cloud cover.  The sun sets every night, turning off solar generation, often just when demand peaks.  In winter, solar generation drops — dramatically in areas with heavy winter cloud cover.  Wind and solar are dumb electricity.

Retail Electricity Prices for sample countries.  Clip and save.

Magical Wind Power: Illusions versus Reality.  The primary reason why wind energy has been a success has nothing to do with wind energy!  Instead, its success is 100% due to the fact that wind energy proponents are masterful lobbyists. [...]
  •   Wind lobbyists have successfully infiltrated our language with totally inaccurate and misleading terminology, such as "wind farms" and "clean energy."  Neither exists.
  •   Wind marketers have successfully portrayed their product as "Free, Clean, and Green" — despite it being none of those.  The reason they have coined these malapropisms is simple:  those who control the words control the narrative.
  •   Wind salespeople have successfully convinced financially distressed communities that hosting a wind project will be a economic windfall — even though numerous studies from independent experts indicate that the net local economic impact could well be negative.
  •   Wind-peddlers have successfully sold technically challenged local representatives that the wind-developer is their friend and business partner — even though these sophisticated and aggressive entrepreneurs typically look at these rural people as rubes and marks, and their number-one focus is to make as much money as possible, at the rubes' expense.
  •   Wind developers have successfully persuaded much of the public that wind energy is an inevitable matter, so fighting it is a lost cause.  The reality is that in many cases, local communities can effectively defend themselves by simply passing a proper wind ordinance.
  •   Wind-supporters have successfully imparted the belief that a certain wind project will power 20,000 homes — even though that project will not actually power a single home 24/7/365.
  •   Wind advocates employ a sleight-of-hand tactic to dismiss noise complaints by claiming that "wind turbines don't make any more noise than a refrigerator."  The fact is that the main acoustical concern with wind turbines is the infrasound generated (which is below our level of hearing).  So discussing the audiblepart of turbine noise purposefully distracts from the serious inaudible(but still very much experienced) noise issue.
  •   Wind propagandists say that wind energy is saving the environment — even though the evidence indicates that it is environmentally destructive on multiple fronts.
  •   Wind-promoters have successfully conveyed the idea that wind energy is a low-cost option of electricity — even though when all its costs are fully accounted for, wind energy can be three to five times as expensive as traditional electricity sources.
  •   Wind advocates have successfully communicated the notion that using more wind will directly result in the closure of coal plants — even though 10,000 wind turbines could never equal the performance of even a single coal facility.
  •   Wind-boosters have successfully disseminated the impression that wind is a major and essential contributor to preventing climate change — even though there is no empirical scientific proof that wind energy saves any consequential CO2.
[...] I could go on and on, as the list of wind lobbyists' deceptions is distressingly long.

"Green" Energy, an Environmental Disaster.  One of the worst features of both wind and solar energy is that they are terrible for the environment.  Land-based wind turbines are bad enough, but offshore installations are a fiasco waiting to happen.

If Solar And Wind Are So Cheap, Why Are They Making Electricity So Expensive?  Over the last year, the media have published story after story after story about the declining price of solar panels and wind turbines.  People who read these stories are understandably left with the impression that the more solar and wind energy we produce, the lower electricity prices will become.  And yet that's not what's happening.  In fact, it's the opposite.

There's nothing 'green' about industrial wind power.  To those who do not know, industrial wind turbines rely on other sources of fuel to ensure steady electrical feed into the power grid, since wind is unreliable and intermittent.  In 2017, winds in Germany could not produce enough power during a cloudy and windless stable high pressure system, forcing the use of duplicate power systems.  The lignite coal burned in an effort to fill in the gap in their electrical grid led to a dramatic increase in carbon dioxide emissions.  Each industrial wind turbine needs about 80 gallons of oil, requiring regular changing.  Oil leaks are not uncommon.  Key components of IWT magnets are the rare earth minerals neodymium and dysprosium mined in China, sickening residents and ecologically devastating these areas.

The Cost of the United Kingdom's Energy Policy.  Unlike most products, electricity must be generated in a way that meets the instantaneous demands of consumers.  Current technology allows for little storage of electricity during low demand.  Therefore, generating capacity must at every moment be sufficient to meet peak demand.  This is the argument for government regulation.  A for-profit company would not invest in excess capacity.  Instead, its generating plants would meet average, not peak, demand.  This argument for government regulation (if not ownership) could become moot if battery (or some other storage) technology improves.  If an electricity firm could store excess electricity generated during low demand and transmit it during high demand, then most economic regulation would become unnecessary.  However, environmental regulation is a different matter.

Is Wind Energy a Good Idea?  You can produce electricity with a wind turbine, but is it good policy to do so?  The reality is that wind energy exists solely because of government subsidies. (Don't take my word for it, just ask Warren Buffett:  "We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms.  That's the only reason to build them.  They don't make sense without the tax credit.")  Given that wind energy is intermittent — nationally, wind turbines produce electricity around 40% of the time, generally at off-peak hours — and electricity cannot be stored at an industrial scale, wind energy accomplishes little, other than driving up electricity rates.  Mark Mathis is a former TV news man and talented video maker who operates Clear Energy Alliance.  He made this four-minute video on wind energy, which is based on a paper that Steve Hayward and Peter Nelson produced for my think tank last fall.  [Video clip]

Twenty-One Bad Things About Wind Energy.  [#1] Wind energy was abandoned for most commercial and industrial applications, well over a hundred years ago.  Even in the late 1800s it was totally inconsistent with our burgeoning, more modern needs for power.  When we throw the switch, we expect that the lights will go on — 100% of the time.  It's not possible for wind energy, by itself, to EVER do this, which is one of the main reasons it was relegated to the archival collection of antiquated technologies (along with such other inadequate energy sources as horse and oxen power). [...] [#10] Along the way, yet another claim began making the rounds:  that wind energy is low cost.  This is surprisingly bold, considering that if that were really true, RES/RPS mandates would not be necessary.

Inconvenient energy fact of the day.  In 2016, solar and wind provided just 0.8% of the total world's energy (Total Primary Energy Demand (TPED)), even after trillions of dollars in taxpayer-extracted subsidies, and will reach only a 3.6% share of energy in 2040, according to the International Energy Agency World Energy Outlook 2017 forecast.  The world's energy future of tomorrow, even almost a quarter century from now in 2040, will look very much like it does today, with fossil fuels supplying the large majority of our energy (81% today vs. 75% in 2040) and renewables playing a relatively minor role as energy sources.

Nations with more renewables have more expensive electricity.  [Scroll down]  Evidently, something else has changed.  Something seismic that wiped out all the bids below $50/MWh.  Perhaps it has something to do with the 2,106 turbines in 79 wind farms that on random windy days might make 4,325MW that didn't exist in Australia in 1999 when electricity was cheap and our total national wind power was 2.3 megawatts?  Another clue might be the 1.8 million new solar PV installations, which theoretically generate 7 gigawatts of electricity at noon on cloudless days if all the panels have been cleaned.  Back in 2007, we had 14MW.  But of course, cause and effect are devilishly difficult.  The one thing we know for sure is that even though sunlight and moving air is free, there is no country on Earth with lots of solar and wind power and cheap electricity.

Texas wind power owes success, in part, to lack of federal regulation.  It is no secret that Texas leads the nation in wind power capacity — at 20,000 megawatts, wind exceeds coal capacity here.  It should come as no surprise, then, that Texas also produces more wind energy than most countries around the world, and it leads the national with wind-industry employment.  But how did Texas' wind industry become so dominant?

'I Say:  We Let the Planet Die'.  [Scroll down]  Besides billionaire Al Gore and his carbon credits scam, there are many others who've profited greatly from the green crisis.  Think those turbine windmills are a good thing?  Ask those whose land has been razed to erect these essentially useless bird-killing pinwheels that cost one million dollars each; doesn't matter if they will ever produce enough energy because the government will pay the cost for operating them.  Oops, I mean the taxpayers... Solar panels in cold climates?  Who cares?  One can get tax credits.  Remember Solyndra solar went belly up but somehow only the taxpayers lost money.

Hidden consequences of intermittent electricity production.  The high variability of both sun and wind leads to periods of massive overproduction as well as renewable power shortages.  To compensate this, ideally, both storage and backup power should be able to deliver at any moment nearly the full load of the grid.  However, storage at the scale required for a hypothesized 100% renewable system is not feasible with current technologies.  Battery storage is totally insufficient and will need a substantial technological breakthrough. [...] If the outcome of these studies is that the required huge storage systems are unfeasible and that at the same time fossil and nuclear options are rejected, the only solution is to adapt the activity of the society to the availability of electricity and to restrict power availability to part of the population/activities during periods of darkness or absence of wind.  If badly planned, we risk entering a new era where daily life could depend again on the variability of the weather, as it was centuries ago.

Wind and Solar Energy Are Dead Ends.  [I]n terms of generational capacity, wind and solar have grown by leaps and bounds in the last three decades (wind by 24.3% per year since 1990, solar by 46.2% per year since 1990).  However, there are two questions worth asking:  (i) are renewable energies making a difference, and (ii) are they sustainable?  To answer the first question:  No, wind and solar energy have not made a dent in global energy consumption, despite their rapid growth.  In fact, after thirty years of beefy government subsidies, wind power still meets just 0.46% of earth's total energy demands, according to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA).  The data include not only electrical energy, but also energy consumed via liquid fuels for transportation, heating, cooking, etc.  Solar generates even less energy.  Even combined, the figures are minuscule:  wind and solar energy together contribute less than 1% of Earth's energy output.

Wind Subsidies Should End.  It is time for the federal government to stop wasting taxpayer dollars on subsidies for wind power.  In its Annual Energy Outlook 2017, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) compares the levelized costs for units coming online in 2022 and found that the levelized cost of wind turbines is competitive with the levelized cost of new natural gas combined cycle units even without wind power's most significant subsidy — the Production Tax Credit (PTC).  And, with the production tax credit, wind turbines are 18 percent less than a new natural gas combined cycle unit, according to EIA.  With levelized costs competitive with its closest competitor, natural gas, there is no reason to continue to subsidize wind power.

Wind Turbine Infrasound Recordings Shown On An Oscilloscope.  [Video clip]

Wind Turbines Are NOT Clean or Green, and Provide Zero Global Energy.  The wind turbine industry is a shell game where all three shells are empty; it is the biggest scam of the millennium and destined to fail miserably in the end.  Technocrats promote initiatives that are designed to impose social control, not social benefits.

Why wind energy does not consequentially reduce emissions.  How do the extra emissions of running the generators less efficiently compare with the emissions saved by running them less?  Since natural gas-fired generators are best able to respond quickly enough to balance wind energy, they have been added almost in parallel with wind (see graphs provided by the Department of Energy's Energy Information Agency), so it is not wind replacing coal-generated electricity, but wind plus its necessary partner natural gas (which, fracking and methane release aside, is much cleaner than coal).  Might it not only be much cheaper and less land-intensive, but also even reduce emissions more to replace coal with natural gas only?

Offshore Wind Turbine May Have Killed Young Whale.  The carcass of a young humpback whale washed ashore Friday morning in Rhode Island, causing experts to think that a nearby offshore wind turbine may be to blame.  Rescue workers and two veterinarians from a nearby aquarium collected samples from the dead whale, and suspect that the nearby Block Island offshore wind farm could be responsible for the whale's death.  Noise from the turbine allegedly hampers the sonar that whales use to navigate and communicate.

Renewable energy cost and reliability claims exposed and debunked.  A new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) from NOAA's Earth System Laboratory, Boulder Colorado exposes and debunks the contrived claims of a recent renewable energy study which falsely alleged that low cost and reliable 100% renewable energy electric grids are possible.  The new paper concludes that the prior study is based upon significant modeling inadequacies, is "poorly executed" and contains "numerous shortcomings" and "errors" making it "unreliable as a guide about the likely cost, technical reliability, or feasibility of a 100% wind, solar and hydroelectric power system."

The Appalling Delusion of 100 Percent Renewables, Exposed.  he idea that the U.S. economy can be run solely with renewable energy — a claim that leftist politicians, environmentalists, and climate activists have endlessly promoted — has always been a fool's errand.  And on Monday, the National Academy of Sciences published a blockbuster paper by an all-star group of American scientists that says exactly that.  The paper, by Chris Clack, formerly with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Colorado Boulder, and 20 other top scientists, appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  It decimates the work of Mark Jacobson, the Stanford engineering professor whose wildly exaggerated claims about the economic and technical viability of a 100 percent renewable-energy system has made him a celebrity (he appeared on David Letterman's show in 2013) and the hero of Sierra Clubbers, Bernie Sanders, and Hollywood movie stars, including Leonardo DiCaprio.

Pitting Wind and Solar Against Nuclear Power.  The US is essentially swimming in energy, at least when it comes to resources that can be turned into electricity.  The only rationale left for the substantial subsidies that wind and power still receive — over $3 billion budgeted for wind alone in 2017 — is environmental:  mainly concerns about climate change and the emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases linked to it.

Donald Trump Is So Right to Wage War on Wind Farms.  Donald Trump is not a fan of wind turbines, as he has hinted occasionally on Twitter. [...] But there's a very powerful lobby which would like us to see wind turbines as being clean, eco-friendly and vital for the planet's future.  So if President Trump is to crush this bloated, parasitical industry as it deserves he'll need some serious fire support.

Wind turbines are neither clean nor green and they provide zero global energy.  Even in rich countries playing with subsidised wind and solar, a huge slug of their renewable energy comes from wood and hydro, the reliable renewables.  Meanwhile, world energy demand has been growing at about 2 percent a year for nearly 40 years.  Between 2013 and 2014, again using International Energy Agency data, it grew by just under 2,000 terawatt-hours.  If wind turbines were to supply all of that growth but no more, how many would need to be built each year?  The answer is nearly 350,000, since a two-megawatt turbine can produce about 0.005 terawatt-hours per annum.  That's one-and-a-half times as many as have been built in the world since governments started pouring consumer funds into this so-called industry in the early 2000s.  At a density of, very roughly, 50 acres per megawatt, typical for wind farms, that many turbines would require a land area greater than the British Isles, including Ireland.  Every year.  If we kept this up for 50 years, we would have covered every square mile of a land area the size of Russia with wind farms.  Remember, this would be just to fulfil the new demand for energy, not to displace the vast existing supply of energy from fossil fuels, which currently supply 80 percent of global energy needs.

Big 'Green' and Mean:  A Wind-Energy Giant Attacks Small-Town America.  NextEra Energy, which bills itself on its website as "the world's largest generator of renewable energy," is suing a tiny municipality in one of Oklahoma's poorest counties.  In mid February, NextEra, which operates 110 wind projects in 20 states, filed lawsuits in both state and federal court against the town of Hinton, population:  3,200.  Why is the wind giant suing the Caddo County town?  Simple:  Hinton stands between NextEra and nearly $18 million per year in federal tax subsidies.  NextEra isn't suing only Hinton.  Since last October, the wind giant has filed lawsuits against five rural governments from Oklahoma to Michigan, all of which have imposed limits on wind-turbine development.

Interior Dept.  Greenlights Eagle-Killing Wyoming Wind Project.  On January 18, just three days before being replaced by the Trump administration, the Obama administration gave final approval for the first phase of construction of the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Energy Project in Wyoming.  If completed, the project will be the largest wind power facility in North America.  The Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) approved construction of the first 500 turbines to begin in 2018, with completion of the first phase scheduled for 2020.  The project will have 1,000 turbines covering 220,000 acres.  Most of the project will be on BLM lands, which is why it needed the agency's approval.  The first phase, some 75,000 acres, will use state lands and parts of a private ranch owned by Denver-based Anschutz Corporation, the parent company of the Power Company of Wyoming (PCW).

Wind Energy is an Attack on Rural America.  Objections to the encroachment of wind energy installations don't fit the environmentalists' narrative.  The backlash undermines the claim — often repeated by climate activists such as 350.org founder Bill McKibben and Stanford engineering professor Mark Jacobson — that we can run our entire economy on nothing but energy from the wind and sun.  Many of those same activists routinely demonize natural gas and hydraulic fracturing even though the physical footprint of gas production is far smaller than that of wind.  Three years ago, the late David J.C. MacKay, then a professor at the University of Cambridge, calculated that wind energy requires about 700 times more land to produce the same amount of energy as a fracking site.

Once Turbines Arrive, Say Goodbye to Peace and Quiet.  I bought my home to reside, because of its semi-secluded, quiet and peaceful nature.  There is a river across the road from me and wooded area that surrounds me.  I enjoyed listening to the river and birds, which is about all I ever heard, until a wind farm was erected around my property.  There is a never-ending, jet-like sound that rips through my property and house.  There is nothing natural about the noise that comes from these turbines and they are loud!

Five Key Reasons to Pull the Plug on Wind Subsidies.  A tax reform plan drafted in part by incoming Trump administration Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin bodes poorly for wind industry lobbies hoping once again to extend current federal production tax credits (PTCs) which are set to expire by 2021.  Now set at 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour, the original subsidy intent was to "level the energy market playing field" by stimulating technology development to achieve competitive costs, reduce fossil fuel "climate pollution," and advance American energy independence.  None of these goals are really any closer to realization now than when these subsidies were first enacted in 1992.

Windy Clean Green Pollution.  Today-Tonight is a current affairs show in Australia.  Today [3/6/2017] a few more Australians discovered that free energy is not just expensive but creates its own kind of pollution.

The Secret, Silent Wind-Power Peril.  How did we get to this point?  Energized by the Arab oil embargo of 1973, federal and state grants, energy tax credits, subsidies and mandates spurred a stampede toward an artificial market for wind-generated electricity.  It was initially most lucrative in California, where more than 16,000 turbines sprouted on the heels of the state's 50% energy credit.  Many have mourned the death of an estimated (who knows how accurately) 1,100 birds every year at Altamont Pass alone, including 75-110 Golden Eagles annually.  They surely celebrated the fact that 14,000 of California's first 16,000 turbines had failed and stood idle by the early 2000s, abandoned to the industry's inexorable move eastward.

Wind Energy — A runaway failure for nearly 4 decades Part 3 of 3.  The green energy fantasy of using wind turbines to power the future truly is a fantasy and this delusion becomes even more impossible when considering all of society's other energy sectors.  When looking at the published California Energy Commission (CEC) information below, these are the total energy consumption figures for CA that include electricity, fuel coal and natural gas.  It tells the public very little but with some added background information, it also happens to be one the most revealing statements you will ever find about the futility wind energy.  This is because when looking at total energy, the energy used every day in our lives, wind energy only supplies a minscule amount of these total energy numbers.

California's historical and future wind energy failure.  [Wind] turbines have been installed in CA for decades.  In Southern CA the historical mountainous range of the Condor was destroyed by this industry and now this endangered species is captive to a small region with permanent feeding stations away from turbines.  The golden eagle population has been decimated, but rigged USGS 2015 research is hiding this fact and exaggerating their populations by more than ten times.  Huge sprawling areas of CA have been blighted or devoured by this industry and across this country millions of protected birds, with lives dependent on these open spaces are getting slaughtered annually.  So, what has been the net benefit from all this destruction?  Probably none except financially for a limited few.

The "Wind and Solar Will Save Us" Delusion.  The "Wind and Solar Will Save Us" story is based on a long list of misunderstandings and apples to oranges comparisons.  Somehow, people seem to believe that our economy of 7.5 billion people can get along with a very short list of energy supplies.  This short list will not include fossil fuels.  Some would exclude nuclear, as well.  Without these energy types, we find ourselves with a short list of types of energy — what BP calls Hydroelectric, Geobiomass (geothermal, wood, wood waste, and other miscellaneous types; also liquid fuels from plants), Wind, and Solar.  Unfortunately, a transition to such a short list of fuels can't really work.

How much is wind power really costing Ontario?  Here are some cogent facts about wind power.  The U.K. president for German energy giant E.ON stated wind power requires 90% backup from gas or coal plants due to its unreliable and intermittent nature.  The average efficiency of onshore wind power generation, accepted by Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) and other grid operators, is 30% of their rated capacity; the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers (OSPE) supports that claim.  OSPE also note the actual value of a kWh of wind is 3 cents a kWh (fuel costs) as all it does is displace gas generators when it is generating during high demand periods.  On occasion, wind turbines will generate power at levels over 90% and other times at 0% of capacity.  When wind power is generated during low demand hours, the IESO is forced to spill hydro, steam off nuclear or curtail power from the wind turbines, in order to manage the grid.  When wind turbines operate at lower capacity levels during peak demand times, other suppliers such as gas plants are called on for what is needed to meet demand.

Facing the Realities of Renewable Energy.  Wind power is generated when moving air turns the blades of a turbine.  There is wind everywhere, but wind power requires fairly constant strong winds, which are found only in specific regions.  In order to maintain enough energy in the wind to turn the blades and create electricity, the turbines must be separated by a set amount of space, which is determined by their size.  If you double the length of the wind turbine blades, you produce four times as much power, but you must space the turbines twice as far apart in both directions, spreading out over four times the land area.  As a result, the amount of power per unit of land is independent of the size of the turbines, meaning there is a fixed amount of energy you can derive from each acre of land.  At the best of sites, this is about 5 kilowatts per acre.  The average coal-fired power plant is located on about 200 acres of ground and produces one million kilowatts of electricity, 1,000 times the amount of electricity wind turbines can produce on 200 acres.

Green Pixie Dust Energy Policies.  The USA now generates a measly 4% of its electricity from 49,000 wind turbines.  Assuming 75 acres per megawatt, those turbines tower over lands the size of Connecticut.  Generating all US electricity with wind would require more than 710,000 monstrous 400-foot-tall 1.5 MW turbines across 93 million acres — an area the size of Montana!  It would also require thousands of miles of new transmission lines — crossing state and private lands via eminent domain and "streamlined" federal permitting processes.  Of course, all those turbines and lines would require billions of tons of concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass, rare earth metals and other raw materials — plus land and energy for mining, production and installation — to produce electricity 15-20% of the time, so that we get electrical power when it's available, instead of when we need it.

Wind [is] an even Bigger Boondoggle than Ethanol.  Before we become too hopeful about the prospects of using offshore wind power as a fuel source of the future, let's not forget that government data shows that offshore wind power cannot survive in a competitive environment without huge taxpayer subsidies.  Today, wind power receives subsidies greater than any other form of energy per unit of actual energy produced.

Wind Energy:  Our Least Sustainable Resource.  Wind turbine installations impact vast amounts of habitat and crop land, and offshore wind turbines impact vast stretches of lake or ocean — far more than traditional power plants.  Arizona's Palo Verde nuclear plant generates 3,750 megawatts of electricity from a 4,000-acre site.  The 600-MW John Turk ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plant in Arkansas covers a small portion of 2,900 acres; gas-fired units like Calpine's 560-MW Fox Energy Center in Wisconsin require several hundred acres.  All generate reliable power 90-95% of the year.  By contrast, the 600-MW Fowler Ridge wind installation (355 turbines) spans 50,000 acres of farm country along Indiana's I-65 corridor.  The 782-MW Roscoe project in Texas (627 turbines) sprawls across 100,000 acres.

Timely news and commentary:

Wind Power is all hot air.  Net Zero threatens to plunge us back into the world that our ancestors, at great sacrifice, sought to extradite themselves.  The wind might be free, but politicians and activists are people apparently unfamiliar with the concept of there being no such thing as a free lunch.  How attractive is the requirement to find 150 square miles of land every day until 2050 to accommodate the demonic 2 mega-watt wind turbines that no one wants near their house, but definitely someone else's?  Everyone loves free stuff until its processing centre is built on your front lawn.  The next UK government is so likely to be Labour that they might as well swap sides in the House of Commons now, and save millions spent on TV debates where they pretend to disagree with one another whilst pursuing the same destructive political games of an overfunded, underperforming NHS, unbridled mass immigration of young men, the pursuit of digital currency and universal basic income (already being trailed), handing over sovereign powers to globalist organisations and probably the most destructive of all, the dogmatic pursuit of a pointless Net Zero.

Biden administration approves enormous wind farm off the coast of Martha's Vineyard.  President Joe Biden's administration announced Tuesday their approval of another large offshore wind project off of the coast of Martha's Vineyard, despite ongoing legal battles to block similar projects.  The Interior Department approved the New England Wind Project, a planned commercial off-shore project roughly 20 nautical miles south of Martha's Vineyard and 24 nautical miles southwest of Nantucket, Massachusetts.  The planned wind farm would include up to 129 wind turbines off of the coast of the island, the location of some of the wealthiest homes in the United States.

Hazardous Particles From Wind Turbine Rotor Blades.  The new research on microplastics in the environment is quite uncomfortable for both the wind power industry and our rulers[.]  Last week I drew attention to the health risks of microplastics and that no one in a decision-making position is doing anything to prevent the spread despite all the warnings from doctors and scientists who, among other things, have found the nasty stuff in the human body as well as in placentas, where the wind turbines that our politicians put on pedestals play a big role.  In addition to previously known facts that wind power contributes to harming both wildlife and marine life, has low reliability, destroys the local environment with its noise, creates problems with non-recyclable rotor blades and lowers the market value of nearby houses, a new study shows that even pollution and poisoning of nature on land and in waterways is yet another negative aspect to add to the list.

Construction of Wind Turbines Enrages Virginia Beach Residents.  Residents of Virginia Beach, one of the few areas in Virginia to choose Joe Biden for president in 2020, are upset over the construction of wind turbines.  Complaints range from noise and vibrations caused by the 24/7 construction project to the destruction of ocean views and possible negative effects on marine life.  On Wednesday, Virginia Beach residents met with Dominion Energy, the company installing 178 wind turbines 900 feet high across 15 miles of ocean.  The local news outlet News 3 reported that after the meeting, residents still "have concerns regarding the construction noise, environmental damage, and ocean views."  The complaints came down to
  •   Construction noise, which is 24/7
  •   Construction vibration that some residents say cracked the walls in their homes
  •   Being able to see the turbines, even though they are 27 miles from shore
  •   Killing wildlife

Offshore Wind:  Follow the Money.  What we have seen is that it is not just the wind turbines that are offshore.  The subsidies are harvested from UK billpayers and exported in the form of dividends and interest payments to offshore entities.  Even the electricity itself is sold to traders in foreign countries so they can take their cut.  The offshore wind industry is merely a means of lining the pockets of overseas investors at the expense of British energy consumers and UK taxpayers.  What we get in return is expensive and intermittent energy that cannot be described as good value on any measure.  We even have UK-based lobbyists taking their own cut to promote this rip-off.

Make them play by their own rules!
conservatives are using the Endangered Species Act to save the whales from offshore wind projects.  Morano: "I'm with Climate Depot, and my parent group, the Committee For a Constructive Tomorrow, has joined with The Heartland Institute and the National Legal Policy Center.  We are suing to save the whales in the US District Court in the District of Columbia.  We are suing Dominion Energy and the federal government to say they have not properly looked at the Endangered Species laws as to how to protect the whales and that offshore wind is harming the whales' sonar, causing the death and beachings and impacting endangered species.  We are going to have our day in court. [...] We're using the 1970s endangered species laws championed by the environmentalists to save the whales from the green energy wind farms.  And the environmentalists have been silent on this issue.  So it's up to us, the conservatives, to stand up and fight this."

Irish High Court Slams Wind Turbine Operator For Noise "Like Aeroplanes that Never Land".  Freedom from wind turbine noise nuisance isn't a "concern"; it's a hard-won legal "right" based on the lawful entitlement to sleep comfortably in your own home — a right (not a privilege) that's been upheld against the mighty, rich and powerful for close to 200 hundred [sic] years.  The grinding, thumping cacophony generated by giant industrial wind turbines delivers wholly unnecessary misery worldwide.  Sleep deprivation is first among the list of adverse health effects caused by these things and the pulsing low-frequency noise they generate.  The wind industry has fought tooth and nail to avoid the consequences of the harm it dishes out, mostly with impunity.  However, increasingly its victims are fighting back and winning.

French Council of State annuls wind turbine permits, major impact on energy future.  In a landmark decision, the French Council of State has ruled that authorizations for onshore wind turbines and rules for the renewal of wind farms are illegal.  The decision comes after a legal challenge brought by the Fédération Environnement Durable and 15 associations.  The Council of State annulled all provisions concerning the three successive versions of the noise measurement protocol that was supposed to protect the health of local residents.  The decision affects not only current authorizations and projects but could also call into question existing wind farms.

Three energy realities that renewable advocates can't answer.  [#2] Renewables increase the cost of electricity.  Renewable advocates often claim that the adoption of more wind and solar will lead to lower electricity costs, but the opposite is true.  In a previous Substack, we wrote in detail about how utility companies with the largest rate increase requests in the country admit the energy transition is a major reason behind increasing electricity prices for families and businesses. [...] How is it that renewable advocates are so wrong about electricity cost increases stemming from massive wind and solar buildouts?  The answer lies in relying on fundamentally flawed means of comparison between different electricity sources and the lack of accounting for the diminished value that wind and solar offer the grid compared to more reliable energy sources like coal, natural gas, and nuclear.  In other words, the framework they use for determining electricity prices is wrong because they don't account for the full system costs of maintaining reliability.

Germany Begins Felling 120,000 Trees From 'Fairy Tale' Forest to Make Way for Wind Turbines.  The windmills are spinning golden subsidies in the central German 'fairy tale' forest of Reinhardswald, but the payment is the partial destruction of the 1,000 year-old ancient wood itself.  Work has started on the clearing of up to 120,000 trees in the forest, the setting for many of the Brothers Grimm mythical stories, to provide access for an initial 18 giant wind turbines around the Sababurg 'Sleeping Beauty' castle.  Who is opposing this massive destruction of the ancient forest teeming with wildlife with trees over 200 years old?  Certainly not the Green party, now in power at national and local level.  In fact the project is being led by local Hesse Green Minister Priska Hinz who is reported to have said: "Wind energy makes a decisive contribution to the energy transition and the preservation of nature.  It is the only way to preserve forests and important ecosystems."  There is some local press interest in Germany about the destruction of part of the forest that covers a 200 square kilometre area.  Nevertheless, the mainstream media generally keep well away from covering environmental destruction when the Greens are doing it in the claimed cause of saving the planet.

Wind and Solar Are No Solution.  Our electricity is mainly produced using fossil fuels, with some hydroelectric (dams) and some nuclear.  Wind and solar are supposed to take the place of fossil fuels.  Right now, when the wind does not blow nor the sun shine, the slack is taken up using coal and natural gas.  To be available when needed, these sources of electricity are kept idling.  But under such conditions, they use almost as much fuel and produce almost as much carbon dioxide, so you have gained little.  When these resources are eliminated, we will have to depend on huge batteries.  In some places, during the winter, there may be week after week with cloudy weather, with rain and snow.  (Where we live in North Idaho, we have had only one week of clear weather in three months.)  It would be impossible to build a battery large enough to power a city for a day, let alone for a week, or a month.  Wind machines last only a few years.  Some burn up or break apart.  And the sound of the turbine has been a health problem for some people and for whales.  Bats and many birds are killed by wind machines.  (Many of these birds are considered threatened, so this is a threat to their survival.)  Plus, there is the fact that when it is really cold, the wind sometimes does not blow.

Dispelling the Cult Claim — "Wind and Solar are Lower Cost Generation than Natural Gas".  Intrigued by the many eco-warriors touting how wind and solar are cheaper generation sources then natural gas I decided to use Scott Luft's (Cold Air) compilation of data for 2023 to calculate on a "simple" basis what each generation source actually cost us ratepayers/taxpayers to see if the claims made were even close to the truth.  Below is a small sampling of what the claims were and who made them!  Please note that four of them are registered "charities" and one is from the Federal Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change!

Two windfarms share £80 million to switch off.  Regular readers will know that I have long been concerned over the extraordinary level of payments to windfarms to switch off.  These so-called 'constraint payments' are deemed necessary when the wires in the transmission grid have inadequate capacity to get a generator's power to market.  When that happens, the windfarm (and it is always a windfarm) is paid to switch off, and a gas-fired power station is paid to switch on so that the end user of the electricity is not left short.  This is particularly a problem for windfarms in Scottish waters, because there is relatively little transmission capacity running across the border to England, where most of the power users are found.  In 2022, I noted that the offshore windfarm called Moray East had spent 25% of the previous year switched off.  The suspicion is that there may be perverse incentives for developers to build windfarms in Scotland precisely so they receive constraint payments.

Alberta had negligible wind power production early last week.  Alberta's 'world famous' wind farms generated negligible power last Monday, despite costing billions of dollars collectively.  According to Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) data, the province's hundreds of turbines across 45 wind farms produced less power than a single diesel generator produces.  As reported by The Epoch Times, Alberta's wind farms, with the capacity to generate 4,481 megawatts (MW) of energy, failed to produce more than eight megawatts at any time for at least half an hour after the sun had set.  The ReliableAB X account uncovered wind power production hit rock bottom at 10:10 p.m. and remained under 100 MW well into the following afternoon.  Wind speeds never exceeded more than two knots.  [Tweet]

Wind farm operator forced to cut hundreds of jobs.  One of Britain's largest offshore wind developers has been forced to cut hundreds of jobs and quit several global markets as it battles spiralling costs.  Ørsted, which operates 12 wind farms in the UK, announced a raft of cost-cutting measures after posting around £2.2bn worth of losses for 2023.  This includes halting dividend payments until 2025 and pulling out of several international markets, including in Norway, Spain and Portugal.  Ørsted's cash crunch comes after the business abandoned several uncompleted projects in the US last year after incurring billions of pounds of losses.  Mads Nipper, chief executive of the Danish business, said up to 800 roles will be affected by the cost cuts, with expected wind farm output falling from 50 gigawatts to 38 gigawatts by 2030.  This could mean the business builds 1,500 fewer turbines.

Danish Clean Energy Giant Sucking Wind.  You all know from reading my posts that Ørsted has had a miserable twelve months, thanks to a number of circumstances.  Most of them stem from contracts agreed to based on overconfidence in continued government largesse, cheap financing, low inflation, and uninterrupted supply chains.  As you well know, all of those came apart this year.  While inflation has mitigated somewhat, thanks to Ukraine, lingering effects of the pandemic, the Panama drought, and recently the Middle East, supply chain issues are a constant thorn in manufacturers' sides.  In the wind industry, the issue is exacerbated by the multitude of warranty repairs almost every firm is facing. [...] Many are too expensive at current rates to even begin.  If local boards controlling utility rates will not renegotiate to substantially raise the purchase price of electricity generated by the completed wind farm from what had been contractually agreed upon, developers are walking away, even in the face of huge penalties.

Inside Amazon's British wind power grab.  When Amazon announced it was buying up half the output from one of Britain's newest and biggest wind farms last week, it appeared like good news for Britain's net zero ambitions.  The US giant committed to buying energy from Scotland's Moray West wind farm before it was even built, bolstering its bid to power all operations with 100 [percent] renewable energy by 2025.  However, amid the positivity, some industry sources claim Amazon and other global firms are embarking on an energy "power grab" that draws resources away from decarbonising Britain's homes and businesses.  The deal completed by Amazon comes after Vodafone bought up the output from five solar farms last year, located in Norfolk, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, Buckinghamshire and Dorset.

Another Wind Farm Wobbling.  Even with Tuesday's disappointing news about New Jersey's verminous governor giving the go-ahead to two more massive offshore wind farms, I knew there'd been such good news in the pipe for so long, this might just be a burp. [...] The projects off the MD coast Orsted had contracted with the state for were going to be called Skipjack 1 and Skipjack 2.  [Tweet]  I first covered them — and the environmental damage already occurring during the sonar surveying — back in October.  There were rumors floating, as many of Ørsted's other offshore projects in the US ground to halt or were abandoned completely, that the Skipjack farms would fall to the same economic pressures.  It seems that has come to pass after a fashion.  What Ørsted did yesterday was pull out of its contract for electricity with the state of Maryland because the rates they'd agreed to initially were now too low to pay for the project.

Freezing to Fight Global Warming.  During the polar Vortex, Alberat's grid demand skyrocket, hitting 10,000, 11,000, and more than 12,000 MWs of demand.  To supply that demand, Alberta's gas plants have run hard, and the province had to rely on imports.  Of course, at night, Alberta's 1650 MWs of solar were completely useless.  And wind output failed too.  On the night of Jan 12-13, during the record-breaking cold temperatures, wind output stood at only 14 MWs at 2115hrs.  That wasn't the lowest either.  Early in the evening, wind output stood at 8-10 MWs.

The U.K. Climate Target is Based on One Windy Year's Data.  In October the Daily Sceptic reported on a paper written for the Royal Society led by Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith of Oxford University that concluded batteries were not the answer to the huge storage requirements of intermittent 'green' electricity power.  Despite the prestigious academic fire power on parade, the paper died a death in the popular prints, presumably because of its unwelcome message about the much-touted battery solution.  But recent revelations suggest the report could act as a loose thread that helps unravel the collectivist Net Zero agenda in the U.K. The Royal Society analysed decades of local wind speeds and found the electricity system needed the equivalent of at least a third of green energy to be stored as backup.  Such a cost would be astronomical.

Biden's Offshore Wind Boondoggle is Collapsing.  The Wall Street Journal published a long analysis of the trials and tribulations of Joe Biden's heavily subsidized offshore wind boondoggle on Friday.  The writers do a good job of detailing many of the major challenges wind developers off the northeastern coast have faced in executing their plans, though the writers carefully avoid mention of all the dead whales washing up onshore adjacent to the developments, and the extremely damaging impacts the projects are having on the commercial fishing industry.  The industry is collapsing into the Atlantic, though, and the piece attributes most of the trouble to timing, attributing the financial struggles of developers to inflation and supply chain muckups coming out of the world's insane response to the Covid pandemic.

Osage Nation Prevails in Court Battle Against European Green Energy Barons.  The New Year has started out with European green energy firms running out of gas.  I recently reported on the news that European energy firms Equinor and BP terminated their agreement to sell power to New York state from their proposed Empire Wind 2 offshore wind farm, probably ending the plans for that project completely.  Now comes more good news for those who are concerned about inefficient and costly wind farm projects being thrust on Americans by green energy barons.  The Osage Nation took a European wind farm company to court and prevailed[,] and now the operating windmills have got to be dismantled and removed per court order.  A federal judge has ordered Enell Energy to remove an 84-turbine wind farm in Osage County, with a final ruling that ends more than a decade of litigation over illegal mining on the Osage Reservation.  Court documents estimate the cost of removing the turbines at $300 million.

Britain's Net Zero Disaster & The Wind Power Scam.  Wind power and net zero are built on a pyramid of deceit.  Net zero was sold to Parliament and the British people on claims that wind-power costs were low and falling.  This was untrue:  Wind-power costs are high and have been rising.  In the net-zero version of "crypto will make you rich," official analyses produced by the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility rely on the falsehood that wind power is cheap, that net zero would have minimal costs, and that it could boost productivity and economic growth.  None of these has any basis in reality. [...] Before mass deployment of renewables, 1 MW of capacity in 2009 produced 4,312 MWh of electricity.  In 2020, 1 MW of capacity generated 3,094 MWh, a decline of 28.3 percent.  It's as clear as can be:  Investment in renewables shrinks the economy's productive potential.  This is confirmed by the International Energy Agency's net-zero modeling.  Its net-zero pathway sees the global energy sector in 2030 employing nearly 25 million more people, using $16.5 trillion more capital, and taking an additional land area the combined size of California and Texas for wind and solar farms and the combined size of Mexico and France for bioenergy — all to produce 7 percent less energy.

Court orders wind farm to be torn down after golden eagle death.  A French wind farm that was found to have killed over 1,000 birds, including a golden eagle, will be torn down on court order.  The Nîmes Court of Appeal ruled that the wind farm — based in the town of Lunas in the south of France — must be demolished and the land returned to its original state.  The court found that the turbines had been built on a site they should not have been following a defective impact assessment.  Tearing them down was justified and proportionate based on the ongoing harm they were doing to local wildlife, it ruled.

Is the 'manmade' climate crisis a scam?  These deep-thinking TV presenters, high on their abilities to read pre-written scripts to camera, spoke with the shallow authority of primary school teachers on the cost benefits of wind power, without for a moment asking their puppeteers what happens when it isn't windy.  It doesn't matter how cheap magic beans are if they can't grow a beanstalk.  You can build over fertile farmland and desecrate beautiful horizons with endless wind farms, but you can't create actual wind.  Obviously, it's not the debut for mainstream media serving as a megaphone for the climate crisis cult.  Professor Norman Fenton, the risk and mathematics expert, also had his own run-in with the BBC on a documentary called Climate Change by Numbers.  The producer of the programme even made clear before filming that the BBC no longer allowed any sceptical commentary on climate change as it deemed the 'science was settled'.

$4B Vineyard Wind Project Got One Turbine Running.  The Vineyard Wind Project, the country's first large-scale offshore wind project, was supposed to be fully operational in Massachusetts in 2023.  They got one working in this "watershed moment," "historic," "major milestone," "dawn" of a new age project.  The project achieved first power late Tuesday with one operating turbine near Martha's Vineyard.  It produced about 5 MW of electricity.  The company believes five turbines will be running in early 2024.  The company calls it a "major milestone".  The project has cost $4 billion so far.  If they get all 62 wind turbines working with any consistency, they will generate power for more than 400,000 homes in Massachusetts if the wind blows and the turbines don't freeze.

The Strange Case of the Exploding Wind Turbine.  The bad news is that if wind turbines costing £3 million each are going to fall to pieces and turn into burning scrap every time there's a gale, won't that affect global warming? [...] The wind turbines are in good company though.  As we all know, electric cars like bursting into flames at the drop of a hat and don't even need a howling gale to do so.  What's next?  Solar panels that slide off roofs and crush people?

Wind Farm Contractors Acknowledge Turbines Harm Dolphins, Whales.  The misleading AP article — carried by WBTS-TV in Boston; The Daily Star newspaper of Oneonta, New York; and WTFX-TV in Philadelphia, among others — stated that "scientists say there is no credible evidence linking offshore wind farms to whale deaths" and that "offshore wind opponents are using unsupported claims about harm to whales to try to stop projects, with some of the loudest opposition centered in New Jersey."  The article accuses opponents of causing "angst in coastal communities, where developers need to build shoreside infrastructure to operate a wind farm."  If so, why are offshore wind farm companies asking Uncle Sam for permission to harm ocean mammals, and why are dead whales washing up on East Coast beaches?

Zero onshore wind plans submitted in England since de facto ban was 'lifted'.  No new plans for onshore wind have been accepted in England since the government claimed it had "lifted" the de facto ban, new analysis reveals.  Renewable energy organisations warned at the time that this was likely.  Despite the levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, having changed planning rules introduced in 2015 by the then prime minister, David Cameron, to stop onshore wind projects being blocked by a single objection, they still face higher barriers than every other form of infrastructure, including waste incinerators.  Analysis of the government's renewable energy planning database shows that no applications for new onshore wind projects have been submitted since the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, claimed that the government would overturn the onshore wind ban in September 2023.

Renewable Failure:  Wind Giant Enel Forced to Remove Wind Farm in Oklahoma.  The Italy-based green energy giant Enel is being forced to remove an already constructed wind farm in Oklahoma after a federal trade judge sided with the Osage Nation in an over-decade-long dispute over the building of the project.  U.S. Court of International Trade Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves ordered the removal of the wind farm because of Enel's failure to obtain a mining lease from the Osage Tribe.  Choe-Groves' ruling granted the Osage Nation's Minerals Council permanent injunctive relief, which calls for "ejectment of the wind turbine farm for continuing trespass."  In 2017, an appellate court ruled that the construction of the wind farm constituted mining and required Enel to acquire a lease from the Minerals Council, which the sustainable-energy giant failed to do.  And now Enel is forced to remove the 84 giant wind turbines spread over 8,400 acres, along with all the transmission lines, weather towers, and any other "sustainable" sundries the company has left behind.

Wind Farm Gets Blown Off the Prairie.  Right before Christmas, a federal judge put the bow on a present twelve years in the making for the Osage Nation of Oklahoma. [...] The Osage had been furiously and unrelentingly fighting the wind farm — Osage Wind — tooth and nail since word of the project first broke. [...] The Osage Nation might not have owned all the property, but they did hold title to all the mineral rights under the windfarm and the area required for maintenance roads, etc., ever since buying the land from the Cherokees in the late 1800's.  As far back as 2011, at the very beginning of the project, the superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs wrote a letter to the company warning them not to violate the tribe's mineral rights when construction started or during any part of the build-out.

Britain's Net Zero Disaster and the Wind Power Scam.  Net zero was sold to Parliament and the British people on claims that wind-power costs were low and falling.  This was untrue:  wind-power costs are high and have been rising.  In the net zero version of "crypto will make you rich," official analyses produced by the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility rely on the falsehood that wind power is cheap, that net zero would have minimal costs, and that it could boost productivity and economic growth.  None of these has any basis in reality.  The push for net zero began in 2019, when the UK's Climate Change Committee produced a report urging the government to adopt the policy.  Part of the justification was historic climate guilt.  In the words of committee chair Lord Deben, Britain had been "one of the largest historical contributors to climate change."  But the key economic justification for raising Britain's decarbonization from 80 percent to 100 percent by 2050 — i.e., net zero — was "rapid cost reductions during mass deployment for key technologies," notably in offshore wind.  These illusory cost reductions, the committee claimed, "have made tighter emission reduction targets achievable at the same costs as previous looser targets."  It was green snake oil.

Federal Judge Sides With Osage Nation, Orders Removal Of 84 Wind Turbines.  The Osage Nation won a massive ruling in Tulsa federal court on Wednesday that requires Enel to dismantle a 150-megawatt wind project it built in Osage County despite the tribe's repeated objections.  The tribe's fight against Rome-based Enel began in 2011 and is the longest-running legal battle over wind energy in American history.  As reported by Curtis Killman in the Tulsa World on Thursday, the ruling grants the United States, the Osage Nation, and Osage Minerals Council permanent injunctive relief via "ejectment of the wind turbine farm for continuing trespass."  The decision by U.S. Court of International Trade Judge Jennifer Choe-Graves is the culmination of 12 years of litigation that pitted the tribe and federal authorities against Enel.  During the construction of the project, the company illegally mined rock owned by the tribe, and it continued to do so even after being ordered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to stop.  Instead of halting work, the company sped up construction.

Industrial Wind Turbines Are Slaughtering Millions of Birds and Bats.  We are constantly told by mainstream media and climate change campaigners that industrial wind turbines (IWTs) are environmentally friendly.  We supposedly need this form of "green energy" to help "stop climate change," they say.  Yet nothing could be further from the truth.  No matter how much IWT manufacturers and their political and environmentalist allies tell us otherwise, IWTs are not even remotely "green" or environmentally friendly.  In their 2021 book, "'Clean' Energy Exploitations: Helping Citizens Understand the Environmental and Humanity Abuses That Support 'Clean' Energy," authors Ronald Stein and Todd Royal explain:  "Green energy uses materials from some of the worst ecological and human rights offenders that exist on Earth...  The volume of wind turbine waste is projected to soar in years to come, with mining and manufacturing waste, service waste, and end-of-life waste being the major sources.  It is estimated that there will be 43 million metric tons just of blade waste worldwide by 2050."  And they will do nothing to "stop climate change," of course.  In fact, they contribute to climate change in the vicinity of the turbines by slowing the wind as they use wind energy to turn the blades.  But perhaps the greatest lie we hear from IWT advocates is that their contribution to bird and bat mortality is negligible.

7,500 wind turbines in Spain to be dismantled within five years.  Approximately 36% of energy-generating wind turbines in Spain will need to be decommissioned within the next five years as they become obsolete, predicts the Wind Energy Association (AEE).  This translates to around 7,500 wind turbines and 20,000 blades turning into scrap that will have to be dismantled, transported, and processed, posing a significant logistical challenge.  According to the industry association, every third wind turbine currently operating in Spain was installed before 2005, while the lifespan of wind turbines generating electricity is estimated at 20-25 years.  Despite this, about 85% of components, including steel, copper wires, electronics, and generators, can be reused.  The challenging aspect of disposal is the fiberglass blades of the turbines, which only a few landfills accept.

Offshore Wind cannot be justified.  Offshore wind facilities are enormously expensive and environmentally destructive.  The primary purported justification for constructing them is to reduce "carbon" (carbon dioxide or CO2) emissions and save the planet from "catastrophic climate change."  However, this justification is not just built on a false premise; adding offshore wind to a state's energy mix will most likely increase global CO2 emissions.  That means the net emission benefits are hugely negative, as are other net environmental and economic effects.  This study finds that carbon dioxide reductions from local (state and national, as opposed to global) wind power generation are greatly overstated.  For starters, any CO2 decrease will be small at best, largely because the intermittency of necessary wind speeds forces backup gas-fired power emissions to increase when the wind isn't blowing.  (Sufficient backup electricity from battery modules is also hugely expensive, heavily reliant on raw materials that are in short supply, and likely a decade or more away.)  The net result is that adding offshore wind to the existing coal, gas and nuclear and/or hydroelectric power system, though modestly lowering emissions at first glance, does little to reduce local power emissions overall because of the gas (or coal) backup generation now needed to maintain a stable grid.

The Global Warming Outside is Frightful:  UK Edition.  It sure is a lucky thing King Charles and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak are lounging by a pool in Dubai for COP28.  You know — expending their carbon footprint and all of ours for the next 300 years just to rattle on about saving the world, eat really good chows, drink to excess, and argue over whether they should give old statues back to the Greeks. [Tweet] [...] Because remember — this is a renewable haven, where the British and Scottish governments have been busy shoving wind and solar farms, EVs and heat pumps down everyone's throats.  How's that going with snow, ice, and... oh, the temperature hovering around freezing with a predicted dip to 15°, and a week's forecast of daily highs in the teens to look forward to?  The answer would be "About what a renewable skeptic would expect."

Internal docs show Biden admin waived taxpayer safeguards to boost offshore wind project.  The Biden administration quietly granted a request from an energy firm developing an offshore wind project off the coast of Massachusetts to waive development fees designed to safeguard taxpayers, according to internal documents reviewed by Fox News Digital.  The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) informed Vineyard Wind that it had waived a financial assurance for decommissioning costs fee in a June 15, 2021, letter obtained by watchdog group Protect the Public's Trust (PPT).  Federal statute mandates that developers pay that fee prior to construction on their lease, a potentially hefty fee designed to guarantee federal property is returned to its original state after a lessee departs its lease.  "At the same time the Department of the Interior was looking at forcing greater and more expensive bonding requirements on holders of long-standing oil and gas leases, they were relaxing these requirements on the nation's first utility-scale offshore wind energy producer, one that just coincidentally happened to be a client of their incoming #2," PPT Director Michael Chamberlain told Fox News Digital.

Offshore wind farms, dead whales and the row that's started a green-on-green civil war.  The helpless body of a huge whale washed up on the shoreline is always a sombre sight.  But the discovery of a dead 52 ft fin whale on Newquay's Fistral Beach at dawn last week was particularly depressing for locals, who have been spotting a growing number of the majestic animals off their coast in recent months.  "It's heartbreaking," said resident Kathryn Fuller.  The increase in whale sightings off Cornwall had been greeted as a sign that marine life was thriving.  But the whale's death was a reminder that beachings often have a man-made cause, such as fishing, naval sonar (which, it is thought, causes whales to surface too quickly, leading to decompression sickness) or collisions with ships.  "These intelligent beings look so sad and helpless out of the water," says Danny Groves of Whale and Dolphin Conservation.  And now there is fierce global debate about whether another factor could be at play in such incidents:  offshore wind farms — a controversy that has set the passionately pursued 'green' agendas of renewable energy activists and conservationists against one another.  The finger-pointing began in February with a spate of strandings and deaths of baleen whales (the name for humpbacks, fin whales and blue whales) on America's east coast, which some blamed on huge turbines off the US seaboard.

Collapse of projects shows again that wind power is not affordable.  The renewable-power fantasy is being blown apart by furious financial headwinds.  Already this year projects have tumbled in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts, and now Danish wind-power giant Ørsted has canceled two wind farms in New Jersey.  Over and over, the litany of causes is the same: inflation, higher interest rates that drive up capital costs and severe kinks in the supply chain.  These same problems are slamming proposed offshore-wind projects in New York as developers make final decisions on whether to start building turbines or cut their losses before they get worse.  Seeing that the wild cost increases threaten to make their projects unprofitable, these companies went hat-in-hand to the state's Public Service Commission asking for increases of 35% to 65% on the price of electricity they hope to generate.  But the commission declined to dig deeper into ratepayers' wallets, sending them away empty-handed.

Offshore Wind is a Financial and Environmental Catastrophe.  It's about time Californians of all ideological persuasions wake up and stop what is possibly the most economically wasteful and environmentally destructive project in American history: the utility scale adoption of offshore wind energy.  The California Legislature intends to despoil our coastline and coastal waters with floating wind turbines, 20+ miles offshore, tethered to the sea floor 4,000 feet beneath the waves.  Along with tethering cables, high voltage wires will descend from each of these noisy, 1,000 foot tall leviathans, but we're to assume none of this will disrupt the migrations of our treasured Cetaceans and other marine and avian life, not the electric fields emanating from hundreds (thousands?) of 20+ mile long live power lines laid onto the ocean floor, nor from the construction, the maintenance, or the new ports, ships, and submersibles.

Offshore wind energy is sinking like a stone.  With respect to energy policy, President Biden has been nothing but consistent.  From day one, he set out to end fossil fuel use in America and replace it with wind and solar power — even if green energy drives up costs and fails to deliver reliable electricity when needed.  One of his flagship initiatives is to construct 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030.  That's 2,500 800-foot-tall 12-megawatt turbines.  Sounds impressive.  It's not.  Even blanketing the East Coast with such monstrosities would barely meet New York state's electricity demand on a hot summer day.  It would provide a scant half of the Empire State's needs once it goes all-electric and perhaps one-third of its needs if the turbines also have to charge batteries to prevent blackouts whenever the wind stops blowing.  Multiply that situation for every state in the country, and the massive, impossible scale of this government-mandated foolishness becomes clear.  Worse, many more obstacles loom — most of which the wind industry, politicians, climate activists and the news media rarely mention.

[The] Price paid for offshore power [will soon] rise by over 50%.  The price paid to generate electricity by offshore wind farms has been raised by more than 50% as the government tries to entice energy firms to invest.  It comes after an auction for offshore wind projects failed to attract any bids, with firms arguing the price set for electricity generated was too low.  The government has lifted the amount it pays from £44 per MWh to a price up to £73.  It is hoped that more offshore wind capacity will lead to cheaper bills.  Companies have said that the cost of building wind farms has soared because of rising inflation and interest rates, while the maximum price they can charge for the electricity they generate has been relatively low.  Energy firms have told the BBC that electricity produced out at sea would remain cheaper and less prone to shock increases compared with power derived from gas-fired power stations.

Beware the offshore wind oligarchy.  The Atlantic coastal states are painting themselves into a financial corner with offshore wind targets and mandates.  These purchase requirements may be creating a seller's market for offshore power providers.  Even worse, given that there are only a handful of developers, it may well become an oligopoly market.  If so, then the question is how high the prices to the states will go.  This alarming possibility is in sharp contrast to how the situation is being reported.  Some developers have bought out their existing power purchase (supply) agreements as uneconomical.  In New York, the State rejected a large-scale request from a bunch of developers for price increases averaging over 50% on the grounds that it violated their competitive procurement policy.  These events have been reported as serious setbacks for the industry, but in every case, the developers are expected to rebid the PPAs at much higher prices.  In fact, these States are rushing to get new procurements underway.  Other states are doing likewise.

Profit At China's Top Wind Firm Slumps 98%.  Lower prices for turbines amid a price war in China have resulted in a 98% plunge in the net profit of the top Chinese wind turbine maker, Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co.  While investments in renewable energy projects in China are booming, intensified competition has led to a race to the bottom for wind turbine prices — a race that has dented profits at the biggest Chinese manufacturer.  Goldwind booked $1.28 million in net income for the third quarter of 2023, down by a massive 98% compared to the same period of 2022, a company statement quoted by Bloomberg showed on Thursday.  Chinese clean energy technology manufacturers have also come under EU scrutiny as the bloc fears cheaper products from China would undermine the European Union's goals of having a strong EU clean energy manufacturing industry.  Globally, the wind power industry faces additional challenges.  Offshore projects are being scrapped amid rising costs and interest rates and supply chain issues.

The myth of cheap offshore wind has been exposed.  Net Zero Watch is calling for an investigation after it was reported that ministers are considering doubling the guaranteed prices on offer for offshore windfarms next year to between £70 and £75/MWh.  The news comes after this year's auction failed to attract any bids from offshore wind developers.  Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford said:  "Just a few months ago, Whitehall was telling us that the cost of offshore wind was just £44/MWh.  If this story is true, they will be effectively admitting that they have been lying.  We must get to the bottom of why civil servants have consistently been underplaying offshore wind costs, despite repeatedly being warned that the underlying financial accounts of windfarms told a different story."

US offshore wind is a costly solution to a non-existent problem.  For better or worse, the boosters of the much-advertised energy transition decided early on to focus their subsidy strategy on a trio of voracious rent-seeking industries:  Wind and solar in power generation, and electric vehicles in transportation.  It is a sort of green three-legged stool that we have been assured by activists, politicians, media and the industries themselves would be able to rapidly displace villainous fossil fuels in a cheap and seamless manner.  But a funny thing has happened on the way to our new net-zero utopia, as two of the three legs of the stool have begun to show clear signs of financial distress that could render this stool highly unstable.  The EV business was the first to signal that things were not going to plan early this year as unsold inventory began to pile up on dealer lots amid slowing demand, stubborn inflation, and rising interest rates.  In recent weeks, some analysts have begun to predict that peak EV adoption could happen in the next 2-3 years and top out at just 10-12 percent of the total vehicle fleet.  Distressed automakers like Ford and GM have recently announced cancellations in some big investments in plant and equipment and year-long delays in new factory openings and new model introductions.  If anything, the Big Wind industry appears to be in even deeper financial distress.

Shell Game:  Another Wind Farm Goes Down.  This past August, as things were beginning to really heat up as far as inflationary and warranty pressures on wind farm developers like Ørsted and turbine manufacturers like Siemens Gamesa, most of the attention was focused on the whale killing sonar surveying off the New Jersey coast.  Learning about profits disappearing because of extraordinary problems with deliveries, cables, blades — whatever their issues were — or the nitty gritty of duking it out over already signed contractual agreements for rates increases can cause your eyes to glaze over.  But a leviathan washing up on a popular beach... and another and another and yet again, well — that catches greater population's attention.  They know they've never seen that before.  Thanks to popular pressure and an industry bleeding tremendous amounts of cash even with enormous government subsidies, the New Jersey projects went bust officially last week.  What I hadn't seen in any of the reports at the time was that another project we've been watching here — Ørsted's Skipjack 1 off the Maryland coast — was also suspended at the same time.

Why wind power won't cut our energy bills.  It has long been claimed by our green elites that renewables provide a much cheaper alternative to other sources of energy, from gas to nuclear.  Just last year, UK Labour leader Keir Starmer claimed that wind power is nine times cheaper than that derived from gas-fired power stations.  But two bits of recent news regarding wind power have called such claims into question.  First, in September, the British government failed to auction off any of its contracts for generating offshore wind power.  Firms argued that the government's set price set for electricity generated was too low to make these offshore wind projects economically viable.  Industry sources subsequently described this as a 'catastrophic outcome' for the sector.  Then, last week, Britain's largest generator of power, German electricity giant RWE, asked the government to pay up to 70 percent more for the electric current it gets from offshore wind farms.  RWE UK chief Tom Glover said that developers should be paid £65-75 per megawatt hour (MwH), rather than the £44 per MwH set by the government.

Wind Spinning Out of Control.  Hard on the heels of the EV sales collapse major automakers are dealing with, compounded by the UAW strike, the bad news in the renewable energy quarter has everyone wondering, "Does Biden bail this bunch out next?"  Legit question.  Think about what the administration has dumped into automakers in their push for EVs and how it's shaking out so far — nobody's buying what they're selling. [...] But the push for EVs, drowning in government largesse and mandates as it already is, has nothing on the wind energy sector, which has state and national governments across the globe literally betting their energy security and financial farm on a technology that hasn't lived up to its billing yet.  And those were during the halcyon days of big money and everyone loving the Green.

The case for wind power was built upon a myth.  Wind is already the cheapest form of power and will save us a fortune in future.  We know this because the green energy lobby keeps telling us so.  But it is hard to square with the words of Tom Glover, chair of energy company RWE's UK arm, last week.  No more offshore wind farms will be built, he said, unless the Government hikes the guaranteed long-term prices offered to their operators by as much as 70 percent.  The energy "market" is not really much of a market at all, not when it comes to green energy.  The Government underwrites wind and solar through "contracts for difference" — guaranteeing operators a minimum "strike price", rising with inflation, for every megawatt-hour of electricity they generate over 15 years.  The trouble is that wind farm developers will no longer accept the strike prices offered.  Last time the Government held an auction for the right to build offshore wind farms, in September, it received not a single bid.

The public still isn't being told the full truth about net zero.  When Theresa May ushered in the legally binding 2050 deadline for net zero, she did so seemingly on a whim.  Those were the last days of her administration, and there was relatively little debate about how any of this transition might be delivered.  In her new autobiography, "The Abuse of Power", the former prime minister says this was one of her crowning achievements in No. 10.  And why not?  The deadline, at the time, was 31 years in the future.  There was no trade-off to make — not one she would have to deal with, anyway.  The green revolution seemed to be characterised only by promise:  of cheaper energy, of greener jobs, and of a cleaner environment.  It hasn't even been five years, yet that blindly optimistic view of net-zero is already being challenged.  Last month's renewables auction — where no bids were put in to build new offshore wind — gave pause not just to the wind industry, but to everyone invested in the net-zero transition.

Kathy Hochul vetoes bill that would have sped up construction of a planned offshore wind depot after civic pressure.  On Friday, New York's governor Kathy Hochul vetoed a bill which would have sped up the construction of a planned offshore wind depot as it would have allowed for the developer to bypass local rules and run the transmission line from the offshore turbines under the community of Long Beach.

Offshore Wind is an Economic and Environmental Catastrophe.  When it comes to "renewables" wreaking havoc on the environment, wind turbines have stiff competition.  For example, over 500,000 square miles of biofuel plantations have already replaced farms and forests to replace a mere 4 percent of transportation fuel.  To source raw materials to build "sustainable" batteries, mining operations are scaling up, with no end in sight, in nations with appalling labor conditions and nonexistent environmental regulations.  But the worst offender is the wind industry.  America's wind power industry somehow manages to attract almost no negative coverage in the press, or litigation from environmentalists, despite causing some of the most obvious and tragic environmental catastrophes so far this century.  Last August I wrote about the ongoing slaughter of whales off America's northeast coast thanks to construction of offshore wind turbines:  "When you detonate massive explosives, repeatedly drive steel piles into the ocean floor with a hydraulic hammer, and blast high decibel sonar mapping signals underwater, you're going to harm animals that rely on sound to orient themselves in the ocean.  To say it is mere coincidence that hundreds of these creatures have washed ashore, dead, all of a sudden, during precisely the same months when the blasting and pounding began, is brazen deception."

The myth of affordable green energy is over.  The pervasive narrative about offshore wind in recent years has been that costs are falling and that wind power is cheap.  But scratch below the surface and you find that things are not quite so rosy.  Turbine manufacturers have been losing money hand over fist in recent years.  Collectively over the past five years the top four turbine producers outside China have lost almost US$7 billion — and over US$5 billion in 2022 alone.  Last year the chief executive of turbine-maker Vestas said that the company lost eight per cent on every turbine sold.  Some of these losses are down to warranty issues — this means the turbines have not performed as expected requiring the manufacturers to compensate windfarm developers and rectify problems.  Privately this is attributed to the pressure for ever larger windmills which are harder to get right.  Insiders now suggest that the growth in capacity per turbine has peaked, at least for the time being.

They Call The Wind Pariah.  How many times have we heard that wind power, coupled with the sun's energy, is going to save us from our fossil-fuel burning ways?  Maybe one day it will.  But at no time soon will it happen.  And by soon, we mean in most of our lifetimes.  How can we say this?  Look around at what's happening with wind energy:  "California's Central Coast residents work to stop — or at least slow down — offshore wind."  California believes that by 2045 it can operate its electrical grid without contributions from fossil fuels and nuclear energy.  To get there, one-fourth of the power must be generated by offshore wind.  This CalMatters report, which summarizes the resistance to offshore wind projects, should set off alarms not just in Sacramento but in other blue state capitals as well as Washington, D.C.

New York denies offshore wind developer request to raise rates, throwing more projects into doubt.  East Coast wind projects are in jeopardy after a decision by New York regulators Thursday to deny requests from renewable energy developers to charge customers billions of dollars more.  Offshore wind developers say they have have been struggling against record inflation, supply chain issues, and interest rate hikes.  Facing these pressures, Orsted, BP, and Equinor and other renewable developers requested that contracts for four offshore projects and 86 land-based projects be renegotiated, according to Reuters.  The offshore developers asked the New York Public Service Commission to alter its long term contracts and raise purchase prices to a level that would have let them collect an additional $38 billion from ratepayers.

The wind energy sector's days are numbered.  Perhaps no sector is more guilty of leaning on platitudes than the wind industry.  Through dishonest manipulation of cost estimates and a relentless campaign of propaganda, proponents of wind energy have convinced countless politicians to support a technology that disrupts the smooth operation of electricity grids and is utterly dependent on the intermittency of the weather.  Anybody with a passing knowledge of energy fundamentals knows this simply can't be sustainable, as we explained back in February [...] This might come as a surprise to some, but projects that require an enormous amount of concrete, steel, high-performance plastic resins, fiberglass or carbon fiber reinforcement materials, high-end magnets derived from rare earth metals, designer lubricants, and labor are susceptible to inflation dynamics and particularly sensitive to the price of fossil fuels.  This is further pronounced if all this effort is directed toward harvesting ultra-low-density energy sources like wind. [...] But there's a giant scandal brewing in the offshore wind industry, one that seems to involve an overt coverup on the part of scientists at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  Dozens of endangered whales are dying all along the US East Coast, and the wind industry is almost certainly to blame.

The only thing dumber than onshore wind energy is offshore wind energy.  The good news for ratepayers, taxpayers, birds, bats, landscapes, viewsheds, and the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, is that both sectors are getting hammered by market forces that make their projects uneconomic.  On Monday, Avangrid, a subsidiary of the Spanish utility Iberdrola, announced that it was abandoning the 804-megawatt Park City Wind project offshore Connecticut because the project was "unfinanceable."  In a statement that includes a marvelous but unintended pun, the company blamed:  ["]Unprecedented economic headwinds facing the industry including record inflation, supply chain disruptions, and sharp interest rate hikes, the aggregate impact of which rendered the Park City Wind project unfinanceable under its existing contracts.["]  Avangrid will pay a $16 million penalty to cancel the contract to sell electricity from the offshore wind project to Connecticut.  The move is the latest blow to the Biden Administration's plans to construct 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind on the East Coast over the next several years.

No, Wind Power is Not Cheaper Than Gas.  Advocates of Net Zero policies repeatedly reassure the public that they are advancing cheap, green energy with the promise of vast numbers of lucrative green jobs and world leadership for the U.K. in selected green technologies.  Unfortunately for the hard pressed British electorate, 'cheap, green energy' is nothing more than an empty political slogan arrived at by a dishonest sleight of hand.  Specifically, the politicians simply ignore the true costs of the 'cheap, green energy' which soon becomes very expensive when factoring in all costs.

Offshore wind is systematically violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act.  New evidence says that offshore wind sonar surveys may have committed hundreds of thousands of violations of the MMPA, each potentially subject to tens of thousands of dollars in fines.  The potential penalty total is in the billions.  Moreover these incredible violations appear to be deliberate.  These astonishingly bad findings flow from research by the Save the Right Whales Coalition (SRWC).  It is a bit technical but here is a simple summary.  First some legal background.  We are talking about the activity of sonar blasting doing something called "incidental harassment".  In the MMPA harassment means doing bad things to a marine mammal.  These can range from causing adverse behavioral changes to outright injury, such as in this case causing deafness.  Incidental means the harassment is due to some activity that is not directed at the mammal, in this case the many sonar surveys done in conjunction with offshore wind development.

Why won't Greenpeace admit that wind turbines may be killing whales?  Who cares about whales?  Whales might be dying because of sonar surveying, but Greenpeace simply ignores the science that doesn't suit it.  So far last year, 71 whales have washed up dead on the shores of New England and neighbouring states.  The rate seems to have risen in recent years along with a growth in the number of offshore wind turbines.  A small group of concerned citizens have started to campaign against the turbines on behalf of the whales, and the journalist Michael Shellenberger has made a short film about their efforts called Thrown to the Wind.  The evidence gathered by the scientists in the film is far from conclusive:  it's a correlation that could be a coincidence.  But it's not a mad idea that wind farms threaten whales.  For a start, the industry has meant increased traffic in the areas where the whales feed, which could well have led to more collisions between whale and ship.  More worryingly, the sonar surveying that precedes wind-farm deployment — to map the seabed and its geology — creates a loud, continuous banging noise that could be disorienting or stressful for the whales.

U.S. Offshore Wind Plans Are Utterly Collapsing.  Offshore wind developer Ørsted has delayed its New Jersey Ocean Wind 1 project to 2026.  Previously, the company had announced construction of the project would begin in October 2023.  The delay was attributed to supply chain issues, higher interest rates, and a failure so far to garner enough tax credits from the federal government.  For now, they are not walking away from all their U.S. projects but will reconsider long-term plans by the end of this year.  Ørsted's stock price has fallen 30% in 5 days.  This is just the latest bad news for offshore win.  Ocean Wind 1 had one of the highest guaranteed prices among the 18 projects currently in the approval queue.  The actual wholesale price guarantees for Ocean Wind 1 start at $98.10/MWh, rising 2% a year to $145.77.  Over twenty years revenue will average $126.47/MWh according to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU).  Ørsted is seeking higher guarantees from the BPU and an increase in federal Investment Tax Credits from 30% to 40%.  Recognizing the potential financial problems, New Jersey's largest public utility, Public Service Electric & Gas Company sold its 25% share of the project to Ørsted in January.

Green Hypocrisy: 1,200 Gallons of Diesel Spilled Into River in Attempt to Fuel Wind-project Vessel.  Those who are pushing us into a "green energy" future cannot seem to escape the fact that they still need those dirty fossil fuels in order to make their green dreams come true.  In Connecticut earlier this month, one of those "green" projects was involved in an environmental mishap when up to 1,200 gallons of diesel fuel was spilled into the Thames River as a vessel being used to help install wind turbines was being fueled at the Gateway Terminal in Montville, just south of Norwich.  Fortunately, prior to the refueling incident, a containment boom was placed around the vessel Atlantic Oceanic, which appears to have largely contained the spill, although some diesel fuel did escape into the river.  The Atlantic Oceanic was assisting with the construction of an ocean-based wind farm off of Martha's Vineyard, which Vineyard Wind, the company in charge of the project, describes as "the nation's first utility-scale offshore wind energy project."

Not just birds and whales:  Windmills threatening extinction for jaguars and pumas in Brazil.  The climate hoax is taking a horrendous toll on not just the cost of electricity and reliability of the grid, but also the survival of many species of animals, from birds to whales to the magnificent big cats of Brazil. [...] The poor all over the world already are victims of the rising price of energy, and of fertilizers made from oil and gas, increasingly scarce and costly as drilling and production are shut down by governments persuaded to buy in to the climate panic.  Now their ability to keep herds of animals — an ancient source of livelihood appearing prominently in Bible — is under threat as well.  Windmills may be the most destructive of the "alternative" (meaning uneconomical) sources of energy.  Because they wear out quickly and have a short useful life, they rarely pay back the energy and carbon emissions used in their construction.  They leave an awful pile of useless, ugly junk that costs a lot to demolish.  Recycling carbon fiber blades is a particular challenge.  Junkyards are filling up with them.

Whale Deaths and Wind Farms.  There has been an alarming, "mysterious" rise in whale deaths in the Northeast, coinciding with a massive, subsidized buildout of offshore wind farms.  The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA,) the federal organization ultimately responsible for reporting on and protecting whales, asserts there is no link between wind farm development and whale deaths.  At the same time, NOAA now issues expedited whale "take," or harm and kill permits, to wind companies.  The likely "link" between deaths and NOAA permits — deafening and disorienting acoustic pulses generated for sub-seafloor seismic surveying and construction — is commonly acknowledged by marine mammal biologists and undersea acousticians, yet it is now publicly ignored or suppressed.  The price of these absurdities may include the imminent extinction of the North Atlantic right whale.

UK's Onshore Wind Scheme Could Backfire, With Far More Potent Greenhouse Gas Emissions.  Shortly after naming Claire Coutinho as secretary of state for energy security and net zero on Aug. 31, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a plan to accelerate the approval process for onshore wind projects.  Previously, a 2015 ruling allowed a single complaint within a community to halt an onshore wind program and fully stopped subsidies for such projects.  Under the new rule, communities can speed up the process for allocating sites through local development orders or community right-to-build orders.  However, wind farms can drastically raise the cost of electricity when the wind doesn't blow and could leak a chemical that is exponentially more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide.  Perhaps Coutinho isn't aware of the influential 2019 BBC article that uncovered how the U.K.'s offshore wind turbine gearboxes are utilizing the world's most potent greenhouse gas, sulfur hexafluoride, and that these gearboxes are leaking 15% of the gas over their lifecycle.

Biden Wants To Shrink Tribal Marine Sanctuary to Accommodate Wind Energy Factory Owned by Dem Donor.  President Joe Biden wants to shrink a Pacific Ocean marine sanctuary meant to protect endangered whales in order to accommodate offshore wind energy factories — one of them owned by a major Democratic donor.  The Biden administration late last month proposed cutting about 1,400 square miles of ocean and coastline from an Indian tribe's proposed national marine sanctuary to make room for wind turbine infrastructure.  One of these factories would belong to Invenergy, whose founder and CEO Michael Polsky has given more than $400,000 to Democrats since 2016.  His company shelled out $2.4 million to lobby the White House, federal agencies, and Congress this year.  The proposal reflects a conflict between efforts to fight climate change and those to preserve natural habitats.  The Biden administration's proposal would benefit green energy companies and generate renewable energy, but environmental groups have sounded the alarm on such projects noting that they kill birds and whales — the very wildlife that the marine sanctuary seeks to preserve.

Wind Energy Fails Texas.  The graph below shows the amount of wind energy currently available in Texas.  It shows that — again today — the amount of wind energy is minuscule when measured against the billions and billions invested in wind.  The wind energy capacity is 38,000.  A value of 1,000 represents just 2.6% of capacity!  Why does this keep occurring?  It is a meteorological fact that when it is extremely hot and extremely cold that winds are usually light — too light to turn the turbine blades.  Thanks to wind energy, Texas is now in desperate shape.

Electricity from wind isn't cheap and it never will be.  The MPs who have forced Rishi Sunak into a U-turn on onshore wind power love to repeat the favourite slogan of the wind industry: "wind is cheap".  "Cheap, clean, secure," says Sir Alok Sharma.  "Cheap," cheeps Ed Miliband.  It conceals the truth.  Electricity from wind is not cheap and never will be.  The latest auction of rights to build offshore wind farms failed to attract any bids, despite offering higher subsidised prices.  That alone indicates that wind is not cheap or getting cheaper.  But the real reason for the lack of interest in the auction is that, for the first time, bidders are not free to walk away from their bids when it suits them.  In the past, they could put in low offers, boast about them being cheap, then take the higher market price later.  The Government has at last called their bluff, so they are having to admit that electricity prices need to be higher to make wind farms pay.  The cost of subsidising wind is vast.  Then add the cost of getting the power from remote wind farms to where people live.  And the cost of balancing the grid and backing wind up with gas plants for the times when the wind drops.  And the cost of paying wind farms to reduce output on windy days when the grid can't take it.

Ignoring History Means Choosing Windmills Over Whales.  If fossil fuels are no longer used, what will replace them?  One alternative that is being seriously pursued involves offshore windmills.  These are proving to be both environmental and economic failures.  But there is a side story that portends even worse consequences.  Dead whales have been washing up on East Coast beaches in unprecedented numbers, with sixty-two known whale deaths in nine months.  Sadly, the whales dying are Right Whales, and there are only 340 left.  A film titled Thrown to the Wind documents excessive loud, high-decibel sonar "emitted by wind industry vessels when measured with state-of-the-art hydrophones.  And it shows that the wind industry's increased boat traffic is correlated directly with specific whale deaths."  Greenpeace, however, which was formed in significant part to protect whales, is not worried: [...]

The Editor says...
This proves that the "animal rights" movement is a sham, or at least it proves that the animal rights activists have lost all their clout and can now be ignored.

If it Saves One Life and Other Meretricious Lies.  [Scroll down]  Not so lucky are the North Atlantic right whales, who are being killed practically to actual extinction by offshore windmills, an energy source which is at best intermittent, relies on extraction of metals which cause environmental degradation and fossil fuels to create, and are exceedingly difficult to dispose of once damaged beyond repair or usage.  The death of these endangered whales is receiving little coverage in comparison, and when there is coverage there's subterfuge for the reason for their demise.  The reason for this misinformation is simply graft: [...] These windmills have a negligible role in reducing carbon emissions and in increasing employment opportunities.  They will not lower electricity prices.  In fact, it's estimated they will increase them by 64%.

Wind farms 'gaming system to inflate millions earned when asked to halt production'.  Wind farm owners appear to be "gaming the system" to inflate the tens of millions of pounds that they are paid not to produce electricity, a study has found.  A paper published in the International Journal of Industrial Organisation concluded that companies were "exaggerating" claims about the amount of energy they expected to produce at times when the transmission network risked being overloaded.  The behaviour increases the likelihood that wind farms will be paid to shut down, as well as resulting in higher payments than would otherwise have been given, to those asked to stop producing electricity, according to the economists who wrote the paper.  The findings will heighten concerns about Rishi Sunak's decision to relax the effective ban on onshore turbines introduced by David Cameron in 2015.

But what if the weather is really hot or cold, and there is no wind?
Turn on your heat pump when wind is blowing, Government pleads.  Families will be urged to turn on heat pumps when the wind is blowing and charge their electric cars at night under net zero plans to save energy.  Ministers are pressing ahead with new legislation that could see families made to adopt "smart" appliances to ease pressure on the grid.  Tory MPs are opposing the proposals, contained in the contentious Energy Bill which will come back before the Commons on Tuesday.  The Government insisted it was "in no way asking people to ration electricity" and that consumers will benefit in the form of cheaper bills.

Why wind and solar power are running out of juice.  Wind turbine manufacturers like Siemens and General Electric have reported huge losses for the first half of this year, almost $5 billion for the former and $1 billion for the latter.  Among other problems, turbine quality control has suffered, forcing manufacturers such as Siemens and Vestas to incur costly warranty repairs.  In Europe, offshore wind output has been less than promised, while operating costs have been much higher than advertised.  Offshore wind developers in Europe and the US are canceling projects because of higher materials and construction costs.  In Massachusetts, Avangrid, the developer of the 1,200 MW Commonwealth Wind project paid $48 million to get out of its existing contract to sell power to ratepayers.  That way, the company can rebid the project next year at an even higher price.  Close by, the developers of the 1,200 MW SouthCoast Wind Project off Martha's Vineyard will pay about $60 million to exit their existing contract.  Rhode Island Energy, the state's main electric utility, recently rejected the second Revolution Wind Project because the contract price was too high.

Windmill blades are accumulating in Sweetwater, Texas.
Modest Texas town repurposed into a dumping ground for expired wind turbine blades.  For anyone who doesn't already know, wind turbine blades at this point in time, can't be recycled, so ordinarily, these expired blades wind up in landfills.  According to a study published in June of this year in the Scientific Reports journal, around 2.4% of turbine blades must be decommissioned every year, and per the United States Geological Survey, there are more than 70,800 wind turbines registered in the country.  So, assuming each turbine has three blades on it, that means that roughly 5,100 blades every year, just in the U.S., become literal garbage (although arguably, they always were).  Blades can weigh anywhere from 5,200 pounds each, to as much as 27,000 — that makes for between 27 million and 138 million pounds of trash bound for landfills annually.  Back to Sweetwater.  In 2017, a Washington-state company called Global Fiberglass Solutions came along, promising an exciting new way to repurpose the blades, and since then, GFS has been dumping the blades in the far-off land of Texas.  According to the Texas Monthly article, the managing director himself admitted that only a fraction of the stockpile had ever been "recycled."

The Editor says...
Sweetwater makes Abilene look like Dallas.

The Biggest Environmental Scandal In The World.  A dead whale washed ashore on Takanassee Beach in New Jersey in the early evening yesterday.  Police blocked off the area so tractors could be brought in to remove it.  "We were sitting on the beach yesterday, and I noticed it when people started running up to it," said Soraya Nimaroff, who lives nearby.  "I'm very sad.  It is very sad."  Yesterday marked the 60th known whale death on the East Coast since Dec 1, 2022.  Whale strandings have increased markedly since 2016.  The North Atlantic right whales are headed for extinction.  Their population has dropped to 340.  There have been 200 humpback strandings and 98 strandings of right whales since 2017.  "It caused us concern enough to ask, 'What is happening?'" said Cindy Zipf, executive director of the Long Branch-based nonprofit Clean Ocean Action (COA).  "We looked into what was different about this December and early January."  The only thing she and other researchers found was offshore wind exploration.

Don't believe the renewables myth.  Wind and solar are not cheap.  Politicians everywhere are repeating the mantra that renewable energy is cheap, and we need to use it instead of gas (currently expensive in and near Europe) to bring down energy costs for households. [...] The Inflation Reduction Act has been designed to make this a reality.  Lots of investment in lovely green energy and green jobs.  This sounds wonderful.  Unfortunately, renewables are not cheap. [...] Originally, subsidies were paid because the technology for producing renewable electricity was immature meaning upfront costs were exceptionally high, but after more than 20 years of subsidies, this is no longer the case.  Today, electricity prices are still determined for the most part by the cost of fossil fuels, so renewable electricity can be sold at much higher prices than the short term cost of production (which is next to nothing).  But even then, renewables still require subsidies.  In fact, subsidies are growing.

Save the whales?  In Massachusetts, today's greenies kill the whales.  Once upon a time, the greenie left waxed poetic and went full scold to the rest of us about saving the whales.  Today?  They're doing the opposite.  Take a look at what's going on off the coast of Massachusetts, where the rare right whales in its waters are dying left and right:  [Tweet with video clip]  Environmental writer Michael Shellenberger has found a causal relationship between the high-decibel pile-driving and boat activity associated with installations of wind turbines for wind power, and the deaths of 60 right whales in the past year, whose habitat is in those very waters, and based on their environmental needs, cannot move someplace else.  The video is well worth watching, as it amounts to a bona fide environmental scandal, as Shellenberger says.  [Tweet]

Alberta to Wind and Solar:  Not Just Now, Thanks.  Alberta's Conservative premier Danielle Smith has announced a moratorium on new wind and solar projects in her province. [...] In short, Smith wants to pair new wind-and-solar capacity with new natural gas capacity, because of the basic unreliability of renewables.  She's concerned that relying too heavily on wind-and-solar could compromise the electric grid.  But the Trudeau government disagrees.  They've manipulated the market and established a regulatory regime as part of Trudeau's pledged transition away from the traditional resource sector — one of the backbones of the Canadian economy, remember — such that adding new natural gas capacity is nearly impossible.  Since Ottawa has dug in their heels on oil-and-gas, Smith has decided to dig hers in on wind-and-solar.

Siemens Faces $5 Billion Loss On Faulty Wind Turbines.  Siemens Energy AG launched a strategic review of its wind power business as problems with its turbines are expected to cause a €4.5 billion ($5 billion) net loss in one of industrial Germany's biggest debacles.  The shares fell as much as 5.1% after the company disclosed the loss, which follows repeated setbacks for the German manufacturer in getting to grips with quality flaws.  Previously the company expected a net loss of roughly €1 billion in the year through September.

Massachusetts 50 Years Of Wind Turbine Failures.  Massachusetts since the 1970s wanted wind energy to play a significant role in its clean energy future, both offshore and land-based.  In the 1970s Cuttyhunk Island in the town of Gosnold, Massachusetts had one of the world's largest wind turbines.  The wind turbine was taken down due to radio interference in line-of-sight communications with the island.  It failed.  In the 1980s NASA and the US Department of Energy conducted wind turbine experiments around the country.  Research supported by the US Department of Energy in 1987 identified impulsive low-frequency noise.  The annoyance was described as an intermittent "thumping" sound accompanied by vibrations in residential homes.  They failed.  In 2005 Massachusetts set a goal of installing 2,000 megawatts of land-based wind energy before 2020 as part of its plan to increase the supply of renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  A failure.

Why Offshore Wind Jobs May Just Be a Lot of Hot Air.  Offshore wind developers in the U.S. have promised to create thousands of "million-dollar" jobs.  But those dollars won't flow into New York workers' paychecks.  Rather, they're just the sum total of the subsidies local taxpayers and utility ratepayers will expend to keep offshore wind afloat — as if New Yorkers' electric bills aren't high enough.  Consider Ørsted, the Danish government-owned company that is developing the 12-turbine, 132-megawatt Southfork Wind and the 84-turbine, 924-megawatt Sunrise Wind projects, which will be built 30 miles east of Montauk Point, Long Island.  Ørsted is also behind the 98-turbine, 1,100 megawatt Ocean Wind project along the southern New Jersey shore, which just rewarded it with several billion dollars in tax credits that were supposed to have been returned to New Jersey ratepayers[.]

The Power Of Power Density.  The shape and size of our energy systems are not being determined by political beliefs about climate change.  Instead, those systems are ruled by the Iron Law of Power Density which says: the lower the power density, the greater the resource intensity. [...] The mineral intensity of offshore wind, including huge amounts of copper and zinc, is shocking:  roughly 15,400 kilograms per megawatt of generation capacity.  That is roughly 13 times more than the amount needed for natural gas-fired generation (1,148 kg) and six times more than what's needed for a coal plant (2,479 kg).  The Iron Law of Power Density explains why Siemens Energy just reported a $2.4 billion loss on its wind business in the latest quarter.  It explains why offshore wind projects here in the U.S. and in Europe, are being canceled left and right.  It also explains why, all around the world, rural communities and landowners are fighting back against the landscape-blighting encroachment of massive wind and solar projects.

Modern Energy and Your Turbine Footprint.  Can you spare a few thousand square feet of land for a windmill?  Well, maybe not you, but surely a farmer can, right?  Or a rancher?  Or a developer.  What's a few thousand square feet to a land baron?  Some people with lots of land can spare that much, especially if the government will pay them a few grand for it.  Maybe not you or me, but... the other guy.  Let him do it.  America is a big country.  Huge.  It doesn't really sound like a few thousand square feet of land for a windmill would have a big impact on land usage in America.  But now let's think about where they put windmills.  They aren't all on farmland... but the majority are.  They usually can't be on rock, because you have to be able to dig deep to sink those footings, to anchor a giant structure like this.  They can't be in the middle of a forest, because you need a path to and from the windmill, for maintenance trucks and wiring.

Wind Energy:  A Doomed Industry.  Why might prices be rising, and supply chain issues emerging?  The [Wall Street] Journal mentions Bidenflation and rising interest rates, but the more intractable problem is supply and demand.  Because of their minuscule productivity, wind turbines use extraordinary amounts of steel, concrete, copper, cobalt, zinc, and numerous rare earths.  As governments around the world have mandated "green" energy, demand for these materials has skyrocketed.  Prices are only going higher, as massive new mines for minerals like copper and cobalt will have to be developed.

Wind Farm Projects are Beginning to Topple Due to Strong Economic Headwinds.  A couple of weeks ago, Sweden's government ditched plans to go all-in on "green energy," green-lighting the construction of new nuclear power plants.  Shortly afterward, fossil fuel giant Shell announced it was scaling back its energy transition plans to focus on ... gas and oil!  Now it looks like specific wind farm projects are beginning to topple due to strong economic headwinds.  Recent, Rhode Island's leading utility decided to nix a project called Revolution Wind 2 because the cost of the electricity was deemed too high.  Everything Ms. Morris reported was later determined accurate, confirmed in outlets from The New York Times and The Washington Post, albeit years later.

SNP admits to felling 16 million trees to develop wind farms.  Almost 16 million trees have been chopped down on publicly owned land in Scotland to make way for wind farms, an SNP minister had admitted amid a major drive to erect more turbines.  Mairi Gougeon, the Rural Affairs Secretary, estimated that 15.7 million trees had been felled since 2000 in land that is currently managed by agency Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) — the equivalent of more than 1,700 per day.

The ultimate debunking of "solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels."  Myth: Solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels.  Truth: Solar and wind are only cheaper than fossil fuels in at most a small fraction of situations.  For the overwhelming majority of the world's energy needs, solar and wind are either completely unable to replace fossil fuels or far more expensive.
  •   Observe that "solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels" is usually invoked, not to encourage competition but to justify coercive government policies to punish fossil fuel use and favor solar and wind.
  •   Observe that the same people claiming "solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels" moved heaven and earth to demand at minimum hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies under the "Inflation Reduction Act" for these supposedly "cheaper forms of energy."
  •   On its face, justifying favoritism toward solar and wind by invoking their cheapness is highly suspicious.  If they're cheaper, why do they need coercive policies to throttle their fossil-fueled competitors (e.g., opposing fossil fuel investment, production, and pipelines) and reward solar and wind?

OSW Is Outrageous Spending on Wind That Makes Zero Sense.  [Scroll down]  Off Shore Wind (OSW) will be a major renewable resource in the net-zero electric energy system.  The Climate Act mandates 9,000 MW of Off Shore Wind (OSW) generating capacity by 2035.  The Integration Analysis modeling used to develop the Scoping Plan projects OSW capacity at 6,200 MW by 2030, 9,096 MW by 2035 and reaches 14,364 MW in 2040.  On the other hand, the New York Independent System Operator 2021-2040 System & Resource Outlook expects 5,036 MW in 2030 and 9,000 MW in 2035 with no additional development after that.  By 2030 the Integration Analysis predicts that 14% of the electric energy (GWh) produced will come from OSW and the Resource Outlook predicts nearly as much (12%).  This is an extraordinary build-out for a resource that is currently non-existent and there are significant differences in the buildout projections that deserve to be reconciled.

Budgets blown: Wind [is] not exactly the net bargain they advertised.  The wind and sun are free, we were and are told.  One only has to wire something up that transmits the harnessed power and everyone will rejoice we did so.  We're still hearing that now — cast your ears towards the painful pleadings of advocates for offshore wind farms in California.  The onshore ones they have have been working out so well for CA consumers, no?  "Oh, if we only get umptyphrats amount more turbines, everything will work out!"  It's all [nonsense], as I noted in a June post about Gavin Newsom already scrambling to lock on external sources of energy to keep power flowing to his state this summer.  His plans, by the way, will be put to the test this coming week, cuz it's going to be hot.  CA residents' electric bills will reflect all those savings from renewables.  The U.K. Labour party is stubbornly pursuing even more wind, even as years of wind driven energy price hikes belie the promises made during their forced transition to Gaia Green renewables.

Local Officials Warn of Wind Turbine Development's Impact to Jersey Shore's Tourism Industry.  Serene beachside views that bring in a lucrative tourism industry could be cut to ribbons if wind companies succeed in constructing fleets of monopole turbines along the east coast.  Orsted, a wind energy company 51 percent owned by the Danish government, has plans to install 200 turbines throughout 161,000 acres of ocean nine miles off the coast southernmost tip of New Jersey in Cape May County.  Diane Wieland, the county's tourism director, told The Epoch Times that in 2022 the vacation resort had 11.3 million visitors, which generated $7.4 billion in direct tourism spending, an increase of 11.9 percent over 2021.  Orsted's own projection is that 85 percent of tourists would return to the county's beaches after the turbines are raised, Wieland said, but that 15 percent loss would set Cape May back six years beyond what it had gained prior to COVID with a loss of $1.11 billion.

Biden Ignores Protests and Imposes Largest U.S. Wind Farm on New Jersey Coast.  The Biden administration on Wednesday approved the Orsted A/S's Ocean Wind 1 project, setting the stage for installation of a massive wind farm in the waters off New Jersey while ignoring the protests of locals who will be forced to share their environment with as many as 98 turbines.  Interior Secretary Deb Haaland boasted the authorization was "another milestone in our efforts to create good-paying union jobs while combating climate change and powering our nation." [...] Just last month Republican lawmakers and experts demanded the Biden administration to put an "immediate moratorium" on offshore wind development until its effects on U.S. military operations, navigation, and radar systems are studied.  Meanwhile community groups blame site preparation work for a spate of whale deaths of New Jersey since December.  At least 60 whales have died on the U.S. East Coast since then.  But three federal and one state agency all say there is no evidence linking the deaths with offshore wind preparations, despite the angry protestations of local residents along the Jersey shore.

Offshore Wind Electrical Substations; The Secret, Silent Killers.  The marine mammal strandings that are taking place almost everyday along the US east coast are the most visible consequence of the Biden administration's reckless disregard of all environmental safeguards that had been carefully crafted since the environmental movement started in the 1960's.  Left by the wayside in their rush to meet artificially imposed production deadlines, are the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, [ESA] and the National Environmental Policy Act, [NEPA].  A rouge and abhorrent federal Agency, BOEM, [Bureau of Ocean Energy Management], under the Interior Department, has highjacked Fishery Management and protection of our marine resources from the National Marine Fishery Service, [part of NOAA, and under control of the Commerce Department] and has thumbed their nose at any restraints that are legally required under both the ESA and NEPA.

Wind farm costs are not falling.  There has been a consistent narrative that the cost of building new wind farms is falling, with falling subsidy prices being offered as evidence.  I have challenged this narrative in the past, pointing out that evidence from the accounts of windfarms themselves does not support this argument, citing the work of Professor Gordon Hughes at the University of Edinburgh, and indeed his work as subsequently been replicated by Andrew Montford of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.  However, there is another big reason to question this narrative:  turbine manufacturers are losing money hand over fist.  Falling subsidy prices at the same time as massive manufacturing losses makes no sense and is clearly not sustainable.

Whales Die, While Officials, Media, and Environmentalists Lie.  A dead whale weighing an estimated twenty tons was spotted offshore, soon moved by tide and waves to the shoreline where beachgoers took photos and videos.  Identified as a young female humpback, the thirty-foot-long cetacean was examined by experts dispatched from the Brigantine Marine Mammal Stranding Center and found to have no signs of illness or injury.  Later that afternoon the local public works department brought in its heavy equipment to bury her on the beach.  Despite the fact that whale deaths happen, this particular humpback who beached herself that overcast day in Strathmere could be called Whale One.  Not just a doomed marine mammal, but a creature who was the first to become emblematic of an ominous plan to industrialize the ocean as quickly as possible.

Environment Canada admits 62,000 birds and 75,000-116,000 bats are killed by wind turbines annually.  The data on how many tiny creatures of flight are being blended into slurry each year in pursuit of the Liberal's net-zero agenda was revealed in response to an inquiry of Environment and Climate Change Canada posed by Conservative Mp Damien Kurek.  The query asked for information held by the agency about the number of animals killed by wind turbines and the species being blended by the blades.  According to ECCC, the ministry is aware of the highly negative effects wind energy has on avian populations across Canada, including several species of bats listed as endangered.

Greta Thunberg's War on Prosperity.  Swedish Doom Pixie Greta Thunberg is at it again, this time leading a protest during which access to several oil tankers in Malmo Harbor was blocked for five days.  Her message remains as it has been: We must surrender our modern technological lifestyle. [...] She's protesting wind turbines?  Seems she is now.  It seems she's against anything that supports our modern lifestyle, by which I mean anything that has any potential to provide energy, whether cheap or otherwise.  Of course, her own lifestyle would seem to be pretty comfortable.  And that is the great irony that is Greta Thunberg — her war on working-class folks.

The SNP and a problem with wind.  Over the last year, the Scottish website These Islands has been having fun with the SNP administration in Holyrood.  Just before Christmas, it discovered the claim that Scotland's 'offshore wind potential' represented 25 percent of Europe's total was entirely without foundation.  Unfortunately, this canard had already been repeated ad nauseam by a host of the party's highest functionaries, and had even been picked up by the UK government.  Sam Taylor, who runs These Islands, has recently obtained some of the internal paperwork relating to the furore under freedom of information, and it makes fascinating reading because of what it reveals about what civil servants are telling elected officials.  A briefing for ministers, prepared just after the news had broken, contains another remarkable claim about the future of offshore wind in Scotland, but this time framed in terms of the pipeline of projects, and in particular of floating offshore windfarms.

Taking the Wind Out of Climate Change.  The fundamental question is: if we accept the Climate Change contention and then spend Trillions of dollars to assiduously implement their wind energy solution, will the existential threat be extinguished in the short time-table they say we have?  The answer is an unequivocal NO, for at least the following six (6) reasons:  [#1] There is no scientific proof that wind energy saves any consequential CO2.  Industrial wind energy has been around now for over 20 years, so there is plenty of empirical data available.  However, if we ask for scientific proof that wind energy actually saves a meaningful amount of CO2, what wind proponents provide are "studies" based on computer models. [...] [#2] There is good evidence that wind energy can produce more CO2 than gas. [...] [#3] There are quality studies that conclude that wind turbines add to global warming. [...] [#4] Several studies conclude that turbines affect local meteorological conditions. [...] [#5] Multiple studies show that turbine performance drops steadily with age. [...] [#6] Several studies demonstrate the diminishing returns of adding more Turbines.

Ramping up wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles can't solve our energy problem.  Many people believe that installing more wind turbines and solar panels and manufacturing more electric vehicles can solve our energy problem, but I don't agree with them.  These devices, plus the batteries, charging stations, transmission lines and many other structures necessary to make them work represent a high level of complexity.  A relatively low level of complexity, such as the complexity embodied in a new hydroelectric dam, can sometimes be used to solve energy problems, but we cannot expect ever-higher levels of complexity to always be achievable.

Models Hide the Shortcomings of Wind and Solar.  Overview of this Post:  In Sections [1] through [4], I look at some issues that energy modelers in general, including economists, tend to miss when evaluating both fossil fuel energy and renewables, including wind and solar.  The major issue in these sections is the connection between high energy prices and the need to increase government debt.  To prevent the continued upward spiral of government debt, any replacement for fossil fuels must also be very inexpensive — perhaps as inexpensive as oil was prior to 1970.  In fact, the real limit to fossil fuel extraction and to the building of new wind turbines and solar panels may be government debt that becomes unmanageable in an inflationary period.  In Section [5], I try to explain one reason why published Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROEI) indications give an overly favorable impression of the value of adding a huge amount of renewable energy to the electric grid.  The basic issue is that the calculations were not set up for this purpose.  These models were set up to evaluate the efficiency of generating a small amount of wind or solar energy, without consideration of broader issues.

The Green New Deal is full of holes, with AOC leading the charge to fall into them.  When first elected AOC didn't know the three branches of government, but proved her qualifications by speaking propaganda and leading people to fall into holes.  Of what holes am I speaking?  The first three we need to examine are the size of 307, 267 and 900 football fields, respectively.  These humongous holes are located at the Bayan Obo mine in China, which is the world's biggest rare earth element (REE) mine.  REEs are used in everything from iPhones to EVs to LED lights to wind turbines.  The low abundance REEs in the earth's soil are fundamentally necessary for all "green new energy."  The waste-to-yield ratio in mining REEs is 2000:1, which is 13 times more than mining copper.  Each EV auto battery involves digging up 500,000 pounds of the earth's crust.

Britain's green energy disaster should be an awful warning to Americans.  The UK's electricity prices are the highest since records began in 1920 and are now amongst the highest in all Europe.  One reason for this is obvious:  [the high price of natural gas].  The other reason why British electricity is so expensive is because we have so much wind power:  particularly, so much offshore wind power.  Bad though the current situation is, we would be an even worse state if we had built even more offshore wind, as the British government plans to. [...] They're expensive to maintain, which is not surprising since offshore windfarms have all their many generators mounted at the top of 200-metre tall masts far away from land.  Estimates of maintenance costs are as high as £200m per GW installed, per annum.  The nominal cost of offshore wind generation is £170/MWh — noticeably higher than that for CCGTs, even in these dire times of high gas prices.  The other factor to bear in mind is that not only is wind capacity extremely expensive to build, wind farms do not deliver anything like their rated capacity over time.  This is bad news for the customer, because the higher the capacity factor — that is, the higher the percentage of the rated capacity the powerplant actually delivers over time — the cheaper the energy.  In 2022 the UK's onshore and offshore windfarms operated with a capacity factor of 33 percent.  In 2021 it was only 29 percent.  It gets worse.

Starry-eyed optimists think U.S. will notice British wind energy disaster.  As if the charlatans invested in these Green schemes and the cultists who live and breathe them would ever look backwards or sideways at actual results from the implementation of any of their beloved projects.  There are always the blithe assurances that The Science will prevail, that the technology is "constantly evolving" to meet every single challenge, the shrieks of "deniers" to silence critics, and — the always practical and usually prevailing — "you can't stop us now, we're on a roll."  [Tweet]  The thing is, now, there really are hard numbers and indisputable facts flowing in about the massive waste, horrific effects on standards of living, and downright inefficiencies that were undersold or flat out lied about, particularly in the case of the U.K. rush to Greendom.  It's really coming a cropper recently, too, as the leading Labour candidate for Prime Minister is going hard down the Green road, and finding himself in a hornet's nest of push-back that he might not have 4 or 5 years ago.

Green Projects Hit Iron Wall.  Developers looking to build thousands of wind turbines off the Mid-Atlantic and New England coast are coming up against a force even more relentless than the Atlantic winds: the Iron Law of Megaprojects, offering a warning of the trouble ahead for green-energy projects. [...] Offshore wind projects are not immune to the Iron Law, regularly experiencing vast cost overruns before a single watt is generated.  The New York state government, looking to replace oil- and gas-fired powerplants with hundreds of wind towers off Long Island, set out in 2019 to create an offshore wind supply chain from scratch, beginning with a massive state-funded turbine fabrication facility about 100 miles north of New York City on the Hudson River.  Ground still hasn't even been broken, but the budget certainly has:  The price of that Port of Albany facility has already doubled from $350 million to $700 million.  An additional $100 million may be needed for equipment costs, raising the final price tag to $800 million.

Offshore wind may not reduce CO2 emissions.  There is a common assumption that offshore wind electricity generation greatly reduces CO2 emissions.  In fact this is the primary justification for the horrendous cost and adverse impact of these offshore megaprojects.  As with many green assumptions, this may well be false.  First, given the way power generation actually works the reduction in fossil fuel emissions may not be all that great.  In fact offshore wind could actually increase fossil fuel emissions.

Are windmills in the sea 'environmentally friendly'? Not even close.  According to a 2021 report, the United States of America uses 97,331,601,000,000,000 Btu, or about 97 quadrillion Btu (British thermal units) of energy per year.  Wind energy contributes 3.24% of the 12% of U.S. energy use that is renewable, with the remaining 88% coming from natural gas (32%), petroleum (36%) nuclear electric power (8%), and coal (11%).  The Biden-Harris administration is pushing hard their wind energy ambitions by granting offshore leases on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.  Leases are being sought for areas as vast as 3.9 million acres 20 nautical miles off the central Atlantic shore and about 1.2 million acres 12 nautical miles off the coast of Oregon, which will permanently scar these shorelines.  What is worse than thinking of these huge wind farms off our coast, consisting of tens of thousands of windmills, is the fact that the bulk of the companies seeking these leases are foreign companies that get U.S. tax breaks.

The Left thinks offshore wind costs are benefits.  Electricity is a big cost in low income household budgets.  The poor will get hit the hardest, paying for other people's good jobs, for no good reason.  Plus most of those good jobs will be in other countries, especially Europe and Asia.  We do not have a domestic offshore wind production industry so almost all of the equipment, which is most of the cost, will come from someplace else.  Even the boats are foreign.  New Jersey is arguably the leader in stupidity here, although there are several serious contenders, so let's take them as a quick example.  Keep in mind that NJ already has all the power generating capacity it needs.  More on this later.  Their stated offshore wind development goal is a huge 11,000 MW.  Dominion Energy has decided to own Virginia's offshore wind facility, instead of buying the juice from developers, so we have some public information on what this stuff costs.  Their present estimate is around $4 billion per thousand MW for construction.

Benign Weather Could Cause Blackouts in States With Green Grids, Officials Warn.  It's a warm summer night in Texas, and as the sun goes down, the wind eases to a calm breeze.  There's nothing extreme about the weather, but the pleasant conditions could present a big problem for the state's green power grid.  Texas is one of many states that have seen fossil fuel plants close in favor of green power generation alternatives, such as wind and solar.  But those alternatives are less reliable than their gas and coal counterparts — wind turbines need strong gusts to generate power at full capacity, and solar panels don't work at night.  As a result, state and federal officials are warning residents in Texas and elsewhere that high summer temperatures, combined with low winds at night, could bring power blackouts.

"Bigger = better" isn't working out for wind.  Back in February, I had a post on the troubles the wind industry was having with excessive warranty claims.  Companies who pioneers in wind turbines, like Siemens and Vestas, had noted huge losses in their quarterly profit reports because of equipment failures under warranty. [...] But governments like our own pig-headed administration powered ahead with their wind projects in any event, or are attempting to, approving ever bigger wind farms with larger turbines to increase the power output when the wind actually blows.  It is turning out that those scaled-up turbines may not be the panacea to continents shutting down reliable sources of electricity in favor of wind after all.  After a bit of time in the field, it's turning out that bigger breaks — sooner and more often.  [Tweet]

Janet Yellen: we have to risk default to build windmills.  At least Janet Yellen is upfront about the Biden Administration's priorities. [...] They truly believe that spending a few billion more on worthless clean energy projects is worth wrecking the US economy, or at least that the American people might think so.  I'm pretty sure that argument isn't going to fly outside the confines of an Antifa meeting or a faculty lounge discussion.  They are about the only people who think that a few more solar panels and windmills are worth blowing up the US economy.

Renewable energy growth brings mounting waste challenge.  Driven primarily by wind and solar power, renewable energy sources surpassed coal for electricity generation in the United States last year, marking a significant milestone.  However, as the industry expands, a new problem emerges:  what to do with the mounting waste generated by worn-out solar panels and wind turbine blades.  More than 90% of discarded solar panels end up in landfills.  By 2030, the retired panels are estimated to cover an area equivalent to about 3,000 football fields.  But the panels, primarily composed of glass and aluminum, contain valuable and reusable materials.

Diving Seabird Populations Decline 94 Percent Near Offshore Wind Farms: Study.  A new study by German scientists has found that populations of a group of aquatic birds known as red-throated loons or "divers" have declined by more than 90 percent in the North Sea after offshore wind farms were built there.  The findings of the study, titled "Large-scale effects of offshore wind farms on seabirds of high conservation concern," were published in Nature on April 13.  The study authors noted that "wind energy, specifically the installation of offshore wind farms (OWFs), has made a substantial contribution to renewable energy production in recent decades, with the North Sea currently being the key area for OWFs worldwide."  Researchers set out to analyze multiple data sources to quantify the effects of such wind farms on seabirds from the family Gaviidae (loons) in the German North Sea.

Wind Generation Cost to us Ontarians on April 13th Hit a Record of $2,054.81 per Megawatt Hour.  Well, the wind wasn't blowing quite as much as April 11th but what was actually consumed by Ontario's ratepayers April 14th set a new record cost; to the best of my knowledge, per MWh!  On April 13th the 4,900 MW of grid connected capacity in Ontario of those IWT (industrial wind turbines) were forecast by IESO to generate 62,063 MW (52.8% of capacity) but only 53,317 MWh or 45.3% of its capacity was accepted meaning about 8,746 MW were curtailed.  The math on the above meant total costs to Ontarians (ratepayers and taxpayers) for IWT generation was $6,722,325 for grid accepted generation at $135/MWh plus $1,049,520 at $120/MWh for curtailed generation so it totaled $7,771,845.

Greta Thunberg's War Against Wind Farms.  Greta Thunberg is back in the news.  This time, she's protesting the installation of wind farms in Norway.  Earlier this month, Thunberg and several activists chained themselves to the doorway of Norway's Energy Ministry.  Some protesters, including Thunberg, were carried away and detained by police so that government offices could reopen.  The protestors claim that the 151-turbine wind farm erected two years ago by the state-owned Norwegian energy company, Statkraft, severely disrupts land used for reindeer herding by the country's largest indigenous population, the Sami.  In 2021, Norway's Supreme Court ruled that the turbines endangered the Sami's "cultural rights" according to international law.  However, since the wind farms were ruled to be "invalid," not "illegal," they are still operating.

This appears to be completely off-topic, at first glance.
Gray whale carcass washed ashore, among 300+ whales unexpectedly dead.  Scientists say a 41-foot gray whale that was found on the shore of Fox Island most likely died after it collided with a ship.  According to the Cascadia Research Collective, a necropsy showed this whale died from blunt-force trauma.  The marine mammal was emaciated — but scientists say in this case, its health may have been a mitigating factor, but not the official cause of death. [...] NOAA statistics show since 2019, 307 gray whale carcasses have been found along the West Coast.  That includes four whales found since January 1, 2023.

Buffalo County [Nebraska] sets new distancing requirements for possible wind farms.  Energy companies will have to meet a new set of requirements if interested in building a wind farm in Buffalo County.  The Buffalo County Commissioners voted unanimously last week to approve distancing rules that were recommended by the planning commission.  The rules say a wind farm can't be located or expanded within three miles of agriculture residential zoned property, three miles from any parcel owned by a non-applicant, three miles of a church, hospital, pool or park, five miles of any village or city, two miles of a burial site, the Platte River and South Loup River areas or five miles from a wildlife preservation or management area.

Exploding the Cheap Offshore Wind Fantasy.  The energy industry lobbyists are out with their begging bowls demanding more subsidies to deliver more "investment" in renewables in general and offshore wind in particular.  It looks like the developers cannot deliver the wind farms they promised at "record low" strike prices of £37.35/MWh and claims of wind being nine times cheaper than gas were just so much hot air.  The Government's predictions of decreasing costs of offshore wind were based on continued low commodity prices, the availability of cheap money and unrealistic assumptions about improved operational performance.  It's not looking likely that any of their operational improvement targets will be met.  In addition, the costs of raw materials and energy have gone up dramatically and interest rates have risen sharply pushing up the costs of capital.  These factors have had a dramatic effect on the price of offshore wind.

Eminent Oxford Scientist Says Wind Power "Fails on Every Count".  It could be argued that the basic arithmetic showing wind power is an economic and societal disaster in the making should be clear to a bright primary school child.  Now the Oxford University mathematician and physicist, researcher at CERN and Fellow of Keble College, Emeritus Professor Wade Allison has done the sums.  The U.K. is facing the likelihood of a failure in the electricity supply, he concludes.  "Wind power fails on every count," he says, adding that governments are ignoring "overwhelming evidence" of the inadequacies of wind power, "and resorting to bluster rather than reasoned analysis".

The output power of a windmill is proportional to the CUBE of the wind velocity.
The Inadequacy of Wind Power.  [Scroll down]  In particular, the generation of electricity by wind tells a disappointing story.  The political enthusiasm and the investor hype are not supported by the evidence, even for offshore wind, which can be deployed out of sight of the infamous My Back Yard.  What does such evidence actually say?  That the wind fluctuates is common knowledge.  But these fluctuations are grossly magnified to an extent that is not immediately obvious — and has nothing to do with the technology of the wind turbine.  The energy of the wind is that of the moving air, and, as every student knows, such energy is ½Mv², where M is the mass of air and v the speed.  The mass of air reaching each square metre of the area swept by the turbine blade in a second is M = pv, where p is the density of air:  about 1.2 kg per cubic metre.  So, the maximum power that the turbine can deliver is ½pv³ watts per square metre.

Electricity prices are soaring in leading wind-energy states.  United States electricity prices are rising rapidly, up 18.1% over the last two years.  Renewable-energy advocates claim that wind and solar installations produce cheaper electricity than traditional power plants, but power prices are rising as more wind and solar is added to the grid.  In fact, electricity prices are soaring in leading wind-energy states.  Over a 12-year period, from 2008 to 2020, U.S. average electricity prices rose only 8%, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.  This was much lower than the inflation rate of 20% over the same period.  But power prices rose 5% from 2020 to 2021 and an additional 12.5% last year.  Most of this rise was due to rising U.S. inflation, but the share of electricity generated from wind also rose, from 8.4% in 2020 to 10.2% in 2022. [...] Electricity prices in states with the highest penetration of wind systems are rising faster than the national average.  U.S. average electricity prices rose 27% from 2008 to 2022.  But in eight of the top 12 wind states, power prices rose between 33 and 73% over the 14-year period.

Guess which state is a national leader in green energy.  I can't say that I realized this before today and maybe you didn't either but it turns out Texas is one of the nation's leaders in both solar and wind energy production.  This is from a NY Times opinion piece titled "Clean Energy Is Suddenly Less Polarizing Than You Think" which is about where some of the money from the Inflation Reduction Act will be going.  ["]Between the signing of the I.R.A. and Jan. 31, announcements of the largest clean-energy investments have been in Georgia and Idaho, followed by Tennessee, then Michigan, then South Carolina and Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, Kansas, Nevada and Arizona.  Between now and 2027, Texas is expected to add almost twice as much solar capacity as California.  In expected development, Ohio, Nevada, Indiana and Florida rank third, fourth, fifth and sixth.["]

More Dead Whales Wash up in NY and NJ, Feds Continue to Deny Massive Wind Turbine Farms at Fault.  Last month, RedState reported on the spate of dead whales washing up on beaches in New York and New Jersey.  The pace has not slowed, and there now have been 25 reported deaths of the huge animals just since the beginning of December 2022.  Many blame the construction of massive offshore wind turbines, but the federal government insists there's no connection, with the Marine Mammal Commission, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), and the National Ocean Atmospheric Association (NOAA) rejecting the claims.  [Tweet]

'Clean energy' projection — 86 million pounds of turbine blades to enter landfills each year.  Based on the radical decimation of our environment thanks to greenie "clean energy" initiatives, I can only assume they've never heard of a cost-benefit analysis.  Or, maybe they have, and I'm just giving them more credit than they deserve. [...] Secondly, a multitude of the "green" initiatives are actually more detrimental than established energy technologies; nowhere is that more evident than the wind energy industry.  The proponents sure are ambitious, and I applaud real innovation that inflicts the least amount of harm on the environment as little as possible, but wind turbines?  One need not look very far to find countless examples of their crippling costs (both financial and environmental).

Thar She Blows.  [Scroll down]  Not surprisingly, locals along the Atlantic Coast are quite passionate about preserving the whales that remain, and a recent spike in whale strandings is pitting several small grassroots organizations against powerful national environmental groups, federal and state governments, and the wind industry.  Locals are convinced the burgeoning offshore wind industry is to blame for the deaths, and they have been spurred into action.  One relatively new non-profit — Nantucket Residents Against Turbines — is even suing various federal agencies to put a halt to the Vineyard Wind offshore wind project, arguing that allowing the project to proceed "will exacerbate threats to the North Atlantic Right Whale which has a population of fewer than 360 individuals."

Texas [is] Still Blowing It with Reliance on Wind Energy!  Electricity specialists at the University of Texas at Austin recently revisited the Great Texas Blackout of February 2021. The op-ed, "Two years after its historic deep freeze, Texas is increasingly vulnerable to cold snaps — and there are more solutions than just building power plants" (The Conversation), spreads the blame and recommends more government planning, not less.  The authors want to let wind and solar continue to "saturate" the market and regulate (via "smart meters") usage in your home and business to save the grid.  But this is a recipe for intrusion, inconvenience, hassle, and conflict.  And it neglects the logical alternative of denationalizing (privatizing) the state's power grid to create the right incentives for the provision of reliable, affordable electricity.

The dead birds and bats that improve renewable energy.  IN 1980, California laid the groundwork for one of the world's first large-scale wind projects when it designated more than 30,000 acres east of San Francisco for wind development, on a stretch of land called the Altamont Pass.  Within two decades, companies had installed thousands of wind turbines there.  But there was a downside:  While the sea breeze made Altamont ideal for wind energy, the area was also well-used by nesting birds.  Research suggested they were colliding with the turbines' rotating blades, leading to hundreds of deaths among red-tailed hawks, kestrels, and golden eagles.  "It's a great place for a wind farm, but it's also a really bad place for a wind farm," said Albert Lopez, planning director for Alameda County, where many of the projects are located.

Oil spilled when turbine crashed down near Paxton.  When a wind turbine collapsed last Thursday east of Paxton, a substantial amount of oil spilled from the turbine hub into the ground.  Ford County Emergency Management Agency Coordinator Terry Whitebird said Austin, Texas-based RWE Renewables, which operates the Prairie Trail Wind Farm, where the turbine collapsed, filed a report with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency about the spillage, and he received a copy of the report.  Whitebird has been on site and said a crew is ready to begin dismantling the turbine but has to wait until the area dries out from Wednesday's rains.  "Those things house hundreds of gallons of oil," Whitebird said.  "At this point there's no definite amount of how much was spilled," and that information won't be available until the hub is dismantled.

Wind turbines collapsing.  Wind turbines are failing — collapsing — around the world.  In recent months and years, turbines in Oklahoma, Colorado, Sweden, and Germany have collapsed.  According to a report in Bloomberg, all three of the major manufacturers say that the race to create ever bigger turbines has resulted in manufacturing issues.  Siemens has experienced quality control issues, Vestas has seen project delays and quality challenges, and GE has seen an increase in warranty costs and repairs.  Supply chain issues and fluctuating material pricing hasn't helped, either.  A number of the turbines that have been collapsing around the world have been more than 750 feet tall.  The tallest thus far, 784 feet high, fell in Germany in September 2021.

Are NOAA scientists being silenced?  Since the beginning of December there have been at least twelve strandings of whales along the New York and New Jersey shores, all resulting in the death of these animals.  An abnormal amount of strandings have been reported in a few southern states as well during this time frame, exacerbating what NOAA has declared as an unusual mortality event taking place on the East coast that started in 2016.  These deaths include, Humpback, Minke, Fin, Sperm, Northern Right Whale, various Dolphins and more since 2016.  Many of the Mammals stranded are endangered species, with the Northern Right Whale considered critically endangered having a population of less then 350 animals remaining, which is down from close to 500 only a decade ago.  A curious coincidence among these particular marine mammals is that they are classified as Low frequency cetaceans, meaning that they communicate, navigate and feed using low frequency sound.

FERC's Role in the Offshore Wind Stampede.  I am looking at a fat study titled "The Benefit and Urgency of Planned Offshore Transmission: Reducing the Costs of and Barriers to Achieving U.S. Clean Energy Goals". The term FERC occurs a whopping 92 times.  Not surprisingly the 103 page report is mistitled.  It is actually about the onshore transmission of offshore wind power, not offshore transmission.  The urgency is that the present power system cannot handle all that offshore juice coming ashore.  FERC is in the crosshairs because they are in charge of the grid.  Technically it is the independent system operators or ISOs, which are also repeatedly mentioned, but they answer to FERC.  This study is welcome in its way because it recognizes a deep problem that is not much discussed.  The present power system is not set up to handle huge new incoming flows at places that happen to be convenient to offshore wind.  As it is it cannot be done.  In fact the term "grid" is something of a misnomer.  It suggests that power can move about freely in large amounts, which is false.  The proper term is the "Eastern Interconnection" and that much is true.  Every major utility is connected to its neighbors, but the amount of allowable power flow is quite limited.  It is typically less than 20% of peak need.

Breaking Wind.  One of the favorite talking points of the climatistas is that we need to take account of the financial risk of future climate change.  This is one reason the Biden Brigade is trying to impose a number of climate risk requirements on American business, even though by every conventional method of economic forecasting, the present value of hypothetical large costs decades from now is quite small.  This is one reason why the climatistas insist on perverted forms of economic calculation (the "social cost of carbon") that in any other context would get them called "economics deniers."  One financial risk that turns out not to be small right now is the cost of green energy — especially windmills.

Wind winding down?  [Scroll down] Offshore wind projects that were touted as saving the world just a few months ago are on shaky pedestals.  The company that is fighting off accusations of whale killing for the prep work going on off the New Jersey coast has just taken a massive write-off on a project underway in the waters off New York state. [...] In an interesting turn of events in New Hampshire, a company contracted with the state for an offshore wind farm is embroiled in a major tussle with the state's department of utilities.  Avangrid has told the state they can't afford to move forward, so "we're not building it anymore."  The state says differently.

Wind Farms Don't Just Hurt The Environment And Boost China, They're Ugly As Sin.  Hoosier Daniel Lee recently noted the policy choice to limit natural gas and coal, combined with mandates for low-energy wind and solar, is making the Midwest energy grid significantly more expensive and unreliable. [...] It's a pattern happening across the United States.  In early 2022, New York's power grid operator predicted increasing blackouts as environmentalist regulations cut supply and the state shuts down power plants.  The North American Electric Reliability Corp. warned the West and Midwest should expect to see the same thing for the same reasons.  In fall 2022, New England's power grid operator told customers to expect blackouts if cold weather became severe, because of natural gas shortages. [...] In short, the United States is following California and Europe into disastrous energy policies that lead to frequent blackouts and brownouts, and people cutting down forests to warm themselves in frigid winters.  Apparently, it needs to be noted that people regularly die when the power goes out, especially the sick, young, and elderly.  Hospitals, nursing homes, and emergency services depend on reliable power.

Battle of the Activists: Dead Whales on the East Coast Likely Due to Wind Turbine Farms.  [W]hales are dying in unusual numbers on the beaches of New York and New Jersey, apparently from sound devastation caused by construction of offshore turbine farms.  It's pitting the climate crowd against the environmentalists, and while you might assume they're the same people, sometimes their interests diverge.  Since December 2022, at least 9 dead whales have washed up in the northeast states: [Tweet] [...] There are seven offshore wind projects in federal waters off the coast of New Jersey and New York currently under construction, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).  The whale deaths are causing some strange alliances, as environmental activists are becoming increasingly vocal in their concern while the climate groupies are not happy that anyone would dare get in the way of their Holy Grail, clean energy.  Forget the whales, is their basic message, according to Politico:  ["]Wind supporters from the New Jersey chapters of the Sierra Club and League of Conservation Voters say talk of a connection with whales is baseless and no reason to stop the development of clean energy.["]

The strange coincidence of the Offshore Wind Industry and 178 dead whales.  There have been a lot of dead whales on the East Coast of the US lately.  David Wojik noticed that NOAA was investigating 178 dead whales in something called an Unusual Mortality Event, or a UME — it's like an episode of X-Files.  NOAA says this wave of strandings mysteriously started in 2016 which was before the offshore wind factory industry got going — but Wojik points out the timing matches very well.  Offshore lease sales for the wind industry ramped up 2015-16.  There were nine big sales, he says, off New Jersey, New York, Delaware and Massachusetts.  And not so coincidentally, apparently 2016 was also the year that NOAA started giving permission slips for whale hunts, sorry whale harrassments for "geotechnical and site characterization surveys".

How long does a wind turbine last?  The ad copy says 25 years.  But new research has chopped wind's life expectancy in half to 12 years.  "A study of almost 3,000 turbines in Britain — the largest of its kind — sheds doubt on manufacturers claims that they generate clean energy for up to 25 years, which is used by the Government to calculate subsidies," reports the Daily Mail.  "Professor Gordon Hughes, an economist at Edinburgh University and former energy advisor to the World Bank, predicts in the coming decade far more investment will be needed to replace older and ineffective turbines — which is likely to be passed on in higher household electricity bills."  Hughes found that onshore and offshore wind turbines degrade differently.  The monthly load factors, or the amount of electricity generated as a percentage of their nameplate capacity, drops from 24 percent in the first year to 11% after 15 years.  Offshore wind, meanwhile, declines more drastically from 40% in year one to 15% after ten years.  This should not be surprising, as saltwater is an incredibly hostile environment.

Calls mount to stop offshore wind project as more whales wash up dead.  Lawmakers, fishermen and marine activists are calling for an investigation into whether offshore wind projects are killing marine life after a recent spate of dead whales washing up along the New Jersey-New York coastline.  Seafreeze fisheries liaison Meghan Lapp told Fox News that the Biden administration's initiative to build wind farms to combat climate change could be threatening the lives of whales as an increasing number have turned up dead in various states across the country.  "I can't authoritatively say that all off the whales that are washing up are because of offshore wind farms.  But what I can tell you is that the seven whales that washed up off New Jersey in the past month have all washed up during intense geotechnical surveying of wind farm leases off of New Jersey," Lapp said Friday on "Tucker Carlson Tonight."

Relying on wind power means Britons must get used to cutting energy use, says National Grid.  Households will be paid to cut their electricity use at certain times more often in future as Britain relies on wind power as part of the push to net zero, National Grid has signalled.  Craig Dyke, head of national control at the electricity system operator, said it "strongly believes" in consumers becoming more flexible about when they use electricity as the energy system is overhauled.  It comes as households are paid to reduce electricity usage between 5pm and 6pm tonight as National Grid deploys its new scheme to help avert blackouts for the first time outside of testing.  Asked if similar schemes could become a "feature of British life" and be used regularly, Mr Dyke told the BBC:  It's something we strongly believe in.  As we take that step whereby people are far more engaged in the energy they use, and as we drive towards that net zero position with people moving to electric vehicles and taking up heat pumps, for example, consumer engagement around this is key.

Climate Extremists' Hideous Wind Farms Are Coming To Your Backyard.  If all goes according to plan, Magic Valley Energy will soon be installing up to 400, 740-foot-tall wind turbines, 485 miles of new roads, miles and miles of transmission lines, and buildings filled with half-ton battery modules on upwards of 197,000 acres at Lava Ridge in southwestern Idaho.  The company is named after a beautiful valley that soon won't be nearly so magical.  The acreage is equal to 15 percent of Delaware, and the turbines, at 740 feet tall, are larger than the Washington Monument — an appropriate comparison because the project is being advanced in cooperation with a climate-obsessed Biden administration determined to replace fossil fuels with "clean" energy.  For the administration, saving the planet from computer models of manmade climate disasters is far more important than saving land, scenery, habitats, wildlife, and ways of life from the ravages of wind and solar installations.

Huge wind turbines — taller than the Statue of Liberty — are toppling over in a 'rash' of incidents.  Bloomberg Business Week, no foe of green energy, headlines: Wind Turbines Taller Than the Statue of Liberty Are Falling Over."  The article beneath the headline reports on a variety of alarming disasters involving wind turbines, including collapses of very tall sructures. [...] Compared to the amount of "carbon free" electricity generated, the carbon emitted in manufacturing and construction of the towers may take many years to counterbalance.  Consider that the relatively low electricity production of each tower (compared to a coal or nuclear fired plant) means that far more power transmission lines must be constructed, and there is a carbon footprint involved, not to mention the excess demand created for copper, which has its own environmental issues in mining and refining, and the problems with meeting demand when creating new copper mines hits a high wall of resistance from the very same environmentalists who think windmills are a solution to the problems they imagine CO2 creates.

Are Whales Being Threatened by a Biden Energy Project?  You may remember a bizarre incident that took place in the early 2000s.  To briefly recap, the company Cape Wind Associates wanted to erect an offshore wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts.  We all know who lives on the coast of Massachusetts:  rich people who champion all sorts of causes, including renewable energy.  But these rich people did not want the things that produce renewable energy within sight of their beach homes.  Among those who were scandalized by the idea were Walter Cronkite and then-Senator Ted Kennedy.  Other wealthy people who also claimed to love Mother Earth were opposed to the idea and a lawsuit ensued. [...] The incident above is fraught with comic irony.  Namely that wealthy leftists did not want to live with something that they had no problem foisting on the "little people." But there is concern that the surveying for the construction of offshore wind farms may be causing a problem for the whale population.  Dead whales are washing up along the shores of New York and New Jersey.

7th Dead Whale Washes Up Near Planned Green Energy Hotspot — Are Offshore Wind Projects Killing Them?  Despite calls for a halt to the development of offshore wind energy projects following a series of unexplained whale deaths, Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy says the state will not interfere with the projects.  The death reported last week of the seventh whale in a little over a month alarmed Cindy Zipf, executive director of the group Clean Ocean Action, according to NJ.com.  "This is bad news on top of bad news," she said.  "This is devastating and shows even more urgency to our call to action for [President Joe] Biden and Gov. Phil Murphy to call for a stop to all activity.  Don't add any more projects and get a comprehensive investigation underway with experts and full transparency with oversight," she said.  The whale death reported Thursday follows the death of another whale the weekend before.

That whooshing sound is windmills shredding tax dollars.  [Scroll down]  Morro Bay is really quite a beautiful place.  I'm wondering what that "substantial new waterfront infrastructure" all entails.  Maybe the greenies won't be so thrilled with it when the bulldozers come in? [...] I don't hold out much hope for the fishing industry having any influence or impact whatsoever on the future of this project, but the tribes could be a horse of a different color and might be able to throw a wrench in it if they don't get the right answers.  Talk about lip service.  Pretty amazing how Democrats are all about minorities until they interfere with their pet projects.  Then they might get a sympathy card after being run over if they get any acknowledgment at all.  This is all part and parcel of allowing our future to be hijacked while destroying our standard of living by people who are mainstreaming beliefs like these: [...]

It is Time to Talk About "Capacity Factors".  In electricity generation, capacity factor, utilization, and load factor are not the same.  A lot of confusion exists in the press and certainly in politics, and even amongst "energy experts", about using the term "capacity factor".  It may be excused, since the distinction made in this article became only relevant with the penetration of variable "renewable" energy, such as wind and solar, in our energy systems.
  •   Worldwide average solar natural capacity factor (CF) reaches about ~11-13%.  Best locations in California, Australia, South Africa, Sahara may have above 25%, but are rare.
  •   Worldwide average wind natural capacity factors (CF) reach about ~21-24%.  Best off-shore locations in Northern Europe may reach above 40%.  Most of Asia and Africa have hardly any usable wind and the average CF would be below 15%, except for small areas on parts of the coasts of South Africa and Vietnam.
Natural capacity factors in Europe tend to be higher for wind than for solar.  Wind installations in Northern Europe may reach an average of over 30% (higher for more expensive offshore, lower onshore), but less than 15% in India and less than 8% in Indonesia.

Gas Power Saves Texas from Blackouts, As Wind Power Collapses Again!  The emergency order from the US Energy Department allowed the state's grid operator to exceed certain air pollution limits to boost generation amid record power demand in the state.  The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, whose service area includes 90% of electric customers in Texas, requested the emergency order Friday, warning it may need to resort to blackouts.  Translation:  fire up more coal and gas plants!  Fortunately a repetition of the blackouts last year was avoided.  But as we can see, it was gas power which came to the rescue, as wind power collapsed to virtually nothing at the same time as demand surged.

The Editor says...
I personally observed a large array of huge windmills standing motionless on the afternoon of December 18, 2022, as I drove on I-20 just east of Abilene, even though there was a brisk wind from the south.  Apparently the windmills were shut down because there was too much wind, in order to keep them from self-destructing.  The previous day, as I drove west approaching Abilene, the windmills were almost motionless because there was not enough wind.

Economic Realities Dash Biden's Offshore Wind Plans.  President Joe Biden's plans for offshore industrial wind facilities lining the nation's coasts have more than a few hurdles to clear before they can become reality.  As part of his plan to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, Biden has initiated efforts to build 30,000 megawatts of traditional offshore wind facilities (with structures attached to the ocean floor) in federal waters by 2030, and an additional 15,000 megawatts of floating industrial offshore wind by 2035.  To hit those targets, the Biden administration is pushing to lease areas in federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico and Gulf of Maine and off the coasts of New England, the Mid-Atlantic States, North Carolina, South Carolina, California, and Oregon.

Green Bombshell: New Evidence Points to the Annual Slaughter of Millions of Bats by Onshore Wind Turbines.  New evidence indicates that millions of bats are being slaughtered every year by wind turbines.  This astonishing figure of wildlife massacre arises from a reasonable extrapolation of casualty numbers collected by a group of German zoologists.  Their data cover a number of years, and more specifically a recent two-month detailed survey at a wind farm near Berlin.  Germany has nearly 30,000 onshore wind turbines, and the researchers suggested their findings translated to 200,000 bat fatalities every year in that country alone.  Land-based wind turbines are common across many parts of the world, and a total figure running into millions is possible.

Mega Wind farm approved that can't operate half the year.  The EPA has approved Robbins Island Mega Wind Factory in a remote island off Tasmania that will have to stop working for five months of the year so it doesn't hurt the Orange-bellied Parrot.  It will however be able to kill eagles and other birds for the other seven months of the year.  Green electrons are revered, Orange-bellied parrots are sacred but our way of life is up for grabs.  It's a cult.  This is infrastructure that only works about 30% of the time anyhow, and now will be reduced to something like 17%.  The theoretical capacity will be 340MW in the first stage, supposedly growing to 900MW if they can somehow build the extra 170km transmission lines and perhaps get the taxpayer to help build another undersea cable across the Bass Strait.

A surprising trigger of western New York 'thundersnow': Wind turbines.  Sparks of groundbreaking science are emerging from the historic lake-effect snowstorm that pummeled western New York over the weekend.  A research project based at State University of New York at Oswego (SUNY Oswego) has gathered unprecedented data on how wind turbines can spawn lightning within a snowstorm, often referred to as "thundersnow."  Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Project LEE (Lake-Effect Electrification) runs through March 2023.  The study has already snagged a major win from the intense multiday episode of lake-effect snow that hammered the east ends of Lakes Ontario and Erie, including the Buffalo area.  On Friday night [11/18/2022], dozens of lightning flashes were detected in snow bands across the Tug Hill Plateau.  Maple Ridge Wind Farm — New York's largest, with 195 turbines — sits atop the plateau about 50 miles northeast of the Oswego campus.  It's a spot well suited for generating wind energy but also notorious for some of the heaviest lake-effect snow on Earth.

Wind Turbine Syndrome: The Impact of Wind Farms on Suicide.  Current technology uses wind turbines' blade aerodynamics to convert wind energy to electricity.  This process generates significant low-frequency noise that reportedly produces annoyance symptoms and disrupts the sleep of nearby residents.  However, the existence and the importance of wind farms' health effects on a population scale remain unknown.  Exploiting over 800 utility-scale wind farm installation events in the United States from 2001 to 2013, I show robust evidence that wind farms lead to significant increases in suicide.  I explore indirect tests of the role of low-frequency noise exposure that support the connection.  The suicide effect rises with the number of days that people experience greater exposure to low-frequency noise radiation as the result of the direction of prevailing winds.  Data from a large-scale health survey suggest that sleep insufficiency increased as new wind farms began operating.  The suicide increase is most pronounced among two age groups:  those in the 15-19 age group and those over than age 80.  I estimate that the suicide cost of wind farms is not trivial in magnitude compared to the environmental and health benefits of wind energy.

Study: Hey, these offshore wind farms aren't good for the ecosystem.  There are wind farms being put up all over the place these days, including in many rural areas of the United States.  But the offshore wind farms that have been constructed in the North Sea by various European power companies have created a forest of towers rising up over the waves.  But that's not a problem, right?  After all, this is the "clean energy" we were all promised and we're saving the planet so everyone can feel better about themselves.  The Biden administration recently announced plans to accelerate offshore wind farm construction in the name of "environmental justice, biodiversity, and protecting our oceans."  But according to one peer-reviewed study published in a prominent nature journal, those wind farms aren't really good for the ocean ecosystem at all.  And they create "substantial" negative impacts on marine life and ocean conditions.

New Study Has Some Bad News for Wind Energy Advocates.  A new peer reviewed study from German scientists found that offshore wind farms — the sort of supposedly "green" alternative to existing energy sources with which President Biden and Democrats want to fill America's coastal waters — are not as safe for marine ecosystems as their proponents may argue.  The researchers looked at one area and ecosystem in particular — the North Sea — where the world's largest offshore wind farm (OWF) opened earlier in 2022.  Relying on modeling and simulations in order to see what the "systematic, large-scale, time-integrated response of the ocean to large OWF clusters" would be, the study's authors found evidence that offshore wind power generation, supposedly great for the planet actually introduced factors that negatively impact sea life.

Costs of Wind and Solar Energy Are Skyrocketing.  Advocates of wind and solar energy have argued that the cost of those energy sources would decline over time as they are more widely adopted.  That never made any sense, and it has not proved true.  In fact, the cost of both wind and solar energy is destined to continue rising sharply as the massive quantities of materials they require become more expensive as a result of increasing demand, driven by ill-advised (the politest adjective I can think of) government mandates and subsidies.  In fact, the cost of electricity generated by wind and solar is already skyrocketing.  My colleague Isaac Orr reproduced this chart at American Experiment.  It shows the average cost of wind and solar energy as contracted for in Power Purchase Agreements with utilities from 2019 through early 2022.  It should be noted that these are subsidized prices, not the full cost if you include the portion that is paid by taxpayers.

How inefficient is German wind power?  Some 28 000 larger wind turbines are in operation in Germany and no one knows how many of them are profitable.  Germany's wind farm operators hide the data "like a state secret", reported the NZZ.  Therefore, the Swiss daily examined and calculated the utilisation with the help of a simulation for 18 000 of these plants.  To do this, it "evaluated hourly weather data over a period of ten years".  The result is sobering, in some cases even shocking.

Why green energy is not green at all.  All green energy degrades its environment.  Take wind power.  Wind turbines steal energy from the atmosphere and must affect local weather.  Turbines are always placed on the highest ground and along ridges to catch more wind.  Natural hills already affect local weather by causing more rain along the ridge and a rain shadow farther downwind.  Wind turbines enhance this rain shadow effect by robbing the wind of its ability to take moisture and rain into the drier interior.  Promoting more inland desertification is not green.  Climatists also plan to defend Australia with offshore wind turbines — using bird-slicers to protect Australia from hang gliders, cruising pelicans, seagulls, eagles, and the occasional albatross.  Solar "farms" prefer large areas of flattish ground.  They steal solar energy from all plant life in their solar shadow.  This deprives wild and domestic herbivores of sustenance.  Neither kangaroos, cattle, emus, parrots, nor sheep thrive in solar energy deserts.

UK faces blackouts, blistering costs and still has to pay wind farms £1b to do nothing.  Imagine an energy system so broken that the government forced The People to buy generators that only work (randomly) 30% of the time and told them they would still have to pay the generators even when their product was useless.  Imagine that the government told The People that this would make their electricity cheaper (and people believed them!).  In the UK people are forced to pay unreliable generators for electricity that comes when no one wants it.  No doubt this was built into the contract from the start to stop investors from fleeing for the hills.  Imagine an investment so bad that the seller has to pre-arrange payments for all the times their product is useless or it wouldn't be worth building in the first place.  There's a message in that.  (Don't build it.)  To put arsenic-icing on this cake, the wind farms that are paid to do nothing are allowed to turn around and sell their electricity to a third party down a private line if they have a buyer, thus earning payments twice for the same electricity.

This is where they mine Neodymium -- The main component in Wind turbines, for 'clean' energy!  [Tweet with video clip]

The wind turbines on his Colorado farm are 20 years old.  Who's going to take them down?  It was the spring of 2000 when two wind company representatives came to Tom Fehringer's farm near the Nebraska border.  They told him about a coming wind project and pressed him to sign a contract on the spot to lease his land for turbines.  Fehringer consulted an attorney in Sterling who said the contract was vague but fairly similar to what an oil and gas company might present.  The agreement was signed within a few weeks.  Fehringer soon had nine of the Peetz Table wind project's 33 turbines turning on his Logan County land. [...] But by 2001, the year the project became operational, Fehringer wanted to renegotiate.  He'd learned his contract paid far less than the industry standard and didn't adjust for inflation.  As years went by, blinking lights atop each tower — meant to warn airplanes — went haywire and resembled a "psychedelic light show" at night.  One turbine clinked and clanked for months before its nose fell off, sending fiberglass chunks plummeting into Fehringer's field below, he said.  Fehringer is no longer sure what company owns the turbines.

Critically Thinking about Industrial Wind Energy.  The primary reason that wind energy has made inroads, has nothing to do with wind energy! Instead its success is 100% due to the fact that masterful lobbyists are behind wind energy policies.  If one reads The Business of America is Lobbying, it's apparent that the wind industry has used every trick in the book — and then written some of their own.  For example:  wind lobbyists have successfully infiltrated our language with totally inaccurate and misleading terminology, such as "wind farms" and "clean energy."  Neither actually exists.  For example:  wind marketers have successfully portrayed their product as "Free, Clean and Green" — despite it being none of those.  The reason they have coined these malapropisms is simple: those who control the words, control the narrative.  For example:  wind salespeople have successfully convinced financially distressed communities, that hosting a wind project will be a economic windfall — even though numerous studies from independent experts indicate that the net local economic impact is likely negative.

Reality Bites Wind.  It is an article of faith among many governments that we are in the midst of a transition from fossil fuel energy to "renewable" wind and solar.  (Notably absent from this consensus are China, India and Russia.)  In fact, no such transition is underway; wind and solar account for only a derisory portion of the world's energy consumption, despite countless billions in subsidies.  Nor will any such transition happen at any time in the future.  One of the fundamental problems with wind and solar is that they are ridiculously low-intensity.  As a result, it requires a vast quantity of raw materials to produce a modest, and unreliable, amount of energy.  Did you know that a single wind turbine requires 8,000 pounds or more of copper?  Like me, you probably have no concept of what it takes to produce that quantity of copper, or of the vast amounts of fossil fuels that are needed to create just this one component of a wind turbine.  Wind and solar installations are parasitic:  they cannot be produced without using enormous quantities of fossil fuels.

Electric Mania.  [Scroll down] This distinction between renewable and nonrenewable is a fallacy as surely as it was a fallacy that electrical currents could bring a dead person back to life.  How do we capture wind or solar energy?  We must produce other things, like wind turbines and solar panels.  Are these clean?  No.  The dirty secret of wind energy and solar production is that the actual wind energy rotors and the solar panels are made of material that, at the end of its useful life, is literally ground up and put into a landfill.  I'm going to talk mainly about wind turbines, but keep in mind that everything I say is also applicable to solar panels.  By 2030, the United States is expected to see as much as one million total tons of solar panel waste.  By 2050, the United States is expected to have the second largest number of end-of-life panels in the world, with as many as an estimated 10 million total tons of panels.  What is going to happen to all that waste, much of it toxic?  Wind turbines typically contain more than 8,000 different components.  One such component are magnets made from neodymium and dysprosium; rare earth minerals mined almost exclusively in China.  Extracting REs is an energy intensive and heavily polluting process, which makes a mockery of "clean energy" all by itself.

The Coming Green Electricity Nightmare.  [Scroll down] To cite just one example, just those 2,500 wind turbines for New York electricity (30,000 megawatts) would require nearly 110,000 tons of copper — which would require mining, crushing, processing and refining 25 million tons of copper ore ... after removing some 40 million tons of overlying rock to reach the ore bodies.  Multiply that times 50 states — and the entire world — plus transmission lines.  How many processing plants and factories would be needed?  How much fossil fuel power to run those massive operations?  How many thousands of square miles of toxic waste pits all over world under zero to minimal environmental standards, workplace safety standards, child and slave labor rules?  How many dead birds, bats, and endangered and other species would be killed off all across the USA and world — from mineral extraction activities, wind turbine blades, solar panels blanketing thousands of square miles of wildlife habitats, and transmission lines impacting still more land?  How many will survive hurricanes like Ian or Andrew?  Where will we dump the green energy trash?  Not only do the luminaries and activists ignore these issues and refuse to address them.  They actively suppress, cancel, censor and deplatform any questions and discussions about them.

Wind Farm Faces Shutdown as Parts Start Flying Off Turbines -- Because It's Too Windy.  Too much of a good thing is causing havoc at a Norwegian wind farm.  Over the past two years, at least seven objects have fallen from the wind turbines at the Ånstadblåheia wind farm near Sortland with strong winds being called the culprit, according to Life in Norway.  The 14-turbine wind farm in Sortland, part of the Vesterålen Islands off the northern coast of Norway produces between 140 and 150-gigawatt hours of electricity a year.  "In the last two years, it has not been safe to travel on the mountain.  Although the facility is now being equipped for the future, and the surrounding area made safe, the reputation is damaged," Morten Berg-Hansen, editor of a local newspaper, said.  "They have made some improvements.  But we note that unwanted incidents still occur," Anne Johanne Kråkenes, section head for the Norwegian Water and Energy Directorate, said.

Dominion hides offshore wind threat to whales.  Secrecy abounds around the monster offshore wind (OSW) project proposed by Dominion Energy.  In this case it is all about the threat to the severely endangered North Atlantic Right Whales.  I earlier reported on the big hidden whale study done by the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which is doing the Environment Impact Assessment for this huge project.  Digging into Dominion's filing with BOEM I found something even worse.  Dominion has done an actual threat assessment but it is 100% secret!

Tesla Battery Catches Fire in California Causing Shelter-In-Place Advisory Due to Toxic Smoke.  A Tesla Megapack battery caught fire at PG&E's Elkhorn Battery Storage facility in Monterey County, California.  A shelter-in-place advisory was in place for 12 hours due to fears of toxic smoke from the fire caused by Elon Musk's battery system, with county officials announcing that even though the fire was "fully controlled" by 7:00 p.m. PT, "smoke may still occur in the area for several days."  KSBW Action News 8 reports that a Tesla Megapack battery caught fire at the local utility company PG&E's Elkhorn Battery Storage facility in Monterey County, California.  The fire reported started at around 1:30 a.m. on September 20 according to the comm manager for PG&E, Jeff Smith.  No injuries were reported at the time.

Why Wind Power Isn't the Answer.  On October 8, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report warning that nations around the world must cut their greenhouse-gas emissions drastically to reduce the possibility of catastrophic climate change.  The report emphasizes "fast deployment of renewables like solar and wind" and largely ignores the essential role nuclear energy must play in any decarbonization effort.  Four days earlier, to much less fanfare, two Harvard researchers published a paper showing that trying to fuel our energy-intensive society solely with renewables would require cartoonish amounts of land.  How cartoonish?  Consider: meeting America's current demand for electricity alone — not including gasoline or jet fuel, or the natural gas required for things like space heating and fertilizer production — would require covering a territory twice the size of California with wind turbines.

Intergovernmental Panel Warns "strongest greenhouse gas in the world being emitted from wind turbines".  While Germany races to build wind farms, there is cause for concern, with a chemical identified as the strongest greenhouse gas in the world being emitted from wind turbines.  In fact, measurements of the air over Germany have already identified the country as the worst offender in Europe when it comes to the highly dangerous substance sulfur hexafluoride (SF6). The chemical is used in the manufacturing of wind turbines and escapes into the environment.  With Germany the leader in wind turbine use in Europe, scientists say this is the major factor behind the exceptionally high levels of SF6 readings in Germany.

Killing the Eagles with 'Climate Change' Malice Aforethought.  [Scroll down] If there is more beautiful country in the lower 48, more varied wildlife and greater opportunity to experience it than in the Rocky Mountains of western Wyoming, I'm not aware of it.  But it's the eagles that draw attention.  High, regal, effortlessly gliding, circling above us, having long-ago conquered the skies in a way man never will.  And being destroyed by wind "farms," in which wind energy companies get "kill" permits to destroy these amazing raptors using the wind highways they have used for hundreds of thousands of years only suddenly to encounter instant, unknowable death.  Male, female, young, old they are killed by the incredible blunt force of a 12-ton blade moving at over 100 mph.  Force = Mass times Acceleration.  You do the math.  For a kilowatt.  For a company profiting on tax dollars devoted to an energy form civilization left-behind centuries ago, and that could not have powered our progress to today, nor keep us warm, alive, fed and producing, as Germans are about to discover.

Wind Turbines Are Destroying the Planet.  New York, along with other states, is moving forward with massive wind turbine projects.  The push for "9,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy" comes at a high price, not only for families who are left dependent on expensive and unreliable energy, but for the planet.  Wind turbines require massive amounts of rare earths for their generators and motors.  A single wind turbine eats up tons of rare earth metals.  Rare earth mining carried out in China is horrifyingly destructive to people and the environment.  One story described radioactive lakes, high cancer rates and villagers whose "teeth began to fall out" and "hair turned white at unusually young ages".  "Children were born with soft bones and cancer rates rocketed."

Wind energy boom and golden eagles collide in the U.S. West.  The rush to build wind farms to combat climate change is colliding with preservation of one of the U.S. West's most spectacular predators — the golden eagle — as the species teeters on the edge of decline.  Ground zero in the conflict is Wyoming, a stronghold for golden eagles that soar on 7-foot wings and a favored location for wind farms.  As wind turbines proliferate, scientists say deaths from collisions could drive down golden eagle numbers considered stable at best.

Why wind turbines are not as green as you think.  The lifecycle of a wind turbine is around 20-25 years.  And it is estimated that by 2023, around 14,000 wind turbine blades will need to be unassembled in Europe.  According to the study head, Professor Peter Majewski, the cost of recycling and the low market value of recovered markets means it's unrealistic to expect a market-based recycling solution to emerge.  "So policymakers need to step in now and plan what we're going to do with all these blades that will come offline in the next few years."  About 85% of a wind turbine is already recyclable.  The problem is the material in the blades.  They are made from glass fiber/epoxy matrix composites to withstand all weather.  Both materials are hard to break down.  Traditionally, the industry has dealt with leftover wind turbines by depositing them in landfill or incineration in cement factories — and burning fiberglass isn't great for the environment either!

Wind Turbine Accidents.  [Page after page of anecdotes]

Senator Manchin Says His Energy Deal Will Bring Windmills to West Virginia Faster, With Batteries Made in Mexico and Canada.  In a remarkable interview attempting to justify his agreement with the senate Build Back Better climate change bill (fraudulently labeled 'inflation reduction act'), West Virginia Democrat Senator Joe Manchin says the massive energy spending and tax bill will bring green renewable energy much quicker.  In essence, the windmills and solar panels for West Virginia will arrive faster now, and that will improve energy production.  When discussing the new energy origination provisions, Senator Manchin catches himself mid-sentence saying, "the battery better be made in America."  He quickly corrected himself knowing the claim was false and followed up with, "better be sourced in North America, it better be processed," because he is well aware the largest employment and investment beneficiaries for his deal will be Mexico and Canada, not American workers.

Environmentalism is an Environmental Hazard.  [Scroll down]  Solar panels are worthless as energy and they're worthless as trash.  Governments have to mandate and subsidize their installation and then their disposal.  The situation isn't much better with the ubiquitous wind turbines whose blades can't be recycled.  Much as solar panels are filling up landfills, so are wind turbine blades.  And those blades which "can be longer than a Boeing 747 wing" will first have to be cut up with a "diamond-encrusted industrial saw" and then hauled away on tractor trailers to massive landfills.  Fiberglass blades aren't biodegradable and burning or crushing them releases toxic fibers that have been linked to everything from skin reactions to lung disease.  Inhaling fiberglass dust is potentially dangerous.  Especially from something the size of a jet wing.  That just leaves one option.  The same option as for nuclear power.  Bury them.  Wind turbines, which were supposed to save the environment, are piling up in rural areas in Wyoming, Iowa and South Dakota.

Texas Wind Power [is] Failing When [the] State Needs It Most.  Wind power — a key source of electricity in Texas — is being sidelined just when the Lone Star State needs it most, with turbines generating less than a 10th of what they're capable of.  A scorching heat wave is pushing the Texas grid to the brink.  Power demand is surging as people crank up air conditioners.  But meanwhile, wind speeds have fallen to extremely low levels, and that means the state's fleet of turbines is at just 8% of their potential output.  Texas may be America's oil and gas hub, but it's also long been the country's biggest wind-power state.  The renewable energy source has become highly politicized:  Some critics blamed frozen wind turbines for the Texas grid's failure during a deadly winter storm last year, even though disruptions at plants powered by natural gas were the bigger culprit.  Texas grid operators had accurately forecast that wind output would be low Monday, yet it points to a broader struggle facing the world as it transitions to cleaner energy sources.

Texas faces blackouts as heat wave strains windmill-reliant power grid.  Clean energy proponents are touting the use of solar and wind power in oil-rich Texas, but a summer heat wave is showing the limits of renewables in sustaining a major power grid.  Temperatures have climbed into the 100's this month and Texas energy companies are sending urgent messages to customers to warn of rolling blackouts.  They also are asking customers to conserve by raising thermostats, cutting back on using dishwashers and washing machines and limiting electric vehicle charging.  Energy Texas, one of 150 retail electricity providers in the state, blamed the looming threat of power outages on "triple-digit temperatures and low wind generation."

Tesla Asks Texans To Limit Charging Cars During Heat Wave As Wind Power Slows.  Tesla is asking all Texas-based customers to avoid charging their electric vehicles during certain times of the day as the Lone Star State is currently experiencing a massive heatwave that is straining its electrical power grid.  On Wednesday, The Verge reported that Tesla recently sent a notice to the screens inside Tesla vehicles in Texas saying, "A heat wave is expected to impact the grid in Texas over the next few days."  "The grid operator recommends to avoid charging during peak hours between 3 pm and 8 pm, if possible, to help statewide efforts to manage demand," the alert added.  On Monday, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) — which operates the state's power grid — asked residents to conserve energy between the hours of 2:00 pm and 8:00 pm local time by not using heavy appliances during that timeframe.

Texas Tells Consumers to Conserve Electricity as Wind Energy Falls Short.  The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has warned power consumers in Texas to conserve energy on Monday afternoon and evening because there will not be enough wind power to operate the power grid reliably in peak demand.  [Tweet]  Though Texas is known for its role in the oil industry, it is also the nation's number-one producer of wind energy.  During a cold snap in the winter of 2021, however, wind turbines froze and many Texans found themselves without electricity.  Now that scenario is likely to repeat itself, albeit due to high temperatures that are accompanied by calm conditions.

Mapped:  Average Wind Speead Across The US.  Wind energy is a hot topic in North America and around the world as a decarbonization tool, but full utilization requires a lot of wind.  This graphic from the team at the Woodwell Climate Research Center maps the average wind speed of the continental U.S. based on NOAA data from 2021.

The Editor says...
For several years, I lived in the southeast corner of Texas, and my perception was that there was never any wind in that area unless a tropical storm was roaring through.  This map confirms my observation.

A No Wind Solution.  Everybody likes the idea of green energy.  Add windmills to that mix, and most folks still get images of Dutch landscapes, not goofy cancer-causing claims.  But when a project for up to 400 wind turbines with a maximum height of 740 feet each — the Seattle Space Needle is 605 feet — is proposed in your neck of the woods, a different level of scrutiny typically kicks in and questions start blowing in the wind.  The Lava Ridge Wind Energy Project, as it's called by the U.S. Department of the Interior, is proposed by Magic Valley Energy, a subsidiary of LS Power, which has developed significant renewable, transmission, and other energy projects across the U.S. It would be constructed on BLM-managed public land in southern Idaho, approximately 25 miles northeast of Twin Falls.  It could generate 1,000 megawatts, which loosely translated means it could power up about 12,000 homes a year.

The Editor says...
"It could generate 1,000 megawatts," or it could sit there and generate nothing on the coldest night of the year, when the wind stops.

Wind turbines bound for landfill because of hefty recycling expenses.  Researchers from the University of South Australia are urging renewable energy companies in the state to come up with an end-of-life plan for their ageing wind turbines.  A study led by Professor Peter Majewski indicated that tens of thousands of old turbines could end up in landfill by the end of the decade.  Worldwide, there could be more than 40 million tonnes of blade waste in landfills by 2050.  Wind turbines have life span of 10 to 20 years and are expensive to break down due to their size and the fact they are made from a mixture of composite materials including glass fibre, carbon fibre, polyester and epoxy resins.

Why The Biden Admin Wants Censorship Of Renewable Energy Critics.  In a talk with Axios, Biden Administration Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy said, "The tech companies have to stop allowing specific individuals over and over again to spread disinformation."  After an Axios reporter asked, "Isn't misinformation and disinfo around climate a threat to public health itself?" McCarthy responded, "Oh, absolutely... We are talking, really, about risks that no longer need to be tolerated to our communities."  McCarthy pointed specifically to those who criticized the failure of weather-dependent renewables during the blackouts in Texas in February 2021.  But many of those criticisms were factual.  Over the last decade in Texas, investors sunk over $53 billion on weather-dependent energy sources, mostly wind turbines, which alongside frozen fossil fuel plants were largely unavailable during the cold snap in February.  That was only partly because of the cold and mostly because of low wind speeds.  McCarthy claimed that the critics of renewables are funded by "dark money" fossil fuel companies, which she compared to Big Tobacco.  She claimed the critics are being paid to "fool" the public about "the benefits of clean energy."  "We need the tech companies to really jump in," she said, because criticizing renewables is "equally dangerous to denial because we have to move fast."

Massachusetts Offshore Ocean Wind Cables Another Boondoggle.  Massachusetts placed commercial megawatt wind turbines in communities that required setbacks of up to 3000 feet.  The worst placed wind turbines in Massachusetts and in the United States are in Falmouth which recently issued a demolition bid for the town-owned wind turbines.  The current Governor Charlie Baker admitted the Falmouth "screw-up," the Falmouth community is still on the hook for at least $12 million after being misled by the state's original Pied Piper of wind.  Massachusetts installed less than 120 megawatts of wind power with most projects stopped or curtailed at night so people can sleep.  In addition to the land-based wind fiasco the former administration's New Bedford marine terminal, built as a Cape Wind construction staging area, has become a taxpayer-funded boondoggle still incomplete with no walking cranes, rail link, and a hurricane gate that won't allow offshore wind jack-up barges into the port.  Today's wind turbines are up to ten times the size of Cape Wind turbines.  Today the Massachusetts Legislature is again in a rush to bring offshore energy to all the large cities including Boston.  The offshore cable approach looks to be another land-based wind and New Bedford ocean wind port fiasco putting the cart before the horse.

Rolls-Royce's SMR Needs 10,000 Times Less Land Than Wind Energy, Proves 'Iron Law Of Power Density'.  Last month, Rolls-Royce said that it expects to receive regulatory approval from the British government by 2024 for its 470-megawatt small modular reactor and that it will begin producing power on Britains' electric grid by 2029.  Will that happen?  Time will tell.  Many nuclear projects and startups have blown past their projected in-service dates.  But Rolls-Royce's announcement is important for two reasons.  First, it adds more credence to the notion that a global nuclear renaissance is, in fact, underway.  Second, Rolls-Royce's new 470-megawatt reactor design shows that due to its unsurpassed power density, nuclear energy is the only way we can produce electricity at scale while preserving the natural environment and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  Why?  The power density of the nuclear plants Rolls-Royce plans to build will need 10,000 times less land than a wind project and about 1,000 times less land than what will be required by a solar project.  Due to their astonishingly high power density, the new nuclear plants will need far fewer resources like land, steel, neodymium, copper, and concrete which proves what I have dubbed the Iron Law of Power Density.

Wind and Solar Face Increasing Opposition Everywhere They Go!  Has the tide turned against the hideous government-enabled superstructures politely called industrial wind turbines?  Robert Bryce has been following community rejections of such projects since at least 2016 and 2017.  His tally today has reached 330 industrial wind and solar projects.  The number is growing, and with growing electricity issues, hard questions are being asked.  The mainstream media portrays renewable siting controversies as an isolated issue.  But the intrepid Bryce is breaking through the narrative of a[n] inevitable 'renewables future' and 'reset' from mineral energies.  Actually, the renewables' takeover is the opposite of "green" as documented in Planet of the Humans.

Ohio County Veto of Wind Project Shows It's Time to End Federal Wind Subsidies.  Rural Americans keep rejecting wind projects.  On May 5, commissioners in Crawford County, Ohio voted 2-1 in favor of a measure that prohibits the construction of wind projects in the county.  The move halts a 300-megawatt project being promoted by Apex Clean Energy called Honey Creek Wind.  The Crawford County vote matters for several reasons.  First, it provides yet another example of the backlash in rural America against the landscape-blighting encroachment of giant wind turbines; and those rejections are piling up.  The vote in Crawford County marks the 330th time that government entities from Maine to Hawaii have rejected or restricted wind projects since 2015.

Offshore wind power's devastating costs and impacts on North Carolina.  In this report, we assessed the cost of building 8,000 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind turbines off the coast of North Carolina and concluded it would cost $55.7 billion in the Low-Cost scenario to $71.5 billion in the Base-Cost scenario through 2050.  This would result in an average cost increase of $330 to $425 per year per North Carolina customer, respectively, peaking in the year 2040 at $641 and $823 per customer, respectively.  Building unreliable offshore wind turbines will greatly increase the economic hardship felt by North Carolinians for zero measurable environmental benefits.

US Offshore Wind Jobs are Highly Exaggerated.  Offshore wind supporters like to quote a Wood Mackenzie research study that says building 29,000 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind electric generating capacity on the Atlantic seaboard by 2030 will create 80,000 annual full-time US jobs between 2025 and 2030.  Extrapolating from an actual approved project leads to an estimate of only about 5,500 jobs, and even that number may be high.  Further, the study ignores possibly over 25,600 jobs potentially lost from huge electric premiums that redirect consumer and business spending elsewhere in the economy.  The Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC) recently approved the 846 MW Skipjack 2 offshore wind project off Delaware's coast.  A review[i] of the project by the PSC consultant indicates there will be 857 temporary construction jobs and 25 permanent Operational & Maintenance jobs.

Wind Power's 'Colossal Market Failure' Threatens Climate Fight.  Optimism abounds about the future of wind power, with a clean-energy boom powering robust growth in an industry that businesses and governments agree is key to slowing climate change.  But a nagging problem could keep the sector from fulfilling that promise:  Turbine makers are still struggling to translate soaring demand into profit.  Wind power heavyweights Vestas Wind Systems A/S, General Electric Co. and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy SA are reeling from high raw material and logistics costs, changes in key clean-power subsidies, years of pressure on turbine prices and an expensive arms race to build ever-bigger machines.  "What I'm seeing is a colossal market failure," said Ben Backwell, chief executive officer of trade group Global Wind Energy Council, noting a mismatch between government targets for new wind power and what's happening on the ground.

Analyzing bird population declines due to renewable power sources in California.  A team of researchers affiliated with a large number of institutions in the U.S. has attempted to determine the vulnerability of bird populations to alternative energy production.  In their paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the group describes studying the impact on bird populations in California.  While touted as green technology, alternative energy sources are not always Earth friendly.  Production of solar panels, for example, results in pollution emitted into the environment.  More widely known are the adverse impacts of wind and solar farms on animals, particularly birds.  Birds can be killed when they try to fly through the rotating blades of wind turbines and they can die from overheating when they fly over large solar farms.  They can also die due to displacement from their natural environment.  In this new effort, the researchers veered from simply counting the number of birds that are killed by alternative power sources and looked instead to gauge the impact of the combined toll that alternative power plants are taking on populations of vulnerable bird species in California.

We Are Massacring Birds to Slow Climate Change.  It's Got to Stop.  The world's biggest producer of renewable energy, the Florida-based NextEra Energy, has killed at least 150 Bald and Golden Eagles at its wind projects in eight different states since 2012. [...] The Department of Justice's enforcement of the MBTA should be welcome news to birdwatchers and citizens alike.  But there's a larger lesson here:  American taxpayers should not be subsidizing an industry that has shown what the DOJ calls "blatant disregard" for federal wildlife laws.  It's especially relevant right now; the prosecution of the company is coming to light at the same time that the wind industry is lobbying to extend, yet again, the federal production tax credit, which expired at the beginning of this year.  The PTC, which was supposed to be a temporary subsidy, has been extended 13 times and is now the single most-expensive energy-related provision in the tax code.

Spain's Wind Industry Slaughters Thousands of Endangered Birds With Impunity.  The wind industry is all about getting away with it.  Whether it's slaughtering millions of birds and bats, or terrorising neighbours, wind power outfits pride themselves on avoiding liability to all and sundry.  Over the last 20 years, Spain has been overrun with these things, including the pretty principality of Asturias on its northwest coast.  The death toll amongst Spain's avian fauna has been staggering.  Not that the wind industry would have you know about it.

Wind turbine makers [are] selling at a loss.  Raw material and logistics inflation coupled with downward price pressures from auctions have led to an unsustainable situation where wind OEMs are selling at a loss, with the sector unable to deliver Europe's planned tripling of wind capacity by 2030, industry leaders have warned.  "The state of the supply chain is ultimately unhealthy right now," GE Renewable Energy chief executive for onshore wind, Sheri Hickok, told a panel at the WindEurope 2022 conference in Bilbao on Tuesday [4/12/2022].  "It is unhealthy because we have an inflationary market that is beyond what anybody anticipated even last year.  Steel is going up three times."  Steel for offshore wind towers is currently being purchased at over $2,000 per tonne, Hickok gave as example, adding that the prices of copper, carbon and logistics had also soared.

By grossly exaggerating eagle population numbers our Govt agencies have been lying for green energy.  Besides lying to Americans about the numbers of eagles being killed by wind turbines Government agencies are are lying about the numbers of eagles living in America.  With Government help the carnage to eagles taking place from wind energy has been hidden[.]  Fake studies have been created and real studies avoided for decades and it seems most anything we hear from our Government is a lie these days.  In 2014, a USGS study reported an embellished golden eagle population of 280 pairs.  This is an impossible number especially when only 11 active nests could be confirmed.  It's truly scientific fraud.  Recently, Bald eagle population numbers have been greatly exaggerated by government agencies.

Mines, Minerals, and "Green" Energy: A Reality Check.  Among the material realities of green energy:
  •   Building wind turbines and solar panels to generate electricity, as well as batteries to fuel electric vehicles, requires, on average, more than 10 times the quantity of materials, compared with building machines using hydrocarbons to deliver the same amount of energy to society.
  •   Oil, natural gas, and coal are needed to produce the concrete, steel, plastics, and purified minerals used to build green machines.  The energy equivalent of 100 barrels of oil is used in the processes to fabricate a single battery that can store the equivalent of one barrel of oil.
  •   By 2050, with current plans, the quantity of worn-out solar panels — much of it nonrecyclable — will constitute double the tonnage of all today's global plastic waste, along with over 3 million tons per year of unrecyclable plastics from worn-out wind turbine blades.  By 2030, more than 10 million tons per year of batteries will become garbage.

A wind farm company admitted killing 150 eagles in the US and was fined $8 million.  A renewable energy company was given five-year probation and ordered to pay more than $8 million in fines after the deaths of 150 bald and golden eagles on their wind turbines.  NextEra Energy subsidiary ESI Energy pleaded guilty to violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, per a press release from the Department of Justice.  The Act prevents anyone from killing or taking parts from protected birds without permission from the federal government.  Golden and bald eagles are further protected by federal law.  The company pleaded guilty to three specific deaths, which prompted the fines, per the DOJ.  As part of the case it also acknowledged the deaths of a more than 150 eagles at the company's wind farms in Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, North Dakota and Michigan, and other states.

Bald Hills Wind Farm ordered to stop emitting night-time noise, pay neighbours damages in landmark ruling.  A Victorian court has ordered a wind farm in the state's south east to stop emitting noise at night in a momentous court decision.  The Victorian Supreme Court today found the noise from the Bald Hills Wind Farm at Tarwin Lower created a nuisance to its neighbours ordering damages and an injunction.  John Zakula and Noel Uren took civil action against the wind farm last year, telling the court that "roaring" intermittent noise from the wind turbines caused health problems and loss of sleep.  In a precedent-setting decision, Justice Melinda Richards said the company had not complied with its noise permit conditions and ordered a permanent injunction over the wind farm, with an initial three-month period to fix the issue.

Windmills are the ultimate in embedded costs and environmental destruction.  Each weighs 1688 tons (the equivalent of 23 houses) and contains 1300 tons of concrete, 295 tons of steel, 48 tons of iron, 24 tons of fiberglass, and the hard to extract rare earths neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium.  Each blade weighs 81,000 pounds and will last 15 to 20 years, at which time it must be replaced.  We cannot recycle used blades.

No Amount Of Incremental Wind And Solar Power Can Ever Provide Energy Independence.  No amount of incremental wind and solar power can ever provide energy independence.  Electricity gets consumed the instant it is generated.  Electricity is consumed all the time, and therefore must be generated all the time.  Indeed, some of the peak times for electricity consumption occur on winter evenings, when the sun has set, temperatures are very cold, the wind is often completely calm, and the need for energy for light, heat, cooking and more are high.  During such times, a combined wind and solar generation system produces zero power.  It doesn't matter if you build a thousand wind turbines and solar panels, or a million, or a billion or a trillion.  The output will still be zero.  And calm winter nights are just the most intense piece of the problem.  A fully wind/solar generation system, with seemingly plenty of "capacity" to meet peak electricity demand, will also regularly and dramatically underproduce at random critical times throughout a year: for example, on heavily overcast and cold winter days; or on calm and hot summer evenings, when the sun has just set and air conditioning demand is high.

The shell game methodology behind America's reported wind energy production.  America's green industries are currently rigging their way into trillions more from American taxpayers and thousands more dead eagles.  They've already received over 2 trillion, for a subsidized source of energy that will never come close to fulfilling America's needs.  Green energy is not only being subsidized financially with Production Tax Credits, it's reported energy production is also being secretly subsidized with energy that's actually being produced by oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear generation because part-time green energy doesn't run the grid.  It never has.  The 57% electrical wind energy being reported in Iowa, is a complete fabrication because other sources of energy are running the grid 24 hours a day, every day of the year and keep energy flowing to customers.  Intermittent wind energy is just part of a much larger electrical system and the calculations or accounting for reported wind energy production, ignore the base load energy being provided by other energy providers.

Do wind farms change the weather?  The effect of lots of wind turbines on weather and climate is a small but active research area.  Wind power converts wind energy into electricity, thereby removing that energy from the air.  The research issue of how taking a lot of energy out might affect weather or climate seems to have emerged as early as 2004.  Studies range from the global climate impact down to the local effects of a single large wind facility.

Lies My Wind Developer Told Me.  The wind zoning regulations demanded by Apex Clean Energy company (APEX) in Montcalm County are demonstrably irresponsible and should be resisted.  APEX will no doubt make great hay out of my speaking at a rally called Big Wind Go Home and, in fact, APEX land agent Dan Paris already is.  But I am here to tell you that it is your fundamental right to tell government-created, unnecessary, invasive Big Wind:  You are not welcome here on the terms you propose.  If you do business here in our county, the terms by which you do business will be dictated to you by us and not the other way around.  And we will not be bullied!  Permit me to tell you some stories where mistruths, call them lies, occurred...

Huge 300 foot tall turbine crashes to the ground at Welsh wind farm.  A huge 300-foot wind turbine collapsed at a wind farm near Gilfach Goch.  Photos taken at the Pant Y Wal wind farm on Monday morning (February 14) show the huge turbine lying on the ground, separated from its base with its blades completely destroyed.  The turbine is thought to have crashed to the ground in the early hours of Monday, with some local residents reporting hearing loud noises coming from the wind farm throughout the night.

The Sierra Club Loves Wind Turbines, Not Whales.  Imagine for a moment what might happen if an oil company — say, Exxon Mobil or Chevron — announced plans to put dozens of offshore drilling platforms on the Eastern Seaboard, smack in the middle of where endangered North Atlantic right whales congregate.  If that were to happen, it's easy to imagine that America's biggest environmental groups would express their outrage and immediately begin filing lawsuits under the Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, and other federal rules to protect the whales and stop the industrialization of their habitat.  Enough for the imagining.  Let's cut to the reality of the proposed 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind project, which aims to do just this:  put dozens of offshore wind platforms smack in the middle of where endangered North Atlantic right whales congregate.  As I reported last month, Vineyard Wind is now the focus of at least two federal lawsuits, with plaintiffs claiming that the project violates the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act.

Turbine 'torture' for Greek islanders as wind farms proliferate.  Until a few years ago, Agii Apostoli was a picturesque seaside village on the eastern coast of Evia, drawing a modest income from tourism and fishing.  Now it is ringed by towering wind turbines whose night lights and whirring sounds are tantamount to daily "torture", locals say.  "Longterm visitors ask us, why did you allow this crime to take place?" laments Stamatoula Karava, a local employee involved in a local cultural association.  With their aviation lights flashing through the night in the surrounding hills, the turbines "have completely ruined the view," she says.

Another Low Blow — Wind Energy Falters (Again).  One of mankind's great achievements has been the way that, across an ever-increasing part of the planet, we have reached a level of technological sophistication that has meant that we can go about our business without, extreme events aside, having to worry too much about what the weather is doing.  One of the countless ironies running through current climate policies is that that progress may be about to go into reverse, not because of climate change, but because of policies designed to combat it, and, more specifically, what looks more and more like a premature dash into wind energy.  One of the triggers of the prolonged energy-price squeeze in the U.K. was the failure of winds over the North Sea to do what was expected of them in the late summer/early fall.

Backlash Against Renewables Surged In 2021, With 31 Big Wind And 13 Big Solar Projects Vetoed Across US.  Despite the many false claims about the land intensity of renewables, the physics and the math don't lie.  The incurably low power density of wind and solar energy means that they require cartoonish amounts of land.  Furthermore, the notion that there are plenty of rural towns and counties who just can't wait to have forests of 600-foot-high wind turbines and oceans of solar panels inflicted upon them is nothing more than rank propaganda.  Furthermore, as the industry has grown, the land grab (and ocean grab) being attempted by companies like NextEra Energy, Invenergy, Avangrid, Copenhagen Energy Partners, and others, has spawned a backlash that is raging from the fishing docks in Montauk and Rhode Island, to McKibben's home state of Vermont (where, by the way, you can't build wind turbines), out west to Shasta County and Oahu, as well as in Canada, Germany, France, Australia and other countries around the world.

Furious Fishermen Take On Offshore Wind Industry Wrecking Atlantic Fishing Grounds.  The offshore wind 'industry' has been given a lesson by Atlantic fishermen: don't mess with another man's livelihood.  Which is precisely what's been happening up and down the Atlantic coast for years now.  An Italian owned outfit, US Wind has been infuriating local fishermen for years.  In one of its recent outrages, its survey ship managed to destroy one local fishermen's gear, despite his efforts to intervene.  Not only did Jimmy Hahn lose his precious pots, ripped up by US Wind's survey vessel, the fact that a quarter of them were destroyed or damaged meant that he lost the opportunity to fish and earn income.

New York State just sealed a deal for 2.5 GW of offshore wind.  The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) announced that it has finalized contracts with BP and Equinor for the Empire Wind 2 and Beacon Wind 1 offshore wind farms.  US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY), US Representative Paul Tonko (D-NY), BP, and Equinor announced the agreement's finalization at an event at the Port of Albany on Friday, January 14.

Assessing Virginia's Hidden Wind And Solar Costs.  Among Governor Glenn Youngkin's first actions was Executive Order #9 initiating Virginia's withdrawal from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the Northeastern U.S. "carbon market" that sets and enforces emission limits for coal and gas power plants.  RGGI also lets utilities buy "carbon credits" when emissions exceed those limits, passing costs on to families, businesses, hospitals and schools.  Special interests will contest withdrawal, but the EO sets the proper tone for reforming Virginia's energy system.  Meanwhile, though, the 2020 "Virginia Clean Economy Act" still requires that utility companies close all fossil fuel generating plants — and replace them with wind and solar power by 2045.  The VCEA also stipulates that "not less than 5,200 megawatts" (rated capacity) of that "clean, renewable" power must come from offshore wind.  That translates into 370 14-MW turbines, 430 12-MW turbines or 865 6-MW turbines off the Virginia coast.  Construction of the first 180 has already hit cost overruns and could reach $10 billion.

When the Wind Doesn't Blow.  The political push to transform our electrical grid into reliance on "renewable" wind and solar energy keeps running into the laws of physics.  The laws of physics are going to win, but the economic carnage in the meantime will be terrible.  [Chart]  The basic point here is that wind energy shows up only sporadically and unpredictably, and tends to disappear when it is needed the most.  The worst time for a blackout is when the mercury is at -20, as it was yesterday where I live.  Note where electricity was actually coming from in the chart above:  coal, the dark brown line, was the principal source, while natural gas, the light brown line, is only slightly behind.  These are the sources that liberals want to do away with.  Wind was flighty; sometimes it worked, but often it didn't.  Is that how you want your light switches to operate?  And if you can find solar energy on this chart, a technology in which many billions of dollars have been invested, your eyes are sharper than mine.

It wasn't very windy this morning, and that's a problem.  It is a well-understood phenomenon that wind generation in the Midwest essentially disappears when the mercury dips below -22° F.  Electricity generation from wind turbines drops under these circumstances because wind turbines are programmed to automatically shut off when the temperatures get this cold to prevent them from breaking.  Ironically, wind turbines are actually net consumers of power during these periods because they have electric heaters installed in the gearboxes to keep the oil inside the wind turbines from freezing.  Hourly data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows wind production plummeted yesterday as the temperatures dropped overnight.  Falling wind output resulted in an increase in coal, natural gas, and oil generation.

Unsung Zeroes:  The Top 10 Under-Reported Climate Flops of 2021.  [#1] European wind failure causes disastrous global energy crisis:  As Europe has closed its coal plants in a rush to embrace wind turbines over the past 20 years, 2021 witnessed a decrease in wind and the ensuing failure of European wind turbines.  With fewer coal plants to fall back on, Europe was forced to rely on natural gas plants, causing natural gas prices to skyrocket and a global energy crisis.  Some of the outcomes:  energy company failures, manufacturing and fertilizer plant shutdowns, projected increase from 50 million to 80 million in the number of Europeans living in energy poverty and a greater reliance on Vladimir Putin's goodwill for supplies of natural gas.  Plus, emissions have increased.  The media has been largely silent on the ongoing energy crisis and emissions backfire, especially with respect to its origins in green policies.

Texas Public Policy Foundation brings fishermen's lawsuit against Vineyard Wind.  The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has so prioritized offshore wind energy development that it is bypassing real environmental review and failing to consider alternative sites that won't harm the commercial fishing industry, charges a lawsuit brought by the Texas Public Policy Foundation.  Filed Dec. 15 in federal court in Washington, D.C., on behalf of six fishing businesses in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New York, the action challenges BOEM and other federal agencies on their review of the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind project off southern New England.  The lead plaintiff, Seafreeze Shoreside Inc. of North Kingston, R.I., is a homeport and major processor for the Northeast squid fleet.  Captains there are adamant they will not be able to fish if Vineyard Wind and other planned turbine arrays are erected in those waters.

The Climate Movement and It's 10 Biggest Failures of 2021.  [#2] Frozen Texas windmills causes blackouts that kill dozens.  As bitterly cold weather approached Texas before Valentine's Day weekend, Texas regulators opted to rely on wind turbines to provide 30% of the state's electricity.  But when the weather hit, the wind turbines froze.  Because of the faith that the wind turbines would work in the approaching cold weather, back-up natural gas facilities were not prepared to step in to fill the gap.  Much of Texas went dark and the state came within just a few minutes of a total grid failure that could have last weeks.  More than 200 died as a result of the power failure.  The media response has been to try and shift blame from the wind turbines to the fossil fuel plants.  But the bottom line is:  The wind failed first and worst in Texas.

Citizens' Group Files Lawsuits to Block Virginia Wind Facility.  A group calling itself Citizens for Responsible Energy (Citizens) is suing to halt the siting of an array of 612-foot-tall wind turbines atop mountains in Botetourt County, Virginia.  A lawsuit brought by Citizens challenges the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality's (DEQ) approval of the Rocky Forge Wind industrial facility project.  Citizens is specifically challenging the DEQ's finding that the project would not harm natural resources.  Citizens says the facility's massive turbines will mar the landscape, endanger wildlife, and harm human health through the low-frequency noise the turbines generate.  In approving the plan, the DEQ ordered the turbines' operator to turn them off at night in the warmer months to reduce the killing of bats.

The real 'green' in green energy is all the money involved.  Dominion Energy is one of America's major energy providers, servicing Idaho, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.  (I'm a Dominion customer.)  It's also enthusiastic about the whole green energy movement — and, when you learn about its Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, you begin to suspect that green money, as much as green energy, drives this interest.  (Note:  I'm not accusing Dominion of any form of corruption or incompetence.  It's just an example of the green energy boondoggle across America.)  Dominion's plan, which is already being put in place, is to build 180 hideous, loud, bird-slicing, non-biodegradable, intermittently productive wind turbines off the coast of Virginia Beach.  (My assumptions are operating there.  Maybe the planned turbines will be beautiful, quiet, bird-supportive, biodegradable, and endlessly productive, but the odds are against it.)  The proposed cost for this project is $8 billion.  However, thanks to inflation, Bonner R. Cohen writes that Dominion is already predicting that the project, due to be finished in 2026, will cost at least $2 billion more, with further cost overruns very likely.

Offshore Wind Farm Power Cables Leave Crabs Mesmerised & Motionless.  Seabirds, whales and dolphins aren't offshore wind's only victims — crabs are being mesmerised by the electromagnetic fields produced by the power cables that connect turbines to each other and to the grid.  A scientific study has found that the magnetic fields generated by these cables attract crabs that then remain in place, fixated on the magnetic field, effectively immobilising them.  For a creature that needs to move over large distances over the seafloor to feed and breed, offshore wind farms may well amount to a death sentence for an entire species, over the longer term.  And the loss of a tasty protein source won't just disappoint diners, it could also spell the death knell for crab fishers around Britain's coasts.

A green paradox:  Deforesting the Amazon for wind energy in the Global North.  What has the destruction of balsa trees in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest got to do with the wind power industry in Europe?  As the international commitment to renewable energy has grown in recent years, the increase in wind farms has triggered a huge demand for balsa wood, leaving a trail of deforestation in its wake.  [Video clip]

Fire fears over huge battery storage plants for wind farm.  A wind farm developer is hoping to build a massive battery plant south of Norwich to ensure there is enough energy when the wind stops blowing.  But the plans, at the three-hectare site between Swardeston and the A47, have sparked concerns about fire safety from experts and local councils.  Hundreds of lithium-ion batteries will be placed in containers around two buildings up to 15 metres high.  It will mean that energy generated by Ørsted's new offshore wind farm, called Hornsea Three, can be stored and then fed into the National Grid on calmer days when the turbines aren't turning enough.

Audubon Society sues Bay Area county over new wind turbine project: 'A population sink'.  The National Audubon Society is suing Alameda County over its recent approval of a controversial new wind turbine facility at Altamont Pass.  It's been described as a "poorly planned project" that's a threat to birds and bats in the area due to its lack of sufficient environmental review, according to a press release shared by the organization Wednesday [11/17/2021].  Commissioned in 1981, The Altamont Pass wind farm was one of the first of its kind in the country and is also one of the most highly concentrated in the world, with roughly 5,000 wind turbines built over a 56-square-mile area.  The National Audubon Society argued the turbines have long been hazardous to migratory avian species such as the golden eagle, whose nesting population at Altamont Pass is the densest in the world, though their numbers have been declining in the region due to incidents related to the turbines, the press release stated.  Populations of western burrowing owls, red-tailed hawks and tricolored blackbirds have also been impacted over the years.

Swiss wind park ordered to scale back to protect birds.  A new wind park in Switzerland must scale back its plans to deliver renewable energy in order to protect vulnerable bird species, the country's supreme court ruled on Wednesday [11/24/2021].  Plans for the new wind park, in the Grenchenberg region in the Jura mountains, had sparked opposition from ornithologists and conservationists, who argued it would interfere with local populations of woodlarks and peregrine falcons, deemed vulnerable in Switzerland.

An Ameren wind farm isn't running at night, to save bats.  Should customers pay for that?  Three years ago, the largest electric utility in the state, Ameren Corp., pitched a brand new wind farm with hundreds of turbines in the hills of northern Missouri.  But the area, just north of Kirksville, was also home to eagle nests and endangered bat colonies, the state said.  Scientists warned Ameren the turbines would kill some.  Now Ameren is before state regulators hoping to raise electricity rates across Missouri, and it's run into a sticking point:  The turbines at its High Prairie Renewable Energy Center have indeed killed a few bats and at least one eagle recently, forcing the company to idle the wind farm overnight for the last several months.  And consumer advocates are arguing, among other things, that Ameren shouldn't be able to fully charge customers for a facility that isn't fully running.

The Real Cost of Government Mandated Wind and Solar.  The government and big financial institutions promote a fraudulent analysis of the cost of solar and wind electricity.  Their narrative is that wind and solar are competitive with traditional fossil fuels and that the cost of wind and solar is rapidly dropping.  Academics and the media amplify and spread the fraudulent analysis.  The basis of the fraud is a simple comparison of the cost per kilowatt hour at the plant fence for electricity produced by wind or solar versus electricity produced by a traditional plant.  Some or all of the massive subsidies for wind and solar are ignored in such comparisons.  With such a rigged comparison, wind or solar may seem competitive.  A proper comparison reveals that wind or solar are five or even ten times more expensive than natural gas or coal electricity.

Climate Crazies Claim Global Stilling At Fault For Wind Turbines Not Producing Energy.  The far-left Gaia worshippers say that the "Climate Crisis" is responsible for floods, droughts, forest fires, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions.  A longer list of crazy things blamed on climate change is at the end of this post.  Their latest crazy belief is that their unproven hypothesis caused the slowing of global wind speeds.  Is there nothing that "climate change" doesn't affect? [...] I'm old enough to remember when climate grifter and former Vice President Al Gore insisted that lower Manhattan, San Francisco, and half of Florida would be underwater by now because of the terrifying melting of ice in Greenland and Antarctica.  That didn't happen.  Frankly, the climate hysterics have been 0 for 50 in half a century of their Chicken Little-like predictions of an "eco-pocalypse."

Norway court rules wind farms [are] harming reindeer herders.  Norway's Supreme Court on Monday ruled that two wind parks built in the country's west were harming reindeer herders from the Sami people by encroaching on their pastures.  It was not immediately clear what the consequences of the finding will be.  But lawyers for the herders say the 151 turbines completed on the Fosen peninsula in 2020 — part of the biggest land-based wind park in Europe — could be torn down.  "Their construction has been declared illegal, and it would be illegal to continue operating them," said Andreas Bronner, who represented a group of herders alleging harm from one of the two parks.

'Global stilling' blamed as wind speeds drop across Europe and threaten to drive up energy prices.  Industry experts are warning that climate change may have caused wind speeds in Europe to plummet this year in news that threatens to drive energy prices even higher.  Long labelled as a saviour of the energy industry, wind farms have cropped up across the continent in recent years and have been billed a low-cost, renewable and dependable source of power.  Increased dependence on green forms of energy has also been touted as a solution to Britain's national gas crisis, amid soaring global prices and energy bills set to reach record-breaking levels.

The Editor says...
If there is such a thing as "global stilling," and there's not, what could be done about it?  Nothing.  The simple fact is that sometimes the wind doesn't blow, but you don't notice unless your electricity supply depends on the wind.

Here's The List Of 317 Wind Energy Rejections The Sierra Club Doesn't Want You To See.  A few weeks ago, I ran into a prominent employee of the Sierra Club who declared something to the effect of "we have to quit using coal, oil, and natural gas."  That, of course, is the official dogma of America's "largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization."  The group says it is "committed to eliminating the use of fossil fuels, including coal, natural gas, and oil, as soon as possible.  We must replace all fossil fuels with clean renewable energy, efficiency, and conservation."  This same Sierra Clubber also expressed dismay about the difficulty of siting big renewable-energy projects and how they are being hindered by "NIMBYism."  Upon hearing this, I quickly interjected that I loathe that term, which, of course, is short for "not in my backyard."  I explained that everyone, everywhere, cares about what happens in their neighborhood, even out there in "flyover country" — that is, the places that are far away from the comfy confines of places like San Francisco, Princeton, Stanford, and other locales where fantasies about an all-renewable economy seem to proliferate.

Germany: Wind turbine collapses hours before official launch.  Officials in Germany are investigating why a huge wind turbine collapsed just hours before it was due to be officially inaugurated.  The turbine, whose rotor blades reach a height of 239 meters (784 feet), toppled over late Wednesday in a forest near the western town of Haltern.  German news agency dpa reported Thursday that police were not currently suspecting sabotage.  The wind turbine was scheduled to be officially launched Thursday [9/30/2021], though it was connected to the power grid six months ago.

The Editor says...
How many other things have been connected to the power grid without being "officially launched?"

Crippling Cost of Ontario's Obsession With Wind Power: 71% Increase in Power Bills.  Ontario's government determined to eliminate coal-fired power in the deluded belief that wind power would soon replace it.  The result, as the protesters above predicted, has been an unmitigated economic disaster.  Power prices in the Province have spiralled out of control, as a direct result of its suicidal energy policy.  Thousands of jobs have been destroyed, never to return.  A recent paper from Elmira Aliakbari, Kenneth Green, Ross McKittrick and Ashley Stedman — Understanding the Changes in Ontario Electricity Market and Their Effects — demonstrates that the disaster was as perfectly predictable, as it was perfectly avoidable.

Understanding the Changes in Ontario's Electricity Markets and Their Effects.  When it comes to energy, policymakers in Ontario have made poor policy decisions, resulting in rising electricity costs, lower employment, and lower competitiveness, while achieving minimal environmental benefits.  Ontario's main policy shift began around 2005 when the government made a decision to begin phasing out coal. [...] The high cost associated with aggressively promoting renewable sources is particularly troubling given the relatively small amount of electricity generated by these sources.  Ontario's decision to phase out coal contributed to rising electricity costs in the province, a decision justified at the time with claims that it would yield large environmental and health benefits.  The subsequent research showed that shuttering these power plants had very little effect on air pollution.  Between 2005 and 2015, the province decided to increase its renewable capacity to facilitate the coal phase-out.  However, since renewable sources are not as reliable as traditional sources, the government contracted for more natural gas capacity as a back-up.  As a result of these structural shifts and poor governance, electricity costs have risen substantially in Ontario.

What'cha Gonna To Do When the Wind Don't Blow?  It's still mild in Europe right now, though winter is coming, a time when demand is always greater, and yet even in a more benign fall there's been a substantial shortage of energy and as a result an incredible increase in energy costs to consumers.  Blame it on the North Sea winds which suddenly stopped blowing if you wish.  I blame it on ludicrous energy policies.  What do you do when the wind stops blowing (one-twenty fourth of its normal electrical production) and the windmills stand still?  You rely on fossil fuels.  To make up the shortfall, gas and coal-fired electrical producing plants are forced into play as backups.  British political geniuses counted on the wind farms to do away entirely with net carbon emissions by 2050.  This may seem odd to officialdom's deep thinkers, but just as man can't control climate, so also he cannot control wind or sunshine or rainfall, either.  Well, you might say, the U.K. is lucky to still have backup fuels to pick up the shortfall.  But, no, the same central planning that counted on wind has also set up a system of purchasable carbon credits to offset the use of such fuels.  Quite naturally, the price of those "credits" is soaring as the need for them increases.

Surging wind industry faces its own green dilemma: landfills.  Wind turbines have become a vital source of global green energy but their makers increasingly face an environmental conundrum of their own: how to recycle them.  The European Union's share of electricity from wind power has grown from less than 1% in 2000, when the continent began to curb planet-heating fossil fuels, to more than 16% today.  As the first wave of windmills reach the end of their lives, ten of thousands of blades are being stacked and buried in landfill sites where they will take centuries to decompose.

Missouri's largest wind farm isn't running at night for fear of killing endangered animals.  Every night for months, turbines at Missouri's largest wind farm sit idle to avoid killing endangered and threatened bats.  And now, as the wind farm's owner, Ameren Missouri, seeks permission to increase customers' rates, consumer advocates are sounding the alarm.  They argue customers shouldn't have to pay the full costs of the wind farm on their bills if it's not fully functional.  And at least one fears the company won't meet state standards for renewable energy.  The St. Louis electric utility purchased the High Prairie Renewable Energy Center near Kirksville from a developer and started operations last year.  The 175-turbine facility should produce up to 400 megawatts.  But according to testimony filed with regulators who are expected to decide on Ameren's requested rate increase, High Prairie is not producing at full capacity.

We cannot afford to stop and start society depending on whether or not the wind may blow.  Europe's desperation to reach net zero, their religious devotion to renewables like wind and solar power, and their unscientific rejection of nuclear power are a recipe for an incredibly expensive disaster.  Energy prices have been rocketing in the past few weeks.  While some of that rise is down to the world economy waking up from a lockdown-induced slumber, alarm bells are ringing about the way major Western economies have become too dependent on renewables in the mad dash to a 'net-zero' world.  The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that low winds in the North Sea were creating a major headache for energy networks.  "The sudden slowdown in wind-driven electricity production off the coast of the UK in recent weeks whipsawed through regional energy markets.  Gas and coal-fired electricity plants were called in to make up the shortfall from wind."

Oregon farmers allege violations at wind turbine project.  Several farmers have complained to Oregon energy regulators that wind turbine construction in Sherman County has caused severe erosion and other problems.  A letter from 11 farmers to the state's Energy Facility Siting Council alleges that developer Avangrid Renewables has failed to comply with requirements for building the Golden Hills Wind Project, which will include up to 51 turbines on 29,500 acres.  "We've lost more soil in the last two months than we have in 30 years," said David Pinkerton, a wheat farmer who leases property to the developer.  "They're not doing what they said they were going to do."

What's causing soaring energy prices in Europe.  Europe is facing an energy crunch caused by surging wholesale prices for natural gas, raising the prospects of higher utility bills for customers and forcing some manufacturers to halt operations.  A complex brew of forces is causing the European gas market's unprecedented surge, creating a "perfect storm" of higher than expected demand and low supply. [...] There are other factors at play.  Stronger demand for liquefied natural gas exports in more competitive Asian markets has diverted cargoes away from Europe.  Europe has also experienced unusually calm weather in recent weeks, leading to less wind power output and creating additional strain on gas supply, particularly in the United Kingdom, where wind normally provides 20% of the country's electricity.

New Jersey officials break ground on multimillion dollar wind port.  New Jersey state and federal officials broke ground Thursday on the roughly $250 million New Jersey Wind Port, saying it will generate jobs and lead to economic development.  Project proponents touted the port as a "first-in-the-nation infrastructure investment" to support offshore wind projects on the East Coast.  New Jersey's fiscal 2022 budget includes $200 million allocated for the New Jersey Wind Port.  Additionally, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities is kicking in $13 million, and the New Jersey Department of Transportation is covering $44 million for dredging.  "The New Jersey Wind Port will create thousands of high-quality jobs, bring millions of investment dollars to our state, and establish New Jersey as the national capital of offshore wind," Gov. Phil Murphy said in an announcement.

Energy Prices in Europe Hit Records After Wind Stops Blowing.  Natural gas and electricity markets were already surging in Europe when a fresh catalyst emerged:  The wind in the stormy North Sea stopped blowing.  The sudden slowdown in wind-driven electricity production off the coast of the U.K. in recent weeks whipsawed through regional energy markets.  Gas and coal-fired electricity plants were called in to make up the shortfall from wind.  [Paywall]

Another Peak Demand Hour and Wind is Missing.  As we have come to expect in Ontario, "peak demand" generally occurs on hot summer days and the hour ending at hour 17 on August 20th was the most recent occurrence coming in at # 8 of "peak demand hours" so far this year.  Demand at the above hour reached 21,569 MW and the bulk of that needed demand was supplied by Nuclear, Hydro and Natural Gas generators.  At that hour gas plants supplied 25.9% (5,587 MW) of demand while wind generators managed to produce only 0.45% (98 MW) of demand and the bulk (53 MW) of that came from the Greenwich Renewable Energy Project[,] a 99 MW station located Northeast of Thunder Bay[,] so none of their generation was useful in the well populated areas of the province.  The other 40 plus wind turbine generating stations scattered throughout the province produced only 45 MW which probably didn't even cover their consumption during that hour.  The foregoing fact is something you will not hear from the OCAA (Ontario Clean Air Alliance) whose push is to close out gas plants.

Green Technologies Cause Massive Waste and Pollution.  Wind turbine blades are made of a tough but pliable mix of resin and fiberglass — similar to what spaceship parts are made from.  Decommissioned blades are difficult and expensive to transport.  They can be anywhere from 100 to 300 feet long and must be cut up on-site before getting trucked away on specialized equipment to a landfill that may not have the capacity for the blades.  Landfills that do have the capacity may not have equipment large enough to crush them.  One such landfill cuts the blades into three pieces and stuffs the two smaller sections into the third, which is cheaper than renting stronger crushing machines.

South Dakota rocked again as a wind turbine plant shuts its doors.  John F. Kerry, the special presidential envoy for climate, said only months ago that those losing fossil fuel jobs in coal and hydraulic fracturing will find they have a better choice of jobs in either the solar industry or as wind turbine technicians.  That was then.  Now, a wind blade manufacturing plant located in Aberdeen, South Dakota, has announced it is shutting its doors permanently in less than two months.  The disappearance of Molded Fiber Glass will displace over 300 workers and their families.  It marks another major loss of energy jobs in the state following President Joe Biden's halting of the Keystone pipeline on the first day of his administration.  MFG said in a news release that the closure will happen because of changing market conditions, foreign competition, and proposed revisions to tax policies affecting the wind energy industry in the United States.

SD wind turbine plant to shut doors, 300 jobs lost.  A major wind blade manufacturing plant is closing its doors in Aberdeen, South Dakota despite Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry claiming there would be plentiful jobs in the solar and wind turbine industries.  Kerry made those claims just months ago as the Keystone Pipeline was nixed by President Joe Biden and many jobs were lost in the coal and hydraulic fracturing markets.  The Molded Fiber Glass company will shut its doors permanently in less than two months and roughly 300 jobs will be lost.  The plant, open since 2007, produces wind turbine blades.  It will remain in operation until August 6, fulfilling existing orders here in the United States.

Everyone Hates Wind Turbines.  Wind energy constitutes a farcical scheme that produces electricity in the least efficient way possible — well, to be fair, in many areas solar power is even worse — and impoverishes almost all of us while a tiny minority reap enormous profits.  Wind energy is nevertheless beloved by politicians, because politicians prize industries that can't survive without subsidies and mandates.  Why?  Because those industries kick back a portion of their profits to the politicians who enact subsidies and mandates, to whom they are forever beholden.  The laws of physics are constant everywhere, and in France, ordinary citizens are rebelling against their government's determination to erect wind turbines, for no apparent reason.

Texas stops Chinese billionaire from building wind facility.  A Chinese company is evaluating its options now that Texas lawmakers have passed a bill to block it from building a wind farm in Val Verde County.  The Blue Hills Wind Farm was planned for the Devil's River area about two hundred miles northwest of San Antonio.  Trouble shooter Jaie Avila investigates claims it poses a threat to national security and our power grid.  The Morning Star Ranch belongs to Sun Guangxin, a former Chinese military official, who purchased 140-thousand acres with plans to build wind and solar farms.

Questions linger regarding offshore wind's economic, environmental impact.  The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) issued its final record of decision on 11 May to permit Vineyard Wind, the 800-megawatt project off southern New England that would be the first truly utility-scale development in U.S. waters.  So far, the only offshore wind operating in the country is at two pilot projects:  the five-turbine, 30-megawatt Block Island Wind Farm off Rhode Island, and the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, which involves twin turbines with 12-megawatt total capacity.  With nearly three decades of offshore wind experience in Europe, companies based there are exporting their expertise to the U.S.  But the Vineyard Wind plan as outlined in the BOEM decision document — a grid layout of 62 turbines spaced at 1-nautical-mile intervals — is so unnerving to some mobile gear fishermen that they may abandon fishing in the area, according to Army Corps of Engineers.

Socioeconomic Impacts of Atlantic Offshore Wind Development.  NOAA Fisheries developed reports summarizing fishing activity from 2008-2018 within each offshore wind lease or project area along the U.S. Atlantic Coast (for more information on individual offshore wind leases, see Bureau of Ocean Energy Management website). For commercial fishing trips, these reports highlight annualized landings and revenue by species, gear type, and fishery management plan within each area, as well as revenue by port and vessel dependence upon operations in each area.  Party/charter reports highlight annualized kept catch by species and management category (a proxy for fishery management plan), annualized revenue based on passenger fees and number of anglers per trip, annualized vessel and angler trips by port, and vessel/angler dependence upon operations in each area.  Both reports can be used to help identify the major species harvested, affected fishery operations, potential revenue impacted, and ports affected by offshore wind development in each area.

Offshore Wind Requires 63,000 lbs of Copper, per Turbine.  Renewables — and especially offshore wind — are set to drive a surge in copper demand that will push prices even higher, as the amount of copper required per wind turbine is staggering, at 63,000 pounds.  A week ago, the basic metal surged to a record high because of supply chain disruptions.  By the end of the week, however, it had cooled off on efforts by China to rein in the commodity market rally.  Now copper's on the way up again, and this is likely to be a steady trend.  The reason for this is renewable energy — and more specifically wind energy — researcher Mirela Petkova wrote for Energy Monitor in a recent article.  Offshore wind turbines require 8 literal tons of copper for every megawatt of generation capacity, Petkova noted, adding, citing data from the International Energy Agency, that "An average turbine of 3.6 MW, which can power more than 3,300 average EU households, will contain close to 29 tonnes of copper."

Cable It In Is No Strategy for Fixing the Problems with Offshore Wind.  First Block Island, offshore Rhode Island, and now wind farms offshore Europe are experiencing problems with transmission cables requiring millions of dollars of investments.  The Block Island offshore wind farm, a 30-megawatt facility off the coast of Rhode Island, found that its high voltage cables that carry electricity to land were not buried deep enough and were being exposed as the seabed was being worn away by tides and storms, making the exposed cables dangerous to swimmers.  National Grid and Ørsted, the current owner, are replacing the cable to a greater depth, which state regulators had originally wanted, but were over-ruled by a state board supportive of the project.  National Grid, which owns the cable that connects the island to the mainland, will charge customers of the Narragansett Electric Company to fix its portion of the problem.  National Grid's reconstruction cost is expected to be $30 million and it will be recovered through an undetermined surcharge on ratepayers' bills.  Ørsted's cost, which cannot be passed on, is unknown.  This is a costly undertaking.

Silence from Shoreline Press on Undersea Electric Problems.  All the exciting press about the installation of windfarms focuses on the seemingly blithe turbine blades swirling innocently in the free breeze offering efficient, economical and carbon imprint free electricity to the east coast of the United States.  That is the mantra offered by Baker, Raimondo, Lamonte and Cuomo.  And to make sure no one sings off key the public is reminded of the tens of thousands of jobs and commercial contracts that attend to this wonderful new age.  Cementing that certainty is the new president Biden naming Raimondo to Commerce so that NOAA doesn't get up on its high horse and start to discuss the real harm marine wind installations can and will cause marine ecology, to say nothing of wrecking a significant portion of the commercial fishing industry.

U.S. Seeks to Approve Dozens of Offshore Wind Projects in Years to Come.  The Biden administration will seek to approve more than a dozen offshore wind projects in the next four years and open the Pacific Ocean off California to such development as it seeks to bolster the nascent U.S. industry, officials said on Tuesday [5/25/2021].  The effort is part of the administration's broader plan to fight climate change by decarbonizing the U.S. power sector by 2035 and the entire economy by 2050.  Amanda Lefton, director of the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, told the Reuters U.S. Offshore Wind conference that the agency would complete the review of at least 16 new offshore wind project plans by 2025.

Biden wind energy projects outsourcing jobs to Europe.  Joe Biden has promised that his push for renewable energy will create more manufacturing jobs for Americans.  He was reported saying, "there is simply no reason the blades for wind turbines can't be built in Pittsburgh instead of Beijing.  No reason."  Except, in reality, most of the manufacturing jobs will actually be created in Europe.  The Vineyard Wind project, off the coast of Massachusetts, is expected to produce enough electricity to power 400,000 homes in New England by 2023.  The windfarm is a joint venture between Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Avangrid Inc. which is part of the Iberdrola group.

Batteries are fossil fuel, too!
The Hidden Risks of Batteries.  The meteoric rise of lithium-ion batteries in the transport and IT sectors has been spurred by demand for technologies that reduce carbon emissions and decrease energy use.  While this sounds like a win for everyone, there's a darker side that could alter the perceptions of ethically minded consumers and create significant risks for brands.  If you look at the production of cobalt and lithium used in these batteries, a stark picture emerges of an industry exposed to issues such as child labor, modern slavery, and the undermining of land and water rights.  Demand for these raw materials is set to grow significantly.

Industrial Wind Health Issues Aren't Blowing Away Quickly.  The latest was an update (March 18, 2021) from acoustical engineer Stephen Cooper regarding vibrations and infrasound (low frequency noise) from industrial wind turbines on nearby residents.  Cooper, part of the wind power debate since his pioneering study of the Cape Bridgewater Wind Farm in southwest Victoria in Australia in 2014 (also see here), is a scientist to watch.

NY Fast-Track Renewables Regulation Paves Way For High-Risk Wind Project.  A proposed wind energy facility in Orleans County, New York, is among the first projects proposed under the state's new renewable energy development law.  This law ignores well-established best practices that would minimize impacts to birds, despite outcry from bird conservation organizations.  Regulations to implement the law went into effect in March 2021, and developers are clamoring to shift to the streamlined permitting process.  "The Orleans County project is located in a major migratory pathway for birds, and adjacent to a high-biodiversity wetland complex that supports nesting Bald Eagles and many rare species," says Joel Merriman, American Bird Conservancy's (ABC's) Bird-Smart Wind Energy Campaign Director.  "The project poses a high risk to birds, but the state's new regulation may mean it's on a glide path to approval."

Cuomo: A Dark Prince of Deception or Lost in A Forest of Falsehoods?  [Governor] Cuomo says we must close Indian Point but whatever shall we do, how shall we replace the clean reliable energy now provided by the Westchester County nuclear facility to much of that densely populated New York City metro area?  Will it be wind turbines?  The answer is NO!  Although Liar Cuomo has allocated billions of dollars to his green energy scheme, even this self-described 'Just call me Gov. Gumby' knows wind is intermittent and wind turbines have a very short life span.  And, just forget the fact each wind turbine uses 240 tons of steel derived from mined iron ore, some 6-7 thousand pounds of copper (also mined) and transportation from mine to manufacturing plant to the windmill site burning an estimated 10,000 gallons of diesel fuel, not to mention the fact the three 90 feet long wind blades are made from natural gas.

New York's Wind Power Plans Make No Sense.  I haven't lived in New York City since I graduated Archbishop Molloy High School in 1992, but with my parents and much of my family still there, I will always be a New Yorker in my heart.  So, it's with this bloodline dating back pre-Civil War that I'm watching the Mayoral race with great interest.  In two terms, Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-NY) has plunged New York City back into crime and decay.  The year 2020 saw double the shootings of 2019.  Murder was up 40%.  Car thefts up 67%.  Burglaries up 42%.  Transit crimes have doubled, and for young people born and raised in the city, like a then 17 year old me in 1992 deciding on college, it's that statistic which ultimately drives you away.  With this misery index looming over the election, I do not begrudge any candidate from any party proposing big ideas.  New York needs big ideas if it's to overcome its current state of decline, for in addition to the crime, the COVID lockdowns have wiped out one third of its businesses and disgraced Gov. Andrew Cuomo's (D-NY) tax plan will impose an additional $4 billion in new taxes.

Texas lawmakers seek to stop a Chinese subsidiary from building windmills near an Air Force base.  An effort to stop China from buying land in Texas leads to a bill in Washington D.C.  Recent reports detailed the effort by state lawmakers to stop the sale of land to a Chinese subsidiary for a windmill farm only 70 miles from a U.S. Air Force Base.  In April, the state Senate passed a bill, which banned businesses backed by hostile nations, like China and Iran, from seeking infrastructure contracts in the state.  Shortly after, a Texas congressman introduced a bill in Washington to stop countries from buying land within 100 miles of military installations and 50 miles from military areas.

Down on the windfarm, something stinks.  Some weeks ago, I received a notification from Companies House that one of Britain's latest offshore windfarms, Walney Extension, had published its financial accounts for 2019.  My interest in the accounts was prompted by the strange contrast between the very high costs of recent windfarms (installation and operating), and the offers by operators of the next generation to supply the grid at prices far below anything that might be expected from analysis of costs.  Walney Extension, comprising 87 turbines 11 miles off Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria, is typical of the last generation of windfarms, costing £3 billion to build — more expensive than average.  Little surprise, then, that it needed to agree a guaranteed price of £150/MWh, more than three times market price, to supply the grid.  That figure has now been index-linked and adjusted up to £170/MWh.  In other words, it sells to the market at £40/MWh, and then receives a subsidy of £130/MWh.

Why Wind and Solar Energy Are Doomed to Failure.  Wind and solar energy are both essentially obsolete technologies.  There is a reason why only the very rich or the very adventurous sail across oceans:  the wind is unreliable, and at best produces relatively little energy.  Nevertheless, liberals have concocted fantasies whereby all of our electricity, or perhaps our entire economy, will be powered by those fickle sources.  There are a number of reasons why this will never happen, but a paper published last week by Center of the American Experiment argues that land use constraints are the most basic reason why wind and solar are inexorably destined to fail.

Lower and middle-class Americans will pay a fortune for Biden's wind-power plan.  Last week, the Biden administration announced "a bold set of actions" that it said will "catalyze" the installation of 30,000 megawatts of new offshore wind capacity by 2030.  A White House fact sheet claimed the offshore push will create "good-paying union jobs" and "strengthen the domestic supply chain."  One problem:  It didn't contain a single mention of electricity prices or ratepayers.  The reason for the omission is obvious:  President Biden's offshore-wind scheme will be terrible for consumers.  If those 30,000 megawatts of capacity get built — which, given the history of scuttled projects like Cape Wind, is far from a sure thing — that offshore juice will cost ratepayers billions of dollars more per year than if that same power were produced from onshore natural-gas plants or advanced nuclear reactors.

Cybersecurity of wind power [is] a growing concern.  The Biden White House's March 29 announcement that it will expedite development of offshore wind projects along the Atlantic Coast of the United States underscores the administration's commitment to move the nation away from fossil fuels to increased dependence on renewable energy.  But the prospect of giant wind turbines sprouting up in coastal waters stretching from New England to Florida may further complicate cybersecurity concerns that are already being raised about wind power.  Wind energy recently surpassed 7 percent of U.S. power production and, thanks to generous taxpayer subsidies and renewable energy mandates in some states, its percentage is likely to continue rising.  The more wind installations that come into service, the more cybersecurity challenges their integrated control systems and related technologies will pose.  For cyber criminals/terrorists, wind power — whether offshore or land-based — makes for an inviting target.

Turbines are environmentally safe energy:  Who says so?  In recent years there has been a big surge of interest in providing environmentally safe energy in New York state.  About that, my many questions don't seem to have answers from the folks promoting huge wind and solar farms, or anyone else.  Most information comes from the folks wanting to build these power stations, you know, kind of like the "fox in the hen house" deal.  And with this big business comes lots of promises of great sounding things, but we have all seen big businesses come and go and their promises broken.

White House moves toward approving huge wind project off east coast.  The Biden administration is moving to sharply increase offshore wind energy along the US east coast, saying on Monday [3/29/2021] it is taking steps toward approving a huge windfarm off New Jersey as part of an effort to generate electricity for more than 10m homes by 2030. Meeting the target could mean jobs for more than 44,000 workers and for 33,000 others in related employment, the White House said.  The effort also would help avoid 78 m[illion] metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year, a key step in the fight to slow the climate crisis.

The Editor says...
[#1] It is unwise to blindly believe "mainstream" news media reports about the climate or anything else.  [#2] There is no climate crisis.  World-wide average temperatures are changing at the rate of about one degree per century.  That is not a crisis.  [#3] Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and CO2 has a far smaller role in the "greenhouse effect" than water vapor.  No significant reduction in CO2 emissions is possible without wrecking the economy of every major country.  No significant reduction of the CO2 content of the atmosphere is technologically feasible.  No actions taken by the United States, regarding carbon dioxide emissions, will have any effect at all unless China and India take the same actions, which they won't.

Tensions Where Green Jobs Meet Blue Collars.  The construction workers who traveled to central Kansas to erect a wind farm for utility giant American Electric Power thought it would be a good job.  Then they fell victim to the troubling side of the renewable power industry.  The nomadic band of workers had come to the Flat Ridge III project from Texas, Michigan and other states to install 62 turbines with towers as tall as 300 feet using cranes and heavy machinery.  But after a few months the project broke down.  Subcontractor C2 Logistics Solutions stopped paying the crew, causing workers to protest and walk off the job.  Some quit in disgust.  At least 60 employees and possibly dozens more are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in wages, overtime and travel expenses, according to workers and a lawsuit against the company.  "We still haven't been paid, from the supervisors on down to the hands," says David Saucedo, the former C2 general foreman who say he's owed about $10,000.

Texas Senate passes bill to counter federal subsidies for wind and solar power.  While President Joe Biden moves to expand the use of renewable energy nationwide, the Texas Legislature is doing the opposite, adding fees on solar and wind electricity production in the state in hopes of boosting fossil fuels.  Among the reforms of the state's electric grid following last month's deadly winter storms, Republicans in the Texas Senate have included new fees aimed at solar and wind companies that Democrats warn would damage the state's standing as a national leader on renewable energy production, particularly wind power.  State Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, said while wind and solar have expanded in Texas, those are "unreliable" sources of energy because they cannot be called up at a moment's notice during an emergency like the freeze in February.  To correct that, Schwertner said his bill will give the state's grid monitor authority to create fees for solar and wind.  As it stands now, he said billions of dollars in federal subsidies to wind and solar companies have "tilted" the market too much to benefit those sources of energy, and he aims to re-balance it.

To Get Wind Power You Need Oil.  Wind turbines are the most visible symbols of the quest for renewable electricity generation.  And yet, although they exploit the wind, which is as free and as green as energy can be, the machines themselves are pure embodiments of fossil fuels.  Large trucks bring steel and other raw materials to the site, earth-moving equipment beats a path to otherwise inaccessible high ground, large cranes erect the structures, and all these machines burn diesel fuel.  So do the freight trains and cargo ships that convey the materials needed for the production of cement, steel, and plastics.  For a 5-megawatt turbine, the steel alone averages 150 metric tons for the reinforced concrete foundations, 250 metric tons for the rotor hubs and nacelles (which house the gearbox and generator), and 500 metric tons for the towers.

French court orders 'historic' demolition of seven wind turbines.  Marjolaine Villey-Migraine, of VPPN Collectif 34-12, a group of 65 associations, said the Montpellier tribunal ruling was historic:  "It is a first in France and will become a precedent for future cases."  The court ordered that the 93 m[eter] turbines at Bernagues in the Grands Causses in Hérault must be demolished, even if the owners launch an appeal.  They started producing power in 2016 but the next year the Conseil d'Etat, France's highest administrative court, rejected the planning permission.  VPPN lawyer Nicolas Gallon said it was rare to win such a case.  He said:  "The technology is relatively new, so there have not been very many cases, and to order demolition and the costs that implies shows our arguments are solid."

Experts: Ocean life is at risk from turbines.  Efforts to quadruple wind power in the North Sea will cause loss of marine life, peers were told yesterday [3/17/2021].  Building large numbers of turbines will require concrete foundations to be laid in the seabed and cables to connect them to the mainland.  But this will affect species such as porpoises, which are disturbed by the sound of drilling in the ocean, and sand eels, whose sandbank habitats are lost when cables are laid, the House of Lords EU environment sub-committee heard.

Maine lobstermen protest Monhegan-area wind project.  More than 80 lobster boats lined up between Monhegan Island and Boothbay Harbor on Sunday to protest a seabed survey for a planned offshore wind turbine near Monhegan.  Lobstermen fear that the ongoing survey project and the test turbine that would follow it will disrupt fisheries and undermine an industry that serves as a vital economic engine for coastal Maine.  After years of planning, a collaboration between the University of Maine and New England Aqua Ventus would link a turbine south of Monhegan to the mainland power grid in South Boothbay via a 23-mile underwater cable.  Earlier this month, three vessels began surveying the seabed along that route to study the potential impact of a cable on the ecosystem and area industry.  But lobstermen say the survey boats have already begun to disrupt their operations by cutting lines and disturbing buoys.

How do offshore wind farms affect ocean ecosystems?  The global shift to renewable energy is well underway, including large-scale deployment of offshore wind farms.  There are already about 3,600 turbines operating along European coasts, with 14 more wind farms under development.  Even more wind energy is needed to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement — but the push to boost European offshore wind power 40-fold by 2030 will change regional ocean ecosystems in profound and unexpected ways, according to researchers studying how the turbines affect the environment.  Most of the research stems from northern Europe, where offshore turbines have been operating since 1991.  Scientists say this research can help shape plans for deploying offshore wind turbines in other parts of the world.

Biden proposes new windmill farms along huge swaths of U.S. coastline.  President Biden announced a plan Monday [3/29/2021] to dramatically increase development of large offshore wind farms to generate electricity for up to 10 million homes and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the plan envisions large windmill turbines along the entire Atlantic coast, the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific coast.  She said it will eventually produce "tens of thousands of good-paying union jobs."  Ms. Psaki also said the initiative will eliminate 78 million metric tons of carbon emissions, which are blamed for contributing to climate change.

The Editor says...
[#1] Please stop saying "carbon" when you mean "carbon dioxide."  [#2] Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and there is no reason to avoid using processes that produce CO2 as a byproduct.  [#3] Water vapor (which can never be eliminated from the atmosphere) has a far greater role in the "greenhouse effect" than carbon dioxide.

Is It Time to Put Wind Energy on Ice?  Even before ice-covered wind turbines contributed to massive power failures in a Texas cold snap this month, the viability of air-driven machines as reliable and economical generators of electricity was in question.  Moreover, suspect at best is the claim that this technology is environmentally preferable to conventional energy sources.  Wind turbines are unlikely to be economically viable without government subsidies anytime soon, if ever, according to a recent report by PPHB Energy Investment Banking.  Referencing a study by Dr. Gordon Hughes, a professor of economics at the University of Edinburgh, PPHB says, "(Wind turbine) performance is impacted by major breakdowns that deprive power generation until the turbine is repaired.  There is also deterioration of output due to blade erosion and other factors that reduce the aerodynamic or mechanical performance of the turbines."  Major breakdowns can be expected in the first eight years of operation in about 80 percent of offshore machines and 20 percent of their onshore counterparts, the report says.

Study shows icing can cost wind turbines up to 80% of power production.  Wind turbine blades spinning through cold, wet conditions can collect ice nearly a foot thick on the yard-wide tips of their blades.  That disrupts blade aerodynamics.  That disrupts the balance of the entire turbine.  And that can disrupt energy production by up to 80 percent, according to a recently published field study led by Hui Hu, Iowa State University's Martin C. Jischke Professor in Aerospace Engineering and director of the university's Aircraft Icing Physics and Anti-/De-icing Technology Laboratory.  Hu has been doing laboratory studies of turbine-blade icing for about 10 years, including performing experiments in the unique ISU Icing Research Tunnel.

Climate and COVID: The Erosion of Common Intelligence and Common Sense.  With regard to climate:  Untold millions credulously buy into long-exploded pseudo-scientific fables like anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and the utility of wind turbines and solar arrays, attesting to the ongoing debility of critical inquiry and independent reasoning, qualities associated with intelligent thinking.  The unsightly despoiling of the environment, the distribution of these monstrosities in fields and pastures across the national landscape, and the hecatombs of bird and insect species caused by these lookalike Imperial Walkers should give us pause.  Moreover, the toxic nature of industrial wind, involving hazards like ILFN (Infrasound and Low Frequency Noise), noxious REEs (rare earth elements), and the installation of Permanent Magnets whose components produce prodigious amounts of radioactive waste, cause serious health impacts and deformities.  This has become a matter of criminal import, something people should be aware of.  The data has been available for years.  In this connection, a legal challenge has been launched in France against the government under articles of the Penal Code.

Why The Texas Blackout Has The Greens So Scared:  Deflecting blame to a more exciting apocalypse.  Last month, President Biden signed a series of executive orders undermining fossil fuels, on the grounds the "climate crisis" forced his hand.  "We can't wait any longer.  We see with our own eyes.  We know it in our bones.  It is time to act."  Within days, most of the country was seeing "with our own eyes" and feeling "in our bones" a cold wave so severe that five million people lost electricity and, in a special irony, nearly half of the ballyhooed wind turbines in Texas, which had risen to supply 23% of her energy, were left frozen (and inoperable).  This constituted a double whammy to the huge global warming establishment.  First was the cold, when the "science" had confidently predicted a steadily warming Texas.  Second was the failure of renewables, vastly exacerbating the problems for the energy grid.

The Texas Energy Disaster.  [Scroll down]  Texas has encouraged the building of wind turbines.  They do this, in concert with the U.S. government, through direct subsidies and by paying for wind generation, rather than paying for electricity purchased.  This guarantee of revenue means generating companies do not have to consider market demand, they can build wind turbines endlessly with no risk.  They can even pay others to take their power and then be reimbursed by the government with our tax dollars!  Since 2006, federal and Texas subsidies to wind power, have totaled $80 billion, this foolishness is explained well on the stopthesethings website.  The wind power excess capacity has distorted the generation mix in Texas to a dangerous and unbalanced level.

Windy City Is One Cruel Place.  Texas is a great state.  But, it's not perfect and over the years it got suckered into becoming windy city as the state embraced wind energy and especially the legal graft of government subsidies to support it.  According to the EIA, "Texas leads the nation in wind-powered generation and produced about 28% of all the U.S. wind-powered electricity in 2019."  Our late friend from London, Nick Grealy, often wrote about this, accurately noting it couldn't have taken place without natural gas.  Or, subsidies, as it turned out, and the subsidies eventually encouraged windy city to grow too big; to the point not even gas could cover for it when the wind died.

Yes, our increasing reliance on intermittent wind power really is a problem.  Our national conversation about energy — as millions and millions of Americans struggle with rolling blackouts that, in some cases, aren't rolling much — is focused on a stupidly binary debate.  Are fossil fuels to blame for the blackouts plaguing the middle part of America?  Or is it renewables? [...] The rise of intermittent "renewable" energy has turned the already complex management of our nation's power grids into a byzantine nightmare.  Everything from local mandates to massive government subsidies has pushed "renewable energy" onto the grids.  Often, when we demand the most output from our grids, those sources of energy aren't producing.  This means that other energy sources, those that don't rely on favorable weather conditions to produce, must be on standby to pick up the slack.

U.S. Offshore Wind Prospects:  Overblown Promises and Blown-Up Costs.  Physics matters.  It was not a random or arbitrary fluctuation, much less political favor or the power of vested interest, that led coal to dominate British energy supply as early as 1700, eroding the status of a deeply resistant landed aristocracy and gentry.  It was not thanks to politicians that in the following centuries coal, oil, and gas established an overwhelming position in global energy supply.  On the contrary, it was the intrinsic physical properties of those fuels that led to their preferment, properties which can be summed up in a single term:  Fossil fuels are of low entropy.  They are, in the technical, thermodynamic sense, highly improbable, being dense stocks of energy, the improbability of which can be rendered in a multitude of changes to the world in accordance with human wishes, improbable changes that we call wealth.  And if the low-carbon candidates to replace those fossil fuels do not have similarly favorable or superior physical properties, no amount of policy support will be able to compensate for the deficiency.

Understanding the Texas Energy Crisis.  Outsiders may not be aware that Texas has a uniquely independent power grid that is relatively disconnected from regional energy consumers and providers.  Outsiders may also be surprised to discover the dramatic growth of wind power in a state that has among the largest fossil fuel reserves in the world.  The growth of wind power to be second as a source only to natural gas is the debate raging in Texas politics now.  Did wind reliance help set up the energy crisis in an energy rich state?  At a moderate level of study, it is apparent that both wind and natural gas was blocked from full utilization by extended severely sub-freezing weather. [...] Has the decade-long move to invest in wind power that placed so many turbines and transmission lines in West Texas proven to be a wise investment for ERCOT and energy providers?  The answer is probably 'no.' [...] More profound — was the switch from coal to natural gas completely wise?

Cascend: Data Shows Wind-Power Was Chief Culprit Of Texas Grid Collapse.  With the worst of the Texas power crisis now behind us, the blame and fingerpointing begins, and while the jury is still out whose actions (or lack thereof) may have led to the deadly and widespread blackouts that shocked Texas this week, Cascend Strategy writes that "in case there was any doubt why the Texas grid collapsed, the data is clear[.]" [...] A massive cold snap drove demand for electricity well beyond normal levels[.]  Wind power failed to deliver its expected power — almost 40% of expected power — in part due to lack of winterized wind turbines[.]  Natural gas (as always) made up the difference, but then suffered from lack of supply from non-winterized delivery[.]  Coal and nuclear both underperformed, but not by much, due to non-winterized equipment[.]

An Insider Explains Why Texans Lost Their Power.  [Scroll down]  If this sounds outlandish, here's the head of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas:  ["]The fundamental decision made in the middle of the night on Monday to have outages imposed was a wise decision by the operators we have here, Magness said.  If we had waited and not done those outages ... we could have drifted to blackout.  That's not just outages, but we could lose all electricity on system, and it could take months or longer to repair that.["]  With a total ERCOT system failure, as many as 12 million customers and possibly 20 million Texans could be in the cold, in the dark, in their cars with nowhere to go — for months.  Wind power did this to Texas.  Be very afraid of the Green New Deal.

Did Wind Power Fall Hard During the Great Texas Storm?  Yep.  Twice.  [Scroll down]  It would be for the good of the state and the world to understand what happened and what can happen.  All the major power sources suffered compared to expected output to one extent or another during the storm that froze the whole state.  But wind didn't just dip, it collapsed, two times — according to the EIA's data.  You can see that more sharply in the 30-day graph than the 7-day graph.  It has since bounced back, but so have coal and nuclear, after a freezing issue at the STP nuclear plant near Houston (that never put anyone in any nuclear accident danger).  The data tells a major part of the story of the past week.  It also holds some lessons for the future.

What Happened In Texas.  Texas gets electricity from six sources: coal, nuclear, natural gas, solar, hydro and wind. [...] It was the "green" energy sources that failed to show up for work: [...] One other comment: when it gets really cold — Minnesota cold, not Texas cold — all wind turbines are shut off, and they draw power off the grid to heat their motors.  So when it is really cold, wind turbines are consumers of electricity, not producers.

Frozen windmills show the need for fossil fuels and nuclear power.  President Biden and his appointees frequently talk about a clean energy future in which carbon-emitting fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas are all replaced by windmills and rainbows.  But that future is a lot colder and darker than they admit.  Four million Texans found themselves without power this past week.  Frozen windmills are not exclusively to blame, as some have suggested, but Texans are nevertheless getting a small taste of what it is like to live with unreliable power.  For some of them, it is an unpleasant reminder of what it was like before they got out of California.  Federal and state subsidies have helped make the Lone Star State a national leader in wind power even though it is blessed with fossil fuel riches.  Wind represents more than 25% of its generating capacity, and in warmer seasons, it works OK.  But this winter, unusually cold weather hit Texas's enormous wind farms and froze the turbines.  The amount of electricity produced from wind suddenly plunged to levels 60% below those of the week before.

Wind turbines played significant role in historic Texas power failures, data suggest.  The historic power failures in Texas this week amid a major cold snap there appear to have been driven in no small part by the failure of the state's wind turbines to keep up with a spike in demand, according to energy data from federal sources.  Once-in-a-century cold weather in much of Texas this week sent energy demands skyrocketing, placing major strains on power grids and leaving millions of residents without power for extended periods of single-digit weather.  Weather data show that temperatures throughout the state began plummeting sharply late Saturday, Feb. 13 and throughout the next day.  In areas such as Fort Worth, the temperature has hovered around zero at times.  February average lows in that area are around 40 degrees.

Texas power outage is a warning about 'green energy' reliance and globalist control.  The current winter storm in Texas, which has left millions without power, heat, and food, has led to questions about the reliability of so called "green energy" and serves as an example of the danger posed by the green agenda in pursuit of the Great Reset.  The storm brought temperatures dipping well below zero degrees Fahrenheit and has left millions of people without power.  Over 20 people have died in various states affected by the storm.  The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages around 90% of Texas's electrical capacity, initially asked residents to "reduce their electricity use," as the system was suffering from "higher-than-normal generation outages due to frozen wind turbines and limited natural gas supplies available to generating units."

Wind turbine company cuts 450 jobs in plants across Colorado.  A wind turbine company based in Denmark has laid off 450 workers from its manufacturing plants in Colorado.  The Pueblo Chieftain reported Wednesday that Vestas Wind Systems A/S laid off 120 workers at its Pueblo tower-manufacturing plant, where it employed more than 800 workers at its peak.

What Role Are Big Government Federal Regulations Playing In Texas Freezing In The Dark?  Defenders of green energy and fossil fuels are pointing fingers at each other for the failures that led to dangerous blackouts in Texas — but could both sides be missing the bigger picture?  How big a role did regulations sent from the desk of some faraway bureaucrat play in this catastrophic failure?  Much has already been written about the failure of wind turbines to deliver an adequate load — and whether they should have been winterized.  About failures of natural gas delivery, and even sensors in the nuclear power stations.  Not much has been said about the role federal pollution standards have played on Texas failing to get ahead of the problem by ramping up supply.  Yes, Federal pollution standards.

When Wind Power Freezes:  Texas's disastrous experience is a cautionary tale for the northeast.  Texas relies on wind turbines for one-fourth of its electric power.  A brutal winter storm and record cold temperatures had plunged the state into darkness.  The problem?  Half of the state's wind turbines were unable to generate electricity because of ice on their blades.  Millions of Texans were left without power as the state's electricity authority ordered rolling blackouts because there wasn't enough electricity to go around.  Anyone who has experienced an old-fashioned nor'easter knows just how unpleasant conditions can be.  And yet, the northeast intends to become heavily reliant on offshore wind.  New York governor Andrew Cuomo has issued an executive order for at least 9,000 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind by 2035.  New Jersey governor Phil Murphy is calling for 7,500 MW by that same year.  Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island have all proclaimed their goal of 100 percent emissions-free electricity as soon as 2030.  But placing one's electric eggs in an offshore wind (and solar) basket will be a prescription for a wintry disaster.

Up To 4 Million Texans Without Power as Electricity Grid Collapses and Wind Turbines Fail.  Forty percent of Austin residents are without power, and up to a total of four million Texas residents are suffering under extreme cold conditions as the state power grid is overwhelmed.  Making matters worse, a shortage of natural gas combined with failures of most wind turbines due to ice and freezing temperatures have dropped power generation.

Texas gets a reality check.  Why in the world did this happen?  I thought that we had all that oil in West Texas!  What are we doing using wind turbines to keep us warm?  Who came up with that crazy idea?  Turbines?  I think that all of us got a lesson this time about relying on wind and solar options.  They always look better on paper and graphs than they really are.  In other words, they are not as reliable as coal, oil, or nuclear power during extreme weather conditions.  The good news is that the public is up in arms.

One Thread Explains How Texas' Adoption of CA Model for Energy Led to Disaster After Brutal Winter Storm.  Texas is in trouble.  A brutal winter storm rolled in over Presidents Day weekend, knocked out power for millions of residents, and the temperatures have dipped to extreme levels.  People have died from carbon monoxide poisoning because they're running cars for warmth.  One family had emergency services arrive after they used a charcoal grill to heat their home.  It's a situation that should never happen in the United States.  How could Texas' grid shut down after a winter storm?  It's simple.  It couldn't keep up with demand — the turbines froze.  Leah covered this yesterday morning.  The Wall Street Journal pointed to bad policy and clean energy's inability to keep a modern economy powered as a prime culprit.  A bad policy with a dash of snow leads to this mess. [...] The state opted for a heavily subsidized model of cleaner energy methods, like wind and solar, which evidently couldn't keep up. if a snowstorm ruins your day, this can't be the way forward.  It never was — there's a reason why it's heavily subsidized.

Associated Press Factcheck of President Trump on Wind Power Blows Apart.  It was only four months ago when President Trump lectured Joe Biden on wind power's "glitchy, pricey, bird-slaughtering way to make electricity."  The liberal media unanimously mocked President Trump for his statements on windmills.  In fact, the Associated Press put out a special "fact check" to condemn President Trump's arguments and "set the record straight." [...] Now we know that President Trump was 100% correct.  A winter storm this week caused chaos in Texas where power outages were and are still widespread since Monday morning [2/15/2021].  This means that hundreds of thousands of Texans are without electricity as temperatures fell into the teens near Dallas and in the 20s around Houston.

The Editor says...
The temperature here in Dallas County got down to 2°F. on the morning of February 16.  The afternoon high was in the teens.  Temperatures this cold are ordinarily experienced in Dallas about once every 25 years.  I suspect that the low solar activity of the last couple of years is the underlying cause of the cold weather.  It's not because all the carbon dioxide has disappeared from the atmosphere.

The great Texas climate catastrophe is heading your way.  Fifteen years ago, there were virtually no wind farms in Texas.  Last year, roughly a quarter of all electricity generated in the state came from wind.  Local politicians were pleased by this.  They bragged about it like there was something virtuous about destroying the landscape and degrading the power grid.  Just last week, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott proudly accepted something called the Wind Leadership Award, given with gratitude by Tri Global Energy, a company getting rich from green energy.  So it was all working great until the day it got cold outside.  The windmills failed like the silly fashion accessories they are, and people in Texas died.  This is not to beat up on the state of Texas — it's a great state, actually — but to give you some sense of what's about to happen to you.

Energy prices jump as millions [are] left without power in Texas.  Energy prices jumped Tuesday as a deep freeze in the South boosted demand for fuel and hampered production.  More than 4 million people were without power across Texas on Tuesday morning, according to poweroutage.us, as the electric grid couldn't keep up with heightened demand, forcing utilities to implement rolling blackouts in some cases.  "The majority of heating needs are met via electrical baseboard or heat pumps in the southern region," said John Kilduff, founding partner at Again Capital.  "The demand for electricity over the weekend rivaled peak summer heat-wave levels."

Texas's 'Nightmare' Energy Situation Is a Warning to the Rest of America.  Millions of Texans have lost power in the middle of a cold snap that brought below-freezing temperatures across the state.  Struggling to keep warm in homes that are poorly insulated, some are turning to unsafe methods that will likely get them killed.  One resident told The Washington Post that after only eight hours without power in Houston it was like an "apocalypse," and she feared they'd "see a nightmare situation in the next few days."  Commenting on the blackout in his home state, former Energy Secretary Rick Perry pointed out how important it is to have a diverse energy landscape.  In recent years, however, reliance on coal has declined while renewable energy sources have been increasing.

Why Texas Has Gone Dark.  Much of Texas is experiencing rolling blackouts, as utilities are unable to keep power flowing.  Why are these blackouts happening? [...] Texas has what some regard as a free market in energy, but in fact it is distorted by the massive federal subsidies paid by the federal government.  These subsidies often cause the price of electricity to go negative; that is, wind farms will actually pay utilities to take electricity off their hands.

Texas: Winter Weather, Iced Wind Turbines, and Rolling Blackouts.  More than 2.5 million people in Texas are currently experiencing rolling blackouts as temperatures remain in the single digits in many parts of the state.  The Lone Star state is currently short of electricity because half of the Texas wind fleet (the largest in the nation) is iced over and incapable of generating electricity.  Additionally, the natural gas infrastructure Texas has become so reliant upon has also frozen up.  Texas's experience highlights the perils of becoming overly reliant upon wind, solar and natural gas because these energy sources are not as reliable as coal or nuclear power during extreme weather conditions.  Nuclear and coal plants have a distinct advantage in extreme weather conditions because they store week's or month's worth of fuel near the power plant.

Nearly Half of Texas' Wind Turbines Freeze Contributing to Power Emergency, Over 2 Million Without Power.  Parts of Texas allegedly drooped down to 0F (-18C) over the weekend, it's still bad today and another arctic snowstorm is predicted to hit the area on Tuesday or Wednesday [2/17/2021].  On top of that, there are rolling power outages that for some may mean their power isn't back on until tomorrow because of the strain on the Texas power grid.  The state is asking people to conserve electricity to relieve the demand and has declared a state of emergency. 2.5 million are without power. [...] 23% of Texas' energy is now powered by wind turbines.  There's also limited natural gas supplies because of the demand to pick up the slack.  It shows once again there are limitations to renewable energy sources and why you need duplicative systems to take up the slack if you have failures like this.  When you want to kill fossil fuels ultimately, like Joe Biden, this is what you would be left with on a more permanent basis if you don't have such reliable systems.

The Editor says...
Austin is one of the cities hardest hit by blackouts.  That is good news.  Austin has become the San Francisco of the South:  As recently as the 1970's it was a delightful medium-sized city with a lot of attractive features; but now, it is apparently run by hippies and socialists.  More importantly, the state capitol is there, and it's packed with leftists and RINOs.  The Austin lefties are learning a long cold lesson about relying on windmills for electricity.  Probably 99 percent of Austin's miserable Democrats would love to have some electricity this cold morning, whether it's generated with oil, coal, or uranium — just turn the power on!

Texas power outage map:  It's not just Austin that's badly affected.

Frozen wind turbines hamper Texas power output, state's electric grid operator says.  Nearly half of Texas' installed wind power generation capacity has been offline because of frozen wind turbines in West Texas, according to Texas grid operators.  Wind farms across the state generate up to a combined 25,100 megawatts of energy.  But unusually moist winter conditions in West Texas brought on by the weekend's freezing rain and historically low temperatures have iced many of those wind turbines to a halt.  As of Sunday morning [2/14/2021], those iced turbines comprise 12,000 megawatts of Texas' installed wind generation capacity, although those West Texas turbines don't typically spin to their full generation capacity this time of year.

Wind Power Can Leave Even Texans in the Cold.  Last I knew, the USA led the world in energy production.  But a war on energy has begun.  The state most associated with energy production is Texas.  Under Biden's handlers, even Texans can expect to see more stories about power outages: [...] Leslie Sopko, communications manager for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, confirms that they have had "a significant number of wind facilities that had to be taken out of service due to icing."

The irony of Texas's massive power outrages during winter weather.  A ferocious winter storm struck the southern plain states with exceptional ferocity over the weekend.  By Monday [2/15/2021], millions of Texans found themselves without power.  Contrary to what one might expect, the energy problem wasn't primarily because of downed power lines.  Instead, in a state that has a quarter of America's proven natural gas reserves, the power went away because Texas has turned to wind generation — and the generators froze.

Toward a Renewable Chaos:  Carbon Imperialism and Disadvantaged Smaller Nations.  [W]ind and solar make up an insignificant percentage of the world's energy consumption.  The renewable contribution to global energy consumption in 2017 was less than 2%.  Solar and wind contributed just 7% of the world's electricity in 2018.  There is a reason for that.  Besides being expensive, they are highly intermittent and so are unreliable.  Further, wind and solar power cannot be used without backup by fossil fuel-powered energy sources.  Even in Germany, increased reliance on wind and solar has resulted in energy chaos.  Berlin is facing energy shortages as both wind and solar have failed during the ongoing winter, and coal plants are running at full capacity to meet the demand.  "With this supply of wind and photovoltaic energy, it's between 0 and 2 or 3 percent — that is de facto zero.  You can see it in many diagrams that we have days, weeks, in the year where we have neither wind nor PV.  Especially this time (winter) for example — there is no wind and PV, and there are often times when the wind is very miniscule.  These are things, I must say, that have been physically established and known for centuries, and we've simply totally neglected this during the green energies discussion," said Dr. Harald Schwarz, professor of power distribution at the University of Cottbus.

Battery Costs in the Billions [are] About to Be Tacked Onto NY Electric Bills.  New York will purchase a 100-megawatt battery system to back up its offshore wind fleet, which is expected to total 9 gigawatts of capacity by 2035.  The battery will be supplied by South Korean developer 174 Power Global, who has announced plans for the battery system, which will store energy to be used during peak demand in New York City.  NY utility Con Edison will buy the power and bid it into the wholesale market for seven years.  The batteries will be housed in dozens of containers and connected to a nearby Con Edison transmission substation, which will be able to supply 400-megawatt-hours of power into the grid.

Jan 2021 Report on Wind Energy.  The entire rationale for wind turbines is to stop global warming climate change by reducing the amount of CO2 being returned to the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.  The energy required for a helicopter to de-ice all the blades on a wind farm must outweigh any supposed saving in CO2 by a factor of 100 or more.  Notwithstanding that no wind farm has saved a gram of CO2 due to construction and the necessary spinning reserve.  The attached picture, taken from a wind farm in Sweden, is a metaphor for the complete insanity of the mad rush into useless UNreliables — wind and solar.  Symbolic 'energy' gestures to the folly of 'green' madness that fail both physically and financially wherever installed.  This one photo alone sums up the collective era of eco-stupidity that we live in today, where rational thought, logic, reason and common sense has been gleefully abandoned for enormous amounts of public money with valuable resources needlessly sacrificed.  And, who pays?  You pay!

Peanuts to Pay For Total Chaos:  Wind Power Outfit Fined $1 Million For Causing Statewide Blackout.  On 28 September 2016, the automatic shutdown of wind turbines in South Australia during a spring storm delivered a statewide 'system black'.  South Australia's hapless Premier, Jay Weatherill led the wind industry's propaganda charge, pointing the finger at the collapse of a couple of power pylons in the state's mid-North as the cause of a statewide calamity that left 1.6 million people powerless; and parts of the State without electricity for more than a week.  BHP Billiton's Olympic Dam mine in South Australia's far north was without full power from September 28 to October 13.  The collapse of a few power pylons occurred late in the day, and affected a single transmission line that could not have caused the collapse of the State's entire power supply.  The rest of the State's transmission lines remained untroubled by the strong winds.  But the power pylons collapse is still touted by renewables advocates as the primary cause.

The Editor says...
If all it takes is the destruction of two power poles to knock out the power across an entire Australian state, I'd say Australia is extremely susceptible to terrorist attacks.

Turbines in Lake Erie are 'irresponsible'.  [Scroll down]  An application for Lake Erie turbines and their accompanying environmental impact statements has not yet been submitted to NYS siting authorities.  But the company Diamond Offshore Wind, a unit of Mitsubishi, Inc., is being encouraged to go forward by lobbying groups like Sierra Club and New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).  The proposed Lake Erie offshore wind project near Cleveland, Ohio has been permitted for construction despite opposition from environmental groups concerned about its placement astride a major migratory bird route.  Sierra Club voiced its support for the Ohio project as it has already done for New York's Chautauqua and Erie County project.  We must not assume that any environmental impact statements are more than a rubber stamp for this project.

Thousands of new French windfarms — but no reduction in carbon emissions.  At the peak of the coronavirus panic on April 21, the French government quietly issued "Decree number 2020-456 relative to pluriannual energy planning". Ignored by the media, it contains, nevertheless, a bomb.  A dramatic down-scaling of nuclear power and up-scaling of renewable energy.  France will, over the next eight years, build 6,500 new wind turbines to add to the 8,100 it already has.  They will be larger than the existing ones so the new wind farms will enable France to more than double its existing installed wind power capacity.  France is engaged in an act of landscape spoliation on a massive scale, from the vineyard slopes of Burgundy to the fortified medieval city at Carcassone.

Wind power accounts for more than half of UKs electricity for first time.  Wind power accounted for more than half of the United Kingdom's electricity for the first time on Saturday [12/26/2020] amid heavy winds caused by Storm Bella, British electrical power company Drax Group announced this week.  Wind energy made up approximately 50.67 percent of the country's energy supply, surpassing the previous record of 50 percent reached in August.  "More than half of Britain's electricity was generated by wind power on Boxing Day this year, this is the first time ever wind has supplied the majority of the country's power over the course of a whole day," the Drax Group tweeted on Monday.

French fishermen vow to take direct action to prevent construction of Saint-Brieuc offshore wind farm.  French fishermen have declared that they would rather die fighting than allow a fully approved offshore wind farm to be built off Brittany, and have vowed to take direct action to prevent construction.  The row has led the French wind industry to write to President Emmanuel Macron, warning that it is being "held hostage to sterile debates' led by organisations "stirring up false fears' about renewable energy.  Leaders of the local Brittany Regional Fisheries Committee have warned they will stop Iberdrola's 496MW Saint-Brieuc project from going ahead if the authorities do not do so, claiming that it poses a threat to the livelihoods of local fishermen by destroying a prolific scallop bed.

Giant Vestas wind turbine collapses in northern Sweden.  A 230-meter tall wind turbine built by Vestas Wind Systems A/S collapsed at a site in northern Sweden over the weekend [11/22/2020].  The cause of the accident is unknown and the company is assembling a team that will investigate at the site, spokesman Anders Riis said on Monday by phone.  A lot of snow is expected this week, which may delay the work, he said.  No one was injured in the incident.

Joanna Lumley calls for WW2 bombs being cleared for wind farms to be quietly 'burnt out' because blowing them up is making dolphins deaf.  Actress Joanna Lumley has called on wind farm developers to stop blowing up unexploded WWII bombs in the seas around Britain because she says it deafens whales and dolphins.  It is estimated that some 100,000 tonnes of unexploded wartime munitions lurk in Britain's waters — much of which needs clearing to make way for new wind farms.  But the traditional way of disposing of these bombs on the sea bed — blowing them up with another explosive device — has the potential to harm marine life.

The Editor says...
[#1] Who is Joanna Lumley?  [#2] The British Navy has had 70 years to find "unexploded WWII bombs in the seas around Britain" and get rid of them all.  [#3] Lots of marine life took a beating in World War II, and nobody cared.  [#4]  The offshore windmills wouldn't be necessary if England had a few more power plants, but the lefty government is so worried about global warming (and dolphins and stuff) that it would prefer to do without electricity if need be.

National Grid is forced to search for emergency power sources due to lack of wind.  National Grid is being forced to search for emergency power sources due to a recent lack of wind — just a week after Boris Johnson said wind farms would power every home in the UK within a decade.  The utility company, which is responsible for ensuring supply and demand are balanced in Britain's energy systems, said electricity supply margins were likely to be tight in the country over the next few days.  Bosses insisted there would be an adequate supply to meet requirements, but the warning comes just days after the Prime Minister's pledge to make the nation a world leader in offshore wind technology.

Washington State blows away wind fantasies.  The Northwest has spoken loudly as the Benton Public Utility District (BPUD) has documented their actual battleground experiences with intermittent electricity from wind farms that should be a wake-up call to our policy makers.  Their message is "no more wind".  The Washington state utility 16-page report titled "Wind Power and Clean Energy Policy Perspectives" of July 14, 2020 provides a devastating counter attack to the wind lobbyists that they question the efficacy of wind farms for power generation and resulted in the utility's commissioners saying they "do not support further wind power development in the Northwest."

£50billion on wind farms?  You might as well spend it on unicorn tears, PM.  Speaking to the virtual Conservative Party conference, the Prime Minister was, for once, full of that old bluster and self-confidence, as he announced his new energy plan for the UK.  The answer to our electricity needs?  Off-shore wind farms.  Loads of them.  Everywhere up and down our coast.  He would make Britain the "Saudi Arabia of green energy", he told a bemused public.  This from a man who once said wind turbines couldn't blow the skin off a rice pudding.  He was pretty much right then.  I wonder what changed his mind?

Local Wind Farm Affecting Your Health?  An Irish Family Just Received a €225K Payout.  The floodgates might be about to open on wind farm health litigation; an Irish family who claim they suffered health impacts from a wind farm which opened 700m from their home just received a €225,000 payout.

Biden's Energy Plan:  Sacrificing Goats to the Sun Gods.  Wind and solar cannot be the instrument to achieve the (unnecessary) goal of 100% zero carbon electricity by 2035.  Wind and solar are erratic and unpredictable sources of electricity.  As long as wind and solar supply less than about 25% of the electricity in a grid, the grid can handle the erratic energy supply by throttling backup plants, usually natural gas plants, up and down to compensate for the ups and downs of wind or solar.  When wind and solar go past the approximate 25% threshold, spells of excess wind and solar power appear.  The problem is that wind and solar power are peaky, with peaks 3 to 5 times the average power.  It may be possible at times to accept 80% wind and solar in some grids.  But a significant amount of traditional power plants have to be online to provide regulation and compensate for the seesawing wind and solar.  To get past the 25% wall requires some storage of electricity to flatten out the peaks.  But battery storage is horribly expensive, easily doubling the cost of wind and solar.

The Real Cost of Wind and Solar.  The main problem with either wind or solar is that they generate electricity erratically, depending on the wind or sunshine.  In contrast, a fossil-fuel plant can generate electricity predictably upon request.  Blackouts are very expensive for society, so grid operators and designers go to a lot of trouble to make sure that blackouts are rare. [...] Both wind and solar have pronounced seasonality.  During low output times, as for summer wind, the fossil-fuel plants are carrying more of the load.  Of course, solar stops working as the sun sets. [...] Wind behaves erratically hour to hour.  Even though the Texas 18,000-megawatt system has thousands of turbines spread over a wide area, the net output is erratic changing by thousands of megawatts in a single hour.  These shifts must be balanced by fossil-fuel plants slewing their output up and down to compensate and keep load matched to generation.

Offshore Wind Is Really A Pirate Ship on the Sea of Subsidies.  New Jersey and New York and a handful of other Northeast nincompoop states are both currently chasing wind with abandon; the abandon of economic sanity with respect to the interests of ratepayers and taxpayers.  It's one gigantic scam; a new venue for hedge fund types who want maximize government rent as a source of profits, milking consumers for every bit of it, while distorting the economics of every other form of energy.  Wind has been just this sort of scam for decades now, but the production tax credits that made the theft possible are slowly be ratcheted backward, so wind energy has blown out to sea.  Offshore is the new hedge fund opportunity for the pirate managers who want to empty the pockets of energy consumers.

The Plague of Renewable Portfolio Standards.  At a modern natural gas generating plant, two thirds of the cost is capital, and one third is fuel.  If you idle the plant because at a particular time there is no market for the electricity, two thirds of your costs keep on running.  At a nuclear plant, fuel is extremely cheap.  Nearly all the cost is capital or staffing, and nearly all the costs continue if the plant is idle.  Idling a nuclear plant saves practically nothing.  That gives a clue why nuclear plants generally run flat out, turned on more than 90% of the time.  With a wind or solar generating plant, nearly all the cost is capital.  If you turn off wind or solar generation, because there is no market, all your expenses turn into losses.  Wind or solar plants, usually, can be turned off on command, but they can't be turned on unless the wind is blowing or the sun is shining.  They are erratic generators.  Not only can you not be sure of turning them on when needed, but they are liable to turn off by themselves because the wind died or a cloud moved in front of the sun.

Wind generation falls over 40% in July; initial assessment blames low wind speed.  India's wind energy generation capacity fell by a whopping 43% in July, taking the industry by surprise as the monsoon months are the most optimal for generation every year, official data showed. [...] Industry insiders have said that wind speeds have been exceptionally low this year, but would likely pick up in August and September.  The central government has taken note of the issue and begun seeking details from states and developers about the alarming drop, according to sources.

Chinese-owned wind farm in Devils River, Texas threatens power grid and more.  Houston-based GH America Energy is a wholly owned subsidiary of Chinese Guanghui Industry Investment Group, which, since 2015, has purchased about 140,000 acres in Val Verde County, Texas. [...] Guanghui's billionaire founder, CEO, and Communist Party member, Sun Guangxin, wants to erect hundreds of wind turbines and perhaps several giant solar arrays on his West Texas acreage, a plan that is running into stiff resistance from residents and national security experts alike.  Located about 200 miles west of San Antonio, the Devils River area of Val Verde County would be site of Mr. Sun's renewable energy mega-project.  The sparsely populated area is home to a few Texas-size family ranches, lots of wildlife, and Laughlin Air Force Base in nearby Del Rio.  French and Middle Eastern companies already operate the sprawling Rocksprings Val Verde Wind Farm, a complex covering 15,000 acres within 15 miles of the Devils River.  The thought of having even more wind turbines, soaring hundreds of feet into the air, further disfiguring West Texas's rugged but picturesque back country has long-time ranchers on edge.

Nuclear to Replace Wind and Solar.  Wind and solar are not remotely competitive with coal or natural gas for generating electricity.  The promoters of wind and solar lie about this constantly, claiming that they are close to competitive.  The lies have two major components.  They ignore or misrepresent the massive subsidies that wind and solar get, amounting to 75% of the cost.  Then they compare the subsidized cost of wind or solar with the total cost of gas or coal.  But wind or solar can't replace existing fossil fuel infrastructure because they are erratic sources of electricity.  The existing infrastructure has to be retained when you add wind or solar, because sometimes the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine.

Offshore Wind:  Definitely Expensive.  Back in 2017, there was great excitement among environmentalists and the media, when it was announced that two offshore windfarms had bid remarkably low prices into the government's Contracts for Difference auction, offering to supply electricity to the grid for around half the price that had been seen in earlier auctions.  How had this remarkable change in the economics of offshore wind power been achieved?  Nobody really knew for sure, although eco-minded correspondents in the mainstream media were insistent that the change was real.  In a paper published shortly afterwards, Gordon Hughes et al. pointed out that there was little evidence that costs of offshore windfarms were falling at all.  Indeed, they were generally rising, as developers moved into deeper waters in search of more reliable wind speeds.  Even discounting factors like this, like-for-like costs seemed to be only falling slightly.  There was absolutely no sign of revolutionary change.  Defenders of the green orthodoxy argued that the Hughes analysis was backwards looking, and couldn't take into account technological advances (although they never said clearly what these were).

The Cost of Generating Offshore Wind Power.  Effervescent claims that offshore wind power is cheap have fallen flat.  When the rising capital cost of taking wind turbines offshore is accounted for, the power that they occasionally generate turns out to be the most expensive electricity of all, and by a very substantial margin.

Why Subsidised Wind & Solar Are Sending South Africa's Power Prices Into Orbit.  Rocketing power prices and grid instability are two inescapable consequences of subsidised wind and solar.  While sunshine and breezes might be free, attempting to run your power system using nature's gifts, brings with it a raft of other costs which RE zealots tend to gloss over.  The electricity generation and distribution system — which wind and solar power are meant to completely replace — is one that was designed to work all on its lonesome; no mythical mega-batteries; no load shedding when the wind drops or the sun sets; no prayers to the wind gods; no fuss; and no failures that can't be fixed in an engineering jiffy.  The same can't be said of the unreliables, which always and everywhere depend upon the system as it was — one built on ever-reliable coal, gas, nuclear and hydro (where it's available).  But STT is referring to a system that works, always has and always will.  On the other hand, those seeking to profit from the wind and solar scam claim keep talking about a new 'system'; when, in reality, all they've got to offer is chaos.  And chaos costs.

Burying The Truth:  No Sensible Environmentalist Supports Filthy Wind & Solar.  Even after 30 years and endless subsidies, no country is powering itself exclusively with the wind and solar; no country ever will.  But that doesn't stop our political betters berating us, should we ever beg the question about the purported logic of throwing endless $trillions at something that's already proven to be an abject failure.  Whatever your views on climate change (the apparently existential threat formerly known as 'global warming'), the idea that trying to run modern, civil societies on sunshine and breezes might somehow prevent it is, of course, a complete nonsense.  One environmentalist who called it out, loud and early, was Michael Shellenberger.  As a long-time advocate for reliable, affordable and safe nuclear energy, and critic of intermittent renewables — calling wind and solar worse than useless — Michael combines common sense, logic and reason, in an era when those attributes have become scarce commodities.

Wind Power failure: on average every 3 days, there is a 500MW fail.  On average, every three days within a one hour period there's a sudden failure of 500 MW of wind generation — equal to one industrial coal turbine.  That's four full wind farms or about 250 spinning turbines that stopped spinning.  Every time a coal plant trips out, it's reported as a problem of relying on our "old coal fleet". But when the same power output fails from wind, it's the new clean green future at work(!), and a sign we need to spend another $20 billion to "upgrade the grid" with interconnectors we don't need, and Hydro schemes we don't want.  A few wind farms are bad for the grid.  More windfarms are worse.

Canadians claiming new high-tech wind turbines as world's 'most energy-efficient power' source charged with fraud in U.S..  Two Canadians claiming to have developed unprecedented utility-grade wind farm turbines told investors their technology was so hot their company could be the next Google, Amazon or Facebook.  There was a lot of wind behind their turbines, but not in a good way.  Their claims were false and the men, including the company's Toronto-area president, were siphoning off investor funds to enrich themselves, U.S. authorities allege.

Villagers puzzled by mysterious noise heard in southern China mountain range.  A mysterious noise left locals puzzled after it was heard in southern China's mountains.  In the video, captured in Weining Yi, Hui, and Miao Autonomous County in Guizhou Province on July 1, the mysterious noise was heard among the mountains which attracted nearby villagers.  [Video clip]

The Editor says...
Note the windmills atop the mountains.  There's yer problem!

Turbine output drops steeply after ten years:  US research.  The performance of newer US wind turbines degrades at a slower rate than that of older projects, with a relatively abrupt decline in output after ten years of operation coinciding with the withdrawal of federal support, according to a new study.

Grand Theft:  US Taxpayers Liable For $120,000,000,000 In Subsidies to Wind & Solar.  In the absence of endless subsidies there would be no wind or solar industries.  Period.  The minute talk turns to cutting those subsidies, the rent-seekers profiting from the wind and solar scam scream 'blue murder'.  In the USA, the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time is on a scale and magnitude that would make Croesus turn green with envy.  If the wind and solar scam continues unabated, American taxpayers will be forced to fork out more than $120 billion, in the form of direct subsidies, tax credits, and mandates for the generation and transmission of chaotically intermittent wind and solar.

Why Dems are so bent on passing wind amid corona crisis.  Renewables live or die by subsidies, in fact.  That was proved yet again this week, when Democrats tried (unsuccessfully) to stuff a panoply of Green New Deal measures into the corona-crisis relief bill — including extensions of the tax credits that have been driving the growth of solar and wind energy.  That Congressional Democrats would push so hard for solar and wind subsidies at such a critical time for the US economy is particularly galling for two reasons.  First, the wind industry already stands to collect some $33.75 billion in subsidies between now and 2029.  Second, wind-energy development in some of the most-heavily Democratic states in the country — Hawaii, California, New York and Vermont — has been effectively stopped due to local opposition.  To be sure, the Washington favor factory never sleeps.  But the American Wind Energy Association and its lobbyists deserve an Olympic gold medal for their utter lack of shame.

Whales Deafened By Offshore Wind Turbine Noise Die Stranded Onshore.  The wind industry has been slaughtering millions of birds, bats and insects for years; and offshore it's been killing off whales and dolphins, as well.  Energy power generation system takes its toll on the environment, but it's only the wind industry that claims moral superiority over all others.  That tenuous claim — which rests on the 'we're saving the planet' mantra chanted by the wind cult around the Globe — is becoming even harder to sustain with a growing avian and insect carcass count to its credit.  Then there's the mounting toll offshore.  Not for the first time, and not for the last time, wind turbine noise and vibration has clocked up Cetacean fatalities, messing with whale's sonar guidance and communication systems.

More than 13.9 million trees felled in Scotland for wind development, 2000-2019.  There is something very concerning about this and it is scarcely very green!

Wind Turbines Not Only Shred Birds But Are Piling Up Landfills.  As it turns out, wind energy may not be as eco-friendly as the environmentalists let on.  Not only are they 24/7 bird-killing machines, they are also now piling up in landfills because they cannot be recycled.  "The municipal landfill in Casper, Wyoming, is the final resting place of 870 blades whose days making renewable energy have come to end.  The severed fragments look like bleached whale bones nestled against one another," reports Bloomberg Green.  Even the disposing of a turbine blade expels tremendous energy, being that they have to be hauled away and must be sawed through with "a diamond-encrusted industrial saw to create three pieces small enough to be strapped to a tractor-trailer."

Wind power in France: a lie and a swindle?  The public's disenchantment with wind power is growing rapidly:  its supporters have become a minority.  More and more French people are concerned about the environmental and health damage and the blots on their country's famous landscapes as a result of its massive development.  They are also exasperated by the cavalier methods used to impose it, and the corruption of elected officials that too often accompanies it.  But the French still do not realize, due to the intense campaigns of disinformation on these subjects, how much wind generated electricity will actually cost them, without contributing to combating global warming, or doing away with nuclear reactors.  It will destroy more jobs than it creates.  This work explains why.  It also dismantles the structures of lies and financial scams that allow wind energy promoters to make money from it without worrying about its real efficiency or the human and environmental damage, just for their own financial or electoral benefit.

Turbines at Deer Lake may drain the lake.  [Scroll down]  A draft contract was drawn up by Calpine's lawyers which, if it had been accepted by Deer Lake residents, would have barred anyone living at the lake from opposing the wind turbines and would have committed the lake's residents to co-operating with Calpine, via its local subsidiary Bluestone, in obtaining State permits.  One section demands no opposition.  "Deer Lake, its Board Members and officers, serving in their official capacity, and members, agree that they (a) will not oppose the Project and (b) will cooperate with Bluestone's efforts to obtain approval of all permits and licenses necessary to construct and operate the Project."  That clause would effectively bar Deer Lake residents from exercising their constitutional right to free speech by forbidding any expression of opposition to the Calpine project.

Intermittent & Unreliable Wind & Solar The Greatest Subsidy Scam In History.  The so-called wind and solar 'industries' were built on lies, myths and propaganda and run on subsidies.  As wind power 'investor' Warren Buffett put it:  "We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms.  That's the only reason to build them.  They don't make sense without the tax credit."  Buffett might have continued, that it's the only reason anyone invests in them.  As to the lies, myths and propaganda, the spate of bushfires that have swept Queensland, NSW, Victoria and South Australian this summer have energized doomsday climate cultists who — without a shred of scientific evidence — pronounce, with godlike certitude, that those fires were all caused by Australia's failure to rein in its carbon dioxide gas emissions.  Ergo, those fires could have been wholly prevented had we only carpeted every inch of the Australian countryside with windmills and every rooftop with solar panels.  It's a sad indictment of Australia's journalistic tradition that the mainstream press not only repeats this nonsense ad nauseam, but magnifies it by berating any politician with the temerity to stick to the facts.

50,000 Tons Of Non-Recyclable Wind Turbine Blades Dumped In The Landfill.  [N]o one seemed to consider what to do with the massive amount of wind turbine blades once they reached the end of their lifespan.  Thus, the irony of the present-day Green Energy Movement is the dumping of thousands of tons of "non-recyclable" supposedly renewable wind turbine blades in the country's landfills.  Who would have thought?  What's even worse, is that the amount of wind turbine blades slated for waste disposal is forecasted to quadruple over the next fifteen years as a great deal more blades reach their 15-20 year lifespan.  Furthermore, the size and length of the newly installed wind turbine blades are now twice as large as they were 20-30 years ago.

It's time to hit the off switch for solar, wind power tax breaks.  The solar Investment Tax Credit is scheduled to wind down, which means special interests are pushing for an extension — part of an end-of-the-year grab bag of tax breaks known as a "tax extenders" bill.  A Republican Congress passed, and President George W. Bush signed, the Energy Policy Act of 2005, a wide-ranging effort to increase U.S. energy independence and security at a time of declining oil and natural gas production.  Two key components of the law were the solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC) and the Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind energy.  Both were reauthorized in 2015, again by a Republican Congress, as part of a deal to allow the United States to begin exporting crude oil.  But as Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, then chairman to the House Ways and Means Committee, points out, it was supposed to be a one-time extension, which is why he doesn't support the effort today.

The dangerous winds of trying to prevent climate change.  Wind turbines continue to be the most controversial of so-called "renewable" energy sources worldwide.  But, you say, wind is surely renewable.  It blows intermittently, but it's natural, free, renewable and climate-friendly.  That's certainly what we hear, almost constantly.  However, while the wind itself may be "renewable," the turbines, the raw materials that go into making them, and the lands they impact certainly are not.  And a new report says harnessing wind to generate electricity actually contributes to global warming!

New Jersey Doubles Down on Stupidity with Offshore Wind.  New Jersey has joined other Atlantic Coast states in increasing its commitment to construct offshore wind power.  Governor Murphy signed an executive order committing to 7,500 megawatts of offshore wind power by 2035 — more than double the goal he previously set of 3,500 megawatts by 2030.  In June, based on the previous goal, the state Board of Public Utilities approved a $1.6 billion, 1,100 megawatt wind-energy farm to be built about 15 miles off the coast of Atlantic City.  The state's public utilities board estimated that the project will result in an estimated monthly bill increase of $1.46 for residential customers, $13.05 for commercial customers and over $110 for industrial customers.

Bird Conservation Groups File Lawsuit in Federal Court Over Icebreaker Wind Project.  American Bird Conservancy (ABC) and Black Swamp Bird Observatory (BSBO) today filed suit in federal court against the U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Case 1:19-cv-03694).  The suit focuses on the agencies' failure to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Clean Water Act, respectively, during their evaluation of environmental impacts and alternatives associated with the Icebreaker Wind project.  Icebreaker would place a precedent-setting wind energy facility in Lake Erie, offshore of Cleveland, Ohio.  Constructing turbines in the proposed project site would pose substantial collision risks to the enormous numbers of birds that use the area throughout the year, including large concentrations of migrating songbirds, as well as Common Loons, globally significant populations of Red-breasted Mergansers, and other waterfowl.

'Green Energy' Capacities Are Overblown Hot Air.  Wind promoters aren't generally eager to mention some negative cost-benefit ratio drivers that warrant big "buyers beware" warnings.  They don't advertise, for example, that breezy intermittent outputs require access to a "shadow capacity" typically provided by an equal "spinning reserve" of natural gas-fueled turbines that enables utilities to balance power grids when wind conditions aren't optimum ... which is most of the time.  Such second-by-second grid management to insure uninterrupted power transfer becomes increasingly complex and inefficient as more and more intermittent sources are added to the power supply mix. [...] Wind turbines are also short on longevity, long on maintenance.  A major 2012 Edinburgh University study of nearly 3,000 on-shore British wind farms found that the turbines have a very brief 12 to 15 year operating life, not the 20 to 25 year lifespans applied in politicized government and industry projections.

When wind turbines die, the problems are just beginning.  Germany now has 29,000 wind towers.  The nightmare of scrappage and decontamination has already started, with 250MW decommissioned last year.  Close to 10,000 towers must be decommissioned by 2023.  One tactic has been to ship the toxic parts and rubble to corrupt African states to deal with.  As for the US, it will have more than 720,000 tons of blade material alone to dispose of by 2040, blades being a particularly enduring space-age construct.  Overall, the wind industry is blowing cold.  Australian wind operators' so-called Clean Energy Council bemoaned last September a 'collapse' in renewables investment in the first half of 2019.

10 Wind Turbine Fails.  [Video clip]

Claim: The Green Energy Lithium Rush is Destabilising South America.  Renewables are not exactly covering themselves in glory on the geopolitical stage.  Cobalt, a vital component of high capacity batteries, is extracted by teams of children working in dangerous mines operated by brutal Congolese warlords.  Chinese peasants suffering toxic pollution released by their hideous rare earth mine (rare Earths are used to produce high strength magnets, vital for efficient wind turbines).  Now we can add corruption and political instability in South America to the cost of renewables.

Top Canadian Energy Engineer — Eric Jelinski — Slams the Great Wind Power Fraud.  The wind is not available when we need energy the most, i.e. summer air-conditioning and winter heating.  The shoulder seasons have the most wind here, yet this is when air-conditioning and heating demands are minimal.  The power equation for wind results in 8 times the energy for a doubling of wind speed, and the excess energy has to be "dumped."  Storage systems are available, but prohibitively expensive.  Hythanation is possible, but wind turbines are not economic for hydrogen production given the added infrastructure relative to the cost of natural gas.  Wind turbines use 5 to 7 times the amount of concrete and steel vs. say a nuclear plant on a per Megawatt basis.  It will require some 10,000 wind turbines to replace the ~ 6000 MW of coal generation at 25% CF (capacity factor).  Back-up gas fired plants have to be added like plug-ins everywhere because the wind is not reliable.

Wind turbines [are] clearly not needed.  A recent example of the foregoing occurred on October 23rd when wind was blowing during the night and during the day.  IESO's "Generators Output and Capability Report" discloses wind was blowing!  Approximately 47,000 MWh of wind was accepted into the grid and about 50,650 MWh were curtailed.  So, wind could have delivered 97,650 MWh when Ontario demand averaged 13,910 MW and peaked at 16,235 MW for the day.  Contracted nuclear at 10,700 MW of capacity could have easily teamed up with some of the 8,000 MW of contracted hydro and supplied all our needs.  During high demand periods in the summer and winter months gas plants can easily supply additional needs when demand exceeds nuclear and hydro's capacity.  The IESO report also suggests we were steaming off nuclear (and paying for it) and probably spilling hydro (which we also pay for) but IESO don't disclose either of the latter two events.  To top things off we were paying gas plants to idle (around $2.5 million per day).  Many of them were originally contracted to back up wind and solar for when the wind isn't blowing or the sun doesn't shine.  The effect on ratepayers, in simple terms, is, we picked up the costs of wind's generation as well as the costs of curtailment.

The Giga And Terra Scam Of Offshore Wind Energy.  As I have said many times, wind and sunshine may be free, renewable, sustainable and eco-friendly.  But the turbines, solar panels, transmission lines, lands, raw materials and dead birds required to harness this widely dispersed, intermittent, weather-dependent energy to benefit humanity absolutely are not.  A single 1.8-MW onshore wind turbine requires over 1,000 tons of steel, copper, aluminum, rare earth elements, zinc, molybdenum, petroleum-based composites, reinforced concrete and other raw materials.  A 3-MW version requires 1,550 tons of these non-renewable materials.  By my rough calculations, replacing just the USA's current electricity generation, backup coal and natural gas power plants, gasoline-powered vehicles, factory furnaces, and other fossil fuel uses with wind turbines and backup batteries would require:  some 14 million 1.8-MW onshore turbines, sprawling across some 1.8 billion acres, some 15 billion tons of raw materials, thousands of new or expanded mines worldwide, and thousands of mostly fossil fuel-powered factories working 24/7/365 in various foreign countries (since we won't allow them in the USA) to manufacture all this equipment.

Was There Another Reason for Electricity Shutdowns in California?  The blades of the wind turbine are airfoils, just like the wings of an airplane.  Adjusting the pitch (angle) of the blades allows the rotor to maintain constant speed, which, in turn, allows the generator to maintain the constant speed it needs to safely deliver power to the grid.  However, there's a limit to blade pitch adjustment.  When the wind is blowing so hard that pitch adjustment is no longer possible, the turbine shuts down.  That's the cut-out speed.  Now consider how California's power generation profile has changed. [...] By 2018, the state's renewable portfolio had jumped to 43.8 percent of total generation, with wind and solar now accounting for 17.9 percent of total generation.  That's a lot of power to depend on from inherently unreliable sources.  Thus, it wouldn't be at all surprising to learn that PG&E didn't stop delivering power out of fear of starting fires, but because it knew it wouldn't have power to deliver once high winds shut down all those wind turbines.

Washington subsidies [are] not helping the wind industry.  Less than a year ago, the American Wind Energy Association had with great fanfare issued a press statement that as Bloomberg reported:  "America's wind farms are ready to go it alone." [...] Never mind.  Big Wind's change of heart was predictable because when this tax giveaway — which basically requires taxpayers to underwrite 30 percent of the cost of wind energy production — was first enacted, the renewable energy lobby promised that it would lift itself out of the federal wheelchair and walk on its own within five years.  But like clockwork, every five years they have come back to Congress pleading for an extension — much like Oliver with his porridge bowl asking:  "Please, sir, could I have some more."  What was especially interesting was why Big Wind thinks it is deserving of "more."

US Energy Reliability [is] Gone With the Wind.  The economy in Texas and nationally demands full-time electricity.  Wind only generates part-time electricity.  In West Texas this summer, on some hot and humid days it was so still there wasn't enough of a breeze to stir a leaf.  Hundreds of wind turbines stopped spinning.  When the Texas grid needed wind power the most, it was nowhere to be found.  The Texas electric power grid came perilously close to collapsing.  Electricity prices spiked from their normal range of $20 to $30 per megawatt-hour to $9,000 not once but twice.  The state teetered on the edge of rolling blackouts and no air conditioning for millions of families during triple digit temperatures.  Operators of the Texas grid issued alert after alert asking consumers to turn off devices and conserve power.  Texas is unlikely to be the only state that comes perilously close to electricity shortages.  Federal and state subsidies have made wind and solar power so cheap that they are displacing essential baseload sources of power that are capable of running when needed.

Why Wind Turbines Threaten Endangered Species With Extinction.  In many countries, wind turbines pose the single greatest threat to bats after habitat loss and white-nose syndrome.  In some places such as Texas, where white-nose syndrome, a deadly fungus, has only recently arrived, wind turbines are the single greatest threat to bats.  And scientists say wind turbines are the single greatest human threat to migratory bats, which live in different habitats during summer and winter months.  Some, like the hoary bat, fly south to Mexico during the winter as insects become more scarce in North America.  In 2017, a team of scientists warned that the hoary bat, a migratory species, could go extinct if the expansion of wind farms continues.

It Costs $532,000 to Decommission A Single Wind Turbine.  It looks like Minnesota will have a very expensive mess to clean up when the wind turbines currently operating in the state reach the end of their 20 year useful lifetimes.  According to utility documents filed by Xcel Energy for it's Nobles Wind facility, it will cost approximately $445,000 (in 2009 dollars) per turbine to decommission the wind facility.  This means it would cost $532,000 per turbine (in 2019 dollars) for each of the 134 turbines in operation at this facility, bringing the total cost of decommissioning the Nobles project to $71 million.  However, Xcel also stated these estimates were conservative, meaning this likely represents the high-end cost of decommissioning.

North American bird population has dropped by 3 billion since 1970, study reveals.  There are almost 3 billion fewer birds in the United States and Canada now than in 1970, according to a disturbing new study.  That amounts to a 29 percent drop in the avian population over the past half-century.  "Three billion is a punch in the gut," Peter Marra, a conservation biologist at Georgetown University, told Science News.  "Our study is a wake-up call.  We're experiencing an ecological crisis."

Wind turbine infrasound articles became too hot for the Sierra Club to handle.  [A]fter working without any compensation for months to uncover the most revealing, current scholarly studies, and thought-provoking news reports on the known health hazards associated with infrasound from industrial wind turbines, a two-part series of articles that was written at the Sierra Club's request was suddenly retracted from one of their club's magazines.  Moreover, it was announced that the reason would not be revealed until December.  This was a shocking outcome, especially considering that the articles had been the idea of the magazine's editor, who along with a recruited author had painstakingly scrutinized, double-checked, and triple-checked every one of the extensive sources for the two-part article, and had verified not only the legitimacy of the sources, but also authenticated the interpretation of those reports.

2.9 Billion Bird Deaths Linked to Solar, Wind.  Feathers at the foot of a wind turbine.  Bird droppings at the base of a solar panel.  A coroner could use these signs to establish the cause of mass bird death.  And a novelist could pen a murder mystery titled:  Death by Renewable Energy.  In 1969, there were far more active coal plants in America than today.  However, in 1969, there were also 2.9 billion more birds in America.  In the last decade alone, 289 coal plants have closed — a 40 percent reduction.  Meanwhile, wind turbines and solar panels are going up at a record pace and scientists are reporting a "full-blown crisis" in the disappearance of 29 percent of North American birds.

Report blames wind turbines for bird slaughter.  A report from the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) says wind turbines are "doing great harm to wildlife" as European countries try to cut emissions to comply with 2030 environment targets.  The GWPF, which says it is neutral on this issue of renewable energy, argued that "many environmental problems come with every form of energy generation".  For the new target of achieving 65 percent of the German electricity needs from renewables by 2030, the country needs five new 3-megawatt plants, the Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) said.  "And even that will only be enough if power consumption does not increase," said Achim Dercks, the DIHK's deputy general manager.

Wind Turbines Kill Bats - Mosquito Disease Encephalitis Increased.  Eastern Massachusetts has the majority of commercial megawatt wind turbines in Massachusetts.  The population may now be paying the price for killing all the bats.  Eastern Equine Encephalitis is at critical or high risk levels in 37 towns in Massachusetts, many of them in the southeastern [part of] Massachusetts[.]  One bat can catch up to 1,000 mosquito-sized insects in a single hour.

FHSU prof:  Bats facing killoffs from wind turbines, disease.  Wind turbines are thought of as environment-friendly sources of energy, but for bats, they are a death trap.  Amanda Adams, instructor of biology at Fort Hays State University, talked to a capacity crowd Monday night about the plight of the bats during a FHSU Science Cafe presentation titled "Bats:  The Rock Stars of the Night."  Adams said bats are being killed by the millions by wind turbines.  Curious creatures, the bats are drawn to the turbines, where they are either struck or killed by a low pressure field that surrounds the turbines.

Unfurling The Waste Problem Caused By Wind Energy.  [Scroll down]  Ninety percent of a turbine's parts can be recycled or sold, according to Van Vleet, but the blades, made of a tough but pliable mix of resin and fiberglass — similar to what spaceship parts are made from — are a different story.  "The blades are kind of a dud because they have no value," he said.  Decommissioned blades are also notoriously difficult and expensive to transport.  They can be anywhere from 100 to 300 feet long and need to be cut up onsite before getting trucked away on specialized equipment — which costs money — to the landfill.

One day the wind stopped blowing all over Texas, and this happened:
Sometimes, a Greener Grid Means a 40,000% Spike in Power Prices.  The road to a world powered by renewable energy is littered with unintended consequences.  Like a 40,000% surge in electricity prices.  Texas power prices jumped from less than $15 to as much as $9,000 a megawatt-hour this month as coal plant retirements and weak winds left the region on the brink of blackouts during a heat wave.  It's a phenomenon playing out worldwide.  Germany averted three blackouts of its own in June and has seen prices both spike and plunge below zero within days as it swaps out coal and nuclear energy for wind and solar.  In the U.K., more than a million homes lost power on Aug. 9, in part because a wind farm tripped offline.

The Editor says...
Seems to me that when the wholesale price jumps above $1000 per megawatt-hour, it would be profitable to start up an array of well-placed 2000-kW diesel generators. [1] [2] [3] [4]

The Environmental Fiasco of Wind Energy.  Wind turbines only last for around 20 years, so many of them are now wearing out.  That raises serious questions about disposal of defunct wind turbine parts.  The turbines' giant blades are not recyclable, so they must be dumped in landfills.

Wind bids rigged for unions.  Bidders seeking state subsidies likely worth billions of dollars to build and operate wind turbines off New York City and Long Island were required to sign project labor agreements (PLAs).  These are pacts with trade unions that dictate hours, pay and other rules on construction projects — including requirements that contractors and subcontractors hire most, if not all, trade workers through union hiring halls.  Requiring bidders to sign PLAs is an effective and costly way for politicians to pay back trade unions that back their elections with volunteers and campaign contributions.

Also posted under Politicians and unions exchange favors constantly.

Former National Grid director says ministers should impose limits new wind and solar farms to help avoid power cuts.  Ministers should impose limits on the construction of new wind and solar farms to help avoid a nationwide blackout, according to a former director of National Grid.  Colin Gibson, who was power network director of Britain's electricity system, claimed that some existing turbines and solar panels may have to be disconnected, and new developments restricted, to "secure" the system after major power cuts earlier this month.

Renewable Energy Hits the Wall.  Wind and solar are erratic sources of energy.  The output depends on the weather.  Solar doesn't work at night.  Because they are erratic, there have to be backup plants, generally natural gas plants, that balance the erratic flow of electricity from wind or solar. [...] As long as the percentage of electricity that comes from wind or solar is small, the grid can handle the erratic nature of that electricity.  But if the penetration becomes large, severe problems start to emerge.  Solar power is strongest in the middle of the day and weakens toward the end of the day.  But the late afternoon and early evening, when solar is dying, are when power usage peaks in many locations.

Turbines Tossed Into Dump Stirs Debate on Wind's Dirty Downside.  Wind turbines may be carbon-free, but they're not recyclable.  A photograph of dozens of giant turbine blades dumped into a Wyoming landfill touched off a debate Wednesday on Twitter about wind power's environmental drawbacks.  The argument may be only beginning.  Fiberglass turbine blades — which in some cases are as long a football field — aren't easy to recycle.  And with BloombergNEF expecting up to 2 gigawatts worth of turbines to be refitted this year and next, there could be heaps more headed for dumps.

Wind Turbine Blades Going Into the Casper Landfill.  The disposal of approximately 1,000 wind turbine blades at the Casper Regional Landfill will generate an estimated $675,485.  The disposal project began this summer and is expected to conclude in the spring, according to Casper Solid Waste Division Manager Cynthia Langston. [...] 90% of wind turbine material is recyclable, according to Langston.  Only the blades and the motor housing are non-recyclable because they are made from fiberglass.

More about Birds and Wind Turbines.  Experience overseas suggests that, apart from hydro power, renewables are unreliable, uneconomical and very unfriendly to the environment they are claimed to protect.  Evidence from places investing heavily in renewables such as Denmark, Germany and California demonstrates they are intermittent power generators needing back-up from conventional energy sources.  South Australia found this out the hard way earlier this year, when heatwaves caused widespread blackouts there (and in neighbouring Victoria). That giant back-up battery Elon Musk sold the former Labor government at undisclosed and, presumably, enormous cost, failed after a few hours and they had to fire up expensive diesel generators to keep the lights on.  Studies on wind farms have raised possible serious human health concerns, and a devastating effect on birdlife.

Wind Energy [is] Collapsing in Germany.  One of the worst features of both wind and solar energy is that they are terrible for the environment.  They use up an enormous amount of land that otherwise would be available for agriculture, development or recreation.  They are eyesores.  And they kill huge quantities of wildlife.

Wind Farm Back-of-the-Envelope Economic Analysis.  We visited a wind farm in southern Utah recently.  I've always been curious about the costs, profitability, and physical size of these things as well as the footprint and environmental impact.  I had 3 meetings with the man in charge of maintenance of the wind farm, a landowner who leases land accommodating 4 of the turbines, and a man who works in the industry in Colorado — and did some internet/newspaper research.  The maintenance superintendent told me they have 27 towers, that the installation cost was about $2 million each, and that each turbine is rated at 2.3 megawatts/hr but produces an average of 1.3 megawatts/hr (=1,300 kW/hr).  The blades are 187 ft long so the total height is nearly 400 feet high, and the tower at the base is about 13 ft in diameter encapsulated in huge quantity of concrete.  The project pays about $1 million in taxes to the community each year and has a 20-year lease.

What It Will Take for the Wind and Solar Industries to Collapse.  The bankruptcy of PG&E, the largest California utility, has created some cracks in the façade.  A bankruptcy judge has ruled that cancelation of up to $40 billion in long-term energy contracts is a possibility.  These contracts are not essential or needed to preserve the supply of electricity because they are mostly for wind or solar electricity supply that varies with the weather and can't be counted on.  As a consequence, there has to exist and does exist the necessary infrastructure to supply the electricity needs without the wind or solar energy.  Probably the judge will be overruled for political reasons, or the state will step in with a bailout.  Utilities have to keep operating, no matter what.  Ditching wind and solar contracts would make California politicians look foolish because they have long touted wind and solar as the future of energy.

Cost Shifting is the Name of the Game Regarding Wind and Solar.  Per Economics 101, no cost ever disappears.  Eventually, the various shifted wind and solar costs, plus direct and indirect wind and solar subsidies, would increase the prices of energy and of other goods and services.  Efficiency and productivity improvements elsewhere in the energy sector, and other sectors of the economy, may partially, or completely, offset such increases.

A Climate Conundrum:  The Wind Farm vs. the Eagle's Nest.  Galloo Island, in Lake Ontario, seemed to be a prime spot for a wind farm.  It is mostly deserted and sits about six miles offshore in northern New York, so few people were likely to be bothered by the looming turbines and their relentless whoosh.  Then a hunter spotted an eagle's nest.  The discovery kicked off a fight over the safety of birds and accusations of a cover-up that have stalled the project.  A judge has questioned the integrity of one of the country's largest wind farm developers, and a pair of eagles seems to have disappeared.

Inefficiency and Hazardous Nature of Wind Energy Impedes Renewable Crusade.  It is a well known fact that wind energy is intermittent — i.e., it can generate stable electricity only when the wind speed is at an optimum level.  This is known as rated wind speed, which is around 26 [to] 30 miles per hour, or 12 [to] 14 meters per second.  A little slower, and the generation is inefficient.  A little faster, and turbines risk getting damaged.  Unfortunately, average wind speeds are not stable, so neither is the energy generated.  Wind changes direction and speed minute by minute for various reasons.  Furthermore, geographical regions have different wind-generating capabilities during different seasons.  Some turbines remain non-operational for months when average wind speeds are lower than 10 miles per hour.  Energy generation can also be affected by cold weather and storms.

The Energy Solution That Should Make Everyone Happy.  Wind and solar are subsidized approximately 70% by the federal government.  The state quotas are effectively an additional subsidy because the electric utilities have to agree to long-term contracts with wind and solar promoters in order to meet their quotas.  The unsolvable problem with both wind and solar is that these are erratic sources of electricity that come and go according the wind and sun.  As a consequence, the electricity they supply is a supplement that can't be counted on.  When wind or solar electricity is flowing, some fuel is saved in the main fossil fuel plants, usually natural gas-powered plants.  Solar has the additional problem that most electricity is delivered at the wrong time — in the middle of the day, not in the early evening, when it is needed.  For technical reasons, it would be difficult and expensive to get to 50% renewable electricity by 2030 by depending mostly on wind and solar.  The wind and solar people have schemes such as new subsidies for batteries, but nothing is on the horizon that will cure the huge problems of wind and solar.

Wind farms are the 'new apex predators': Blades kill off 75% of buzzards, hawks and kites that live nearby, study shows.  Wind turbines are the world's new 'apex predators', wiping out buzzards, hawks and other carnivorous birds at the top of the food chain, say scientists.  A study of wind farms in India found that predatory bird numbers drop by three quarters in areas around the turbines.  This is having a 'ripple effect' across the food chain, with small mammals and reptiles adjusting their behaviour as their natural predators disappear from the skies.  Birds and bats were assumed to be most vulnerable to the rise of the landscape-blotting machines.  But their impact is reverberating across species, experts warned, upsetting nature's delicate balance.

We Shouldn't Be Surprised Renewables Make Energy Expensive Since That's Always Been The Greens' Goal.  [T]he output of solar panels declines one percent every year, for inherently physical reasons, and they as well as wind turbines are replaced roughly every two decades.  As for circularity, solar panels and wind turbines are rarely recycled because the energy and labor required to do so are much more expensive than just buying raw materials.  As a result, the vast majority of solar panels and wind turbines are either sent to landfills or join the global electronic waste stream where they are dumped on poor communities in developing nations.  And that's just at the level of the solar and wind equipment.  At a societal level, the value of energy from solar and wind declines the more of it we add to the electrical grid.  The underlying reason is physical.  Solar and wind produce too much energy when we don't need it and not enough when we do.

'Low-Cost' Renewable Energy Is Breathtakingly Expensive.  [Scroll down]  We don't need to wait around for decades to learn how this program would work in practice.  At least some of these wild claims are testable today by examining energy prices in places that have already deployed large measures of renewable energy. [...] Kansas is the U.S. state with the highest degree of renewable energy penetration in 2018.  As the chart [left] shows, the state began deploying wind power at a furious pace beginning in 2008.  (Note:  Kansas first deployed wind power in 2001, but the state saw only token deployments until 2008.)  At the beginning of 2008, year-to-date all-sector rates were below 73% of the U.S. average.  But by the end of 2018, Kansas rates were essentially equivalent to the national average.  As the state increased wind capacity by nearly a factor of six, its rates climbed more than 7.8 times faster than the average of the 45 states with the lowest degree of renewable energy penetration.

Costly Wind Power Menaces Man and Nature.  Wind turbines are highly inefficient.  Large industrial wind turbines (IWT) typically produce about 2.5 megawatts of power when wind speed is between about 8 and 25 miles per hour.  However, most of the time it's not, even at the best locations.  Today's wind farms have a 30 [to] 40% average "capacity factor."  That means their average annual output is only 30 [to] 40% of "nameplate" capacity, or what they would produce if the wind were blowing 8 [to] 25 mph 24/7/365.  As we erect more turbines, they must be placed in less optimal locations, and capacity numbers will drop, perhaps dramatically.  And no one can predict when they will generate electricity.

Brown, others say DoD vindicates concerns about wind turbines and military operations.  Sen. Harry Brown, R-Onslow, is convinced large wind energy projects, such as the Amazon Wind Farm near Elizabeth City, hinder the military's ability to conduct low-level flight training missions in North Carolina.  He also thinks construction of new wind facilities could hurt the state in a future Base Realignment and Closing process. [...] Brown's Senate Bill 377, the Military Base Protection Act, would try to block wind-energy encroachment on military facilities.  It bans new wind energy projects shown on a map authorized by the General Assembly and developed with military officials.

Solar and wind struggle to compete against a flood of cheap natural gas.  [A]s utilities replace retiring coal assets in PJM, coal capacity has been replaced at almost a one-for-one rate with new combined-cycle natural-gas generation.  Over the last several years, 29 gigawatts of retiring coal plants in PJM have been replaced with 23 gigawatts of natural gas, according to a recent Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables webinar.

The Editor says...
PJM is the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland Interconnection, which is a regional power grid.

Scientists Are Mapping the Industrial Hums That Travel Through the Earth.  Across the U.S., industrial machinery creates a constant underground hum that sends vibrations through the surface of the Earth.  Scientists are now mapping that subterranean humming. [...] The industrial "hum" is much like a hum you hear when you walk into a room where a fan is running — a persistent signal, but much lower in frequency.  Wind turbines and turbines in hydroelectric systems can produce these hums, which can get in the way when you're trying to study earthquakes, scientist Omar Marcillo from Los Alamos National Laboratory said in a press statement.  Indeed, the researchers first noticed the hum when it showed up in data about ocean storms.

The Reason Renewables Can't Power Modern Civilization Is Because They Were Never Meant To.  Over the last decade, journalists have held up Germany's renewables energy transition, the Energiewende, as an environmental model for the world.  "Many poor countries, once intent on building coal-fired power plants to bring electricity to their people, are discussing whether they might leapfrog the fossil age and build clean grids from the outset," thanks to the Energiewende, wrote a New York Times reporter in 2014.  With Germany as inspiration, the United Nations and World Bank poured billions into renewables like wind, solar, and hydro in developing nations like Kenya.  But then, last year, Germany was forced to acknowledge that it had to delay its phase-out of coal, and would not meet its 2020 greenhouse gas reduction commitments.  It announced plans to bulldoze an ancient church and forest in order to get at the coal underneath it.

The Green New Deal Comes to New York.  [Scroll down]  Bill de Blasio claimed that the city would switch completely to 'renewables' in only 5 years.  That would be a spectacular achievement since neither solar nor wind energy work all that well in New York.  New York ranks 47 out of 50 states in average sunlight hours at only 3.79.  It's windier than it is sunnier, but still only comes in at 28 out of 50 with an average annual windspeed of 0.05 miles per hours [sic].  Turbines need winds of 10 miles an hour to start working and city winds are not only erratic, when they blow, they come from different directions, making conventional wind energy setups all but useless.  The New York Times even noted that the city's turbines were for show, with the builder of the city's first wind turbine building installation admitting that they barely did anything.

More wind power getting 'stuck' upstate.  The state isn't harvesting increasing amounts of wind energy because it can't be delivered to power-hungry downstate where it is needed, and if more wind farms go up that problem will only grow worse unless new transmission lines are built. [...] Last year, there were about 73 megawatt hours of lost wind energy, according to the 2019 ISO annual report, or enough to power nearly 7,000 average homes for a year.  That is up from about 47 megawatt hours in 2017, and 21.5 megawatt hours in 2016. Combined, that was enough power for 20,000 homes for a year.

The Editor says...
Windmills produce power in relatively short bursts.  If there is an overabundance of power one day, that energy can't be stored (efficiently and easily) to be used next week when the wind is calm.  Thus, the claim that some quantity of "lost" power could have run "20,000 homes for a year" is specious:  That power wouldn't anything for a whole year, because there's no mechanism in place to spread it out over a year.

Minnesota's Wind Farms Are Being Rebuilt to Capture More Subsidies.  The Lake Benton Wind (LBW) Farm in southern Minnesota is being retooled to improve turbine performance and reliability, but most importantly, it is being rebuilt to generate federal production tax credits.  According to North American Wind Power, in 2017, ALLETE Clean Energy announced an $80 million project that includes replacing select blades, gearboxes and generators on turbines at the Lake Benton wind farm in Minnesota's Lincoln County and the Storm Lake I and II wind farms in Iowa's Buena Vista and Cherokee counties.  The Lake Benton 1 facility was placed into service in 1998, and Lake Benton 2 was placed into service in 1999.  Output from these facilities has been steadily declining since the early 2000's, the earliest years statistics are available from the Energy Information Administration.

The Green New Deal Will Hit the Poor With Higher Energy Costs.  The Green New Deal's goal is to move America to zero carbon emissions in 10 years.  "That's a goal you could only imagine possible if you have no idea how energy is produced," James Meigs, former editor of Popular Mechanics magazine, says in my latest video.  "Renewable is so inconsistent," he adds.  "You can't just put in wind turbines and solar panels.  You have to build all this infrastructure to connect them with energy consumers."  Because wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine, "renewable" energy requires many more transmission lines, and bigger batteries.  Unfortunately, says Meigs:  "You have to mine materials for batteries.  Those mines are environmentally hazardous.  Disposing of batteries is hazardous."  "Batteries are a lousy way to store energy," adds physicist Mark Mills, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.  Also, the ingredients of green energy, like battery packs, are far from green.

Neighbors in eastern Iowa fight to bring down turbines — and win.  Developers who invested $11 million to install three wind turbines in eastern Iowa are tearing them down, after losing a legal battle waged by nearby residents.  It's only the second time nationally a judge has ordered wind turbines to be torn down and a first in Iowa.  "It's great.  We love it," said Cheyney Hershey, whose young family lives near the turbines.  "You can't sit outside on the deck and have a conversation without the constant thumping of the blades going round."  The noise can even be heard inside his home, Hershey said:  "There was nowhere to get away from them."

Wind turbine fire in Huron County is out.  Firefighters and deputies responded to a wind turbine that caught fire near the village of Elkton.  Jeff Smith, an Elkton village official, said the fire, which broke out on April 1, is 300 feet in the air and crews couldn't reach it to extinguish the blaze. [...] Jared Schuette owns the property where the wind turbine is located, he said that this is quite an ordeal because this has never happened before.

Wind Turbines and Solar Panels Suspected of Killing Hundreds of Cows in France.  In recent years, cattle farmers in France's Brittany region have lost hundreds of cows to deaths that veterinarians simply cannot explain.  After running various tests on their land, some now claim that the solar panels and wind turbines in the area are releasing too much electricity into the ground, which is slowly killing their animals. [...] According to local farmer Patrick Le Nechet, his cattle just started losing weight a few years back and many of them ultimately died.  The strange thing was that the animals didn't seem to be suffering from any diseases and the veterinarians couldn't explain the cause of death.  After conducting his own investigation, Le Nechet concluded that the mysterious deaths started occurring around the time that a photovoltaic installation appeared in the area.

Battery Foolishness in Florida.  The largest electric utility in Florida is proposing building the world's largest battery to smooth the output of solar energy installations.  Wind and solar energy are erratic.  Output depends on when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.  If only electricity could be economically stored, wind and solar would be a lot more practical, or at least, less impracticable.  With storage, when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, electricity could be stored for use when the wind or solar was temporarily dead in the water.  There are two methods of storing electricity that are not entirely inadequate: pumped storage and lithium batteries. [...] Batteries are great for computers, cellphones and portable drills.  They are even semi-practical for automobiles like Tesla's products.  But batteries are desperately expensive for smoothing out wind or solar energy.

Homeowners win battle to have noisy wind turbines taken down.  Earlier this week the press was having a field day with some of President Trump's complaints about noise from wind turbines.  The fact checkers were busily tracking down expert opinions to ruffle the President's feathers over it.  And while the idea that wind turbine noise causes cancer is certainly dubious at best, that doesn't mean that the thumping of the turbines isn't causing problems.

Does General Electric Know What It Is Doing?  Wind or solar would become competitive if the price per kilowatt were reduced by approximately 70%.  A 70% reduction is not remotely possible in the foreseeable future.  The National Renewable Energy Laboratory projects that the cost of wind power will decline by 8% over the next 10 years.  Wind or solar is supplementary and erratic power.  Large wind installations with thousands of turbines erratically increase and decrease power output.  Output of less than 5% of capacity is common in the Texas wind system.  Solar power does not work at night or when it is cloudy, and often it dies in the early evening, just as power demand reaches a maximum.  If aliens suddenly carried away all the wind turbines in the United States, the electric grid would carry on without a ripple, using the backup plants.  The economic contribution of wind or solar is a reduction in fuel consumption in the backup plants when the wind or solar is generating electricity.  In a natural-gas plant the fuel to generate a kilowatt hour of electricity costs about two cents.  But to generate a kilowatt hour with wind or solar costs about seven cents in favorable locations.  (The cost for wind and solar is almost the same.)  The cost is seven cents, the benefit is two cents, so the subsidy is five cents per kilowatt hour.  Wind or solar would be competitive only if the seven-cent cost per kilowatt hour could be reduced to two cents, a 70% reduction.

"Clean" Energy? What's That?  Shills for wind- and solar-derived energy refer to such sources as "green" or "clean."  But are they really?  In what sense?  And compared to what?  This video by the Clear Energy Alliance makes the case that wind and solar energy are not notably cleaner than fossil fuels, pollution from which has declined rapidly.  Actually, the video is understated.  It could have been more hard-hitting, I think, with a sharper focus on the (African and Chinese) mining and (Chinese) manufacturing that go into producing wind turbines and solar panels.  [Video clip]

Developer seeks to bury transmission lines along railroad corridors.  While proposed long-distance, high-voltage transmission projects continue to be stymied by hostile landowners and disapproving state regulators, a new transmission strategy is taking root in the Midwest.  The Direct Connect Development Company has been working on a plan for an underground transmission line along existing railroad tracks from north-central Iowa to the Chicago area.  The goal is to provide a way to move additional wind energy from Iowa, the Dakotas and Minnesota to a transfer point in the Chicago area.  From there, the power could move farther east into regions with more electricity demand.  And because the line with a capacity of 2,100 megawatts would be mostly invisible, it might elude some of the problems that have dogged transmission lines that would tower overhead while crossing Midwestern farm fields.

The Editor says...
I would hate to be the first guy to discover this "mostly invisible" transmission line with a backhoe.  Underground inter-city transmission lines are very expensive, and usually seen only in Europe.  For example, a link that goes under the English Channel with a 51-km cable cost 315 million Euros.  That's 6.9 million Euros per kilometer.  Do the math and make the conversions to miles and dollars, and at the same cost per mile, a similar transmission line from Waterloo, Iowa, to Chicago (301 miles) would cost at least $3.35 billion dollars.  Probably much more, because the ElecLink cable was constructed in an existing tunnel.  It would be far better and cheaper to forget about burying the cable.  It would be even better and cheaper to build another power plant in Chicago and forget about the windmills.

Wind & solar are always ruinously expensive.  South Africa faces energy calamity on two fronts.  First is the disaster of Eskom.  Second, and potentially worse, is the disaster of our REIPPPP (Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers' Procurement Programme) and our lunatic IRP 2018 (Integrated Resource Plan).  The IRP is the mandatory plan laid down by the Department of Energy for our electricity supply until 2030.  What it calls the "least cost" option is in fact the most expensive possible option, a mix of wind, solar and imported gas.  If implemented, it would shut down the South African economy.  A very similar plan was actually implemented in South Australia and shows us what to expect in the real world.  Driven by green ideology, South Australia shut down coal stations, which had been providing cheap, reliable electricity, and built a lot of wind turbines and some solar power.  Australia, unlike us, has an abundance of cheap gas.  The result was soaring electricity prices to final customers and two total state black-outs.  At one point in July 2016, the price of electricity reached $14/kWh.

Democratic Presidential Candidates Perfect Orwell's Language Manipulation.  Solar and wind now constitute some 3% of energy production in the U.S. To go from 3% to 60% — the percentage not covered by nuclear and hydro — while at the same time meeting rising energy demands, projected to grow by 40% by 2050, would be a colossal undertaking.  It would entail paving the entire state of Arizona in solar panels and constructing a wall of windmills from West Texas to North Dakota.  That construction would entail environmental damage far in excess of anything that continued reliance on fossil fuels might do.  It would also kill off entire industries, for which millions of workers have been trained.

Kansas property owners lash out at wind farms in support of proposed restrictions.  he law would require a 1.5-mile cushion between residential homes and wind turbines.  Echoing the concerns of those who testified in support of the restrictions, Brown said she fears health problems linked by studies to low-frequency sounds produced by wind generators.  If Reno County officials approve a deal with NextEra Energy, she said, her family's nine-acre property will be in the middle of an industrial wind facility of more than 80 turbines.

Swiss Daily NZZ: More Than 1000 Citizen Wind Energy Protest Groups — Germany "On Path To The Unknown".  Although resistance to littering the landscape with industrial wind turbines continues to grow strongly and the power grid is becoming ever more unstable, the German government refuses to back off its expansion of wind and solar energy. [...] It started 28 years ago, when the German government enacted a law that forced power companies to buy up any green power produced, pay exorbitant prices for it and feed it into the power grid whether it was needed or not.  Over time the installation of solar panels and wind turbines exploded and today many parts of the countryside have become littered with unsightly wind parks.

Wind turbines can create interference, meteorologists say.  Check the weather app on your smartphone in the middle of a clear day, and you might be surprised to see weather conditions forming in the northwest part of Macon County.  That's not a sign of inclement weather.  Rather, meteorologists say, it is a side effect of new wind farms cropping up across Central Illinois.  The massive size of the turbines, sometimes taller than 400 feet, and the wind they generate can create interference on nearby Doppler radar, said Chris Miller, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Lincoln.

Green Electricity Grid Collapses During Aussie Heatwave.  Thanks to the renewable supply duck neck (power only arrives when it isn't needed), even during optimum weather, renewable electricity is useless for supplying households during heatwaves.  You can have reliable electricity or you can have renewable electricity but you can't have both.

Wharton Commissioners Aren't Big Fans of Subsidies.  The El Campo Leader News reports that the Commissioners Court this week rejected the effort of a proposed wind farm to get Chapter 312 tax abatements from the residents of Wharton County:  The Wharton County Commissioners Court unanimously decided not to move forward with a 312 tax abatement application from Wharton Wind, LLC during its Monday [1/14/2019] session.  The 5-0 decision came in front of dozens of people who packed the meeting room inside the Wharton County Annex Building in Wharton.

New York State and Renewables.  Governor Cuomo's energy plan for New York includes investment in wind and solar power.  New York has poor wind potential compared to Midwestern states.  New York solar potential is about 30% less than in sunny Southwestern locations.  As a consequence, green energy in New York will be even more overpriced than it is in favorable locations.  In every state, wind and solar are absolutely and totally useless.  In New York, they are even more useless.  Wind and solar installations are built only because there are huge subsidies covering 70% of the cost.  Neither are wind and solar cost-effective ways of reducing CO2 emissions.

Green New Deal:  A Crazy, Expensive Mess.  Producing 100 percent of electricity from renewable sources is a practical impossibility in the near future.  Scientists doubt it would be achievable by 2050, let alone 2029, the deadline Democrats would set.  Such a massive overhaul in power generation would require the closure and replacement of about 83 percent of U.S. electricity generation, including all coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants.  While nuclear energy does not release carbon dioxide, it is not renewable and would not be allowed under the Green New Deal.  Today, renewable electricity — mainly wind, solar, and hydroelectric — provides only 17 percent of American electricity.

Another report reluctantly admits that 'green' energy is a disastrous flop.  Amid hundreds of graphs, charts and tables in the latest World Energy Outlook (WEO) released last week by the International Energy Agency, there is one fundamental piece of information that you have to work out for yourself: the percentage of total global primary energy demand provided by wind and solar.  The answer is 1.1 percent.  The policy mountains have laboured and brought forth not just a mouse, but — as the report reluctantly acknowledges — an enormously disruptive mouse.  The International Energy Agency (IEA) has in recent years become an increasingly schizophrenic organization.  As both a source of energy information and a shill for the UN's climate-focused sustainable development agenda, it has to talk up the transition to a low-carbon future while simultaneously reporting that it's not happening.  But it will!

Wind Power Installation Amplifies The Growth Of Fossil Fuel Energies.  Wind turbines cannot produce energy when the wind is not blowing.  Consequently, wind power routinely needs to be backed up by reliable and immediately-available energy sources — which are often fossil fuels-based (gas, oil, coal).  So as wind power installation expands across the world, more fossil fuel plants will need to be built to back them up.  A new observational analysis using data from 10 European Union countries affirms the rather devastating conclusion that wind power installation preserves fossil fuel dependency because for every 1% increase in the installed capacity of wind power there is a concomitant ~0.25% increase in the need for more electricity generation from fossil fuels.

Whale Deaths And Wind Farms — The Facts That Cannot Be Ignored.  This year alone, it is estimated that upwards of 1000 whales have died around the coasts of the UK and Ireland in an exceptionally high mortality event.  In 2017, when some Minke whales were washed up on the East coast of England, it was suggested that noise from nearby offshore wind farms had affected the animals' delicate echolocation mechanisms, but the idea was quickly ridiculed by 'experts' even though it appeared to be a perfectly reasonable suggestion, one that should have at least been investigated further.

Upwind wind farms can reduce the energy production of downwind neighbor turbines.  As onshore and offshore wind energy farms have proliferated in recent years, new research highlights a previously underexplored consequence: a wake effect from upwind wind farms that can reduce the energy production of downwind neighbor turbines.  The study, by University of Colorado Boulder (CU-Boulder) scientists working with University of Denver and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) researchers, combines economic analysis with atmospheric modeling to demonstrate that these wake effects — which occur when groups of turbines reduce wind speed for up to several miles behind them — are measurable and predictable, yet remain largely overlooked.

Court Orders Three Iowa Wind Turbines Dismantled.  A court in Iowa has ordered three wind turbines in Fayette County, Iowa be dismantled by December 9. Local residents are standing outside watching them come down and cheering.  What's going on?  Some of it has to do with NIMBY, some of it has to do with money, and some of it has to do with the "city vs. country" divide that helped propel the current president into office.  The dispute comes down to whether or not the developers who put up the wind turbines had a proper building permit.  The court ruled they did not.

Renewably Useless:  Dynamite Needed.  Having written an entire book about wind and solar power I consider myself an expert.  My conclusion is that wind and solar are totally useless for generating utility scale power fed into the electric grid.  They are totally useless because they have to be subsidized, approximately 70% for utility scale installations, and 90% for residential rooftop solar installations.  In other words their economic value is approximately 10% to 30% of their cost.  The subsidy needed to support wind or solar is paid by taxpayers and utility customers.  The right thing to do is to plow under or dynamite the wind and solar installations.  But, wind and solar are still being built, because it is in the financial interest of important people.  The public and the media are fooled into thinking that wind and solar are useful, due to pervasive propaganda and faulty analysis.

Is Wind Power Actually Cheaper Than Coal Fired Power?  Well, No!  Virtually every commentator who even mentions renewable power generation these days will tell you that renewable power generation is cheaper than coal fired power, but is this really the case?  It has puzzled me for a long time now how they can get away with saying that, and not actually taking the time to check the real data to see if it's true at all.

Ontarians living too close to wind turbines experiencing cardiac instability.  On October 7, 2018 I received an alarming letter from a citizen in rural Ontario.  The title was:  "Cardiac instability caused by infrasound radiation from industrial wind turbines".  This letter was sent to Ontario government people, including yourself, with no response.  I include an excerpt of the letter below with permission of the author. [...]

Exposed: A Key Element of the Wind Energy Fraud.  In Wisconsin, a wind turbine farm is being decommissioned and disassembled after only 20 years of operation.  It turns out that this is typical. [...] This is the point:  the federal government produces figures on the "levelized cost of energy," comparing coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, solar and so on.  Most people naively assume that the government's numbers are authoritative.  In fact, as usual when it comes to energy, the government's thumb is firmly on the scale in favor of crony energy that funds politicians.

Another One Bites the Dust:  Wisconsin Wind Farm Decommissioned After Just 20 Years.  An industrial wind facility in Kewaunee County, Wisconsin has been decommissioned after just 20 years of service because the turbines are no longer cost effective to maintain and operate.  The decommissioning of the 14 turbines took many people by surprise, even local government officials and the farmer who had five of the turbines on his property. [...] You'd be astonished at how many people I talk to that have no idea that wind turbines only last for 20 years, maybe 25.

Rain damage to wind turbines is a serious and potentially costly problem.  A number of wind turbine companies are collaborating with the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) on a project to solve the problem of 'leading edge erosion' — a technical term that covers damage to turbine blades caused by raindrops.  Every time a drop of rain hits a wind turbine blade it contributes to a process that ends in small cracks being formed in the leading edge of the blade that eventually ruin the coating on the blade.  The bigger the drop, the worse the damage, reports DR Nyheder.

BBC Mislead Again About Wind Power.  [Scroll down]  What the BBC and its friends in the Green Party never point out is that investment in new onshore wind projects has dried up to virtually zero since subsidies were withdrawn.  If it really was so cheap, why does it still need subsidising?

Wind farms are the 'new apex predators': Blades kill off 75% of buzzards, hawks and kites that live nearby, study shows.  Wind turbines are the world's new 'apex predators', wiping out buzzards, hawks and other carnivorous birds at the top of the food chain, say scientists.  A study of wind farms in India found that predatory bird numbers drop by three quarters in areas around the turbines.  This is having a 'ripple effect' across the food chain, with small mammals and reptiles adjusting their behaviour as their natural predators disappear from the skies.  Birds and bats were assumed to be most vulnerable to the rise of the landscape-blotting machines.  But their impact is reverberating across species, experts warned, upsetting nature's delicate balance.

Is Renewable Energy a Fraud?  Can it be that wind and solar energy is a complete fraud?  In the book "Dumb Energy," Norman Rogers makes a powerful and convincing case.  His main point is that there must be backup generating plants because the delivery of electricity from wind or solar is erratic, depending on the surging or weakening of wind and sunlight.  The backup plants supply kilowatt hours when the flow of green electricity falters. [...] If you have to have a backup plant, why not eliminate the wind or solar and just use the backup plant?

The Reality of Industrial Wind Power.  Industrial wind turbines weigh dozens of tons and are hundreds of feet high, with blades that can sweep a vertical airspace of an acre or more.  These behemoths, with blades that appear slow and majestic from a distance but which, at their tips, move as fast as 180 mph, slaughter millions of birds and bats every year worldwide.  Many of these killing fields are located directly in bird migration corridors or in breeding and nesting sites, including precious and iconic bird habitats such as those for bald and golden eagles.  Affected birds include those from endangered species such as falcons, hawks, and ospreys.  Turbines kill larger birds at the top of the avian food chain that have fewer broods, and keystone species whose presence is crucial for maintaining the diversity of other species and the health of the overall ecosystem.

Science Says: Wind Power Blows.  If you care about global warming, you must like wind power, right?  But what if wind power itself ends up contributing to a warmer climate?  That appears to be the case, according to a new study.

Blood on the Blades:  Is Bird Life Facing Global Catastrophe from Wind Turbines?  Bird life across the globe could be facing its worst nightmare in the 21st century because of mankind's ardent love for wind turbines.  Despite the outright denial of renewable enthusiasts, data from across the globe suggests that bird life is in great peril due to wind factories.  (They're not farms, by the way.) [...] The fact that birds are killed by other sources does not mean that the wind turbines somehow earn the unalienable right to slaughter millions of birds every year.  Data from across the world indicate that the situation is much worse than previously thought.  While there have been many reports on bird mortality from studies on wind factories in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, data from developing countries and other less-reported developed countries further expose the heinous role played by what some people call "Cuisinarts of the sky."

'Green' folly.  Anyone who has ever looked out their windows knows that wind and solar only deliver about half the time each day, on good days.  Therefore it's not enough for wind and solar to produce 300,000 megawatts of electricity for consumption during half a day.  They must produce more than 600,000 megawatts each day so the renewables can store what is not consumed.  The first cost multiplier for renewables is that storage capable of handling more than 300,000 megawatts does not yet exist.  The second cost multiplier is to achieve 100-percent replacement of fossil fuels by increasing wind and solar generation to more than 600,000 MW.  This is to store enough energy for several bad days when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow (or blows too hard).

Power of people on display.  Tuesday morning's [9/18/2018] news that a proposed plan to bring wind turbines to Cass County is no longer being considered was applauded by some and castigated by others.  Without doubt, the debate that has raged for months over whether Renewable Energy Systems, or RES, should build wind turbines in the county has been among the most divisive in recent history.  It pitted friends, family members and neighbors against each other.  In a recent Public Forum, one Cass County resident shared how his family had fallen victim to the ferocity of the debate:  "My son should not have to come home from school and ask why his schoolmates' parents or guardians will not wave or acknowledge him anymore."  Proponents pointed to the potential for increased revenues for the county, more jobs and a cleaner option for generating electricity as some of the reasons to support the plan.  Opponents cited potential health concerns, negative impacts on property values and dangers to wildlife among reasons to stand against the introduction of wind turbines to rural Cass County.

Wide-scale US wind power could cause significant warming.  [A] new study by a pair of Harvard researchers finds that a high amount of wind power could mean more climate warming, at least regionally and in the immediate decades ahead.  The paper raises serious questions about just how much the United States or other nations should look to wind power to clean up electricity systems.  The study, published in the journal Joule, found that if wind power supplied all US electricity demands, it would warm the surface of the continental United States by 0.24°C.  That could significantly exceed the reduction in US warming achieved by decarbonizing the nation's electricity sector this century, which would be around 0.1°C.  "If your perspective is the next 10 years, wind power actually has — in some respects — more climate impact than coal or gas," coauthor David Keith, a professor of applied physics and public policy at Harvard, said in a statement.  "If your perspective is the next thousand years, then wind power is enormously cleaner than coal or gas."

Offshore wind rush is irresponsible.  In an April opinion piece, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke wrote that "affordable, reliable, and abundant American energy drives domestic jobs and prosperity."  If by "drives domestic jobs and prosperity" Zinke meant "threatens the very existence of New England fishermen," then the East Farm Commercial Fisheries Center of Rhode Island (which represents Rhode Island commercial fishermen) would agree.  Right now, Zinke's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is reviewing a construction and operation plan submitted by Vineyard Wind.  Vineyard Wind is a project company owned by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Avangrid Renewables, a subsidiary of Iberdrola, a company based in the industrial port city of Bilbao, Spain.  These companies plan to install a massive offshore wind project in the waters south of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.  In the first phase of the project alone, according to the plan, Vineyard Wind will install between 88 and 106 wind turbine generators, up to four electrical service platforms, 156.4 nautical miles of cable, and up to three offshore export cables that are each 122.5 nautical miles long.  And this is just the first project.

Solar Power Too Cheap to Meter?  Another Green Dream.  Buy $1 million worth of solar panels and, over a 30-year operating period, they will produce about 25 million kilowatt-hours (kWh).  Never mind what one is paid for those kWh, whether directly or indirectly through tax and regulatory jiggering, or legal mandates, that's the quantity of energy one gets.  Period.  By comparison, $1 million worth of a modern wind turbine will produce 50 million kWh over the same 30 years.  That basic fact explains why wind today contributes about 600% more to the grid than does solar; wind power is a lot cheaper.  Alternatively, purchase $1 million worth of a shale rig and, over those same 30 years, that capital will produce enough natural gas to generate 400 million kWh.  The 400 is not a typo.  That same $1 million of hardware producing natural gas yields 10 and 20-fold more 'product' (kWh) than either wind or solar respectively.

Renewables Goal Is All About Posturing.  [Scroll down]  To reach the kind of goals included in the bill, "California would need 41.5 billion square meters, or about 16,023 square miles, of turbines," wrote the Manhattan Institute's Robert Bryce, in a recent Los Angeles Times column.  "To put that into perspective, the land area of Los Angeles County is slightly more than 4,000 square miles — California would have to cover a land area roughly four times the size of L.A. County with nothing but the massive windmills."  He noted that four California counties have already imposed tough restrictions on new wind turbines.  California utility costs are far above the national average, which adds to our already absurdly high cost of living.  That cost of living is, according to the Census Bureau, the reason California's poverty rates are the highest in the nation.

A $2.2 million loss:
Failed VA wind turbine to be torn down in 2019.  A failed wind turbine at the St. Cloud VA Medical Center will be torn down. [...] The turbine was built in 2011 and never produced any energy for the VA.

NY ratepayers will pay for $2.1B offshore wind plan, but won't get the energy.  New York state ratepayers will pick up the tab for the Cuomo Administration's multi-billion dollar plan to jump-start the offshore wind industry, but most won't benefit from the energy produced.  Only consumers in Long Island and New York City will be able to access the wind-powered energy that's going to be generated in the waters off the state's Atlantic coast in the years to come.

Wind turbine sparks fire in Arlington, Oregon.  A wind turbine caught fire Thursday, sparking a 2,000-acre wildfire, according to the North Gilliam Rural Fire Protection District.  The turbine was on Rattlesnake Road and, according to firefighters, the fire jumped Highway 19, closing the road.  Firefighters got the fire out but not before two railroad bridges were burned.

Power Worth Less Than Zero Spreads as Green Energy Floods the Grid.  Wind and solar farms are glutting networks more frequently, prompting a market signal for coal plants to shut off.

The Ridiculous Myth Of Powering The Nation With Renewable Energy.  Technocrats should back up a few steps and look at the foolishness of their plans:  To power America with 100% renewable enerty they propose 500,000 wind turbines, 18 billion square feet of solar panels, 75 million residential rooftop systems, 50,000 wind and solar farms.  The projected cost is a minimum of $15.2 Trillion.  However, we are already fully powered with enough oil, natural gas and coal resources to last another 200 years.

The $2.5 trillion reason we can't rely on batteries to clean up the grid.  Fluctuating solar and wind power require lots of energy storage, and lithium-ion batteries seem like the obvious choice — but they are far too expensive to play a major role.

The Sausage-Making of Wind Power vs. the Military.  There have been several years of conflict between military operations (in the U.S. and elsewhere) and industrial wind energy.  There have been multiple types of conflicts, ranging from tall structures obstructing low-level flight paths to weather and navigation radar interferences to specialized cases (like deteriorating the important ROTHR facility and having infrasound compromise sensitive military equipment). Initially, commanding officers (C.O.s) of affected military facilities voiced their objections, and in most cases, the proposed offending wind project was not approved.  This was unacceptable to the powerful wind industry, and some of its well connected allies.  Their plan was to get military base C.O.s out of the equation — while simultaneously giving the public the impression that military concerns were being fully addressed.  Th

Wind turbines destroy local farming village.  [Scroll down]  The scheduled construction has been temporarily put on hold following a yearlong protest by people in the village.  "They say it is green energy that they are building," Park told The Korea Herald.  "But how can it be green when wind energy cuts 100-year-old pine trees, kills living creatures and destroys the community people live in?  They are already cutting down trees on some hill slopes that will cause erosion and landslide risks."

Wind Turbines Take a Break as Heatwave Is About to Hit Britain.  Thousands of wind turbines from Germany to the U.K. are set to grind to a halt next week, cutting electricity supplies at the same time as the next wave of hot weather arrives.  As the warmest second quarter in 30 years draws to a close, next-month power prices in Europe's biggest economy are already trading at their highest for this time of year since 2011.  The drop in wind, coupled with forecasts for hotter-than-normal weather across Northwest Europe, could give wholesale rates another lift.

Sheppard AFB, SMAC team to halt wind farms in one North Texas area.  Sheppard Air Force Base and the military community is celebrating a win this week as a wind farm company decides to not build near the base.  The base announced that Innergex, a renewable energy company, was considering building wind farms near Byers and Bluegrove.  After information campaigns from the base and Sheppard Military Affairs Committee (SMAC) about how the developments would negatively impact Sheppard's training routes, the company removing themselves from the permitting process — meaning their interest in the area is essentially over.

All-renewable energy is a prescription for disaster.  Last year, an all-star group of scientists thoroughly debunked the work of Mark Jacobson, the Stanford engineering professor who, for years, has been claiming the US can run solely on renewables.  In 2016, Sanders adopted Jacobson's entire renewable scheme and made it his energy platform.  In a paper last June in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists — including Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution, Dan Kammen of the University of California, Berkeley, former EPA Science Advisory Board chairman Granger Morgan and Jane Long of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — concluded that Jacobson's all-renewable scheme used "invalid modeling tools, contained modeling errors, and made implausible and inadequately supported assumptions."  Those errors "render it unreliable as a guide about the likely cost, technical reliability, or feasibility of a 100-percent wind, solar and hydroelectric power system."

Green Job Hazards:  Wind Energy, Wind Farms, Wind Turbines, Fire and Crane Safety.  Wind Energy workers are exposed to hazards that can result in fatalities and serious injuries.  Many incidents involving falls, severe burns from electrical shocks and arc flashes/fires, and crushing injuries have been reported to OSHA.

Texas Wind Power Story:  Part 1.  In 1999, the state of Texas hosted 184 megawatts (MW) of installed wind energy representing 7.4 percent of the 2,473 MW of wind operating in the United States.  At the time, California dominated the capacity race with 1,600 MW installed, followed by Minnesota with 274 MW, and Iowa a close third at 242 MW.  By the end of 2006, wind capacity nationwide grew to over 11,000 MW and Texas assumed the lead with the most wind energy operating of any state (2,736 MW).  Since that time, Texas experienced a sevenfold increase and now claims nearly 23,000 MW of wind representing 25 percent of the total installed in the U.S., with Oklahoma a distant second at 8 percent or 7,495 MW.  Numerous factors influenced why Texas was able to achieve its rate of growth compared to other states.  This report examines the Texas wind story, the reasons for its growth, and what to expect in the next 10 years.

Dumb Energy.  The core characteristic of wind and solar is that they are erratic sources of electricity.  The supply is randomly intermittent. [...] The wind and solar promoters, in order to accommodate their dumb energy, demand that the electric grid be re-engineered to become a "smart" grid.  Perhaps the idea is that if the grid is smart enough, the dumb energy will be canceled by the smart grid.  That's actually what the smart grid people have in mind.  The smart grid is supposed to be agile enough to fill in the gaps when the wind or solar is playing hooky.

Britain Has Gone Nine Days Without Wind Power.  Britain's gone nine days with almost no wind generation, and forecasts show the calm conditions persisting for another two weeks.  The wind drought has pushed up day-ahead power prices to the highest level for the time of year for at least a decade.  Apart from a surge expected around June 14, wind levels are forecast to stay low for the next fortnight, according to The Weather Company.

Epic Renewables Fail as Solar Crashes and Wind Refuses to Blow.  Don't laugh too hard but this has been a terrible week for the renewable energy dream.  Across the world solar energy share prices have crashed. [...] Solar stocks have fallen across the board by double digits.  It's uncertain when they will recover.  It hasn't been a good week for wind energy either.  In Britain, the industry has become a national joke because for seven days its wind turbines stood still and produced no electricity.

Three Climate Change Questions Answered.  A claimed nearly unanimous scientific consensus on fear of climate change has caused a push to substantially reduce or even eliminate the use of fossil fuel in favor of solar and wind.  But three crucial questions are:  1) is the scientific community really united?,  2) can solar and wind take over any time soon to provide the required vital energy for the maintenance of modern civilization in today's world of 7 billion people?,  and 3) has CO2 caused any harm yet?  The answer to all three questions is no.

Tom Steyer Allegedly Using Convicted Felons For His Renewable Energy Initiative.  An organization backed by environmentalist Tom Steyer is allegedly paying convicted felons to gather signatures for a ballot initiative in Arizona — a crime in the state.  Steyer, an environmentalist billionaire who has spearheaded numerous climate change initiatives across the country, is behind a push to increase Arizona's renewable energy portfolio.  The California activist, through his national NextGen America organization, has completely funded Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona — a group that is campaigning to force utilities to obtain 50 percent of their electricity from renewable sources, such as solar and wind, by 2030.  Such a sweeping mandate requires an amendment to the Arizona Constitution, meaning supporters have to collect 225,963 valid voters' signatures by July to make the 2018 ballot.

Energy sprawl threatens Kittitas County tourism.  Kittitas County has an award-winning tourism sector.  Yet the county will struggle to reap the benefits of recent investments when the state's energy siting council approves its fourth energy project in the Kittitas valley just north of downtown Ellensburg.  A French multinational corporation just asked the council to approve 31 giant turbines.  At almost 500 feet, nearly as tall as Seattle's Space Needle, these will be the tallest seen on U.S. soil.  Spanning 4,400 acres along Highway 97, this energy project will threaten tourism efforts, stifling growth in local jobs and tax revenues.

The Argument Against Wind Turbines.  Mary Kay Barton began fighting against the turbines about 15 years ago.  In 2005, she and her husband bought a small marina along Lake Ontario. [...] She asked a physicist to calculate the productivity of the turbines.  "No wind project in New York State was making enough energy to pay for itself over its projected 20-year life span," she said about the results of the wind turbines calculations.  "Studies since then showed they're not lasting 20 years anyway.  The thruway turbines are broken down already and it's only been a couple of years....  The things are only lasting five to thirteen years.  All of New York State's 20-installed wind factories are averaging about a 25 percent capacity [...] that's actual output."

Noise is the New Secondhand Smoke.  New York City, American's largest metropolis, fields about 50,000 non-emergency, 311 calls each day, and the No. 1 complaint is noise.  In a city whose cacophony can reach 95 dB in midtown Manhattan — way above the federal government's recommended average of no more than 70 dB — the commotion over all that racket involves irate residents, anti-noise advocates, bars, helicopter sightseeing companies, landscapers and construction companies, as well as City Hall.

NOAA/NWS document: wind turbines affect weather radar, create false storm impressions.  From the Watertown Daily News, and the "law of unintended consequences" department comes an inconvenient truth from the National Weather Service, that upon further investigation appears to be a nationwide problem for the WSR-88D doppler weather radar network used to predict, track, and analyze severe weather.  According to NOAA's Radar operations center, forecasters are faced with "little or no workaround".  Part of the reason is that the WSR-88D national deployment in the early to mid 1990's preceded the mass deployment of wind turbines to provide "green energy".  They had no way of knowing then that their field of view would be polluted by an army of rotating blades.

Michigan Initiative Would Restrict Energy Choice.  A citizens' ballot campaign in Michigan aims to force the state to get 30 percent of its electricity from select renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power by 2030.  Clean Energy, Healthy Michigan (CEHM) introduced its "30 by 30" plan in mid-February.  CEHM must collect at least 252,523 valid signatures by August 12 to get on the November ballot.  The ballot initiative is backed by California-based financier and leftist activist Tom Steyer, who has made millions of dollars on coal investments since 1999.  A similar constitutional amendment backed by anti-fossil fuel activists that would have raised Michigan's renewable power mandate to 25 percent by 2025 was rejected in a 62 percent to 38 percent vote in 2012.

Time for Industrial Wind to pay its fair share of Oklahoma's education costs.  House Bill 1010XX passed.  Oklahoma companies are paying more taxes to fund it.  You and I are paying more taxes to fund it.  Industrial Wind will contribute nothing.  In fact, these multibillion-dollar companies based outside of Oklahoma threatened to sue and file bankruptcy if required to participate in funding HB 1010XX.  They printed and distributed expensive fliers at the Capitol claiming "Oklahoma is closed for business," followed by one that touted a number of statistics about its success.  Is the industry thriving or on the brink of bankruptcy?

Why some rural communities are fighting back against wind development.  Can anyone name one example of zoning regulation that measures someone's industrial structure to the foundation of another person's house?  You can try to find it but it doesn't exist.  This is largely the language in wind ordinances that wind developers look for when attacking a rural community in the cloak of darkness.  They want the public to think this is a farming operation so they can justify measuring these things to a house and not a property line.

Wind turbines delivering next to nothing to grid despite hysteria.  As I write this Wednesday evening, all those wonderful "clean" wind turbines across Victoria and South Australia are pumping out all of 30MW of electricity.  They are supposed to have the capacity to produce more than 3400MW — that's 1½ Hazelwoods.  They were operating at less than 1 percent of capacity. [...] If the wind doesn't blow then no power is generated.

Offshore Wind States Beware.  Off of the shore of Block Island on the Rhode Island coast, five wind turbines are operating and supplying power to the island.  It took years of state and federal policymaking, environmental impact assessments, and town hall meetings for the 30-megawatt wind farm to come to fruition due to its cost and degradation of vistas.  It cost $300 million — $10,000 per kilowatt — about 10 times more than the cost of a new natural gas combined cycle unit.  Further, it is 55 percent more costly than what the Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects a first-of-a-kind offshore wind unit to cost — $6,454 per kilowatt.  In terms of generation costs, EIA expects a new offshore wind farm to be 3 times more expensive than an onshore wind farm.

Is Big Wind the New Big Tobacco?  Before it was known that cigarette manufacturers were chemically enhancing the addictive properties of its product, they often argued that smokers had the choice to stop.  They insisted that they could not be held responsible for personal choices made by smokers.  Whether true or not, the idea that smokers could opt out at any time was a powerful persuasion on public opinion.  By contrast, once an industrial-scale wind turbine begins to spin in your neighborhood, there is no chance for anyone to opt out.  The wind industry is always quick to point out that a vote was taken to accept a particular wind project — but the fact that no one was told just how dangerous industrial turbines are, is never mentioned.  In any case, the perverse idea that a majority of voters have the right to impose harm on a minority belongs more to fascism than democracy.

Six New Papers Reveal A Hushed-Up 'Green' Reality:  Wind Turbines Destroy Habitats.  Scientists (Krekel and Zerrahn, 2017) report that the installation of wind turbines near human populations "exerts significant negative external effects on residential well-being" and a "significant negative and sizable effect on life satisfaction" due to "unpleasant noise emissions" and "negative impacts on landscape aesthetics."

Opponents say Block Island wind farms are causing problems across prime fishing grounds.  The five enormous turbines that have been generating electricity off Block Island over the past year are considered a model for the future of offshore wind.  But the nation's first ocean-based wind farm also has exposed what fishermen say are serious threats to them caused by scattering massive metal shafts and snaking underwater cables across prime fishing grounds.

Relying on renewables alone significantly inflates the cost of overhauling energy.  It increasingly appears that insisting on 100 percent renewable sources — and disdaining others that don't produce greenhouse gases, such as nuclear power and fossil-fuel plants with carbon-capture technology — is wastefully expensive and needlessly difficult.  In the latest piece of evidence, a study published in Energy & Environmental Science determined that solar and wind energy alone could reliably meet about 80 percent of recent US annual electricity demand, but massive investments in energy storage and transmission would be needed to avoid major blackouts.  Pushing to meet 100 percent of demand with these resources would require building a huge number of additional wind and solar farms — or expanding electricity storage to an extent that would be prohibitively expensive at current prices.  Or some of both.

Six New Papers Reveal A Hushed-Up 'Green' Reality:  Wind Turbines Destroy Habitats.  Scientists (Krekel and Zerrahn, 2017) report that the installation of wind turbines near human populations "exerts significant negative external effects on residential well-being" and a "significant negative and sizable effect on life satisfaction" due to "unpleasant noise emissions" and "negative impacts on landscape aesthetics."

Why Solar and Wind Are Not the Future.  Wind farms were a familiar sight for me as they were an integral part of the landscape near my hometown in southern India.  The general assumption was that these windmills would generate a significant amount of electricity to aid the energy sector that was struggling to meet soaring electricity demand.  However, the wind farms turned out to be a burden, not a boon.  They generated unreliable and expensive electricity that was available only during the windy months of the year.  This is true with wind farms worldwide, which are infamous for killing hundreds of thousands of birds every year.

MN Wind Turbines Shut Down Over Safety Concerns From Ice.  Wind turbines at a Freeborn County wind farm were shut down this week, due to safety concerns.  A longtime American Experiment source got wind of an incident on Thursday [2/222018] involving a livestock truck that was struck by "ice throw" that may have come from a wind turbine at Bent Tree Wind Farm.

GE Renewable Energy Unveils 12 MW Giant.  Towering 260 meters (853 feet) over the sea — more than five times the size of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris — the Haliade-X will carry a 220-meter rotor.  Designed and manufactured by LM Wind Power, the 107-meter-long blades will be longer than the size of a soccer field, says GE.  One Haliade-X 12 MW turbine will generate up to 67 GWh annually (again, based on wind conditions on a typical German North Sea site), which is enough clean energy to power up to 16,000 households per turbine and up to 1 million European households in a 750 MW wind farm configuration.

The Editor says...
It doesn't matter how big the windmill is, or how many people might benefit from it on a windy day.  There are some days when the wind doesn't blow, and ordinary people still want to take a hot shower and make some toast.

Five things you should know about Addison's crazy wind turbine lawsuit.  On the eve of an expensive trial, the wackiest lawsuit in these parts involving one of our star cities is headed toward a much-welcomed ending.  But terms of settlement for Addison's failed $1 million wind turbine art exhibit atop a city water tower are still secret.  You read that right.  The Watchdog hates secrets, especially when they involve taxpayers' dollars.  With this project, Addison tried to build a tribute to the environment, to art and to itself when it plopped turbines high in the sky.  The city promised enough electricity generated to run the water tower and even power streetlights along Arapaho Road.  Never happened.

California Has Too Much Green Energy.  California has frozen development on any more renewable energy sources as it wrestles with what to do with all the extra electricity it's currently producing, Quartz reported.  Solar energy production has risen from less than one percent of California's energy mix in 2010 to around 10 percent in 2017.  On certain days when conditions are favorable, solar has supplied as much as half the energy used by Californians, according to Quartz.  The California Public Utilities Commission has proposed the state hold off on any further investment into renewable energy as individuals and businesses throughout the state continue to buy their own private sources of energy, such as solar panels secured to the tops of buildings.  As more individuals invest in private energy, demand on the state's grid lessens, Greentech Media reported.

Green Ideology's Failed Experiment.  The twentieth century's bequest of cheap, reliable electrical energy is now being undone.  For the past decade or so, Australia and other industrialised countries have been conducting a vast experiment on their electrical grids.  Tried, tested and refined technologies — predominantly based on coal-fired generation — are being replaced by weather-dependent wind and solar farms.  Western societies are moving from industrial means of generating their electricity, with the precision, reliability and economies of scale that implies, to intermittent sources that, like agriculture, depend on the weather, with all that implies for cost and reliability.  The green energy revolution — counter-revolution would be more accurate — did not come about because wind and solar are superior generating technologies.  If they were, they wouldn't have needed the plethora of costly political interventions.

End of federal wind industry handouts is long overdue.  The wind industry is finally seeing a phase-out of the federal subsidies that have kept it alive over the past several decades.  Ending that corporate cronyism is long overdue.  Under programs known as the Production Tax Credit (PTC) and the Investment Tax Credit (ITC), wind developers have reaped billions of dollars in federal giveaways paid for by taxpayers.  Essentially, the PTC gives players in the wind industry $23 for every megawatt-hour of electricity produced (increased annually for inflation), while the ITC allows corporations to write off 30 percent of a project's development cost.  These enormously generous — and fundamentally misguided — government handouts amounted to roughly $6 billion in 2016 alone, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.  But the federal tax credits are only part of the picture.

Some say noise, vibrations from Orangeville Wind Farm are unbearable.  Like many Wyoming County residents, it was the simple beauty of the land that attracted Linda Makson.  In 1973, after years of saving, she and her husband Paul bought 24 acres in Orangeville and built the house that they live in to this day.  Through all that time, they developed as little of their land as possible, preferring to keep it natural and a haven for wildlife.  "We chose to live here.  We have a little land; we're naturalists," Makson said.  But the environment was changed in 2014, when Invenergy erected its 75-unit Orangeville Wind Farm.

How Environmentalists Keep Heating Bills High.  Home heating and electric bills would be much cheaper still for poor families without the so-called renewable-energy standards pushed by greens and liberal politicians at the state and local levels.  The Manhattan Institute has found that states with these wind and solar mandates have had much larger hikes in utility costs than states without them.  New York, which is revving up its green energy policies, charges its residents 40% more for electric power than the national average.

Industrial wind turbines threaten our way of life.  There is an invasion coming that will destroy our rural way of life.  It will destroy the vast, untouched, sweeping views of rolling hills, woodlands and abundant wildlife and the quiet peace and tranquility which are some of western New York's most valuable assets.  The invader:  600 feet tall industrial wind turbines and high voltage transmission lines, up to 150 feet tall.  Currently there are 176 turbines under signed leases projected for a 15-mile swath between Canisteo and West Union.

Property rights end at property lines.  [I]f you can keep the noise, the infrasound, the vibration, the shadow flicker and the visual blight on your property alone, you may have the right to host an industrial wind turbine on your property.  One cannot imagine how that might be even remotely possible.  Remember too, in signing that lease, you will have probably given up all recourse to complain about noise, vibration, infrasound and shadow flicker.  Apex will have left town, you'll be picking up dead bald eagles and bats from under your wind turbine, and you will be left without some very basic property rights.

Mexico Court Puts Stop To 396 MW Wind Farm.  According to coverage from Mexico News Daily, Energ'a Eólica del Sur was building a 132-turbine wind farm within the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region on land of the local Zapotec community.  Opposing the project were 17 human rights groups that claimed the Zapotec had not been consulted about the wind farm before it was approved by the government.  Back in May 2013, Vestas — the turbine supplier for the wind farm — confirmed that the project was experiencing construction delays due to opposition from minority groups.  Now, the Mexican Supreme Court has ruled that the indigenous people had a "right to prior, free and informed consultation" about the project on their land and, thus, ordered a halt to construction, says Mexico News Daily.

The hidden costs of wind-power subsidies.  In addition to the $24/megawatt hour in production tax credits (PTC) in the first 10 years of a project's life, wind payments under power-purchase agreements (PPAs) with utilities and nonutilities (like Facebook, Amazon, Google, etc.) can average $70/Mwh and more over contract lengths that are typically 20 years and longer.  Thus, wind energy is guaranteed compensation from extra-market sources that is two to four times the $20 to $30/Mwh typically received by true market participants.

With bankruptcy, Black Oak Wind Farm officially dead.  The years-long saga surrounding the construction of the Black Oak Wind Farm in Enfield has finally come to a definitive close, after the company sent a letter last week to Enfield Town Board members announcing its dissolution.  While the project's vocal opposition may be glad to see them go, it appears Enfield may still be left holding the bag for the failed alternative energy proposal to the tune of over $8,000.  In the letter, Black Oak said they are not capable of covering the last of the expenses, as well as offering one parting shot at the residents who disrupted the $40M project.

Offshore Wind Isn't Without Risks.  Jonny Allen, head of offshore wind at GCube Underwriting, said that wind energy has created demand for maritime services and boosted supply chain development, but the risk landscape has been changed significantly by factors such as steeply falling costs, increasing turbine sizes, and the development of floating technology.

Wind power backup and storage batteries explode into flames and send a toxic cloud over the city of Brussels.  A wind power storage battery has exploded into flames at a power station located near the city of Brussels.  The fire resulted in a cloud of toxic fumes that flew over the city and force thousands of people to stay at home.  The battery was part of the first real live testing of power batteries being used to store wind power in Belgium.  After less than one month, the test miserably failed with the battery being destroyed by fire and residents hiding in their houses to escape the polluted cloud.

Frozen windmills.  The entire Eastern half of the US looks like the Arctic.  No wind in the Midwest and the windmills are still.  If not for fossil fueled power plants like this one, people would be freezing in the dark.  That is the Democratic Party platform.

New England Wanted To Use All Renewable Energy — Then It Got Cold.  [A]s I'm sure any of you living in the northeast are aware, there's a blistering bubble of arctic air throwing the region into a deep freeze.  Suddenly the power grid is experiencing strains which aren't generally seen in more clement weather conditions.  So how are they responding? [...] As the temperature dropped, wind energy production waned just as demand was rising.  And the local power companies responded by... burning oil.

Are Big Wind firms actually "Subsidy Miners"?  Eco-activists enamored by alternative energy technology have long touted the potential for wind farms as a source of power.  However, it appears that the industry's promises may be full of hot air.  Take, for example, the funding for many projects.  Many Americans are now coining the term "Big Wind" for wind farm installation firms who collude with government employees to obtain subsidies and funding for large-scale projects.  Instead of being "clean energy providers," the companies behave like "subsidy miners."

Corrosion Risks and Mitigation Strategies for Offshore Wind Turbine Foundations.  Over the last decade, offshore wind power has gone from a marginal industry to a major government-supported renewable energy source in Northern Europe.  An increasing number of wind turbine structures have been installed, particularly on monopile foundations.  This type of foundation is currently the most common type used due to its ease of installation in shallow to medium water depths (up to 30 m deep). [...] External corrosion of the foundation is similar to that observed in other offshore industries, and corrosion protection is prescribed in current industry guidelines based on experiences from the oil and gas industry.

Australian Court Finds Wind Turbine Noise Exposure a 'Pathway to Disease'.  In a World first, Australia's Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) has declared that the "noise annoyance" caused by wind turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound "is a plausible pathway to disease" based on the "established association between noise annoyance and some diseases, including hypertension and cardiovascular disease, possibly mediated in part by disturbed sleep and/or psychological stress/distress."  The AAT also held that "The dB(A) weighting system is not designed to measure [wind turbine noise], and is not an appropriate way of measuring it."  The dB(A) weighting system is the basis of every wind turbine noise guideline in operation around the world.  The AAT's finding means that every one of those noise guidelines is premised on an acoustic nonsense and, therefore, entirely irrelevant.

Why Wind Is Not Coal:  On the Economics of Electricity Generation.  Electricity is a paradoxical economic good:  it is highly homogeneous and heterogeneous at the same time.  Electricity prices vary dramatically between moments in time, between location, and according to lead-time between contract and delivery.  This three-dimensional heterogeneity has implication for the economic assessment of power generation technologies:  different technologies, such as coal-fired plants and wind turbines, produce electricity that has, on average, a different economic value.  Several tools that are used to evaluate generators in practice ignore these value differences, including "levelized electricity costs", "grid parity", and simple macroeconomic models.  This paper provides a rigorous and general discussion of heterogeneity and its implications for the economic assessment of electricity generating technologies.  It shows that these tools are biased, specifically, they tend to favor wind and solar power over dispatchable generators where these renewable generators have a high market share.  A literature review shows that, at a wind market share of 30-40%, the value of a megawatt-hour of electricity from a wind turbine can be 20-50% lower than the value of one megawatt-hour as demanded by consumers.  We introduce "System LCOE" as one way of comparing generation technologies economically.

France: 1.2 to 3.3 million bats destroyed by wind turbines.  The level of mortality of this declining species is now being recognized.  The Chiroptera family of bats, which hunt at dusk and at night, are not blind.  So why are they not seeing the turbines?  Some blame the the signal lights placed on wind turbines designed to warn aircraft of the their presence.  The lights attract insects and therefore pipistrelles and other common bats, are swept by the blades.  But it appears, in fact that it is especially the strong variation of pressure caused by the passage of the blades in front of the tower of the wind turbine which creates a "barotraumatism".  "The fragile capillaries of their lungs burst during this brutal depression," says the Bird Protection League.  The sonar of the bat works by echolocation and detects the obstacles, but it remains blind to the pressure change."

Wind farm seeks to increase allowed number of bat deaths.  The Hawaiian hoary bat, or 'ope'ape'a, is Hawaii's only native land mammal, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which adds that "relatively little research has been conducted" on the bat's habitat and population.  The nocturnal creature with a brown-and-gray coat and white-tinged ears preys on insects and is believed to roost among trees in areas near forests.  The bat has been spotted on Hawaii island, Maui, Molokai, Oahu and Kauai, and population estimates have ranged from hundreds to a few thousand.  In October 1970, the bat was listed as a federally endangered species.  The nene, meanwhile, has been listed as endangered since 1967 and has an estimated statewide population of around 2,500, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List.

Researchers study impact of turbines on golden eagles.  A New Mexico State University professor in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences is conducting research on golden eagles being killed by wind turbines and other human-related factors.  Gary Roemer, professor for the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Ecology, is conducting a research project to identify whether certain factors impact golden eagle populations.  Some of the factors that impact the eagles are electrocutions, vehicle strikes and illegal shootings, but another more recent factor is wind turbine strikes, Roemer said.  From 1997 to 2012, there were 85 eagle fatalities reported in 32 facilities around the United States.  More than 78 percent of those fatalities occurred from 2008 to 2012.  Roemer said there is no way to know exactly how many eagles are killed, "as monitoring programs are usually not in place at wind energy facilities."

In the Shadow of Wind Farms.  A six-month GateHouse Media investigation found that wind developers representing some of the world's biggest energy companies divide communities and disrupt the lives of residents forced to live in the shadow of their industrial wind farms.  Reporters interviewed more than 70 families living near three dozen current or proposed wind farms.  They also spoke to 10 state and local lawmakers, read hundreds of pages of public-service-commission records about wind projects, reviewed court filings in seven wind-related lawsuits and inspected lease agreements from at least eight wind farms.  GateHouse Media also identified through public documents and media reports an additional 400 families living near industrial wind turbines that have publicly complained about shadow flicker, noise, health problems and/or misleading statements by wind companies in an effort to solicit land agreements.  The investigation found that companies convince landowners to sign away their property rights for generations based on the promise of potential profits and the minimization of potential problems associated with wind turbines.

Why Wind Turbine Sounds are Annoying, and Why it matters.  Almost without hesitation, most people can identify a sound that is annoying to them, whether it might be fingernails on a chalkboard, a barking dog late at night, a mosquito buzzing in their ear, or their own particular example.  Classic acoustics texts identify key points related to annoyance.  These "special characteristics of noise" include tonality, a non-random cyclical nature, pitch, roughness, rise time and dominance of noise during sleeping hours when environmental noises diminish.  A new source of environmental sound arises from wind turbines, a rapidly growing method of generating electricity. [...] Why annoying sounds matter is a complex subject.  Some consider "annoying" has little impact more than, "your gum chewing is annoying," while for others, an annoying sound can mean loss of sleep, and loss of that restorative time itself has many documented adverse effects.

What Was Once Hailed as First U.S. Offshore Wind Farm Is No More.  Energy Management Inc. has ceased efforts to build what was once expected to become the first offshore wind farm in the U.S., according to an emailed statement from Chief Executive Officer Jim Gordon.  The project's Boston-based developer has already notified the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management that it has terminated the offshore wind development lease it received in 2010.  Cape Wind suffered a slow death.  Efforts to develop the 468-megawatt offshore farm, proposed to supply power to Cape Cod and the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, began in 2001 but came up against relentless opposition from a mix of strange bedfellows including the Kennedy family and billionaire industrialist William Koch.

Truly Green?  How Germany's 'Energy Transition' is destroying nature.  The German Green Party was founded in 1980.  The Greens promised to save nature.  They wanted to be the protectors of forests, birds and rivers.  But their policies have led to the most widespread destruction of nature in Germany since the Second World War.  No industry consumes as much land as the generation of 'natural electricity'.

Stop subsidizing the Big Wind bullies.  With good reason, numerous upstate towns are actively fighting the encroachment of Big Wind.  To cite just one recent example:  Last month, the Watertown City Council unanimously approved a resolution opposing the development of eight industrial wind-turbine projects totaling 1,000 megawatts of capacity, because the projects could impair military training capabilities near Fort Drum.  Over the past decade or so, members of Reynolds' group — some of America's biggest subsidy miners — have collected $18.7 billion in federal and state subsidies.  The burgeoning backlash against Big Wind means a growing group of rebellious New York towns stand between Reynolds' members and even more taxpayer gravy.

10 Years of Wind Maintenance to Exceed $40 Billion.  Operations and maintenance on North American wind facilities is expected to exceed $40 billion from 2015 through 2025.  Much of that cost is due to aging equipment, as the majority of wind turbine equipment is more than five years old, according to a benchmarking study by HIS Markit.

Green Energy Crash:  Wind Turbine Maker Siemens Gamesa To Cut 6,000 Jobs.  Siemens Gamesa is to cut 6,000 of its 27,000-strong workforce as part of a restructuring plan "to consolidate its position as a market leader", the company said on Monday.  Since Siemens took full control earlier this year, the wind company's shares have fallen 46 percent.

Maine Department of Environmental Protection Issues Draft Wind Energy Act Rules.  After more than a year of pre-rulemaking process including the issuance of two drafts, the Maine DEP has commenced formal rulemaking and today issued draft rules for wind energy developments in Maine.  The formal draft largely tracks the most recent pre-rulemaking version issued in January 2017.  The draft rules include standards for evaluating scenic impacts, limits on shadow flicker, provisions related to public safety, and requirements for demonstrating significant tangible benefits.

Grid-Scale Storage of Renewable Energy:  The Impossible Dream.  The utopian ambition for variable renewable energy is to convert it into uniform firm capacity using energy storage.  Here we present an analysis of actual UK wind and solar generation for the whole of 2016 at 30 minute resolution and calculate the grid-scale storage requirement.  In order to deliver 4.6 GW uniform and firm RE supply throughout the year, from 26 GW of installed capacity, requires 1.8 TWh of storage.  We show that this is both thermodynamically and economically implausible to implement with current technology.

The impact of wind turbines on suicide.  Current technology uses wind turbines' blade aerodynamics to convert wind energy to electricity.  This process generates significant low-frequency noise that reportedly results in residents' sleep disruptions, among other annoyance symptoms.  However, the existence and the importance of wind farms' health effects on a population scale remain unknown.  Exploiting over 800 utility-scale wind turbine installation events in the United States from 2001-2013, I show robust evidence that wind farms lead to significant increases in suicide.

"Green" Energy Fails Every Test.  Minnesota is a poor place for solar power, so its renewable policies have focused on wind.  Minnesota has gone whole hog for wind energy, to the tune of — the Hayward/Nelson paper reveals, for the first time — approximately $15 billion.  It is noteworthy that demand for electricity in Minnesota has been flat for quite a few years, so that $15 billion wasn't spent to meet demand.  Rather, it replaced electricity that already was being produced by coal, nuclear and natural gas plants.  Wind energy is intermittent and unreliable; it can only be produced when the wind is blowing within certain parameters, and cannot be stored at scale.  It is expensive and inefficient, and therefore patently inferior to nuclear, coal and natural gas-powered electricity, except in one respect — its "greenness."

Wind is an Irrelevance to the Energy and Climate Debate.  The Global Wind Energy Council recently released its latest report, excitedly boasting that 'the proliferation of wind energy into the global power market continues at a furious pace, after it was revealed that more than 54 gigawatts of clean renewable wind power was installed across the global market last year'.  You may have got the impression from announcements like that, and from the obligatory pictures of wind turbines in any BBC story or airport advert about energy, that wind power is making a big contribution to world energy today.  You would be wrong.  Its contribution is still, after decades — nay centuries — of development, trivial to the point of irrelevance.  Even put together, wind and photovoltaic solar are supplying less than 1 percent of global energy demand.

Wind Power:  A Fraud Promulgated by Fools based on a Fantasy.  Ian Plimer is an Australian geologist, professor emeritus of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne, professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide, and the director of multiple mineral exploration and mining companies.  He has published numerous scientific papers, 7 books and is one of the co-editors of Encyclopedia of Geology.  Ian also manages to draw plenty heat for his attack on global warming hysteria.  What impresses STT is that, unlike his interlocutors, Ian Plimer's grasp on the facts goes back some 4.6 billion years, as long as this orb has been lapping the Sun, rather than the last Tweet that popped up five minutes ago.

'Completely perverse' wind energy subsidies aren't reducing emissions.  The taxpayers dole out so much money to the wind power industry, their subsidies are so gigantic, that it's sometimes profitable for them to literally pay utilities to take their product.  Imagine the taxpayers giving Coca-Cola money so they can, in turn, pay restaurants to sell their drinks.

Delaware Revisits Offshore Wind Energy.  Nearly ten years after an offshore wind project failed in Delaware, Gov. John Carney is giving it another shot.  Carney's August 28 executive order directed the state government to create a "working group" to "help us explore the potential economic and environmental benefits of offshore wind development for Delaware."  The group is supposed to deliver its findings to Carney on December 15.

Green Power is Part Time Power.  24/7 electricity users such as hospitals, trains, factories, refineries, fuel and water pumps, cash registers, infrastructure and mines cannot operate on part-time electricity.  Moreover, every part-time power producer (using sun, wind, batteries, hydro, gas or coal) consumes money full-time for operations, standby, maintenance and replacement.  Each also has to fund its own specialised generators, transmission lines, access roads and workforce.  Electricity becomes both unreliable and expensive, and consumers suffer.  Using taxes, subsidies, dictates and mandates to replace a full-time power producer like coal with up to five part-time power producers only makes sense in the part-time minds that inhabit Greentopia.

Thirteen complaints filed against wind project for well water interference.  Thirteen Chatham area well owners have now filed water well interference complaints following the start of construction on a 34 turbine wind power project near their farms.  The Council of Canadians is demanding work stop on the project immediately.  The project developer, North Kent Wind One (owned by Samsung Energy and Pattern Energy), started pile driving for the first turbine foundation in late June.  The vibrations caused by the pile driving can be felt hundreds of meters away.  Before construction began, experts predicted that local wells could suffer siltation problems from the vibrations.  Some of the 13 wells affected to date have become so silted up that water no longer flows through the household plumbing.

Puerto Rican Wind project destroyed by hurricane Maria.  [Video clip]

Factors associated with bat mortality at wind energy facilities in the United States.  Hundreds of thousands of bats are killed annually by colliding with wind turbines in the U.S., yet little is known about factors causing variation in mortality across wind energy facilities.  We conducted a quantitative synthesis of bat collision mortality with wind turbines by reviewing 218 North American studies representing 100 wind energy facilities.  This data set, the largest compiled to date, provides further support that collision mortality is greatest for migratory tree-roosting species (Hoary Bat [Lasiurus cinereus], Eastern Red Bat [Lasiurus borealis], Silver-haired Bat [Lasionycteris noctivagans]) and from July to October.

Misleading Costs for Wind and Solar.  Recently the media has reported that wind and solar were competitive with coal and natural gas for generating electricity.  The Wall Street Journal, for example, published an article with a headline, Economic impact of wind farms is changing the political dynamics of renewable energy.  These media reports could lead people to believe that wind and solar were competitive with coal-fired and natural gas power plants, which is not the case.  Electricity generated by coal-fired power and natural gas combined cycle power plants remain the lowest cost methods for generating electricity, especially when the unreliability of wind and solar are taken into consideration.

German wind industry "threatening to implode" as subsidies end wiping out half or more of new plants.  So many parallels with Australia.  The Germans have had wind subsidies for 20 years, but even after two decades of support, the industry is still not profitable on a stand-alone basis.  In 2016, some 4600MW of new wind plants were installed, but that may drop to one quarter as much by 2019 as subsidies shrink.  According to Pierre Gosselin (August 31st, 2017) there are more wind protests, electricity prices are "skyrocketing" and "the grid has become riddled with inefficiencies and has become increasingly prone to grid collapses from unstable power feed in."

Puerto Rico Might Ditch Oil to Build New Electric Grid Using Renewable Energies.  With the majority of Puerto Rico's 3.4 million citizens still without power following Hurricane Maria, the commonwealth's government is floating the idea of starting from scratch as it rebuilds — ditching oil dependency and moving toward renewable energies.

The Editor says...
Brilliant idea, because everybody knows windmills and solar panels are impervious to tropical weather.

Redefining "residence" and "habitable" for the sake of windmill developers:
Community raises questions about Amish homes' eligibility for turbine setbacks.  Some residents opposed to the North Ridge Wind Farm project in Parishville are concerned about suggested revisions to the definition of residences for the purpose of turbine setbacks.  They say the proposed changes, targeting hunting camps, could apply to Amish homes as well.  In a letter to the Parishville Town Planning Board, Avangrid Renewables, the company behind the wind farm, asked that hunting camps not be considered residences for the purpose of the town's mandated setbacks for turbines.  The company argues that such camps do not meet the legal definition of a dwelling, citing the lack of plumbing and electricity at such camps as evidence that the camps are not "habitable."  The letter was sent to the board in May, but Janice R. Pearse, a concerned resident, says she only found the letter two weeks ago.  She thought that the definition of hunting camp might apply to local Amish homes, given that they do not have indoor plumbing or electricity.

Another Reason to Reject Wind Farms.  There are a number of legitimate reasons for opposing wind farms; (1) they kill birds, bats and other animals, (2) they create undesirable ambient noise, (3) they blight the landscape and (4) the power they generate is far more costly per kilowatt hour than that obtained from conventional fossil fuels.  Now, however, thanks to the studious research of six Chinese scientists (Tang et al., 2017), we can add a fifth reason for avoiding wind farms — they reduce the productivity of surrounding vegetation.

Revisiting Wind Turbine Numbers.  Sustainability and renewable energy claims are too grounded in ideology, magic and politics.  Wind and solar energy forecasts ignore the need to find and mine vast new metal and mineral deposits — and open US lands that are now off limits, unless we want to import all our wind turbines, solar panels and batteries.  They assume land use impacts don't really exist if they are in other people's backyards.  Worse, too often anyone trying to raise these inconvenient truths is shouted down, silenced, ignored.  That has to stop.

Hurricane Harvey Threatens Wind Farm Output.  At least one news outlet has noticed that renewable energy is exceptionally vulnerable to hurricanes and other extreme weather events.  How will renewables power the future, if climate change produces more extreme weather?

Boondoggle: Check Out America's First Offshore Wind Farm.  America's experiment in off-shore wind-based energy is raising rates on residents and creating another burden for businesses in a state that is already consistently ranked one of the worst places for businesses in the country.  In December last year, the first off-shore wind farm started operating off the coast of Rhode Island.  Although hailed as an innovative step forward in renewable energy, some customers are balking at the higher costs.

Solar [and] Wind Industries [are] Dying as Subsidies Dry Up.  Slowly, deliciously, like a leech starved of blood, the renewable energy industry is withering away and dying.  It can only survive through government enforced subsidies or bribe-incentives.  Once those dry up, so does its trade. [...] The jobs aren't productive ones, the businesses are an ugly manifestation of crony capitalism, and the investors should have realized that in finance there's no such thing as a one way bet.  And in any case the victims of the renewable energy industry's ongoing collapse will be far outnumbered by the victors.  Renewables are, and always have been, a scam perpetrated by the few against the many.

Tourists shun areas hit by wind turbine 'blight'.  More than half of tourists to Scotland would rather not visit scenic areas dominated by man-made structures such as wind farms, a YouGov poll suggests.  A survey carried out on behalf of the John Muir Trust (JMT) found that 55% of respondents were "less likely" to venture into areas of the countryside industrialised by giant turbines, electricity pylons and super-quarries.  Just 3% said they were "more likely" to visit such areas, while 26% said such large-scale developments would make "no difference".  The poll has rekindled calls for Scottish ministers to increase protection for wild and scenic areas that, it is argued, will protect rural tourism businesses.

Researchers Found They Could Hack Entire Wind Farms.  For the past two years, [Jason] Staggs and his fellow researchers at the University of Tulsa have been systematically hacking wind farms around the United States to demonstrate the little-known digital vulnerabilities of an increasingly popular form of American energy production.  With the permission of wind energy companies, they've performed penetration tests on five different wind farms across the central US and West Coast that use the hardware of five wind power equipment manufacturers.

Turbine Effects on Bats Likely Worse Than Thought.  Large numbers of migratory bats are killed every year at wind energy facilities.  However, population-level impacts are unknown as we lack basic demographic information about these species.  We investigated whether fatalities at wind turbines could impact population viability of migratory bats, focusing on the hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus), the species most frequently killed by turbines in North America.

Here's How Green Sausages Get Made In The Swamp — It Isn't Very Pretty.  [Rick] Perry had a great idea:  Why not conduct a 60-day review of green-energy policies to see how they would affect the U.S.' electrical grid?  A leaked memo that was obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation shows how Washington works.  When Perry announced his review in April, the American Wind Energy Association, the main lobbyist for wind producers, kicked into high gear.  It plotted to go after politicians, regulators and green-energy supporters in the press to fight Perry's study for "supporting baseload sources such as coal and nuclear."

Oldest commercial wind farm in Canada headed for scrapyard after 23 years.  The oldest commercial wind power facility in Canada has been shut down and faces demolition after 23 years of transforming brisk southern Alberta breezes into electricity — and its owner says building a replacement depends on the next moves of the provincial NDP government.  TransAlta Corp. said Tuesday the blades on 57 turbines at its Cowley Ridge facility near Pincher Creek have already been halted and the towers are to be toppled and recycled for scrap metal this spring.

Alexander Says Tennessee Has Opportunity To Decide Whether Wind Turbines Are Acceptable.  Lamar Alexander on Thursday [5/11/2017] said Governor Haslam's signature on legislation approved by the Tennessee General Assembly will give Tennesseans "an opportunity to decide whether we want our landscape littered with unreliable wind turbines over two times as tall as the skyboxes at the University of Tennessee football stadium."  "I am glad Governor Haslam and the General Assembly approved legislation to prohibit the construction of some Tennessee wind farms for one year and instead give the state a chance to study the issue.

Big Wind Gets Spanked in Michigan.  Big Wind's lobbyists and promoters love to claim that their projects are being welcomed by rural communities everywhere.  The reality is rather different.  Last Tuesday, voters in 20 rural towns in Michigan went to the polls and rejected or restricted the expansion of wind energy.  Furthermore, those same Michigan voters soundly rejected two projects being promoted by the world's largest producer of wind energy, NextEra Energy — which, as I discussed on this site last week, has been suing rural governments in multiple states (two of them in Michigan) while at the same time collecting billions of dollars in federal tax subsidies.

Offshore Wind Power Will 'Absolutely Cost Jobs' Of US Fishermen.  The fishing industry is worried the first offshore wind farm to come online in the U.S. will ruin their way of life and kill jobs.  An offshore wind turbine three miles off the coast of Block Island, Rhode Island, will kill large numbers of fish and potentially drive hundreds of small coastal enterprises out of business, according to a fishing industry representative.  Fishermen fear offshore wind turbines will continue to pop up along Atlantic Coast, eventually make it impossible to be a commercial fisherman.  "This will absolutely cost jobs in the U.S.," Bonnie Brady, director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Batteries: Another green scam.  The idea of producing reliable grid power from intermittent green energy backed up by batteries looks possible in green doodle-diagrams, but would be absurdly inefficient and expensive. [...] Both wind and solar are unpredictable, unreliable, intermittent, and weather-dependent energy sources.  They require large collection areas with a cobweb of access roads and transmission lines.  Their output can change suddenly and cannot be managed easily to meet demand fluctuations.  They need flexible backup power able to swing in quickly to maintain stability and supply.  Gas provides the easiest back-up for green energy, but gas exploration is banned in many areas of NSW, SAust and the whole of gas-rich Victoria.  Canny residents of the green states are now investing in diesel generators.

Science Deniers in the Wind Industry.  Like the tobacco industry before it, the wind industry has spent decades vehemently denying known harmful consequences associated with its product, while promoting its fraudulent feel-good image.  Dismissing or denying the serious health impacts of industrial-scale wind turbines is wishful thinking, akin to insisting that tobacco is harmless because we enjoy it.  The problem with wind energy is not just its costly, subsidized, unreliable electricity; the need to back up every megawatt with redundant fossil-fuel power; or its impacts on wildlife and their habitats.  Infrasound (inaudible) and low-frequency (audible) noise (slowly vibrating sound waves collectively referred to as ILFN) produced by Industrial-scale Wind Turbines (IWTs) directly and predictably cause adverse human health effects.

How Would Oklahoma's Anti-Wind Tax Affect The State's Industry?  Gov. Mary Fallin, R-Okla., recently released her proposed 2018 executive budget, which includes two new anti-wind tax proposals.  The first proposal would end the zero-emission tax credit for wind facilities placed in service after 2017.  The second proposal would begin taxing the production of wind energy at $0.005/kWh produced.  Oklahoma is facing a budget shortfall that has been projected to be nearly $900 million.  One of the primary causes of the revenue shortfall is less tax revenue due to low oil prices and an increase in wind energy production, resulting in greater tax credits.  Fallin's tax proposals would reduce the number of tax credits available for wind energy production and increase revenue by imposing a new production tax of electricity generated by wind.

As Wind Grows, So Does Its Opposition.  Oklahoma wind developers are fresh off a record-setting year.  Only Texas installed more wind capacity in 2016, a fact that thrusts the Sooner State's power markets into a sudden transition and is agitating opponents along the way.  Wind barely registered in Oklahoma a decade ago, but it now accounts for 20 percent of the state's electricity generation.  Instead of celebrating, industry leaders find themselves facing a torrent of anti-wind legislation in Oklahoma City, the state capital.

Retiring worn-out wind turbines could cost billions that nobody has.  This is a story about death and resurrection, and as with all such stories, faith plays its part.  Texas is by far the leading wind energy producer in the United States, generating more than 20,000 megawatts of electricity each year.  That is about one-fourth of the nation's wind-energy production.  We can expect the Texas winds to blow forever, but the colossal turbines which capture the breeze and transform it into electricity will not turn forever.  Like all mechanical things devised by man, no matter how clever, they eventually wear out.

Yes, humongous wind turbines really do exist.  A recent letter questioned whether the proposed Project Lighthouse wind industrial complex of approximately 70 turbines, to be strung along the shore of Lake Ontario in the towns of Somerset and Yates, could use wind turbines 700 feet in height or higher.  The writer claimed no such units exist.  The answer is a resounding YES they do exist and could be used.  The facts speak for themselves. [...] A brief search of literature for land-based industrial wind turbines reveals that there is a General Electric unit available, Model 3.6-137, with a range of tip heights up to 223 meters or 731 feet.  Other manufacturers likely offer similar units.

In New York, Wind And Solar Get Double Their Value In Subsidies.  New York state is paying 11 large wind and solar power projects two times more in subsidies than the projects actually generate in electricity. [...] State officials are handing out the equivalent of $24.24 per megawatt-hour over the next 20 years to the 11 projects.  Wind turbines can get an additional $23 per megawatt-hour in federal tax credits.  The electricity generated by these 11 projects, however, will only sell for an average of $16.25 per megawatt-hour, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.

The comeback of coal.  America was built on coal.  Fossil fuels, following the demise of windmills and the like as the sources of inefficient production of electricity, provided the spark that ignited American industry and made it the industrial leader of the world, and kept it the leader for more than a century and a half.  "America," said Winston Churchill on the eve of World War II, "is a mighty boiler, and once alight there is no limit on what it can produce."  Coal fired that boiler.  Despite an eight-year assault on coal by fanatics who dream of an America cut down to size, coal is still responsible for almost a third of America's electricity.  Wind and solar power, despite enormous subsidies of more than $100 billion over the last decade, still produce less than 5 percent of America's energy.

South Australia Heatwave Wind Power Collapse, Rolling Blackouts.  South Australia, the world's renewable energy crash test dummy, is once again experiencing horrendous power price spikes and rolling blackouts, thanks to excessive reliance on wind, a lack of dispatchable power capacity, and high demand caused by a Summer heatwave.

South Australian electricity is coming your way.  It's not just that renewables muck up the electricity supply (with frequency and instability issues), they also drive a pike through the energy market.  These are two separate disruptors.  We've seen inexplicable spikes in power prices in SA in seasons when it shouldn't happen, but this might be a new form of volatility.  Wind power produced 900 MW earlier in the day, but that fell to below 100 MW within 6 hours (which is not that usual, [...]).  The problem, apparently, was that no one thought it was worth turning on their generators?  SA has enough generation (if only it was running), but when the crunch came, the market failed.

Green Energy is a Charter For Crooks And Liars.  The Scam Must End Now.  When is the rest of the Western world going to catch up with Donald Trump and point out that the green emperor is wearing no clothes?  I ask as a concerned UK taxpayer absolutely sick to death of the vast sums of money that continue to be funnelled into the pockets of crooks, liars, spivs, chancers, con-artists and fantasists in the name of solving the non-existent problem of "climate change."

Wind Energy — A runaway failure for nearly 4 decades Part 1 of 3.  If you are one of the millions across America, that that believes wind energy will create a better world, you need to read the facts presented here.  This information has been hidden by the media, utility companies, your government and by most of all, a terribly destructive industry seeking profits.  California's wind turbines may have started a green revolution here in America.  But as readers will learn here, wind energy's perceived value to society is a devious fantasy.  Adding to the public's confusion is that this puffed-up industry has been enabled with layers of rigging from politicians, planted media stories, fraudulent research, data manipulation and outright lies.  All for the purpose of giving corporations access to taxpayer billions.

Opposition to wind power is becoming universal.  Worldwide, more people are being affected by industrial wind turbines, and the impacts are unhealthy, expensive, environmentally destructive and unnecessary.  Wind companies can no longer be dismissive and cavalier about millions of people protesting worldwide.  There is a common denominator, and no matter how much lobbying the wind industry does, it is becoming clear to more people every day that wind energy comes at a significant cost to human health, and at the expense of the well-being of many animal species, either by harming or killing, or by habitat fragmentation or destruction.  Wind energy is expensive and those expenses are borne by the very residents that pay taxes that support the lavish incentives given by governments who want to ignore the facts.  It destroys rural lands as mega-ton machinery compacts soils and ruins roads.  It disrupts the community physically and also creates friction among people who used to live peacefully.

Obama Has Little To Show For His Lavish Spending On Roads, Green Energy And E-Cars.  Obama came into office like a starry-eyed dreamer.  He promised a vast network of high-speed rail, a "smart" electric grid, a million electric cars on the roads, a "clean energy economy" creating millions of new green jobs.  And he spent lavishly to realize this dream. [...] Obama has spent billions of taxpayer dollars subsidizing windmills and solar plants as part of his vision of a "clean energy" future.  But despite his repeated claims about a huge increase in renewable energy production, renewables today make up just 11% of the nation's total energy production, according to the Energy Information Administration.  In mid-1983, the share of energy production comprised of renewables was... 11%.

A Political Fad vs National Security.  The [Obama] administration's position appears to be that promotion of industrial wind energy is more important than maintaining our military missions, assuring military readiness, and/or protecting the lives of military personnel. [...] The primary justification of this aggressive wind energy promotion is that wind energy supposedly plays an integral role in reducing climate change.  However, this marketing claim does not hold up under careful scrutiny.  The fact is that there is zero scientific proof that wind energy makes any consequential contribution to alleviating climate change.  Zero scientific proof.

Final wind-turbine rule permits thousands of eagle deaths.  The Obama administration on Wednesday [12/14/2016] finalized a rule that lets wind-energy companies operate high-speed turbines for up to 30 years — even if means killing or injuring thousands of federally protected bald and golden eagles.

Households with alternative energy suppliers paid $817 million extra, state says.  One in five households in New York state buys electricity or natural gas from an independent energy service company — that growing bunch of 200 companies that are advertising for your business.  Many customers do it to save money.  But it turns out they pay millions more each month than traditional utility customers, a new study by state regulators says.  Energy service companies charged residential customers $817 million more than utilities would have charged during the 30 months ending in June, according to the first-of-its-kind report.

Congressman Chris Collins Introduces Legislation to Blow Back Wind Turbines.  Congressman Chris Collins (NY-27) today introduced legislation that would curb the installation of wind turbines in close proximity to military installations, such as the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station (NFARS) in Niagara Falls, New York.  Recently, Apex Clean Energy has proposed a plan to build 70 propeller turbines amid farms and towns throughout Niagara County.  The impact that this plan may have on the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station has raised significant concerns from local residents and lawmakers. [...] Congressman Collins introduced the "Protection of Military Airfields from Wind Turbine Encroachment Act" in an effort to ensure that any new wind turbines located within a 40-mile radius of a military installation will be deemed ineligible for renewable energy tax credits.

The Editor says...
I find this very interesting, because there is a very large wind power project just a few miles west of Dyess AFB.  If the operators of such a wind farm lose their tax credits, the whole project will quickly become a white elephant.

Report: Costly wind turbines projected to yield $1.39 in daily savings.  A small Washington state city spent more than $100,000 on three "windmill-like turbines" — but any hopes for big savings appear to be blowing in the wind.  The Peninsula Daily News reported that the Port Angeles turbines, which haven't yet been turned on, are expected to generate $1.39 per day in electricity, or roughly $42 per month.  The turbines were meant to help illuminate a local park.  Now, some city council members are having second thoughts about their unanimous approval for the project.  "I did not realize they would produce so little energy.  I wouldn't have voted for it knowing it was that little," City Councilwoman Sissi Bruch told The Peninsula Daily News.

LCRA poised to pay $60 million to back out of wind power contract.  Any day now, the Lower Colorado River Authority could cut a $60 million check to break a long-term deal to buy power from a South Texas wind farm.  The decision to voluntarily pay the penalty reflects the economic realities of power in the age of cheap natural gas:  In 2009, when its then-general manager signed the 18-year deal, the nonprofit LCRA locked in a price of $64.75 per megawatt-hour.  Today wind power sells for less than half that price, [...]

Large-scale wind energy slows down winds and reduces turbine efficiencies.  Every turbine removes energy from the winds, so that many turbines operating over large scales should reduce wind speeds of the atmospheric flow.  With many turbines, this effect should extend beyond the immediate wake behind each turbine and result in a general reduction of wind speeds.  This wind speed reduction is critical, as it lowers the amount of energy that each turbine can extract from the winds.  By accounting for this slowdown effect, the authors resolved a standing discrepancy between the high estimates for wind energy derived from local wind speed observations and small wind farms and the much lower estimates derived from large-scale estimates derived from climate models.

Big Wind Blown Away in Vermont.  While it's not clear what Donald Trump's election means for federal energy policy, it's abundantly obvious that the wind-energy sector's agenda was crushed in Vermont.  Indeed, thanks to the resounding — and somewhat improbable — election of a new Republican governor, Phil Scott, it is possible that Vermont could ban construction of new wind projects.  And in the towns of Grafton and Windham, voters rejected the proposed Stiles Brook wind project by big margins.  Scott's whopping nine-point victory over Democratic nominee Sue Minter is all the more impressive considering that Vermont voted overwhelmingly for Democrats at the federal and state levels.

Time to cut our losses on big wind.  After billions in public hand-outs spanning nearly four decades, big wind has never been able to stand on its own and there's no reason to believe this will change.  If yanking the handouts causes the industry to flat line then so be it.  The US has elected a businessman at the helm who understands what it means to cut your losses.  It's time we did exactly that!

Wind Turbine Accident and Incident Compilation.  Almost two thousand incidents:  Fires, thrown ice, disconnected blades, injuries, and fatalities.  Most of these injuries occur during the transportation, construction and servicing of windmill generators.

Gov't Study:  Wind Turbines Cause Sleep Loss, Stress, and Anxiety.  Living near wind turbines can cause stress, anxiety and sleep loss, a government report has admitted.  The report, commissioned by the former Department for Energy and Climate Change last year, found a "clear link" between the amount of noise emitted by a wind farm and the irritation nearby residents experience.  If turbines exceed 40 decibels, there is an "increased risk" of sleep deprivation, thus in turn leading to stress and anxiety.

Peer-reviewed Study:  Four Decades of Wind Turbine Noise and Human Health.  Whether infrasound and low-frequency noise (ILFN) from industrial wind turbines (IWTs) is detrimental to human health is currently a highly controversial topic.  Advocates of industrial-scale wind energy assert that there is no credible scientific evidence of a causal relationship, while many reputable professionals believe that there is sufficient scientific evidence to establish a causal link between IWTs and detrimental health effects for a non-trivial percentage of individuals who reside in communities hosting IWTs. [...] The debate surrounding IWTs extends to many controversial issues, including physical safety, visibility, shadow flicker, and threats to property values and wildlife.  Many problems involving wind turbines, including mechanical failures, accidents, and other mishaps, have been discussed on the Internet.  At least one website has extensively catalogued these incidents, and the large number of incidents reported by that site is described by its webmaster as grossly underestimating the actual number of documented incidents.  The most vigorous debate, however, centers on ILFN and its effects on human health.

An examination of Future Energy Scenarios - Cost of Supply.  Despite having installed more than 38GW of renewable energy generating capacity in the last decade, we have reached a capacity crisis.  There is no hard evidence that this push for renewables has been an effective way to reduce CO2 emissions, and the cost has certainly been very large.  [...] Although we hear that the cost of renewable energy is coming down and, in some cases, can reach parity with conventional sources, this is misleading since it relates purely to the cost of generation and takes no account of necessary additional costs, particularly transmission and backup.  The scenarios envisaged by National Grid necessarily inflate the cost of electricity, in part because the gas generating plant needed for backup (with the impending closure of coal-fired stations, the sole use of fossil fuel in the system) have to operate at very low efficiency.

Vermont Wind Project Needs Votes, So Developer Offers to Pay Voters.  To many residents in this tiny town in southern Vermont, the last-minute offer of cash was a blatant attempt to buy their votes.  To the developer that offered the money, it was simply a sign of how attentively the company had been listening to voters' concerns.  The company, Iberdrola Renewables, a Spanish energy developer, wants to build Vermont's largest wind project on a private forest tract that spans Windham and the adjacent town of Grafton.  The project would consist of 24 turbines, each nearly 500 feet tall, and generate 82.8 megawatts of power, enough to light 42,000 homes for a year if the wind kept blowing, though the houses could be in Connecticut or Massachusetts.

Iowa Wind Project Generates More Tax Credits than Electricity.  Known as "Wind XI," the proposed 2,000 megawatt wind farm — Iowa's largest ever — has the potential to produce a lot of electricity, but even more tax credits.  In total, Wind XI could generate up to $1.8 billion in tax credits for its backers over the next decade.  The winners?  Warren Buffett; MidAmerican Energy's other investors; and Facebook, Microsoft, and Google — MidAmerican's biggest customers, who will receive tax benefits of their own for using wind energy.  The losers?  Taxpayers and other ratepayers footing the bill.

$25k (EU) = Renewable Energy Cost for Each German Family of Four.  [Scroll down]  According to the study, most of the direct cost of the energy transition are due to the EEG surcharge to subsidise green electricity production and the so-called cogeneration levy to subsidise combined electricity-heat (CHP) producers.  The EEG surcharge has already cost €125 billion euros by the end of last year.  By 2025 this figure is expected to rise to 408 billion euros due to the rapidly growing number of renewable energy projects.  Including the CHP allocation this will rise to €425 billion euros.  On top of that there are additional indirect costs of the energy transition.  The DICE Institute expects the cost for expanding network transmission and distribution to be around €56 billion euros, plus costs for the offshore liability levy to protect offshore wind power, as well as the cost of feed-in management, "Re-Dispatch" and reserve capacity.

The Editor says...
All this money is being spent to avoid the production of carbon dioxide, which is futile, unless India and China do the same.

US Offshore Wind Facility costs $17,600 per Home Powered.  America's first offshore wind power plant will cost about $17,600 dollars to build per home it will power.  Three miles off the coast of Block Island, Rhode Island, the wind farm is supposed to generate enough energy to power 17,000 homes, but will cost $300 million to build five turbines.  This cost is just to build the turbines, not to operate them.  The extremely high cost of offshore wind doesn't worry environmentalists and progressives, however, because, as Salon.com says about the project, "it's the precedent that counts."  Despite the extremely high cost, federal officials want to power a whooping 23 million homes with offshore wind by the year 2050.

Green Overload.  The governor wants to make New York a "national leader" by having renewables provide 50 percent of the state's electricity by 2030 — a goal also known as "50 by 30" — while keeping unprofitable nuclear plants running. [...] The 50 by 30 mandate will require the expansion of solar- and wind-generated power production on a massive and unprecedented scale — without providing needed improvements to an already strained electric transmission system.  The PSC also failed to consider the added conventional generating capacity needed to back up renewables when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.

Opposition to Wind Facilities is Spreading Across the U.S..  Over the past 18 months, local resistance to wind-energy facilities has spurred governments in a growing number of jurisdictions, from California to Maine, to restrict or reject projects within their boundaries.  Wind projects have raised the ire of local residents concerned about noise from turbines, their possible impact on aviation, visual blight, potential human health impacts, and the threat posed to wildlife, among many other issues.

Send The Wind Developers Packing.  [Scroll down]  What have informed Vermonters learned about industrial wind turbines since 2005?  Are turbines combating climate change?  No.  Even the architects of Governor Shumlin's wind energy policies have acknowledged that the policies will have no effect on climate change.  In fact, wind development is degrading our natural defenses against the impacts of climate change by fragmenting wildlife habitat (thereby inhibiting climate adaptation and accelerating extinctions) and paving our ridgelines (increasing the vulnerability of our communities, farms, businesses, and roads to flooding from severe weather events).  Do turbines reduce greenhouse gas emissions?  According to Green Mountain Power, the Lowell turbines avoid 74,000 tons of CO2 emissions over the course of a year.  Does that sound like a lot?  It's not — it's the amount of carbon that New York City traffic produces in less than half a day.  And for that, Peter Shumlin allowed GMP to pave a mountain and fragment an irreplaceable forest (burning untold amounts of fossil fuels in the process).

Wind Developer Proposes Buying Out Homeowners within 3000 feet.  Swanton Wind stated at their press conference on Thursday, September 8th that they were filing their petition for a Certificate of Public Good for their Industrial Wind Project.  They also announced that they are offering to buy out 20 homes within 3000 feet of the turbines.  This is tacit admission that it will be impossible to live that close to the wind project.  In the wind industry, this is referred to as a Property Value Guarantee.  People living near a proposed wind project are concerned about their property values — for most people, their house is their biggest investment.

Four Years of Misery Caused by Hoosac Wind.  For the third night in a row, I can hear Hoosac Wind from inside our home.  Saturday evening, after spending a day on the river, we decided to cook dinner on a fire in the backyard.  The noise from the turbines was hard to ignore and the experience wasn't enjoyable as it used to be.  Sunday evening was just as loud.  Tonight, Monday going into Tuesday [9/13/2016], I can hear the noise from the turbines inside our bedroom.  I can tell the wind is coming out of an easterly direction because of the type of sound that is difficult to ignore.  Sounds like a roar with "whoop whoop whoop," on and on endlessly!

Major US Wind Developer Files for Bankruptcy.  Noble Environmental Power LLC, a wind-energy company backed by billionaire Michael Dell, filed for bankruptcy protection on Thursday [9/15/2016] in a debt-for-equity restructuring deal.

How to Succeed in the Wind Energy Fight.  Since an industrial wind project is something you may have to live with for 20± years, it seems wise to carefully, objectively, and thoroughly investigate this matter, ahead of time.  After working with 100± communities throughout the US, my conclusion is that your absolute best and first line of defense, is a well-written, protective set of wind energy regulations.

Saskatchewan Rejects Proposed Wind Project to Protect Birds.  A proposed project that would have generated electricity from wind energy in southwestern Saskatchewan has been denied over concerns about birds.  Environment Minister Scott Moe says an environmental review of the proposal for Chaplin identified potential risks to migratory bird activity in the area.  Algonquin Power wanted to build a 177 megawatt facility on behalf of SaskPower that would have included a maximum of 79 wind turbines, 50 to 70 kilometres of access roads and 110 kilometres of trenched transmission lines.  Moe says the government will continue to work towards its goal of 50 percent of power generation from renewable energy sources by 2030.

Study:  Wind Turbines Killing More Birds Than Just Those Found Locally.  Wind turbines are known to kill large birds, such as golden eagles, that live nearby.  Now there is evidence that birds from up to hundreds of miles away make up a significant portion of the raptors that are killed at these wind energy fields.  Using DNA from tissue and stable isotopes from the feathers of golden eagle carcasses, researchers from Purdue University and the U.S. Geological Survey found that golden eagles killed at the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area in northern California can come from hundreds of miles away.

Another Statewide Blackout:  South Australia's Wind Power Disaster Continues.  For those truly interested in the cause, what appears in the graph above — [courtesy] of Aneroid Energy — gives a clue as to the culprit.  SA's 18 wind farms have a combined (notional) capacity of 1,580MW.  On 28 September (aka 'Black Wednesday'), as the wind picked up, output surges by around 900MW, from a trifling 300MW (or 19% of installed capacity) to around 1,200MW.  As we explain below, electricity grids were never designed to tolerate that kind of chaos, but it's what occurs in the hour before the collapse that matters.  From a peak near 1,200MW, there are drops and surges in output of around 250-300MW (equivalent to having the Pelican Point Combined Cycle Gas plant switched on and off in an instant).  At about 2:30pm there is an almost instantaneous drop of 150MW (1,050 to 900MW), followed by a rapid surge of around 250MW, to hit a momentary peak of about 1,150MW.

People Ask Me Things About Wind Energy.  [Question #2]  "But isn't wind energy better than coal?"  No — but that's a lobbyist made-up question.  For technical reasons it's impossible for wind energy to replace coal.  That question is like asking "Aren't bicycles better than airplanes?"  Yes airplanes use a lot of fossil fuels, and bicycles use very little, and they are both transportation sources.  However no quantity of bicycles will ever replace a single airplane, or even reduce our airplane usage.  Likewise no quantity of wind turbines will ever replace a single coal facility, nor reduce our coal usage.

A Technical Expert's Superior Wind Energy Critique.  The intention of having wind farms in the electricity supply system was to drive out the highest emitters of CO2 but the cost structure of the electricity market is such that the coal burning power stations are the lowest cost generators and higher cost but lower carbon emitting generators became more vulnerable to being stood down.  This is abundantly clear looking at the short run marginal costs of generation.

World Health Organization Investigating Industrial Wind Energy.  The World Health Organization (WHO) is currently modernizing its noise guidelines for industrial wind turbines, last revised in 1999.  And new evidence is accumulating that the huge wind turbines, tasked with turning dilute energy into usable electricity, cause a variety of ills.  Mrs. Christine Metcalfe, UK spokesperson, and chief author of the communication/media release (below) to Marie-Eve Héroux of WHO, brings attention to the following negative health effects of industrial wind turbines:  sleep disturbance, cognitive impairment, mental health and wellbeing, as well as cardiovascular disease, hearing impairment, tinnitus, and adverse birth outcomes.

Very Good:  ABC letter about Turbines, Birds and Bats.  The American Bird Conservancy (ABC) is writing to express serious concerns about Charlotte, Virginia- based Apex Clean Energy's proposed Galloo Island Wind Energy Project (WEP) slated to be built in Lake Ontario on Galloo Island in Jefferson County, New York.  This large, commercial wind energy facility is to be comprised of thirty-two 585-foot tall turbines.  The island is a major stopover point for large numbers of migratory birds and home to other wildlife, including the endangered Indiana bat.

Study:  Wind Turbines Cause Chronic Stress to Badgers.  A paucity of data exists with which to assess the effects of wind turbines noise on terrestrial wildlife, despite growing concern about the impact of infrasound from wind farms on human health and well-being.  In 2013, we assessed whether the presence of turbines in Great Britain impacted the stress levels of badgers (Meles meles) in nearby setts.  Hair cortisol levels were used to determine if the badgers were physiologically stressed.  Hair of badgers living <1 km from a wind farm had a 264% higher cortisol level than badgers >10 km from a wind farm.  This demonstrates that affected badgers suffer from enhanced hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal activity and are physiologically stressed.  No differences were found between the cortisol levels of badgers living near wind farms operational since 2009 and 2012, indicating that the animals do not become habituated to turbine disturbance.  Cortisol levels in the affected badgers did not vary in relation to the distance from turbines within 1 km, wind farm annual power output, or number of turbines.

Michael Dell-backed wind-energy firm Noble Environmental files Chapter 11.  Noble Environmental Power LLC, a wind-energy company backed by billionaire Michael Dell, filed for bankruptcy protection on Thursday [9/15/2016] in a debt-for-equity restructuring deal.

How Intermittent Renewables Are Harming the Grid.  [Scroll down]  In fact, I have come to the rather astounding conclusion that even if wind turbines and solar PV could be built at zero cost, it would not make sense to continue to add them to the electric grid in the absence of very much better and cheaper electricity storage than we have today.  There are too many costs outside building the devices themselves.  It is these secondary costs that are problematic.  Also, the presence of intermittent electricity disrupts competitive prices, leading to electricity prices that are far too low for other electricity providers, including those providing electricity using nuclear or natural gas.  The tiny contribution of wind and solar to grid electricity cannot make up for the loss of more traditional electricity sources due to low prices.

Australia Finds Out Wind Power Doesn't Really Work.  South Australia is suffering from a power crisis because it has shuttered so many coal plants in favor of wind.  Back wants a cost-benefit analysis done on the wind industry around the country. [...] Exactly the same arguments can be made regarding solar power.  The entire solar and wind industry is surely based on extravagant government subsidies, not just in Australia but around the world.

Interior Department Opens Hawaii's Coasts To Wind Farms.  As part of the Obama administration's Climate Action Plan, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell called for bids for offshore wind leases in two areas off the Hawaiian island of Oahu.  In her June 22 announcement, Jewell said, "Today's announcement marks another milestone in the president's plan to support clean, renewable energy from the nation's vast wind and solar resources."  The U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has worked with the Hawaii Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Task Force to determine the best site for Hawaii's first offshore wind farms.  The sites in consideration amount to a combined 485,000 acres of submerged federal lands.  The proposed offshore wind projects are intended to help Hawaii reach its target of having 100 percent of its electricity generated by renewable-energy sources by 2045, as required by a state law enacted in June 2015.

Crab Orchard Wind Farm — Are We Considering All The Costs?  "Clean energy" like wind power must be a positive thing for the environment, right?  And it must therefore also be good for wildlife too, yes?  The truth is that the impacts of wind farms are significant, and they are decidedly not positive for Tennessee's environment and wildlife.  If you look at the 23 wind turbines proposed for Cumberland County, each 600 feet tall — three times the height of Neyland Stadium, with blades as long as a foot ball field — and plainly visible from I-40 and the surrounding area, you begin to understand the scope.  A sufficient amount of wind to run the turbines would only be available 18 percent of the time, and TVA says they don't even need the electricity it would produce.

The Right to Know:  Releasing Wind Turbine Bird & Bat Death Data.  I've uploaded these documents (and 45 more!) to a public Google Drive folder that anyone can access, view and download.  This was the whole point — to make these documents public because our government and the wind companies won't!  Bring some transparency to the bird and bat deaths in Canada!  Hold these bloody wind companies accountable for the wildlife slaughter they getting away with!

Blowing Wind.  I was once a promoter of windmills, but the facts have changed my mind.  Many more must make that change, but it won't be easy because, as Mark Twain wrote, "It is much easier to fool a person than it is to convince them that they have been fooled."

Levelized Cost of Electricity from Existing Generation Resources.  The LCOE-E framework allows for cost comparisons that are relevant for today's energy policymakers.  For example, when all known costs are accurately included in the LCOE calculations, we find that existing coal ($39.9), nuclear ($29.1), and hydroelectric resources ($35.4) are about one-third of the cost of new wind resources ($107.4) on average and one-fourth of the cost of new PV solar resources ($140.3).  By increasing the transparency of the costs associated with policies favoring new resources over existing conventional resources, we hope to inform policymakers with the best available data and raise the level of the electricity policy debate.

14,000 Abandoned Wind Turbines Litter the United States.  The towering symbols of a fading religion, over 14,000 wind turbines, abandoned, rusting, slowly decaying.  When it is time to clean up after a failed idea, no green environmentalists are to be found.  Wind was free, natural, harnessing Earth's bounty for the benefit of all mankind, sounded like a good idea.  Wind turbines, like solar panels, break down.  They produce less energy before they break down than the energy it took to make them.  The wind does not blow all the time, or even most of the time.  When it is not blowing, they require full-time backup from conventional power plants.  Without government subsidy, they are unaffordable.  With governments facing financial troubles, the subsidies are unaffordable.  It was a nice dream, a very expensive dream, but it didn't work.

Feds End "Unjust" Exemption for Wind Energy .  It's time for the wind industry to start being held to the same standard as power plants run by natural gas and coal, the federal grid watchdog says.  The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the independent agency charged with regulating the nation's interstate electricity markets, did away with a key exemption last week for wind farms wishing to compete in the large wholesale markets the commission oversees.  The commission says maintaining the exemption is "unjust, unreasonable and unduly discriminatory and preferential."

Low Frequency Noise and Industrial Wind Turbines.  The Multi-municipal Wind Turbine Working Group was formed by municipal councillors in Grey, Bruce, and Huron Counties in Ontario in response to the growing number of complaints they were receiving from constituents concerning the installation of industrial wind turbines throughout the area.  Councillors were aware of their responsibility regarding the health, safety, and well-being of their constituents.  The Multi-municipal Wind Turbine Working Group was set up to share ideas on how to fulfill that responsibility.  Complaints from citizens, including reports of adverse health impacts have persisted and increased as more turbines have been installed.  The reported symptoms conform to those described internationally by many people living near wind turbines.

Wind Turbines Killing Tens of Thousands of Bats, Many Endangered.  Wind turbines are killing bats, including ones on the endangered species list, at nearly double the rate set as acceptable by the Ontario government, the latest monitoring report indicates.  Bats are being killed in Ontario at the rate of 18.5 per turbine, resulting in an estimated 42,656 bat fatalities in Ontario between May 1 and October 31, 2015, according to the report released by Bird Studies Canada, a bird conservation organization.  Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources has set 10 bat deaths per turbine as the threshold at which the mortalities are considered significant and warrant action.  The bats being killed by turbines in Ontario include the little brown bat, tri-coloured bat, eastern small footed bat, and northern long-eared bat, all on the endangered species list.

Bats Save Billions in Pest Control.  Just after dusk, high-stakes aerial combat is fought in the darkness atop the crop canopy.  Nature's air force arrives in waves over crop fields, sometimes flying in from 30 miles away.  Bat colonies blanket the air with echo location clicks and dive toward insect prey at up to 60 mph.  In games of hide-and-seek between bats and crop pests, the bats always win, and the victories are worth billions of dollars to U.S. agriculture.  Bats are a precious, but unheralded friend of farmers, providing consistent crop protection.  Take away the colonies of pest killers and insect control costs would explode across farmland.  And just how much do bats save agriculture in pesticide use?  Globally, the tally may reach a numbing $53 billion per year, according to estimates from the University of Pretoria, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), University of Tennessee, and Boston University.

Blinded By The Sun .  We are constantly being bombarded with feel-good stories about wind and solar power generation and, indeed, billions of dollars have been expended worldwide on these boondoggles.  This has produced little in the way of practical, base-load power, it has certainly spawned an endless supply of studies telling us how good renewables will be for the economy.  This alleged benefit is said to be over and above those technologies' CO2-curbing potential.  Trouble is, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) tells us that, in 2010, renewables made up only 20% of global electricity production, of which 16% was from hydroelectricity.  Wind power contributed 1.4% and solar less than 1%.

Germany Votes To Abandon Most Green Energy Subsidies .  Germany's legislature voted Friday [7/8/2016] to sharply cut back on subsidies and other financial incentives supporting green energy due to the strain wind and solar power placed on the country's electricity grid.  Germany's government plans to replace most of the subsidies for local green energy with a system of competitive auctions where the cheapest electricity wins.  The average German pays 39 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity due to intense fiscal support for green energy.  The average American only spends 10.4 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Backlash against big wind:  Booing Sierra Clubbers in Pennsylvania.  On June 23, residents of Penn Forest Township, which sits near the heart of the Pocono Mountains, turned out for a zoning hearing on a 37-turbine wind project proposed to be built on land owned by the Bethlehem Authority, the financial arm of the City of Bethlehem's water system.  The next day, Nicole Radzievich, a reporter for the Morning Call , (based in Allentown) published an article on the hearing, held at a local fire station, which she reported was "packed to capacity with mainly critics."  Radzievich added that "nearly 300 opponents" of the proposed wind project "hurled boos" at Pennsylvania Sierra Club's Donald Miles for supporting the wind project, "and applauded verbal jabs against the wind energy company, Iberdrola Renewables."

US Governmental Entities that Rejected or Restricted Wind Projects.  [Spreadsheet]

Open Season on Bald Eagles.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency charged with protecting bald and golden eagles, is once again trying to make it easier for the wind industry to kill those birds.

Replacing Nuclear with Wind Energy Doesn't Make Sense.  The Swedish power supply is largely free of carbon emissions.  Indeed, it is mainly based on a combination of hydroelectric and nuclear power combined with power exchange with neighbouring Scandinavian countries.  A study published in EPJ Plus investigates the possibility of replacing nuclear power with wind power, which is by nature intermittent.  According to the study, this, in turn, would finally lead to a reduction in the use of hydroelectricity if the annual consumption remained constant.  The authors of the study conclude that a backup system, based on fossil fuel, namely gas, would be required in combination with wind power.  In such a scenario, the CO2 emissions would double.

Cape Wind Project Loses in Federal Appeals Court.  A three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on July 5 threw out two government approvals for the Cape Wind Energy Project, which is a proposal to generate electricity from windmills off the coast of Massachusetts.  The project involves the construction, operation and maintenance of 130 wind turbines in the Horseshoe Shoal region of Nantucket Sound.  The turbines have an estimated life-span of 20 years, and during that time they are expected to generate up to three-quarters of the electricity needs for Cape Cod and the surrounding islands.  The project's "underlying purpose" is to help the region achieve Massachusetts's renewable energy requirements, the court noted.  Offshore energy providers like Cape Wind must comply with a "slew" of federal statutes designed to protect the environment, promote public safety, and preserve historic and archeological resources on the outer continental shelf, said the court.  They must also go through several regulatory and administrative procedures to satisfy regulations promulgated under these statutes.

Wind Energy Economic Lessons From Denmark.  The wind industry is mounted on myth and fuelled by fantasy.  In Australia, its parasites and spruikers must believe that we are still cut off from the known world (suffering from what was referred to as the "tyranny of distance") when they peddle stories about Europeans still being wedded to wind power.  On that score, one of the Australian wind cult's "pinup girls" has always been Denmark.  No doubt aided by struggling Danish turbine maker, Vestas (the High Church for wind worshippers) the gullible and naïve still believe that Denmark has achieved a wind powered Nirvana.  (The hard-hitting Danish docu-drama, Follow the Money — screening on SBS — with Vestas played by 'Energreen' — has knocked some of the varnish off, though.)  In the cultists' eyes wind power can, of course, do no wrong.  Moments when the wind blows, and these things produce more than their usual piddling fraction of their rated capacity, are celebrated with awe and reverence:  10 hours of meaningful output is said by the faithful to make up for the thousands of hours each year when they produce absolutely nothing at all.

ABC's Good Comments to US F&WS re Eagle Killings.  The American Bird Conservancy (ABC) hereby submits its comments on the proposed regulation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), Eagle Permits; Revisions to Regulations for Eagle Incidental Take and Take of Eagle Nests and its associated Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS).  ABC commented on FWS's prior regulation on this subject, expressing its concerns about the impact of the 30-Year Eagle Take Rule on eagle populations in the United States.  The revised regulation does not allay our serious, legitimate concerns about the short- and long-term impacts that 30-year permits for large, commercial wind energy facilities, along with some of the other rule changes proposed by FWS, will have on eagle populations and other wildlife.

Wind Energy — One of the Greatest Swindles Ever.  And the reason there's no debate about this is because the issue is complicated and so the money, billions of dollars, is just being thrown up against a foreign ownership wall.  I'm talking about wind turbines, wind power, renewable energy and renewable energy certificates.  Just forget for a moment the fact that farmers are bought off initially by the wind turbine industry to shove these things up and of course the wind turbine industry can offer farmers buckets of money because they are just making a fortune out of this.  Forget it also, because I won't do this today, the demonstrable and drastic health consequences of all of this, but of course where people are paid to have the wind turbines on their property they then have to sign letters that basically prevent them from saying anything, on the basis that well, you've been adequately compensated.  So, that has bought your silence.  Shut up.  We're paying this mob, the wind industry, for every turbine that they stick up, sorry you're paying them you're paying them, foreigners, your paying, that's why our want you to listen.  The impact of some of these things, wind turbines is such that people can't open the windows the noise at night they can't entertain at night because of the noise they can't sleep.

Feds propose changes to allow more bald eagle deaths.  As the nation prepares to celebrate America's birthday, conservationists are in a fight to protect America's symbol, the bald eagle.  "There's an active response to what's going on," Dana Bove said.  Bove serves on the Board of Directors for the Boulder County Audubon Society.  In May, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed a change to allow more permits for bald and golden eagle deaths under the current Bald Eagle and Golden Eagle Protection Act.  Bove says the driving force behind the change is the expansion of wind energy across the country.  He says wind farms have caused the deaths of bald and golden eagles.  "They wind up flying through and drawn into the blades and they're killed," Bove said.

28-turbine mega-wind project faces steep opposition in Vermont.  Tensions are escalating after the Windham Selectboard sent a letter asking wind developer Iberdrola to back off a 28-turbine, 96-megawatt project planned for Windham and Grafton.  "We're really divided on this," said Grafton Selectboard member Ronald Pilette.  "And that seems to be their way of operation, to come into communities and make a big issue for the town's people."  According to Windham Selectboard Chairman Frank Seawright, location has been a central theme.  "From the very outset we have maintained that this is an inappropriate site because what they've proposed to build on is at the headwaters of the Saxtons River, and it rises right here in Windham," Seawright said.

Wind Energy Sector Gets $176 Billion Worth of Crony Capitalism.  There's no doubt that wind-energy capacity has grown substantially in recent years.  But that growth has been fueled not by consumer demand, but by billions of dollars' worth of taxpayer money.  According to data from Subsidy Tracker — a database maintained by Good Jobs First, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that promotes "corporate and government accountability in economic development and smart growth for working families" — the total value of the subsidies given to the biggest players in the U.S. wind industry is now $176 billion.  That sum includes all local, state, and federal subsidies as well as federal loans and loan guarantees received by companies on the American Wind Energy Association's board of directors since 2000.  (Most of the federal grants have been awarded since 2007.)  Of the $176 billion provided to the wind-energy sector, $2.9 billion came from local and state governments; $9.4 billion came from federal grants and tax credits; and $163.9 billion was provided in the form of federal loans or loan guarantees.

Denmark Cancels All Coastal Wind Projects.  The Danish government has announced a new proposal to resolve the problem of the renewable energy tax (PSO) which the EU believes to be illegal and which has become markedly more expensive for businesses and citizens than planned.

Wind Turbines Threaten Space Research.  A plan to build fifty giant wind turbines in the province of Drenthe may interfere with the operation of a radio telescope and do 'disastrous' damage to scientific research, according to the Dutch Institute for Radio Astronomy (Astron). Astronomers claim that the placement of the 200 metre high windmills will interfere with the low-frequency array (Lofar) which uses thousands of low-frequency antennae to survey the universe.  Because of their height, the windmills reflect other radio and television signals towards the Lofar station.  'For some of our astronomical applications, this will be pretty devastating,' Astron's director professor Michael Garrett told DutchNews.nl.  'It seems a bit strange to have built the world's premier low frequency radio telescope in the world, and now to put all that in jeopardy.'

Despite Huge Investments, Renewable Energy Isn't Winning.  For hydrocarbon doomsayers, there's good news and bad news.  In 2015, there were record investments in renewable energy, and record capacity was added, much of it in emerging economies.  Yet despite the huge investment, the global share of fossil fuels is not shrinking very fast.  Renewables such as wind, solar and geothermal still account for a tiny share of energy production, and there are factors that may inhibit their growth in the next few years.  REN21, the international renewable energy association backed by the United Nations Environment Program, has summarized impressive developments in the sector in 2015.  Total investment in renewable power and fuels reached $285.9 billion, an all-time record, and renewable power capacity, including hydropower, increased by 148 gigawatts — another record — to 1.8 terawatts.  For the sixth consecutive year, investment in new renewable capacity was higher than in hydrocarbon-burning power plants.

Turbine Bat Killings Continue Unabated.  On a warm summer evening along the ridgetops of West Virginia's Allegheny Mountains, thousands of bats are on the move.  They flutter among the treetops, searching for insects to eat and roosts on which to rest.  But some of the trees here are really metal towers, with 30-meter-long blades rotating at more than 80 kilometers per hour even in this light breeze.  They are electricity-generating wind turbines — a great hope for renewable energy, but dangerous for bats.  The flying animals run into spinning blades, or the rapid decrease in air pressure around the turbines can cause bleeding in their lungs.  By morning, dozens will lay dead on the ground.  Countless more will die at wind turbines elsewhere in the U.S. and Canada in the forests and fields of the Midwest and the windy prairies of the Great Plains.

Multiple Mortality Events in Bats: a Global Review.  Despite conservation concerns for many species of bats, factors causing mortality in bats have not been reviewed since 1970. Here, we review and qualitatively describe trends in the occurrence and apparent causes of multiple mortality events (MMEs) in bats around the world.  We compiled a database of MMEs, defined as cases in which ≥ 10 dead bats were counted or estimated at a specific location within a maximum timescale of a year, and more typically within a few days or a season.  We tabulated 1180 MMEs within nine categories.  Prior to 2000, intentional killing by humans caused the greatest proportion of MMEs in bats.  In North America and Europe, people typically killed bats because they were perceived as nuisances.  Intentional killing occurred in South America for vampire bat control, in Asia and Australia for fruit depredation control, and in Africa and Asia for human food.

Who Wants Wind Turbines?  Last month's wind-turbine fire near Palm Springs, California, that dropped burning debris on the barren ground below serves as a reminder of just one of the many reasons why people don't want to live near the towering steel structures.  Other reasons no one wants them nearby include the health impacts. [...] Then, there are the U.S. utility companies who are forced to buy the more expensive wind-generated electricity due to an abused 1978 law that was intended to help the U.S. renewable energy industry get on its feet.  The Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) was designed to give smaller power players an entry into the market.  If wind-turbine projects meet the guidelines, utilities must buy the electricity generated at "often above-market" costs.  Instead, in many cases, big projects, owned by one company, get divided up into different parcels with unique project names, but are still owned by the major developer.  Energy Biz magazine reports:  "PacifiCorp, for one, estimates that such abuses will cost its customers up to $1.1 billion in the coming decade by locking the company into unneeded electricity contracts at rates up to 43-percent higher than market price."

Bat mortality no longer sustainable, global review finds.  Since bats are long-lived and slow to breed, population stability requires high survival rates in adults.  But the onset of white-nose syndrome and a growing wind energy industry threaten these rates.  The authors doubt their observations are sustainable.

Denmark Slashes Wind Power Subsidies to Curb Runaway Power Costs.  Worshipping the Wind Gods comes at a staggering cost, as Danish households and businesses have fast come to realise.  As with everywhere else, power prices matter to consumers in the same way votes matter to politicians.  The mounting anger of the former has forced a panicked retreat by the latter:  Denmark's Climate and Energy Minister, Lars Christian Lilleholt has just slashed support for offshore wind projects in an effort to cut billions of Danish kroner from the cost to power consumers of being forced to perpetually subsidise wind power.  After more than 40 years of promising to stand on its own two feet, the Danish wind industry is still wholly dependent on massive subsidies to survive.

New administration rule would permit thousands of eagle deaths at wind farms.  It will be okay to kill 4,200 bald eagles per year.

Spanish Wind Power Outfit — Iberdola — Pockets $2.2 Billion in Taxpayer Funded Corporate Welfare.  Wind and solar power subsidies are not just huge, they're massive and they're designed to be endless.  In Australia, its Federal Government drew up the economic suicide pact also known as the Large-Scale Renewable Energy Target 15 years ago.  Under the most colossal single industry subsidy scheme in the history of the Commonwealth, power consumers have already been walloped with an additional (and wholly unnecessary) $9 billion added to their escalating power bills (pocketed by wind power outfits like Infigen).  And the scheme lines them up to pay (on the same terms) another $3 billion a year, every year until 2031 (see our post here), almost all of which is designed to be 'gifted' to wind power outfits, for a product that has NO commercial value. [...] The perversity of squandering endless $Billions on a 'technology' — that was made redundant the instant Mr Watt's steam engine chugged to life in 1763 — isn't a crime limited to economic backwaters like SA.  No.  It's being committed in Germany and the United States, too.

Wind Industry Cashes In on IRS Extension.  Institute for Energy Research President Thomas Pyle issued the following statement on the Internal Revenue Service's decision to double the "commence construction" period for wind power projects from two to four years: [...] "This is just another example of the Obama administration circumventing the will of Congress, which began the process of phasing out this wasteful subsidy in December of last year.  It now falls to Congress to clean up the taxpayer-funded mess this administration has made."

Germany's Green Energy Fiasco:  Wind Farms Paid €500 Million a Year to Stand Idle.  Because of the boom of renewable energy, more and more wind turbines have to be switched off.  The reason is power overloading.  The network operators must turn down electricity generated from windmills when their power threatens to clog the network.  Originally, this was intended only as an emergency measure.  The operators of wind and solar parks, however, are being subsidised for electricity that is not produced.  For the grid operator Tennet alone, these costs added €329 million in 2015 — two and a half times as much as in the previous year.

US Wind Power Output Collapse:  What Happens When the Wind Don't Blow.  States with lucrative subsidies for wind power such as California, Oregon and Washington saw huge decreases in the amount of wind power generated during 2015, according to a Thursday report by the Energy Information Administration.  The only major state to see large increases in its wind power capacity in 2015 was Texas, the EIA report found.  Wind power generation in America grew slower last year than at any time since 1999, and produced a mere 4.7 percent of all electricity generated in the U.S. during 2015.

Study: Coast Guard push to limit offshore wind development.  A working group from the U.S. Coast Guard released a study calling for limiting offshore wind development along the Outer Continential Shelf because of incompatibility with commercial shipping, the Checks and Balances Project reports.  The study outlined what the authors termed as "dangers" offshore wind farms pose to shipping, calling for reduction of some blocks designed as potential sites for such ventures by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Group files complaint against wind producers over green marketing claims.  A group defending ridgelines against wind energy development has filed a complaint with the Vermont Attorney General's office and the Federal Trade Commission accusing local wind-power producers of making false green marketing claims.  In a complaint filed March 15, the Irasburg Ridgeline Alliance alleges that Renewable Energy Vermont, Georgia Mountain Community Wind and the Burlington Electric Department engaged in consumer deception in their descriptions and marketing of wind-generated electricity.

Wind Turbine Infrasound:  German Doctors Demand Shutdown of Turbines Within 3KM of Homes.  One of the myths pedalled by the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers is that Germans — who live cheek-by-jowl with thousands of these things — are not troubled in the slightest by incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound.  Yet again, as with wind industry propaganda in the main, the truth is a whole lot different.  Germans neighbouring wind farms ('parks' as they call them) suffer precisely the same range of illnesses, sensations and symptoms as people do all over the world.  Now, their Medicos — clearly conscious of their Hippocratic Oath — are demanding that turbines be shut down to prevent anymore wholly unnecessary harm.

Wind and solar a waste of money for UK, Prof Sir David MacKay said in final interview.  Wind turbines and solar panels are a waste of money if Britain wants reliable low carbon electricity supplies through the winter, the late Professor Sir David MacKay said in his final interview. [...] He criticised the "appalling delusion" that renewable sources of power could simply be scaled up and paired with battery storage to provide all the UK's energy needs, citing the high costs and large areas of land that would be required.

Inconvenient Science:  Study of Wind Farm Impacts On EU Protected Species Determines 80% Reduction.  As multiple recent articles have documented, wind energy, in the form of wind farms, has been plagued with multiple serious issues.  When compiling the list of issues, it demonstrates that wind power's future as a sustainable renewable energy resource is not so bright. [...] Adding to the negative issue impacts of wind energy is a new study out of Scotland that established an 80% reduction of the EU protected golden plover bird species in the vicinity of a wind farm.

England Giving Up On Wind Power.  Hugh McNeal, chief executive of the British wind industry's trade body, has acknowledged that with subsidies at an end, there won't be any more wind turbine projects in England.  Why?  The wind doesn't blow hard enough.

Wind Energy Results in Animal Deaths and Deformities.  Domestic animals are in grave danger, too, based on worldwide accounts.  According to an article published on the World Council for Nature's website June 7, 2014, a mink farm in Denmark suffered a huge hit when 1,600 mink cubs were born prematurely following the installation of four industrial wind turbines less than 1,600 feet away.  "Many had deformities, and most were dead on arrival," the article states.  "The lack of eyeballs was the most common malformation.  Veterinarians ruled out food and viruses as possible causes.  The only thing different at the farm since last year has been the installation of four large wind turbines only 328 meters away."

England not windy enough, admits wind industry chief.  England is not windy enough to justify building any more onshore wind turbines, the chief executive of wind industry trade body has admitted.  Hugh McNeal, who joined RenewableUK two months ago from the Department of Energy and Climate Change, insisted the industry could make the case for more onshore turbines in some parts of the UK, despite the withdrawal of subsidies.  But he said this would "almost certainly" not be in England, as the wind speeds were not high enough to make the projects economically viable without subsidy.

Germany Runs Up Against the Limits of Renewables.  At one point this month renewable energy sources briefly supplied close to 90 percent of the power on Germany's electric grid.  But that doesn't mean the world's fourth-largest economy is close to being run on zero-carbon electricity.  In fact, Germany is giving the rest of the world a lesson in just how much can go wrong when you try to reduce carbon emissions solely by installing lots of wind and solar.  After years of declines, Germany's carbon emissions rose slightly in 2015, largely because the country produces much more electricity than it needs.  That's happening because even if there are times when renewables can supply nearly all of the electricity on the grid, the variability of those sources forces Germany to keep other power plants running.

Germany basically had to pay people to use electricity Sunday.  Germany hit a new milestone in renewable energy on Sunday [5/15/2016], generating so much power at one point that customers were essentially being paid to turn on their lights or charge their phones.  Quartz reports that around 1pm Sunday, about 87 percent of the power being used in Germany was coming from wind, solar, hydro, and biomass power plants.  In 2015, the average was 33 percent.  There was so much power being produced that the cost of electricity briefly dropped to -$149 per megawatt-hour, according to the Independent.

Canadian gov't could face $475M payout for blocking US wind energy company.  A U.S.-based company that accused the Canadian government of using phony environmental concerns to keep wind turbines off the Great Lakes could be close to a ruling in its $568 million suit.  A panel of international law experts could rule any day now on whether Ontario's open-ended "temporary ban" violated the North American Free Trade Agreement, as alleged by Windstream Energy.  In creating the moratorium, Ontario said it needed more time to study the environmental impact of the turbines, but documents obtained by Windstream seem to show the real reason was aesthetic, not environmental.

The Nuclear Reaction.  In 2015, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) called for a reduction of 32 percent in the 2005 levels of carbon dioxide emissions. [...] The EPA guidelines were not written with global warming in mind.  Nuclear power is already the greatest source of clean electricity in the United States and could largely eliminate fossil fuels by 2030.  The guidelines seem designed to increase the use of solar and wind energy in the United States, though they will also increase the use of greenhouse gas (GHG)-emitting natural gas.  But wind and solar energy do not provide completely clean electricity.  They are variable renewable energy (VRE) sources, both low in concentration and intermittent.  It takes resources to collect and concentrate them, and even more resources to make them available on demand.

Why I can boldly proclaim the Interior Department to be a corrupt government agency in collusion with the wind industry.  From the recent AP article announcing a plan that would allow wind companies and other power providers to "kill or injure up to 4,200 bald eagles a year without penalty" the USFWS gave out official numbers pertaining to the current population status of Golden eagles.  A population I might add that has been rapidly declining in the western US.  ["]The Fish and Wildlife Service estimates there are about 143,000 bald eagles in the United States, and 40,000 golden eagles.["]  I will explain very clearly why this statement is not even close to being true and I will use official USFWS data to prove it.  When I am finished it will be very clear to most that the USFWS is either very incompetent, very corrupt and probably both.

Why EU renewable energy figures are misleading:
Europe requires 150% renewable energy to become fossil-free.  The EU has a target of 20% renewable energy in 2020. In 2014, 16% was reached and thus, it has been concluded that the EU is well on its way to achieve the target.  After all, thousands of wind turbines are being built in our countryside and millions of solar panels are being installed on our rooftops.  I assume that many readers of Energy Post are aware of the 16% level that we are supposed to have reached.  But I wonder whether they have ever tried to find out how this percentage was calculated?  I did — and it turned out to be far from straightforward.

Prove This Wrong.  Many people believe wind and solar energy capturing devices can replace a substantial percentage if not all of our fossil fuel usage.  [In this article] you will find pictures and charts detailing the necessity of the fossil fuel supply system and the massive industrial infrastructure in this "renewable" dream. [...] The pictures clearly illustrate that the fossil fuel supply system and a vast industrial infrastructure support the manufacture and installation of these wind energy capturing devices.  The tons of rebar and the yards of concrete offer a chance to look at the energy requirements for both.  It is also important to point out that all the equipment used to install the turbines also have the fossil fuel supply system and the massive industrial infrastructure supporting them.

CO2 Emissions Variations in CCGTs Used to Balance Wind in Ireland.  The island of Ireland functions as a single electricity grid linked to the British mainland by two interconnectors with a combined capacity of 1 GW.  The Republic of Ireland in the south has set a goal to have 40% of electricity generated from renewables, mainly onshore wind, by 2020.  Variable intermittency will be balanced using frame type combined cycle gas turbines (CCGTs).  As the level of wind penetration grows the CCGTs need to work harder ramping up and down to compensate for variable wind.  This causes increased wear and tear on the CCGT plant and also significantly reduces the energy efficiency of the CCGTs raising their specific CO2 production.  During 2014 and 2015, average wind penetration was 22%, the CCGTs produced 575 Kg of CO2 per MWh and the average fuel efficiency was 32% compared with a design specification of 55%.

Navy & Air Force Share Concerns Regarding Wind Energy.  The Naval Air Station at Corpus Christi, Texas, is faced with the same dilemma that the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station (NFARS) confronts:  What impact will at least 70 proposed 620-foot-high industrial wind turbines have on military flight operations?  "I do feel like one day we're going to wake up surrounded by wind farms in South Texas significantly impacting the mission [of the Naval Air Station] in a negative way," Capt. Christopher Misner, commanding officer of Naval Air Station Kingsville, said during a Texas Senate Committee on Veteran Affairs and Military Installations hearing in April.  Rear Admiral Dell D. Bull, chief of naval air training, is quoted as saying he's unsure if naval air operations can safely coexist with industrial wind turbines, "and I don't know how anyone can say otherwise."

New administration rule would permit thousands of eagle deaths at wind farms.  The Obama administration is revising a federal rule that allows wind-energy companies to operate high-speed turbines for up to 30 years, even if means killing or injuring thousands of federally protected bald and golden eagles.

FAIL: Busted Wind Turbines Give College Whopping Negative 99.14% Return On Investment.  Lake Land College recently announced plans to tear down broken wind turbines on campus, after the school got $987,697.20 in taxpayer support for wind power.  The turbines were funded by a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, but the turbines lasted for less than four years and were incredibly costly to maintain.  "Since the installation in 2012, the college has spent $240,000 in parts and labor to maintain the turbines," Kelly Allee, Director of Public Relations at Lake Land College, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.  The college estimates it would take another $100,000 in repairs to make the turbines function again after one of them was struck by lightning and likely suffered electrical damage last summer.

Senate votes to restore full taxpayer subsidies for windmills.  Hot air still rules on Capitol Hill, where senators voted Tuesday [4/26/2016] to restore millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies for windmills, in a signal that Congress is still eager to pick winners in the emerging renewable energy sector.  A sizable number of Republicans joined most Democrats in backing the subsidy for research on wind energy which, while small in terms of dollars, is considered a major symbolic test of Congress's commitment having alternative energy sources be part of the mix, even if they aren't economically viable on their own yet.

Abandoned Eyesores Almost Certain to Proliferate Across the Maine Countryside Unless We Stop Them.  Wind companies do everything they can to get as much of the money generated by a wind project upfront or as frontloaded as possible.  They also avoid at all costs buying the land, because ownership comes with responsibilities.  Instead, they typically lease the land for their monstrosities so that when they've wrung it for money, they can simply abandon the turbines, leaving the unwitting lessors stuck with the rusting and leaking hulks.

The Big Green Job Killing Machine.  The Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, Arizona, is a legal action environmental group that sues to block human action and doesn't care who gets hurt. [...] Hatred of industry — and the people who ran it — prompted the founders to seek ways to permanently stop natural resource use and led them to form the CBD in 1994. With the help of environmental attorneys, CBD "weaponized" the Endangered Species Act against ranchers, loggers, miners, and human activity in general.  That law now trumps virtually everything else.  In fact, about the only time the act doesn't seem to apply is when gigantic wind turbines slaughter hundreds of thousands of eagles, hawks, falcons, other birds and bats, year after year, nearly eradicating them and "entire biological communities" across vast areas in California, Oregon, and elsewhere.

Study: $40± Million in Property Value Loss due to Wind Project.  A Henderson-funded study on the potential impact of the Galloo Island wind project found the town could face a total loss in property value of up to about $40 million because of the view of turbines.  During a meeting Monday night [4/4/2016] at the fire hall, people had a chance to ask researchers questions about the study, which was completed by the Clarkson University School of Business, Potsdam, and Nanos Research, a public opinion and research company in Ottawa, Canada.

Lack of Wind Power, Power Plant Repairs Leaves Hawaiians in the Dark.  Residents on Hawaii Island suffered blackouts in late February due to a number of electric power generating units being taken offline due to repairs simultaneous with wind power generation being zero.  Despite a prime location with wind speeds rated as superb by the Department of Energy's renewable energy laboratory, the Hawi wind farm on Hawaii Island, like the Kamaoa wind farm before it, has been taken off line numerous times, plagued by wind speeds that were too high for sustained periods threatening to damage its turbines.  The Kamaoa wind farm was closed in 2006 for the same reason.  Constant need of repairs due to high wind speeds made it too expensive to keep operating for the amount of power it could be counted upon to reliably produce.  The turbines at Kamaoa were abandoned, rusted and eventually fell.

Chart: Power Is A Lot More Expensive Under Obama.  [Scroll down]  "President Obama openly ran in 2008 on a platform of making electricity rates 'skyrocket' and bankrupting anyone who dared to build a coal plant in the United States," Travis Fisher, an economist at the Institute for Energy Research, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.  "Now, more than seven years into his presidency, it should come as no surprise that his efforts have taken a widespread toll in the form of higher electricity rates for nearly every state in the union."  Despite falling generation costs, electrical utilities are being forced by the government to pay for billions of dollars of government-mandated "improvements" and taxpayer support for new wind and solar power systems.

Renewables are useless: The Evidence is Overwhelming.  Al Gore has a problem.  He seems to want people to believe that only climate skeptics oppose renewables.  The truth is, a small but growing number of prominent greens, openly acknowledge that renewables in their current form are not a scalable replacement for fossil fuels.

The Catch-22 of Energy Storage.  Several recent analyses of the inputs to our energy systems indicate that, against expectations, energy storage cannot solve the problem of intermittency of wind or solar power.  Not for reasons of technical performance, cost, or storage capacity, but for something more intractable:  there is not enough surplus energy left over after construction of the generators and the storage system to power our present civilization.  The problem is analysed in an important paper by Weißbach et al.  in terms of energy returned on energy invested, or EROEI — the ratio of the energy produced over the life of a power plant to the energy that was required to build it.  It takes energy to make a power plant — to manufacture its components, mine the fuel, and so on.  The power plant needs to make at least this much energy to break even.  A break-even powerplant has an EROEI of 1.  But such a plant would pointless, as there is no energy surplus to do the useful things we use energy for.

Health Officer Admits Feeling Ill Near Duke's Shirley Wind Turbines.  Brown County appears to be digging a deeper and deeper hole for itself as more facts come to light surrounding Duke Energy's Shirley Windpower.  After an unusually long almost 3 month delay in satisfying a resident's open records request, the records ultimately provided expose that former Brown County Health Officer Chua Xiong feels ill when visiting the Shirley Wind facility.

Wind energy is a public health problem.  Wind turbine projects have previously been rejected in Wellfleet, Eastham, Orleans, Harwich, Dennis, Brewster, Barnstable and Bourne.  Health concerns have been a major issue.  A Superior Court judge, hearing neighbor' complaints that wind turbine noise constituted an intolerable "nuisance" that was causing "irreparable harm," issued an injunction to curtail operations.  The "Falmouth experience" is not unique.  Residents in at least 21 communities in Massachusetts (and hundreds of locations all over the world) have reported significant health problems as the result of living too close to wind turbines.

Wounds not healing after wind turbines turned friends into bitter enemies.  Wind turbines tear apart communities and relationships, causing animosity that lingers for years, warn farmers who have lived through the ugly battles.  Don Winslow signed up in 2013 when a wind turbine company planned to build five turbines near Peterborough.  Three months later, after immense public pressure and hostility, he couldn't do it anymore.  "It relieved our stress tremendously (to cancel the contract)," the then-70-year-old Winslow told Farmers Forum.  "We don't have to sneak around the neighbours, hoping to not run into them.  There is always an element of society that is going to go overboard but people I respected were just as upset as the real radicals."

Time to regroup and defend against Big Wind.  Like a freshening breeze that becomes a steady blow, the move to turn northeastern Jefferson County into one giant wind generation facility has roared perforce back to life.  Back in 2014, when Iberdrola officially removed its Horse Creek wind project from the Independent Systems Operator list of pending wind projects, it appeared to signal the death knell for wind generation along the St. Lawrence River corridor.  Other projects studied for Hammond, Cape Vincent and Galloo Island had similarly quietly expired, or so it seemed at the time, and residents and vacation-home owners breathed a sigh of relief.  There were a lot of voices at the time that warned, in effect, it ain't over 'til it's over, but those voices were largely ignored.

Will Wind Turbines Ever Be Safe For Birds?  Wind turbines kill an estimated 140,000 to 328,000 birds each year in North America, making it the most threatening form of green energy.  And yet, it's also one of the most rapidly expanding energy industries:  more than 49,000 individual wind turbines now exist across 39 states.  The wind industry has the incentive to stop the slaughter:  Thanks to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, it's illegal to kill any bird protected by the Act — even if the death is "incidental," meaning it occurs unintentionally on the part of the wind farm.

Report: 10 Of The Worst-Sited Wind Energy Projects For Birds.  Hundreds of thousands of protected birds, including some endangered species, die each year when they collide with wind turbines and associated power lines.  The number of turbines is set to grow significantly as wind energy projects continue to expand across the landscape, likely causing a major increase in this already serious problem.

Wind and solar have destroyed the ability of the market to signal price.  Before the election, high electricity prices made the Big Six energy companies everyone's favourite whipping boys.  A report by the competition watchdog exonerated them.  Government-driven social, environmental and network costs were the main drivers of rising electricity bills, the Competition and Markets Authority found.  Now the Big Six have put themselves squarely back in the frame.  A 125-page report by the electricity industry lobby group, Energy UK, supports phasing out cheap coal power and demands more subsidies for wind and solar.

We Cannot Afford "Free" Wind and Solar Energy.  While driving the mostly empty and flat 1,000 miles from Houston to Colorado Springs recently, I noticed something I hadn't seen much just a few years ago — lots of wind farms dotting the landscape, but none anywhere near even small population centers.  And another funny thing, though:  Invariably, many of the turbines weren't moving and one of the largest appeared to have about 100 turbines, yet I counted just three in action.  How can this be?  Having paid for the land, the turbines, and those long transmission lines don't providers want a maximum of the machines going?  Nope.  Because, you see, wind farms — and solar farms for the same reasons — don't make their money by generating electricity.  They do it by generating government subsidies.

The Charade of Industrial Wind.  Maine abounds in natural beauty.  Historically there have always been practical and impractical uses of the Maine geography and waters.  In recent years we have been brow beaten by a corrupt government philosophy into allowing an ever increasing degree of impractical destruction of Maine by the industrial wind industry, related power companies and businesses.  The majority of Mainers have no idea how it has been happening, and they are being told over and over that this is all needed to "combat climate change," and therefore it is all a "virtuous argument."  You don't agree?  You'll be demonized as a "denier" or worse.  Never mind that the record through emails shows that the proponents have colluded beyond public purview for years to achieve their aims.

5 environmentalist ideas that have spectacularly backfired.  [#2]  Wind Turbines:  Not only must birds fear solar liquidation, but also towering blades of death.  Those would be windmills, touted as producers of renewable energy by environmentalists, but at a heavy cost.  Not only are the wind turbines not able to store energy, they also kill hundreds of airborne critters a year.  One study last year found that 1.5 million birds and bats were killed annually by these enviro-cuisinarts.  And while environmentalists claim that new wind turbines can prevent avian destruction, the study found that the deaths had increased by 30 percent since a government review in 2009.  The windmills have also been slicing apart endangered birds, like bald and gold eagles.  But don't worry.  The Obama administration has been handing out 30-year exemptions for wind turbine owners.  Some of them even get government grants.

14,000 Abandoned Wind Turbines Litter The United States.  The towering symbols of a fading religion, over 14,000 wind turbines, abandoned, rusting, slowly decaying.  When it is time to clean up after a failed idea, no green environmentalists are to be found.  Wind was free, natural, harnessing Earth's bounty for the benefit of all mankind, sounded like a good idea.  Wind turbines, like solar panels, break down.  They produce less energy before they break down than the energy it took to make them.  The wind does not blow all the time, or even most of the time.  When it is not blowing, they require full-time backup from conventional power plants.  Without government subsidy, they are unaffordable.  With governments facing financial troubles, the subsidies are unaffordable. [...] According to the Golden Gate Audubon Society 75-110 Golden Eagles, 380 Burrowing Owls, 300 Red-Tailed Hawks and 333 American Kestrels are killed by the turbines every year.

The laughable idea that renewable energy is or ever will be 'least cost'.  [Scroll down]  It certainly can't be least-cost if you shutter working coal plants to start up replacement renewable plants.  As it is, electricity generation from new plants is more expensive than electricity from existing plants; that'll be worse when you replace an existing plant generating electricity from an efficient source like coal with ones relying on vastly inefficient sources.  It's definitely not least cost when you fully account for the realities of nondispatchable renewable energy.  Those would include their well-known inefficiencies and flat-out inability to work when either the sun isn't shining enough or the wind isn't blowing.  Nature, economics, simple math, and physics all work against nondispatchable renewable energy sources with respect to whether they can ever be cost-competitive with traditional sources.

11 Ways to Kill Big Wind Projects.  Communities around the world are facing a plague of industrial wind projects that like hideous War of the Worlds steel monsters are destroying communities, mountains, and wildlands; slaughtering birds and bats; and sickening people and driving them from their homes.  Even though these wind projects do not reduce greenhouse gases or fossil fuel use (as promised), they do have dreadful environmental, social, and economic impacts on whole regions.  They are nothing but a tool for energy companies and investment banks to make billions in taxpayer subsidies that get added to the national debt.  The good news is that communities worldwide are learning how to defeat these dreadful projects.

The Windmills of Bernie's Mind.  Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders in December introduced a sweeping renewable-energy plan that would, among other things, require tens of thousands of new wind turbines.  Sen. Sanders's "people before polluters" proposal may help rally his followers, but it won't be so well received in rural America, where resistance to wind farms has been building.  Nowhere is the backlash stronger than in Mr. Sanders's state.

Offshore Wind Turbine Maintenance Cost Fiasco: "100 Times More Expensive Than A New Turbine Itself"!.  A press release by Germany's Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft reports how offshore North and Baltic Sea wind turbines need to be in operation for 25 years before they become profitable, but that they are prone to shortened lifespans due to rust from the harsh sea environment.  As a result the wind turbine installations need extra and very costly maintenance to ensure that they survive long enough.  It's turning out to be an insurmountable challenge.  Maintenance to turbines cannot be done at a dry dock, rather, because they are permanently fixed out to sea, repair work and maintenance have to be done offshore in raw and windy conditions.  Not only is this expensive, but it also puts the lives and limbs of repair personnel at risk.

Wind farm study finally recognizes that all is not well with wind power.  As wind energy development blossoms in Canada and around the world, opposition at the community level is challenging the viability of the industry.  A new study with research from the University of Waterloo, published in Nature Energy, identifies four major factors leading to disputes over wind farms, and offers recommendations on avoiding disagreements.  The research project focuses on the province of Ontario.  It lists socially mediated health concerns, distribution of financial benefits, lack of meaningful engagement and failure to treat landscape concerns seriously, as the core stumbling blocks to a community's acceptance of wind energy development.

Wind turbine photo of the year.  The entire rationale for wind turbines is to stop global warming by reducing the amount of CO2 being returned to the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.  In the attached picture, recently taken in Sweden, freezing cold weather has caused the rotor blades of a wind turbine to ice up bringing the blades to a complete stop.  To fix the "problem" a helicopter is employed (burning aviation fuel) to spray hot water (which is heated in the frigid temperatures using a truck equipped with a 260 kW oil burner) on the blades of the turbine to de-ice them.

New Research on Turbines Killing Bats.  Reports of bat deaths worldwide due to human causes largely unique to the 21st century are markedly rising, according to a new analysis.  Collisions with wind turbines worldwide and the disease white-nose syndrome in North America lead the reported causes of mass death in bats.  These new threats now surpass all prior known causes of bat mortality, natural or attributed to humans.

5 Reasons Why We Shouldn't Keep Subsidizing Wind and Solar Energy.  Proponents of wind and solar energy subsides argue that they are necessary for any number of reasons, such as business certainty, to stimulate the economy, to preserve jobs, to combat global warming, to compete internationally, and the like.  But in the long run, subsidies actually hurt the very industries they're supposed to help by disincentivizing innovation and making U.S. companies less competitive at home and abroad.  The real irony, if not tragedy, is that a free market is far more likely to yield the growth and innovation that subsidy supporters claim to want.  Each year, when Congress tries to extend, re-extend, or retroactively extend targeted tax credits for renewable energy, Congress hurts long-term innovation and growth.

Keyword:  eyesore.
Vermonters say they want industrial wind to go the way of the billboard.  The contrast between Florida's highways and those in Vermont is stark; Florida's are littered with billboards.  They often advertise products or services that I would have preferred not to have to explain to my children when they were young.  Vermont, a state with a deep streak of independence filled with people who love their farms, quaint towns and mountains, does not allow billboards.  That makes motoring along their roads a completely different kind of experience.  This week, Vermont state Senator John D. Rogers (Essex County) introduced a bill that he hopes will make industrial scale wind turbines — the kind that have grown ever larger as producers seek the promised land of "economy of scale" — go the way of the billboard.

Wind turbine noise levels for 1238 homes.  Noise results are presented according to the distance from the closest wind turbine to the participant's home.

No matter where it's sited, industrial wind is a net loser.  With all due respect to [Gary] Kent, 'green' energy is NOT a partisan issue.  Frankly, I do not know a single person (Republican, Democrat, Independent, or otherwise) who is not all FOR protecting our environment.  According to Mr. Kent's reasoning, wind turbines are OK sited elsewhere, blighting someone else's horizons — just not ours.  Those who support this kind of 'NIMBY' (Not In My Back Yard) reasoning unintentionally give undue credibility to the scam of industrial wind.  Fact is:  Industrial wind is a NET LOSER:  economically, technically, environmentally, and civilly — no matter where it is sited.

In Victory for Eagles, USFWS Gives Up Fight for 30-Year Take Permits.  Eagles just scored a big victory in the courts.  This week the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service dropped an appeal it was pursuing in support of 30-year "take" permits that allow wind farms and other industries to disturb and kill Bald and Golden Eagles, as long as they take steps to protect the raptors.  The appeal was part of a legal battle over the agency's 2013 move to extend the length of these take permits' validity by 25 years.

Once in favor of wind power, Yates residents become overwhelmingly opposed.  Residents of this Orleans County [NY] town used to be big supporters of wind power, even urging town leaders to go out and recruit a wind developer.  That's not true anymore.  Two surveys last fall showed overwhelming opposition to the Lighthouse Wind project proposed by Apex Clean Energy, which wants to erect a total of as many as 70 wind turbines in Yates and the neighboring Town of Somerset in Niagara County.  The exact number and location of the turbines has not yet been determined, a company spokesman said last week.

Study: Wind Electricity Several Times as Expensive as Conventional Sources.  On average, electricity from new wind resources is nearly four times as expensive as that from existing nuclear sources and nearly three times as expensive as using existing coal sources, a new study by the Institute for Energy Research (IER) reports.  The study, What is the True Cost of Electricity?, used data from the Energy Information Administration and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.  "This study points to the need to let economic decisions about energy be made on a commercial basis rather than on a political basis," said Mark Jamison, Ph.D., director of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida.  "Too often people suffer from the illusion of knowledge and, believing they know what investments others should make, support political decision-making that favors one technology over another."

End Wind Welfare.  Congress enacted the Wind Production Tax Credit (PTC) in 1992 as a temporary measure for an "infant" industry.  After propping up the wind industry for more than two decades, the PTC should be eliminated.  Subsidized wind power increases electricity costs, harms taxpayers, and destabilizes the electric grid.  It is most beneficial to wealthy wind developers who are able to reduce their tax rate at the expense of the rest of the taxpayers and ratepayers.  It is past time to end corporate welfare for the mature wind industry.

IESO confirms wind is wimpy during On-peak use periods.  The IESO's 18-Month Outlook was posted on their website September 21st and includes various forecasts that attempt to project what Ontario's demand for power will be and also estimate what our various generating sources will provide.  The forecasts for power generation from wind tell a story:  wind power generation occurs when its not needed!

Wind turbines proven to be a threat to people's health.  There is clinical evidence that substantiates that there is a clear correlation between the dba levels and the distance of the effect of the noise and specifically the infrasound that will adversely affect residencies and the respective residents.  This particular stance is not contrived or based on conjecture, the facts stand on the complaints of individuals who have suffered greatly to include lost sleep, severe headaches, increases in blood pressure and increased levels of stress and eventually, having had to abandon homes and properties as a result of their continued deteriorating health and welfare.

The Cynicism of the Clean Power Plan.  If you want to irritate promoters of the Clean Power Plan, just state the obvious:  It's going to increase electricity prices, and that will be bad for the poor and the middle class. [...] Eurostat data from Spain, which has also been on a renewable-energy binge, tells a similar story.  Between 2007 and 2014, residential electric rates in Spain jumped by 70 percent.  Over that same time period, wind capacity increased by about 50 percent and solar capacity grew about seven-fold.  Spanish households are now paying some of the highest electricity prices in Europe, about $0.27 per kilowatt-hour, a rate that is more than twice the U.S. average.

Trump favors subsidies for wind energy.  Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump told an Iowa crowd Thursday [11/19/2015] that he is in favor of federal subsidies for wind energy.  During a voter forum in Newton, Iowa, Trump said he's "OK" with wind energy subsidies, mostly because the price of oil has plummeted during the past year.  With oil costing so little, there's not much incentive to build windmills to generate wind energy without subsidies, Trump said.

Thirty-Eight Years Of Subsidies.  In 2013, coal was subsidized about a billion dollars.  Natural gas and oil, about $2.3 billion.  Nuclear got about $1.7 billion.  Total, about $5.0 billion dollars.  Now, how about renewables?  Solar energy alone, at $5.3 billion, gets more subsidy than all the fossil fuels put together plus nuclear.  And wind energy alone, the recipient of an even larger $5.9 billion dollar subsidy, also is larger than all fossil plus nuclear.  In total, the renewable sector got about $15 billion dollars in subsidies, three times that of fossil fuels plus nuclear.  More than two-thirds of that went to wind and solar.  And it is getting worse.

The Greatest Energy Chart Ever.  The original energy crisis goes back to the Jimmy Carter administration.  There was a shortage of gasoline, which the Carter administration made worse by fixing oil prices.  [...] [F]or thirty-eight years, our government has been predicting the demise of fossil fuel energy and subsidizing, to varying degrees but amounting cumulatively to many billions of dollars, solar and wind energy.  What has the result been?  This chart tells the story.  It plots global energy consumption from 1965 to the present; you can see the contributions of solar and wind power as a virtually straight line, approximating zero, across the bottom of the graph.

14,000 Abandoned Wind Turbines Litter the United States.  The towering symbols of a fading religion, over 14,000 wind turbines, abandoned, rusting, slowly decaying.  When it is time to clean up after a failed idea, no green environmentalists are to be found.  Wind was free, natural, harnessing Earth's bounty for the benefit of all mankind, sounded like a good idea.  Wind turbines, like solar panels, break down.  They produce less energy before they break down than the energy it took to make them.  The wind does not blow all the time, or even most of the time.  When it is not blowing, they require full-time backup from conventional power plants.  Without government subsidy, they are unaffordable.  With governments facing financial troubles, the subsidies are unaffordable.  It was a nice dream, a very expensive dream, but it didn't work.

Wind turbines may reduce breeding success of white-tailed eagles.  While renewable energy sources such as wind power will play an increasingly important role in climate change mitigation, new research reveals that the breeding success of species such as the white-tailed eagle can be significantly reduced by wind power generation on a large scale, possibly due to collision mortality.

Wind Turbines Are Killing Bats And Could Be Hurting Farmers.  Wind turbines are killing hundreds of thousands of bats every year — bats that could be providing farmers with huge economics benefits if new research is to be believed.  A new study by University of California Davis researcher Katherine Ingram claims that bats add $3.7 billion to the U.S. agriculture industry through pest control.  As it turns out, eating moths, mosquitos and other bugs make bats a big money saver for farmers, especially organic growers, looking to cut down on pesticide use.

Ten Reasons to Eliminate the Wind PTC.  [#1] It Increases Electricity Costs. Wind generation is not reliable because wind units produce electricity when the wind blows, not necessarily when people want electricity.  Adding wind generation to the electric grid does not increase the usable capacity of the grid, because there are times when the wind does not blow.  Wind, therefore, does not reduce the amount of reliable generation that is required to keep the lights on.  As noted below, the PTC leads to cannibalistic pricing behavior, which makes some low-cost, reliable generators uneconomic.  The reliable generators will need to be replaced with new facilities, increasing the cost of electricity in the long run.

U.S. Offshore Wind: A Government Pipe Dream.  At a White House summit last month, the Obama administration publicly backed its new government program — offshore wind.  With America's first offshore project now under construction, and the Department of Energy's (DOE) latest analysis showing 21 projects totaling 15,650 megawatts in the works, the political boost could trigger a development boom.  But don't count on it.  The already uneconomic on land is only worse off in the waters.

The secret is out: wind is wimpy.  The IESO's 18-Month Outlook was posted on their website September 21st and includes various forecasts that attempt to project what Ontario's demand for power will be and also estimate what our various generating sources will provide.  The forecasts for power generation from wind tell a story:  wind power generation occurs when its not needed!

Can We Rely on Wind and Solar Energy?  Is "green" energy, particularly wind and solar energy, the solution to our climate and energy problems?  Or should we be relying on things like natural gas, nuclear energy, and even coal for our energy needs and environmental obligations?  [Video clip]

Feds Auction 343,833 Offshore Acres to Wind Power Companies; 87 Percent Off Limits for Oil, Natural Gas Development.  The federal government is auctioning off 343,833 acres of offshore federal land for wind energy development on Nov. 9, with bidding coming from 13 companies deemed to be "legally, technically and financially qualified" to participate.

Michigan's Wind Energy Mandate Costs Each Family Nearly $4,000.  A new study from Utah State University found that, as of 2013, Michigan's renewable energy mandate, enacted in 2008, has cost families and businesses here a bundle:  $15.1 billion overall, or $3,830 per family, compared to what we would have experienced without the mandate.  According to the study, the economies of all states with a renewable portfolio standard, or RPS, have suffered harm.  Among the negative effects are a nearly 14 percent decrease in industrial electricity sales, plus losses in both personal income and employment.  A key finding was that an estimated 24,369 jobs have been lost in Michigan because of the mandate, which is in effect a mandate for wind energy.

Not all energy is created equal.  [Scroll down]  Those "renewable energy tax credits" are mainly two:  the wind Production Tax Credit (PTC) and solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC).  Like the oil-export ban, the wind PTC is an archaic policy that has no place in today's modern reality of energy abundance.  Passed by Congress in 1992, the PTC pays the wind industry for every kilowatt-hour of electricity generated over a ten-year period.  No other mature energy source — natural gas, oil, or coal — can claim a similar carve out based on how much product they sell.  The subsidy is so lavish that wind developers can sometimes sell their electricity at a loss and still profit.  The New York Times has described this as wind's "cannibal behavior" on the power grid.

Wind Holds Energy Exports Hostage.  Congress has taken action that actually advances free markets and limits government intrusion.  I was in the room when, on September 17, the House Energy and Commerce Committee — with bipartisan support — advanced legislation to lift the 1970s-era ban on crude-oil exports.  HR 702, "To adapt to changing crude oil market conditions," is expected to receive a full floor vote within a matter of weeks.  The export ban is a relic of a bygone era during which ideas like "peak oil" and "energy scarcity" were the conventional wisdom.  Despite all those who cried "wolf," the U.S. is now the world's largest combined oil-and-gas producer.

The Big Sunshiny Lie.  The important thing to know about solar and wind power, and other so-called "renewable" sources of energy, is that they aren't necessary.  Au the contraire, their dominance of the energy mix would be a disaster for the republic.  Solar and wind create trifling amounts of power at a multiple of the cost of power made available by fossil fuels.  Increased reliance on pricy power from wind and solar would drive up the overall cost of energy, which in turn would drive up the cost of everything.  Everything!  Not just individual power bills, which would be bad enough.  It takes energy to produce, transport, and market all the goods Americans take for granted.  Even our service economy is a heavy user of energy.  Wind and solar power are also unreliable.  The sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow.  This isn't going to change.

Renewable fail: Weakest US winds for 40 years.  The Financial Times reports that the USA is experiencing the weakest wind speeds for 40 years, which is having a dramatic impact on wind energy businesses. [...] In my opinion this once again demonstrates how useless wind power is, as an energy solution for an economy which requires a reliable, biddable supply of electricity.

Does God Hate Green Energy?  The Gore Effect is well known:  wherever greenies gather for a global warming conference, cold weather — frequently, in the form of a blizzard — pursues them.  It is hard to escape the sense that the Almighty is trying to send a message.  Now we have this:  no sooner had the U.S. erected thousands of windmills than the wind stopped blowing[.]

In China, the true cost of Britain's clean, green wind power experiment: Pollution on a disastrous scale.  [The Daily Mail] has uncovered the distinctly dirty truth about the process used to extract neodymium:  it has an appalling environmental impact that raises serious questions over the credibility of so-called green technology.  The reality is that, as Britain flaunts its environmental credentials by speckling its coastlines and unspoiled moors and mountains with thousands of wind turbines, it is contributing to a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China.  This is the deadly and sinister side of the massively profitable rare-earths industry that the 'green' companies profiting from the demand for wind turbines would prefer you knew nothing about.

The President's Clean Energy Farce.  Green energy investments are a guaranteed flop, the kind of failure only a shady Broadway producer could envision.  This current green energy production really got underway when the economic "stimulus" set aside $80 billion to subsidize politically connected energy projects, according to the Heritage Foundation.  Since the halcyon days of the stimulus, 1,900 investigations have been opened to probe stimulus fraud and about 600 convictions have been secured by prosecutors.  What is more, about 10 percent of the Obama-backed green companies have gone bankrupt or out of business.  But Obama does not let the facts get in the way of a good, green story.

The Clean Power Plan Will Collide With The Incredibly Weird Physics Of The Electric Grid.  The idiosyncratic physics of electricity will ultimately doom the aspirational goals of the new 1,560 page Clean Power Plan, more than will an army of lobbyists, lawsuits and laborious studies.  It is an inconvenient truth that electricity is profoundly different from every other energy source society uses; it is, in fact, weird.  In energy equivalent terms, the nation's electric utilities deliver five oil supertankers every day.  This feat is performed on a network where operational dynamics and disasters can happen at near lightspeed.  And here is the critical singular fact:  Over 99 percent of all electricity has to be generated at the same instant that it is consumed.  Try doing that with wheat, steel, or oil.  Thus the problem:  The Clean Power Plan (CPP), as by now everyone knows, sets a course to radically increase the use of wind and solar power everywhere in America.  And, cost aside (which it never is in the real world), it should go without saying that neither wind nor solar are available all the time.

30 Million Birds are Killed by Wind Farms Every Year.  [Scroll down]  But we're unlikely ever to get an accurate figure because the wind industry takes such pains to cover up this embarrassing data.  For example, last year, PacificCorp — an energy company which operates at least 13 wind energy facilities in three US states — sued the US Interior Department to prevent it releasing to the media the figures on how many birds have been found dead at its facilities.  PacifiCorp claimed the disclosure would cause "irreparable harm" to its interests.  Well, maybe.  But oughtn't that to be a matter for the public to decide?

The True Cost of Energy: Wind.  This report explores the true cost of producing electricity from wind power.  Rather than creating a new cost estimate, we analyze the findings of prominent cost studies by experts in the energy field.  Each study includes different factors in its estimate of the cost of wind power.  We break down each of these factors and explain the significance of each.  These factors include:  capital costs, operation and maintenance costs, capacity factor, transmission costs, baseload cycling, social and environmental costs, and the cost of government subsidies.  Other factors are more difficult to quantify, but nevertheless add to the true cost of wind power.  Such factors include:  opportunity cost of taxpayer dollars, reduced reliability of the grid, and higher electricity prices.  We conclude that, when estimating the true cost of wind power, all of these factors should be included.

Renewables drain our resources.  Renewables use sun, water, wind; energy sources that won't run out.  Non-renewables come from things like gas, coal and uranium that one day will.  But unless electricity and motorised transport are abandoned altogether, all "renewables" need huge areas of land or sea and require raw materials that are drilled, transported, mined, bulldozed and these will run out.  Wind turbine towers are constructed from steel manufactured in a blast furnace from mined iron ore and modified coal (coke).  Turbine blades are composed of oil-derived resins and glass fibre.  The nacelle encloses a magnet containing about one third of a tonne of the rare earth metals, neodymium and dysprosium.  Large neodymium magnets also help propel electric cars.  Currently China provides 95 percent of rare earths; proven reserves of dysprosium will likely run out in 2020.

Wind Power? Forget It!  If anybody is foolish enough to believe that wind power is having the slightest impact on the world's energy needs, I would suggest they book into Realityville and check out the facts from the BP Energy Review.

Windfarms produce a whopping one percent of EU energy.  The colossal, hugely expensive windfarms that are spread across huge areas of Europe's land and sea, which are projected to drive up household energy bills by more than 50 percent in coming years, have achieved ... almost nothing in terms of reducing EU carbon emissions.

Wind power no-show means more CO2 emissions for Ontario.  The Independent Electricity System Operator's (IESO) summary report for July 28, 2015 demonstrated how it was an atypical day for Ontario's industrial wind generators.  The Toronto temperature reached 33 degrees Celsius meaning Ontario's electricity demand was high.  Demand averaged 19,515 MWs per hour and peaked at 22,471 MWh.  Wind generators were playing in the sandbox for the whole 24 hours, producing a miserly 2,180 MWh which equaled 2.9% of their (IESO posted) capacity and less than a half percent (½%) of total Ontario demand of 462,144 MWh.  For two of those hours (9 and 10) wind produced less than 10 MWh — that probably meant they were drawing more power than they produced.  Picking up the slack for wind generators fell to Ontario's 9,200 MW capacity of the gas plants.  For several hours those gas plants were running close to their maximums, and in the 24 hours produced 94,386 MWh.  That's slightly more than 20% of Ontario's total demand.

Spanish company tops list of US corporate welfare hogs.  The federal government has quietly doled out $68 billion through 137 government giveaway programs since 2000, according to a new database built by a nonprofit research organization, Good Jobs First.  It identified more than 164,000 gifts of taxpayer money to companies. [...] A report the organization released today [3/17/2015], "Uncle Sam's Favorite Corporations," shows that big businesses raked in two-thirds of the welfare.  The most surprising and tantalizing finding is the identity of the biggest known recipient of federal welfare.  That dubious honor belongs to Iberdrola, a Spanish energy company with a reputation for awful service and admissions of incompetence.  It collected $2.1 billion of welfare on a $5.4 billion investment in U.S. wind farms from coast to coast.

Bayonne losing $25K a month with windmill generator on the fritz, officials say.  The wind turbine used to power the city's Oak Street and Fifth Street pumping stations has gone motionless, costing the city roughly $25,000 a month in energy costs, officials confirmed.  And there's more possible bad news — Bayonne may be on the hook for roughly $350,000 to replace the broken generator.  The 260-foot structure, off East Fifth Street, went into operation in June 2012, with city officials touting energy savings of up to $300,000 a year.  But the wind turbine stopped working in June.

Wind Farms Now Off Limits for Australia's $7 Billion Energy Fund.  Wind farming in Australia suffered another setback with the government banning its A$10 billion ($7.4 billion) renewable energy fund from investing in the industry.  The government sent a letter to the Clean Energy Finance Corp. outlining proposed new investment priorities, including a shift away from wind power, Trade and Investment Minister Andrew Robb said Sunday in an interview on Sky News television[.]  The fund should be "investing in new and emerging technologies and certainly not existing wind farms," Prime Minister Tony Abbott later told reporters in Darwin.  His government's policy is to eventually abolish the fund, he said.

Why are greens so keen to destroy the world's wildlife?  Ever more evidence is piling in these days to show how one of the oddest anomalies of our time is the astonishing extent to which the dream of "renewable, carbon-free" energy is creating one environmental disaster after another.  The flailing blades of wind turbines across the world may have been shown to kill millions of birds and bats; a fact that their enthusiasts, including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, do not advertise.  But even more blatant is becoming the wholesale destruction of forests, thanks to the lavish subsidies now being offered to burn them as "biomass" to make electricity.

Bill Gates: Cost of switching to renewables is "beyond astronomical".  [Bill] Gates expressed his views in an interview given to the Financial Times yesterday [6/25/2015], saying that the cost of using current renewables such as solar panels and windfarms to produce all or most power would be "beyond astronomical".  At present very little power comes from renewables:  in the UK just 5.2 percent, the majority of which is dubiously-green biofuel burning [...] and even so, energy bills have surged and will surge further as a result.

Electricity from New Wind is Four Times More Costly than Existing Nuclear.  Today [6/30/2015], the Institute for Energy Research released a first-of-its-kind study calculating the levelized cost of electricity from existing generation sources.  Our study shows that on average, electricity from new wind resources is nearly four times more expensive than from existing nuclear and nearly three times more expensive than from existing coal.  These are dramatic increases in the cost of generating electricity.  This means that the premature closures of existing plants will unavoidably increase electricity rates for American families.

Wind Energy More Expensive and Pointless Than You Thought.  The cost of wind energy is significantly more expensive than its advocates pretend, a new US study has found.  If you believe this chart produced by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), then onshore wind is one of the cheapest forms of power — more competitive than nuclear, coal or hydro, and a lot more than solar.  But when you take into account the true costs of wind, it's around 48 percent more expensive than the industry's official estimates — according to new research conducted by Utah State University.

GAO hits Obama administration on renewable energy projects: audit.  Lawmakers on Wednesday [6/24/2015] demanded accountability from the Bureau of Land Management following an investigation that found the government routinely fails to secure proper bonding from wind and solar project developers, potentially leaving taxpayers on the hook for millions of dollars.  The Government Accountability Office report — which gives more fuel to critics who say President Obama will push "green" power at all costs — also said that the administration has kept shoddy records, may have shredded bond documents and blatantly treats renewable power differently than it treats fossil fuel projects.

Which Kills More Birds? Oil Spills, or Windmills?  Any time there's an oil spill on the water, the media are filled with photos and videos of crude-soaked birds.  The coverage is the cue for the self-appointed environmentalist defenders of wildlife to wring their hands and furrow their brows.  If it weren't for those greedy oil companies and voracious Westerners who consume more energy than they should, they imply, these crimes against nature would never happen.  The alternative to evil fossil fuels, these folk say, are "clean" renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar.  The environmentalists want us to believe they are more gentle to nature.  But are they?

True Costs of Wind Electricity.  Wind turbines have become a familiar sight in many countries as a favorite CAGW mitigation means.  Since at least 2010, the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) has been assuring NGOs and the public that wind would be cost competitive by now, all things considered.  Many pro-wind organizations claim wind is cost competitive today.  But is it?

California PUC concludes that Solar & Wind costs are extravagant.  The Sierra Club is upset because the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) built a sophisticated and unbiased computer model to analyze the cost-effectiveness of new solar policy proposals.  But despite all the Sierra Club's political clout, the computer model determined [...] that none of the solar policy proposals are cost effective.  After years of paying about a $200 premium to buy any and all excess electrical power streaming from home and commercial building rooftop solar panels, California is supposed to be moving to "market-based solutions" for energy production.

Bees and wind turbines.  The drastic increase in the number of wind farms in the United States began between 2004 and 2005, and has blossomed to cover vast sections of the country today, as seen on the blue map below.  Interesting to note is the time frame of drastic increases of the number of wind farms from 2004 to 2005.  This time frame becomes very important, because it is also the exact time when massive disappearances of honey bees began to be reported, beginning in 2005, with drastic increases in the years to follow.  The next map shows the states where the most losses of honeybees have occurred.  The orange [map] below is also an interesting map, because if you didn't know better, you would believe it is another wind farm map.  Although the southeast area of the United States, such as Florida does not have large numbers of operating wind farms, the honeybee disappearances in that area are attributed to weather events.

New Energy vs. the Birds.  [T]he 'green movement' is coming under attack from a most unexpected source — the 'green movement.'  Seems the pursuit of green utopia is coming at a steep price to some of the planet's birds.  Unforeseen until this massive expansion of production capability we are now discovering that acres and acres of solar and/or wind power production fields are either incinerating or bludgeoning birds to death in mid-flight.  And the greenies who want alternative fuels now are hopping made with those who want to protect wildlife.  Problem is they're the same people.

Wind farm 'needs 700 times more land' than fracking site to produce same energy.  A wind farm requires 700 times more land to produce the same amount of energy as a fracking site, according to analysis by the energy department's recently-departed chief scientific advisor.  Prof David MacKay, who stood down from the Government role at the end of July, published analysis putting shale gas extraction "in perspective", showing it was far less intrusive on the landscape than wind or solar energy.

Germany's Green-Power Program Crushes the Poor.  [Scroll down]  However, what Friedman, Obama, and other admirers of the German green-energy strategy fail to say is that it has come at the expense of sky-high electricity rates.  According to EU data, Germany's average residential electricity rate is 29.8 cents per kilowatt hour.  This is approximately double the 14.2 cents and 15.9 cents per kWh paid by residents of Germany's neighbors Poland and France, respectively, and almost two and a half times the U.S. average of 12 cents per kWh.  Germany's industrial electricity rate of 16 cents per kWh is also much higher than France's 9.6 cents or Poland's 8.3 cents.

Association Between Wind Turbines and Human Distress.  The proximity of wind turbines to residential areas has been associated with a higher level of complaints compared to the general population.  The study objective was to search the literature investigating whether an association between wind turbines and human distress exists.

Transmission planning: wind and solar.  On the grid power does not flow downhill, take the shortest path or move from areas of high to low pressure.  The grid cannot be well understood as a highway system or a set of pipelines.  Energy simultaneously takes every possible interconnected path from source to destination.  For the most part in normal operating ranges the flows between a generation addition and a new load are unaffected by the flows that are already on the lines.  Energy flows on every possible interconnected path based on the inverse ratio of that path's impedance (resistance).

Massachusetts Wind Money Wasted.  Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick's (D) export-terminal dreams have become a nightmare for the state's taxpayers, as the South Coast Marine Terminal being constructed as a staging area for a large offshore wind development has come on hard times since the Cape Wind project has been all but officially scrapped.  It was originally estimated the terminal project would cost taxpayers $113 million.  Currently, the project, still under construction, has already run $10 million dollars over budget and is months behind schedule.  The terminals construction costs were to be offset by revenues from the wind project, but now state officials are scrambling to find someone to lease the terminal.  Present options are estimated to generate a lower return on investment than the profits projected to be generated by Cape Wind.

Industrial Wind: A Net Loser, Economically, Environmentally, Technically, Civilly.  According to AWEA, there are approximately 45,100 industrial wind turbines in the U.S. today.  They are remotely sited, far removed from urban centers where the power is needed, and necessitate the addition of a spider web of new transmission lines (at ratepayers' expense), which will exponentially add to the needless bird deaths being caused by turbines themselves.  Additionally, sprawling industrial wind factories cause massive habitat fragmentation, which is cited as one of the main reasons for species decline worldwide.  Studies show there are millions of birds and bats being slaughtered annually by these giant "Cuisinarts of the sky."

Renewable and Sustainable Crony Capitalism.  Renewable power has serious problems, apart from costing too much.  Wind doesn't work if there is no wind and solar doesn't work at night.  The proprietors of solar and wind expect the electrical grids to accept and pay for all the power they can provide, whenever they provide it.  If a cloud drifts in front of the sun, and the power output suddenly stops, the grid is expected to handle the problem and make up the missing power on a moment's notice.  This is just the opposite of the way that the operators of the electrical grids usually deal with power plants.

Rigging data for excessive wind energy Tax credits.  Large wind turbines require a large amount of energy to operate.  Other electricity plants generally use their own electricity, and the difference between the amount they generate and the amount delivered to the grid is readily determined.  Wind plants, however, use electricity from the grid, which does not appear to be accounted for in their output figures.

What's the True Cost of Wind Power?  As consumers, we pay for electricity twice: once through our monthly electricity bill and a second time through taxes that finance massive subsidies for inefficient wind and other energy producers.  Most cost estimates for wind power disregard the heavy burden of these subsidies on US taxpayers.  But if Americans realized the full cost of generating energy from wind power, they would be less willing to foot the bill — because it's more than most people think.

Even With Subsidies, Green Energy's Future Is Dim.  It's a lot easier to throw money at wind and solar projects than it is to get energy out of them.  That, at least, is the conclusion one could draw from the Energy Information Administration's latest Annual Energy Outlook, released this week.

Environmentalism and Envy.  In 1856, Nongqawuse, a teenager of the Xhosa tribe in South Africa, prophesied that if the tribe killed their cattle and destroyed their crops the British would be swept away.  The tribe did this and most of them starved to death.  Now we have prophets demanding that we destroy our fossil fuel infrastructure and replace it with windmills and solar power stations.  If we actually did this, the economic consequences would be very costly.  Solar and wind power, on a national scale, would cost 5 or 10 times more than our current sources of power and be less reliable.  This easily discovered fact is rarely discussed by environmental romantics, much less by the crony capitalists of the alternative energy industry, basking in a flood of subsidies and mandates.

Stop dumping billions into unreliable wind power.  During George W. Bush's administration, the Department of Energy set a wildly unrealistic goal to have 20 percent of the nation's electricity come from wind by 2030.  Now, the Obama Administration wishes to fulfill that goal by passing permanent subsidies for wind power.  Wind power has gained a reputation as the future of energy generation, but few wind power advocates seem willing to answer the pertinent question, "What happens when the wind doesn't blow?"

What do we have to show for government subsidies of wind power?  For the past 23 years, the federal government has subsidized wind power with tens of billions of taxpayer dollars through the Production Tax Credit (PTC).  What do we have to show for it?  Wind energy only supplied 1.6 percent of total U.S. energy in 2014.  Now the Department of Energy wants to reach a ridiculous goal of 20 percent wind energy by 2030.  The fledgling wind industry has no hope of reaching that goal on its own, and the government wants to stick the American taxpayer with the bill to sustain an industry that can't sustain itself.

Councillors want planning permission for €200m wind farm to be refused.  Donegal Co. Council is set to object to plans for a €200 million wind farm development, where the turbine blade tip height would be a maximum of 156.5 metres — more than twice the height of Liberty Hall.  Under the fast-tracking Strategic Infrastructure Development (SID) process, the planning application has by-passed Donegal Co. Council and has been lodged directly with An Bord Pleanala by Cork based company Planree Limited.

Neighbors oppose town's appeal of wind ruling.  Neighbors of the town's controversial wind turbines say the appeal of a zoning lawsuit should not reach the state's highest court because it does not involve issues that could affect the entire Commonwealth.

Final wind moratorium vote expected Thursday.  A hearing next week could be the final chance for residents to help decide whether to impose a moratorium that would put a stop to wind energy development for up to six months in 16 county-zoned townships.

Three Decades of Wind Industry Deception.  Starting in the early 1980s, a decade's worth of research was undertaken by NASA into a series of large wind turbines (then being developed by NASA), which included a stellar cast of physicists, meteorologists, geophysicists, seismologists, engineers (both mechanical and acoustic), and psycho-acousticians.  Part of that research involved a multidisciplinary effort to identify the causes of complaints made by neighbours in relation to the operation of those turbines:  [...]

Wind Turbine Noise Complaint Predictions Made Easy.  Acousticians have known for decades how to predict the community reaction to a new noise source.  Wind turbine consultants have chosen not to predict the community reaction as they have previously done for other community noise sources.  If they had, there would be far fewer wind turbine sites with neighbors complaining loudly about excessive noise and adverse health impacts.

Experts offers insight to wind farm questions.  An expert witness called by The United Citizens of Livingston County testified the majority of Tuesday evening [2/17/2015] during the ongoing Livingston County Zoning Board of Appeals hearing at the Walton Centre.  Michael McCann, of McCann Appraisal, LLC, a Chicago-based company, testified about property values and how they are negatively affected when wind turbines are installed.

Wind & Solar are 16x more expensive than gas.  The diagrams below show the cost and capacity factors of the major European renewable energy power sources: onshore and offshore wind farms and large scale photovoltaic solar generation.  They are compared to the cost and output capacity of conventional gas fired electricity generation.

Ontario's Green Energy Subsidies — some of what we know.  We know industrial wind energy developers were given lucrative 20-year contracts and paid to produce electricity guaranteeing 13.5[¢]/kWh no matter the time of day power was generated.  We know that industrial wind energy developers were given 20-year contracts that included a cost of living benefit up to 20%.  We know industrial solar under the feed-in-tariff (FIT) program paid contracted parties, e.g., IKEA, the Township of Markham, etc., over 70 cents/kWh for generation, while those same companies/municipalities purchased power for their use at the same rate as the rest of us.  We ordinary customers pick up the tab for the difference.  We know that the Office of the Auditor General (AG) on two different occasions clearly noted the Ontario government failed to conduct a cost/benefit analysis for just about everything associated with the Ministry of Energy's portfolio.  We know "smart meters" cost us about $2 billion but failed to produce any meaningful benefit other than allowing local distribution companies to bill us on a time-of-use basis.  We know energy costs have doubled since 2003.

AFP: Pretenses of Economic Viability "Blown Away".  Legislation introduced by the Senate Environment and Energy Committee, and being pushed by Senate President Steve Sweeney, removes all pretenses that offshore wind would be good for the state's economy according to Americans for Prosperity, the state's leading advocate for taxpayers.

Wind project results in poor TV reception.  The Heath and Reach turbine — the biggest onshore one in the country when it was erected — officially began turning on Thursday, December 18.  For some people, enthusiasm for the project turned to frustration when they found their TV signals starting to fail.  Roger Smallridge, 75, said:  "Since the turbine went on our TV reception has not been worth looking at.  BBC East isn't working at all. [...]"

Upper Peninsula wind farm sued over impacts on neighbors.  Eleven people who live near the first wind farm in Michigan's Upper Peninsula say the whir of turbines has reduced property values, diminished their sleep and put birds at risk.

Think Again, before your liberties are gone with the wind.  Landowner leases and "good neighbor agreements" entered into with these multi-million-dollar, multi-national corporations NEED a trusted lawyer's oversight.  Besides the fact that wind industry salesmen have never provided any PROOF to back up all of their false and misleading claims, the hot air contained in the legal mumbo-jumbo within their lease agreements is actually nothing less than the signing away of your First Amendment rights.  These legal documents are tied to your property forever, even after the property changes hands.  Landowners in Wyoming County ended up with liens on their property when one of the wind developers failed to pay contractors.

Cape Wind Is Dead.  Cape Wind was supposed to be America's first offshore wind project.  Chief sponsor Jim Gordon labored since 2001 (14 years!) on his vision of 130 massive spinning fans sited in shallow federal waters off New England's historic coastline (468 MW at maximum capacity).  Mr. Gordon was the darling of environmental groups and green-minded politicos who pushed big wind at any price.  Last week, the project was dealt a fatal blow when utilities who contracted to buy the energy terminated their agreements.  Cape Wind will never be built, and no amount of green-colored optimism will change that fact.

Wind Energy Dead in the Water Off Cape Cod.  Cape Wind, touted as "America's first offshore wind project," became one of America's most high-profile and controversial wind-energy projects.  Fourteen years in the making, estimated at $2.6 billion for 130 turbines, covering 25 square miles in Nantucket Sound off the coast of Massachusetts, the Cape Wind project has yet to install one turbine — let alone produce any electricity.  Now, it may be "dead in the water."

Rolling Blackouts Caused by Lack of Wind.  Thousands of Oahu residents were in the dark from rolling blackouts, something that hasn't happened in years....  The problems began hours before the rolling blackouts began.  One of HECO's generating units at the Kahe power plant had problems in the morning, then in the afternoon an independent power producer went out of service.  Meanwhile another independent producer undergoing repairs was on half power.

America's first offshore wind project dealt major setback after utilities bolt.  The $2.6 billion Cape Wind project, a private operation benefiting from millions in federal subsidies, is attempting to pioneer offshore wind energy in pursuit of an eco-friendly, sustainable energy supply.  Wind turbines would be installed off the coast of Massachusetts' Cape Cod in Nantucket Sound.  But Cape Wind is now in limbo after utility companies terminated huge purchase agreements.

The effect of wind turbines on human health.  Infrasound has been used in Sweden in a nonlethal weapon for riot control.  The infrasound from air-conditioning systems has been implicated as a cause of sick building syndrome (S.S.).  Infrasound affects the vestibular system, causing symptoms resembling seasickness, accompanied by headache, dizziness, and "deep nervous fatigue."  It can affect ocular reflexes, causing nystagmus; spinal reflexes, causing tremors; and autonomic reflexes, causing shortness of breath.  In the 1970s, army physiologists carried out studies on how long military personnel could perform their duties under conditions of high levels of infrasound, as in a tank, the engine room of a ship, or a space capsule, but results are secret.  The wind turbine syndrome also includes sleep problems, irritability, and depression.  The variable audible noise results in frequent awakenings or arousals, which may not be remembered.

21 peer reviewed articles on health and industrial wind turbines.  Contrary to what the wind farm developers and the Environmental Impact Assessment noise and health 'specialists' of the Vredenburg WEF development (former IDP) would like us to believe, there are many up to date peer reviewed and published articles on adverse health effects related to industrial scale wind energy projects that are situated too close to our homes.

Sleep Deprivation [is] the Most Common Adverse Health Effect Caused by Wind Turbine Noise.  One aim of the study was to see if the literature disclosed a direct dose-response relationship between noise exposure from wind turbines and the symptoms experienced by neighbours:  the "dose-response" being the range and severity of noise induced symptoms at differing distances from turbines.  Drs Schimdt and Klokker pored over the literature — starting with 1,295 papers investigating suspected health-related outcomes associated with wind turbine noise exposure.  From this 36 articles addressing specific health related outcomes in relation to wind turbine noise exposure were identified.

For Crop-Duster Pilots, Wind Towers Present Danger.  Crop-dusters are the ultimate multitaskers.  They fly while dodging obstacles like trees and power lines.  They don't want to pour pesticides on a farmhouse by mistake or sprinkle the wrong seeds on a neighbor's field.  Pilots are stumbling across a new hazard now: unmarked towers that are used to prospect for wind energy projects.

Wind turbine collapses in Haskell County.  The turbine that collapsed is part of a wind farm between Satanta and Garden City.  That farm was set up in 2014 and has 135 wind turbines.  The company says it is very unusual for something like this to happen, but it did not affect anyone's electric service.

As Britain Freezes, Wind Farms Take Power from Grid to Prevent Icing.  As Britain shivers under a blanket of snow and ice, it has emerged that offshore windfarms have been idling to prevent icing up — and drawing electricity off the national grid to do so.  Critics have pointed out the "folly" of having windfarms idle in a cold snap, but industry experts insist that all forms of power generation involve some electrical input.  The issue has been raised by Brian Christley, a resident of Abergele, Wales, who wrote to the Daily Telegraph to say:  "Over the weekend just gone, the coldest of the year so far, all 100-plus off-shore wind turbines along the North Wales coast were idling very slowly, all using grid power for de-icing and to power their hydraulic systems that keep the blades facing in the same direction.

Wind turbine collapses in Northern Ireland.  A 328-foot tall wind turbine worth more than £2 million has buckled and collapsed on a mountainside in Northern Ireland.  Unconfirmed reports suggested the blades of the turbine had spun out of control — despite only light wind speeds — before the structure came crashing to the ground on Friday [1/2/2015].  Locals claimed the sound of the turbine hitting the mountain could be heard up to seven miles away from the Screggagh wind farm, near Fintona in County Tyrone.

Offshore wind farms drawing electricity from grid to keep turning in icy conditions.  Offshore wind farms are drawing power from the National Grid to keep turning and prevent them icing up in subzero temperatures, it has emerged.  The turbines need to idle slowly when temperatures plunge in calm conditions to stop ice forming and to power hydraulic systems that turn the blades into the wind.  Critics of wind farms, which cost three times as much as conventional power stations per unit of energy produced, said it was "another example of why wind farms are difficult and expensive to manage", but industry bodies pointed out that all power stations use electricity as well as generating it.

The Editor says...
It may be true that "that all power stations use electricity as well as generating it," but coventional generating stations use only a tiny fraction of the power they produce.  No generating station consumes more power than it makes after its construction is completed and it goes on line.

InvEnergy's California Ridge Noise Study report is not credible.  Despite all we have learned, and all the personal testimony the board has heard from numerous residents experiencing the negative consequences of living too close to industrial wind turbines, the Vermilion County website continues to be "pro-wind lopsided".

Wind Power Is Intermittent, But Subsidies Are Eternal.  "Tax credits have been essential to the economic viability of wind farms so far, but will not be needed within a few years."  So said Christopher Flavin, now president emeritus of the Worldwatch Institute — in 1984.  Thirty years and billions of dollars later, the wind industry is still saying it needs taxpayer support.  Congress is currently hearing this argument as it debates whether to extend the 22-year-old "production tax credit" in the lame-duck session.

20 Reasons Why the Wind Industry's "Case" Doesn't Stack Up.  [#1] Wind energy was abandoned well over a hundred years ago, as even in the late 1800s it was totally inconsistent with our burgeoning, more modern needs for power.  When we throw the switch, we expect that the lights will go on — 100% of the time.  It's not possible for wind energy, by itself, to EVER do this, which is one of the main reasons it was relegated to the dust bin of antiquated technologies (along with such other inadequate energy sources as horse and oxen power).

Good news does not sell newspapers.  Very conservatively, it will take at least 15 years before a turbine could possibly just break even!  And then there's the 'minor' problem that if the wind doesn't blow — either strong enough, or too strong — the turbines don't work, so there has to be a constant back-up running, including to provide heating in freezing conditions.  Of course, there is also another 'minor' (?) problem of the massive killing of wildlife — birds and bats (and aren't environmentalists supposed to concerned about such matters?), to say nothing of the problems for both livestock and humans caused by infra-sound.

Dead Eagle Data.  For decades wind industry research has been using "studies" that are actually designed to hide the harmful impacts of wind turbines.  Industry-related studies on health impacts, declining real estate values, whooping crane surveys, golden eagle surveys, turbines preventing climate change, wind turbine energy potential, and, especially, bird and bat mortality, have all been manipulated through fraudulent data collection methodologies.  These data collection methods have enabled the U.S. wind industry to hide 90% or more of turbine avian and bat mortality, in my estimation, from public view.

Wind turbine warning for wildlife.  Small domestic wind turbines or 'microturbines', which can kill bats and birds, are becoming an increasingly popular means to generate clean energy for home owners.  The Stirling team, whose research was published recently in the online journal Biodiversity and Conservation, found that the careful positioning of these turbines — and the avoidance of installing them in areas where bird or bat activity is likely to be high — is vital to ensure rare species of wildlife are not forced to abandon their homes in search of safer habitats.

All megawatts are not equal.  [D]iffering types of generating resources bring diverse sets of costs and benefits to the power system so that they cannot be compared solely based on a cost per Megawatt (MW) produced basis.  As this post will conclude, it matters very much when energy is generated, where the energy comes from and how well it works to support the system.  For large scale bulk projects, the average cost of solar and wind will need to be significantly below the average cost of conventional generation well before wind and solar can begin to approach general competitiveness on a cost basis.

Wind Power Supporters Pray For Subsidies Before Next Congress.  Wind power supporters are hoping their big campaign spending pays off this year and lawmakers reinstate lapsed green energy subsidies before the new Republican-controlled Senate is sworn in.  Wind lobbyists and environmental groups spent millions supporting Senate Democrats who support subsidies for the wind industry, but Republicans were still able to win in several key battleground states and are set to take control of both congressional chambers next year.

Catlin NY Bans Wind Farm.  After two heated public hearings and 267 signatures, wind turbines will not be coming to the Town of Catlin.  Florida-Based NextEra Energy Resources had its sights set on the small community but may have to start looking elsewhere.  According to our media partner the Star Gazette, Catlin Town supervisor, Laverne Phelps says he believes if the town opened its doors to the energy company, any restrictions the town would try and set could be overruled.

Ill winds blow from wind turbines.  A Canadian court will soon decide if wind turbines violate Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms by posing a risk to human health.  Charter case decisions can be convoluted but the fundamental question of health at issue here is straightforward.  Wind turbines, from all that is today known and by any rational measure, represent a risk to those living in their vicinity.

Negative health impact of noise from industrial wind turbines: The evidence.  By far, sleep disturbance is the most common complaint of families living near wind turbines.  Prolonged lack of sleep affects our capacity to learn and negatively affects our memory, temperament, heart health, stress levels, and hormones that regulate growth, puberty and fertility.  It can also lead to high blood pressure, changes in heart rate, and an increase in heart disease, as well as weight gain and lowered immunity to disease.

Why pro-wind studies often use a 10 km radius.  Last week I was reading of an Australian study, by a Professor Gary Wittert, which had shown sleeping pill usage for those living near wind turbines was no greater than the general population.  The study compared those living within 10 km of turbines with those living more than 10 km away.  There have been similar studies with property values using a 5 mile or 10 km radius that showed property values are not affected by wind turbines.  Had you ever thought why they pick a 10 km radius?

'Green' Lobby Pushes to Extend Lucrative Tax Breaks.  As the lame-duck Congress limps to the finish line, billions of dollars in dubious federal energy subsidies remain in limbo.  The perennial procrastination has solar- and wind-power lobbyists scrambling for renewal of their industries' expiring tax credits.

Loch Ness Wind Farm Will Be an Environmental Disaster, Say Conservationists.  A giant 67 turbine wind farm planned for the mountains overlooking Loch Ness will be an environmental disaster thanks to the sheer quantity of stone which will need to be quarried to construct it, according to the John Muir Trust.  In addition, the Trust has warned that the turbines spell ecological disaster for the wet blanket peat-land which covers the area and acts as a huge carbon sink, the Sunday Times has reported.

Renewable Energy: So Useless That Even Greenie Google Gave up on it.  Some people call it "renewable energy" but I prefer to call it "alternative energy" because that's what it really is:  an alternative to energy that actually works (eg nuclear and anything made from wonderful, energy-rich fossil fuel.)  Now a pair of top boffins from uber-green Google's research department have reached the same conclusion. [...] In a nutshell, renewable energy is rubbish because so much equipment is needed to make it work — steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage — that it very likely uses up more energy than it actually produces.  Yet our political class remains committed to the fantasy that the emperor's green clothes are perfectly magnificent.

MN wind and solar mandate would mean costly grid upgrade.  [Scroll down]  A search of the 178-page report shows the authors never mention ratepayers, leaving unanswered whether spending nearly $400 million to upgrade the grid would be a good investment for Minnesota consumers and employers.  "It doesn't say it would be cost effective to upgrade the system to accommodate 40 percent renewables.  It doesn't say it would be a good idea," said Bill Glahn, an independent energy analyst for Piedmont Consulting and a former Pawlenty administration energy official.  "It just said that given enough time and money, it's technically feasible.  I could have told you that."

Wind credit could roil House GOP tensions.  Conservatives want House GOP leaders to abandon the production tax credit for renewable energy that lapsed last year.  The incentive primarily aids wind power through a 2.3-cent per kilowatt-hour credit awarded to power producers.  But Republican leaders in both chambers appear willing to extend a suite of tax credits that includes the wind incentive to "clear the deck" before the next Congress so that lawmakers can focus on overhauling the federal tax code.

Abandoned Homes Help Understand Wind Turbine Annoyance.  This presentation arose from listening to the sincere comments of people who live near wind turbine installations, and trying to make sense of what they honestly observed from their personal experience, and what they tried to do to address their observations.  For most I listened to, large wind turbines have created a change in their environment, although in the case of some infants, they have known nothing but a wind turbine environment around their home.  People may not be expert in knowing "why" they feel the way they do, but surely that must be the best expert in knowing "how" they do feel, and they deserve being listened to.

Texas Comptroller Report Destroys Wind Industry Claims.  A new report by the Texas Comptroller documents how wind power is raising electricity prices in Texas, throwing cold water on false assertions made by American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) lobbyists. [...] Among the wind power shortcomings documented in the Texas Comptroller's report:
  •   Wind power is more costly than conventional power and will continue to be so for decades to come.
  •   Wind power is intermittent and unpredictable.  This requires conventional power plants to back up wind power, ramping conventional power output up and down on short notice.  This reduces the efficiency and raises the costs of conventional power.
  •   One of Texas's most pressing challenges is meeting peak demand during hot summer days.  Wind power, however, delivers its least production on hot summer days.
  •   Wind production peaks when electricity demand is at its lowest, during cooler weather.
  •   Wind power is most productive along Texas's coastal shores (where wind power's environmental infringement is most troubling).
  •   New transmission lines must be built to deliver wind power from remote wind farms.  This imposes additional costs on electricity consumers, already costing Texas households an extra $70 to $100 per household per year.  A Texas grid official advised the Texas Public Utility Commission further expansion of the grid to accommodate wind power will cost another $2 billion — which is an additional $200 per household per year.
  •   Wind power unfairly benefits from preferential subsidies.

Study: Wind Turbines are 'Expensive, Unreliable and Inefficient'.  Wind power is too variable and too unpredictable to provide a serious alternative to fossil fuels, a new study by the Scientific Alliance and the Adam Smith Institute has confirmed.  The researchers concluded that, although it is true that the wind is always blowing somewhere, the base line is only around 2 percent of capacity, assuming a network capacity of 10GW.  The majority of the time, wind will only deliver 8 percent of total capacity in the system, whilst the chances of the wind network running at full capacity is "vanishingly small".  As a consequence, fossil fuel plants capable of delivering the same amount of energy will always be required as backup.

It May be Lights Out for the Wind Energy Come the Midterms.  The International Energy Agency recently cut its forecasts for oil demand growth for this year.  Nevertheless, production in North America is exploding led by the shale oil boom.  Already, the U.S. has become the world's largest producer of oil and natural gas.  For energy products like oil and natural gas operating in the marketplace, this excess production means lower costs for consumers.

Health officials weigh next step in wind turbine battle.  Brown County health officials have declared wind turbines a public health risk, but they haven't determined how to put their declaration into action.  The county's Health Board this month declared the Shirley Wind Farm operated by Duke Energy Renewables poses a health risk to its neighbors in the town of Glenmore.  Three families have moved out of their homes rather than endure physical illness they blame on the low-frequency noise the wind turbines generate, according to Audrey Murphy, president of the board that oversees the Brown County Health Department.

An Embarassingly Bad Argument for Wind Power in Kansas Newspaper.  Wind power shills serially embarrass themselves by making claims that wouldn't even make the multiple-choice options for "Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?"  Whether economic illiteracy, political mendacity, or some other reason is to blame, the following is an example published July 25 by a newspaper in Kansas.  Patrick Lowry at the Hays Daily News published an article, "Against the Wind," about staffers for Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) wordsmithing Brownback's statement that he would like to see the Sunflower State phase out its renewable power mandates.  Lowry used this news hook to display his embarrassing lack of knowledge about economics — or, as more cynical readers may conclude, propagate a deliberate and mendacious effort to misinform Daily News readers about energy economics.

Sounds you can't hear can still hurt you.  A wind turbine, a roaring crowd at a football game, a jet engine running full throttle:  Each of these things produces sound waves that are well below the frequencies humans can hear.  But just because you can't hear the low-frequency components of these sounds doesn't mean they have no effect on your ears.  Listening to just 90 seconds of low-frequency sound can change the way your inner ear works for minutes after the noise ends, a new study shows.

Carteret Wind Energy.  The objectives of state, county and town representatives should be:  1) to allow development that is a net-benefit to the community, while 2) protecting citizens, the environment, local economies, and NC military bases from industrialization.  Our position is that alternative energy sources should be encouraged — but none should be permitted on the public grid until a scientific assessment proves that they are a NET societal benefit.  No such scientific assessment exists for wind or solar.  In fact the evidence from studies done by independent experts conclude that wind energy is a net economics and environmental loser.

Diagnostic criteria for adverse health effects in the environs of wind turbines.  In an effort to address climate change, governments have pursued policies that seek to reduce greenhouse gases.  Alternative energy, including wind power, has been proposed by some as the preferred approach.  Few would debate the need to reduce air pollution, but the means of achieving this reduction is important not only for efficiency but also for health protection.  The topic of adverse health effects in the environs of industrial wind turbines (AHE/IWT) has proven to be controversial and can present physicians with challenges regarding the management of an exposure to IWT.  Rural physicians in particular must be aware of the possibility of people presenting to their practices with a variety of sometimes confusing complaints.

Low-frequency sound affects active micromechanics in the human inner ear.  Noise-induced hearing loss is one of the most common auditory pathologies, resulting from overstimulation of the human cochlea, an exquisitely sensitive micromechanical device.  At very low frequencies (less than 250 Hz), however, the sensitivity of human hearing, and therefore the perceived loudness is poor.  The perceived loudness is mediated by the inner hair cells of the cochlea which are driven very inadequately at low frequencies.

Illinois bats face increasing threat from wind turbines.  As if white-nose syndrome wasn't enough, the nation's bats have another problem:  wind turbines that are becoming increasingly more common on the American landscape.  For two months, Paul Cryan, a research scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey, set up thermal video surveillance cameras to find out why up to 900,000 bats are killed by windmills each year.

The Wind Energy Machine.  After months of open committee meetings and town hearings, residents voted in the Frankfort Wind Ordinance.  This process tore at the very fabric of the community, pitting neighbor against neighbor, and resident against nonresident property owners.  Now, three years later, even after the town won a lawsuit confirming the veracity of the town ordinance, the wind energy company is back carrying an incentive goody bag, and campaigning to persuade residents to overturn the town wind ordinance.

A decade after welcoming wind, states reconsider.  Opposition is also mounting about the loss of scenic views, the noise from spinning blades, the flashing lights that dot the horizon at night and a lack of public notice about where the turbines will be erected.

Electricity Prices Soaring In Top Wind Power States.  From 2008-2013 electricity prices rose an average of 20.7 percent in the top 10 wind power states, which is seven-fold higher than the national electricity price increase of merely 2.8 percent.

Obama misleads students about climate and energy.  The International Renewable Energy Agency reports that worldwide investment in renewables (not counting large hydropower) amounted to an incredible $214 billion in 2013 alone!  IRENA insists that these expenditures need to more than double by 2030, to achieve the impossible goal of restricting average global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.  However, results to date show that those investments have brought few benefits, and much harm.  European studies have found that expensive, unreliable wind and solar power kills two to four jobs for each "renewable" energy job this heavily subsidized industry creates.

A decade after welcoming wind, states reconsider.  A decade ago, states offered wind-energy developers an open-armed embrace, envisioning a bright future for an industry that would offer cheap electricity, new jobs and steady income for large landowners, especially in rural areas with few other economic prospects.

Germany's Offshore Wind Power Debacle.  The Germans went into wind power harder and faster than anyone else — and the cost of doing so is catching up with a vengeance.  The subsidies have been colossal, the impacts on the electricity market chaotic and — contrary to the purpose of the policy — CO2 emissions are rising fast.  Some 800,000 German homes have been disconnected from the grid — casualties of Germany's out of control renewables policy.  A further 7 million households are left struggling to pay their power bills — forced to choose between heating and eating — victims of what is euphemistically called "fuel poverty".

Wind turbines don't run on wind, they run on subsidies.  Wind power is an economic and environmental fraud.  Because wind power can only ever be delivered at crazy, random intervals — and, therefore, never "on-demand" — it will never be a substitute for those generation sources which are — ie hydro, nuclear, gas and coal.  Were it not for government mandates — backed by a constant and colossal stream of subsidies — wind power generators would never dispatch a single spark to the grid, as they would never find a customer that would accept power delivered 30% of the time (at best) on terms where the vendor can never tell customers just when that power might be delivered — if at all.  Ultimately, it'll be the inherently flawed economics of wind power that will bring the greatest rort^* of all time to an end.  The policies that created the wind industry are simply unsustainable and, inevitably, will either fail or be scrapped.

The Editor's helpful footnote:
^*Rort: a wild party to which you were not invited (Australian slang).

Wind Turbines Monitored by Unbiased Sound Experts Prove Noise Levels are Intolerable!.  Extract from the Conclusions:  "Therefore, the results show that there is a low frequency noise problem associated with the Waterloo wind farm.  Therefore, it is extremely important that further investigation is carried out at this wind farm in order to determine the source of the low frequency noise and to develop mitigation technologies.  In addition, further research is necessary to establish the long-term effects of low frequency noise and infrasound on the residents at Waterloo.  This research should include health monitoring and sleep studies with simultaneous noise and vibration measurements."

A Lesson in Journalism: Rebecca Thompson Exposes the Great Wind Power Fraud.  Rebecca Thompson is the brilliant young journo behind the recent Sun News documentary, Down Wind, that tipped a bucket on the great wind power fraud in Canada. [...] Rebecca is a stand-out not simply because she exhibits the proper temerity to challenge the lunacy of wind power and those behind the fraud (it's what journalists are supposed to do), but because she has taken the time and trouble to understand every aspect of the most destructive government sanctioned rort of all time:  be it the infantile pointlessness of throwing $billions at an intermittent and unreliable power source; spiralling power prices; the utterly flawed economics; the slaughter of thousands of birds and bats; and the harm caused to thousands of hard-working rural people through incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound — Rebecca has a complete grip on the facts.

Earth-Friendly Energy is Anything But.  Environmentalists worship solar energy and wind power as Earth-friendly answers to their ecological prayers.  Tortoises, bats, butterflies, and bald eagles beg to differ.  Perhaps because solar panels and industrial wind farms lack emissions, they seem "clean."  Despite their pristine appearance, however, these "green" electricity sources hammer Mother Nature — often fatally.

It's the Poor Who Suffer Most from the Great Wind Power Fraud.  The wind industry and its parasites tout spurious and unproven benefits in terms of CO2 emissions reductions — reductions which cannot and will never be delivered by a generation source delivered at crazy, random intervals that adds nothing to the entire Eastern Australian Grid hundreds of times each year — and which, therefore, requires 100% of its capacity to be backed up 100% of the time by fossil fuel generation sources.  Despite (or, rather, because of) its mad wind-rush Germany has seen CO2 emissions increase as it has had to build and re-commission coal fired plants to provide reliable base-load power to keep the grid up and running. [...] Wherever there's been any significant investment in wind power retail power prices have gone through the roof — witness Denmark, Germany and South Australia — which all jostle for the top spot on the table for the highest power prices in the world.

Solar and wind power costs are huge compared to natural gas fired generation.  Ed Hoskins has done an analysis of cost ratios, and no matter what your viewpoint of economics might be, the numbers here don't lie.  Without being propped up by subsidies, solar and wind aren't even in the race as their competitiveness leaves them at the starting line while cheap natural gas (aided by fracking) runs laps around the race course.

Danish Wind Farm Company Sued For Spoiling View.  Europe's troubled wind turbine industry has a new predicament, with a householder in Denmark successfully suing Vestas, a Danish wind turbine manufacturer. Vestas was sued by the householder with the help of International Law Office and awarded 500,000 Danish kroner (£53,000) in compensation for the loss of property values due to visual interference, inconvenience caused by the noise of the blades and light reflection.  Eight turbines are visible from the owner's house.

New Wave of Turbine Terror: Brits Brace as Giant Fans Keep Collapsing.  [Scroll down]  Dr Philip Bratby, from CPRE Devon, believes the risk of collapse will continue to grow as long as the wind industry is allowed to operate behind a wall of secrecy.  A retired physicist, who formerly worked in nuclear energy, he says:  'Safety standards in my line of work were paramount.  We constantly monitored, tested and maintained equipment but this does not seem the case with turbines.  'These two failures were catastrophic.  The towers came crashing down with great force from a great height.  'It was only down to luck it happened in the night and no people or animals were injured or killed.  'The wind industry is very secretive about everything it does.  It won't publicise any definitive information about accidents so it is impossible to make an independent assessment of the risks.'

Environmental Researcher: Wind Industry Riddled with 'Absolute Corruption'.  Patricia Mora, a research professor in coastal ecology and fisheries science at the National Institute of Technology in Mexico, has been studying the impact of wind turbines in the Tehuantepec Isthmus in southern Mexico, an environmentally sensitive region which has the highest concentration of wind farms in Latin America.  The turbines, she says in an interview with Truthout, have had a disastrous effect on local flora and fauna.

Danish Wind Farm Company Sued for Spoiling View.  Europe's troubled wind turbine industry has a new predicament, with a householder in Denmark successfully suing Vestas, a Danish wind turbine manufacturer.  Vestas was sued by the householder with the help of International Law Office and awarded 500,000 Danish kroner (£53,000) in compensation for the loss of property values due to visual interference, inconvenience caused by the noise of the blades and light reflection.  Eight turbines are visible from the owner's house.

Flagship German Offshore Wind Farm Project Humiliated by Technical Faults.  Germany's flagship Bard 1 offshore wind farm has been described as "a faulty total system" as technical problems continue to plague the project, casting major doubts on the feasibility of large scale offshore projects.  The wind farm was officially turned on in August last year but was shut down again almost immediately due to technical difficulties that have still not been resolved — and now lawyers are getting involved.

Why Renewable Energy is Hopeless.  Wind and solar power are industries that are destined to remain in their infancy, if not forever, then certainly for the indefinite future.

EU to ban high-energy hair dryers, smartphones and kettles.  The European Union is considering pulling the plug on high-wattage hair dryers, lawn mowers and electric kettles in a follow up to its controversial ban on powerful vacuum cleaners.  The power of hairdryers could be reduced by as much as 30 percent in order to be more eco-friendly, a draft study commissioned by Brussels suggests, threatening many of the models favoured by hairdressers and consumers for speedy blow-dries. [...] Current EU legislation covers televisions, washing machines, refrigerators and vacuum cleaners but not most smaller electrical appliances.

The Editor says...
Dear European friends:  If you don't have enough electricity to go around, the solution is to generate more of it, which in your case means abandoning your attachment to solar panels and windmills.

Blowing Our Dollars in the Wind.  Wind energy produces costly, intermittent, unpredictable electricity.  But Government subsidies and mandates have encouraged a massive gamble on wind investments in Australia — over $7 billion has already been spent and another $30 billion is proposed.  This expenditure is justified by the claim that by using wind energy there will be less carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere which will help to prevent dangerous global warming.  Incredibly, this claim is not supported by any credible cost-benefit analysis — a searching enquiry is well overdue.  Here is a summary of things that should be included in the analysis.

How to cut emissions, and how not to.  The world's efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions began with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, were formalized in the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and have since mutated into the hundreds of "XX percent of renewables by 20YY" targets adopted by groups of countries, individual countries and regional jurisdictions.  They have spawned, among other things, innumerable bureaucracies, countless climate conferences, forests of wind turbines, patchwork quilts of solar panels and a billion-dollar-a-day climate change industry.  And they haven't worked [at all].

Wind Turbine Noise & Adverse Health Effects.  Constructively addressing the current conundrum about precisely what is causing the reported symptoms, sensations, sleep disruption and deteriorating mental and physical health of residents living near industrial wind turbines around the world, and trying to prevent such damage to health in future, has not been helped by ignoring important research findings of the past, particularly those of Dr Neil Kelley and his co researchers, and other NASA researchers during the 1980's.

Wind Power Requires 700 Times More Land As Fracking.  In my experience, many environmentalists don't actually care much about the environment.  "Environmentalism" is most often a cover for something else — either a financial interest, or a general yearning for the government (controlled by them, of course) to have more power over the people they don't like.  There are, no doubt, a few honorable exceptions.  But the vast disproportion in environmental impact between fracking and wind power illustrates the point.

Wind farm 'needs 700 times more land' than fracking site to produce the same energy.  A wind farm requires 700 times more land to produce the same amount of energy as a fracking site, according to analysis by the energy department's recently-departed chief scientific advisor.  Prof David MacKay, who stood down from the Government role at the end of July, published analysis putting shale gas extraction "in perspective", showing it was far less intrusive on the landscape than wind or solar energy.  His intervention was welcomed by fracking groups, who are battling to win public support amid claims from green groups and other critics that shale gas extraction will require the "industrialisation" of the countryside.

Wind Turbine 'Infrasound' May Be Making Thousands Sick In UK, US.  The windswept Scottish highlands are increasingly becoming home to thousands of wind turbines due to government policies seeking to boost green energy production and fight global warming.  But such well-intentioned policies may be having an unintended side effect:  They could be making people sick.  The Scottish Express reported Sunday [8/10/2014] that the Scottish government has commissioned a study into the "potential ill effects of turbines at 10 sites across the country."  There are more than 33,500 families living within two miles of these turbines, meaning thousands could be getting sick.

An ill wind blows as the surge of turbines stirs fears of silent danger to our health.  The Sunday Express can reveal that the Scottish Government has recently commissioned a study into the potential ill effects of turbines at 10 sites across the country.  More than 33,500 families live within two miles of these 10 wind farms — which represent just a fraction of the 2,300 turbines already built north of the Border.  Hundreds of residents are now being asked to report back to Holyrood ministers about the visual impacts, and effects of noise and shadow flickers from nearby wind farms.  Campaigners fear that many people do not realise they are suffering from ailments brought on by infrasound — noise at such a low frequency that it cannot be heard but can be felt.

U.S. Gov't Loans $64.5M for Wind Farm — in Uruguay.  The Export-Import Bank of the United States is giving a $64.5 million direct loan to a company in Uruguay for the purchase of wind turbines made by a Spanish company at one of its plants in Pennsylvania, according to the bank.  The $64.5 million direct loan to Astidey S.A., in Montevideo, Uruguay" is for "the purchase of U.S.-manufactured wind-turbine generators being exported by Gamesa Technology Corporation Inc., headquartered in Feasterville-Trevose, Penn.," reads the July 10 press release from the Ex-Im Bank.

Defending Real Science is a Full Time Job!  We now have yet another distressing example, where a leading scientist has lost his job — apparently for the crime of being a conscientious, competent academic, focused on quality research (instead of chasing grant money).

Developers To Clear 850,000 Sq M Of Virgin Forests On UNESCO Nature Reserve To Make Way For 700-Foot Turbines.  The days of an open welcome to "environmentally-friendly" wind parks in Germany are over.  When the turbines were small-scale and novel, people were generally open to them.  But now that they have reached skyscraper dimensions, have proven to be unsightly, and have demonstrated poor performance, they are not welcome anymore.

Intermittent Renewables and Electricity Markets.  Renewable energy advocates regularly ignore the intermittency of solar and wind energy in their analyses.  As discussed in a previous article, this is a very serious omission because the mechanisms required to compensate for intermittency can increase the cost of solar and wind energy many-fold, especially at higher penetration levels.  The fact that wind energy still requires generous subsidies after having reached grid-parity with conventional power is a very direct real-world example of the added costs of intermittency even at low penetration levels.

Wind Farms are OK Because They Benefit Barnacles.  Besides being wildly expensive (so heavily subsidised by compulsory levies that they cost six times more than coal energy) they are also:  shortlived (because it's hard to erect such large mechanical structures in such hostile terrain); subject to declining efficiency; they kill an average 110-330 birds per turbine per year; they blight the view from the coast; they disrupt shipping; they kill whales and other marine life; they drive up energy prices; they increase fuel poverty; they enrich rent-seekers; they require vast pylons to carry their costly, intermittent energy from the sea across the land.  Happily, all these disadvantages have been nullified by this glorious news, as recounted in Christian Science Monitor: [...]

Bird Conservancy Files Suit Against Wind Turbines.  The American Bird Conservancy has filed a lawsuit against the federal government, charging the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service with "multiple violations of federal law" in granting wind turbine permits.  At issue is the FWS's controversial proposed rule that would allow wind power facilities to kill protected golden and bald eagles for periods of up to 30 years.  Currently, eagle kill permits are valid for only five years.  The 1940 Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act imposes fines and jail time on people who kill eagles, either intentionally or accidentally.  As part of its policy to push renewable energy, however, the Obama FWS in 2009 inserted an exemption into the law, allowing permits for wind turbines to eagle kills "accidentally" even when such kills are foreseeable when building wind farms.

U.S. offers leases off Jersey Shore for wind energy projects.  The Obama administration last week announced plans to sell leases for nearly 344,000 acres of seafloor off the New Jersey coastline to companies that want to build wind energy turbines, a significant step toward the development of wind farms off the Jersey Shore.  The area extends from Cape May Court House north for 60 miles to Barnegat, at least seven miles offshore.

Wind turbine fires 'ten times more common than thought', experts warn.  Wind turbines may catch on fire ten times more often than is publicly reported, putting nearby properties at risk and casting doubt on their green credentials, researchers have warned.  The renewable energy industry keeps no record of the number of turbine fires, meaning the true extent of the problem is unknown, a study backed by Imperial College London finds on Thursday [7/17/2014].  An average of 11.7 such fires are reported globally each year, by media, campaign groups and other publicly-available sources, but this is likely to represent just the "tip of the iceberg".  There could in fact be 117 turbine fires each year, it argues, based on analysis showing just 10 [percent] of all wind farm accidents are typically reported.

Court Backs Finding Of Wind Turbine Noise Problem.  Michigan's 51st Circuit Court has ruled that Mason County was justified in determining that wind turbines at the Lake Winds Industrial Wind Plant near Ludington are too noisy.  In his June 16 decision, Judge Richard Cooper denied Consumer Energy's appeal to have the court overturn the county's finding that the wind plant was exceeding the county's established decibel level limits.

Solar (and Wind): Green for the Air, Filthy for the Grid.  Barclays Investment Bank Research recently downgraded the entire U.S. electric utility sector because they believe that "a confluence of declining cost trends in distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) power generation and residential-scale power storage is likely to disrupt the status quo" for energy generation in America.  The electrons generated by residential PV solar systems are "green," but the electric current they send to the utility grid is referred to in the industry as "filthy," since it is inherently variable, intermittent, and unreliable.

Obama Celebrates Independence Day by Murdering Bald Eagles.  Last week, the Obama administration gave a California wind farm permission to kill bald eagles with impunity for up to 30 years.  The birds are supposed to be protected under federal law; without a waiver from the president, killing them would result in six-figure fines and up to 18 months in prison per eagle.  The move is just the latest escalation in the administration's eco-genocide, which biologists estimate is responsible for the horrific death of hundreds of thousands of birds each year.  The birds are typically chopped out of the sky in brutal fashion by the enormous and unsightly turbine blades.

Feds nix eagle penalties for California wind farm.  A California wind farm will become the first in the nation to avoid prosecution if eagles are injured or die when they run into the giant turning blades, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday [6/26/2014].

Renewable Electricity: a Technological Rip-Off, and an Environmental Loser.  In California, electricity sales were $35 billion in 2012.  The average retail price of electricity in California is around 14 cents per kilowatt-hour.  This compares to about 8 cents in states that have not found the renewable energy religion.  The differential gives the California renewable energy mafia about $15 billion a year with which to reward its friends and supporters.  That's just for the electricity sector.

Energy CEO says Obama is destroying low-cost energy with EPA.  Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray says he is scared to death for this country, for poor people, those who live on fixed incomes and for people who are retiring.  Murray says Obama is illegally using the EPA and the Clean Air Act to take over the US Electric Power Grid and in the process he's destroying low-cost energy.  Murray points out that coal is only 4 cents per kilowatt-hour and Obama wants to replace it with renewable energy sources, wind and solar, that cost 22 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Wind-farm operator upset with energy law.  The man in charge of the two largest wind-energy projects planned for Ohio says the latest message from the state is clear:  Go away.  Michael Speerschneider of EverPower Wind Holdings said that after Gov. John Kasich signed legislation on Friday that stops increases in requirements for the use of renewable energy, such as solar and wind, the prospect of any new large-scale wind development in the state probably is gone.

The accepted killing and maiming of animals in the name of Green energy.  Liberals love solar and wind energy as long as the solar panels, which need considerable acreage to install and plenty of sun year around, are installed on someone else's property.  But no progressive would agree to have the ugly, unsightly, and noisy wind mills installed in their own back yards because they would be destroying their vineyards' and horse-riding pastures' "view shed."  Aside from frying birds that happen to wonder in the heat flux of the solar panels, or are attracted by the reflecting panels that look like water, or chopped by the rotating blades of the turbines, wind mills are damaging to animal and human health.

Energy Sources, Costs and Global Warming.  Last month the Wall Street Journal (8/18/12) published a breakdown of federal subsidies for electric power production, citing the U.S. Dept. of Energy and the Institute for Energy Research as sources.  Here is the comparison of subsidy costs per megawatt hour:

  Fuel Type              $ Subsidy per megawatt hour
  Oil and Gas            $0.64
  Coal                    0.64
  Hydropower              0.82
  Nuclear                 3.14
  Wind                   56.29
  Solar                 775.64

Federal double standard on endangered species laws?  The federal government is not shy about prosecuting those who violate threatened and endangered species laws.  But under a new Obama administration policy, wind farm operators are getting 30-year permits to kill protected species.  The government fined marine biologist Nancy Black $12,000 and sentenced her to three years probation for feeding a whale in Monterey Bay.  Just last month, US Fish and Wildlife cited 26-year- old tree trimmer Ernesto Pulido for violating the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act for disturbing a nest of herons. P

Study: Renewable Energy Poses Security Risk.  Intermittent and unreliable wind and solar power pose a serious energy security risk and threaten to undermine the reliability of energy generation in the UK, according to a new report. [...] Last December, wind and solar power generation almost came to a complete halt for a week.  Germany's 23,000 wind turbines were largely still, while photovoltaic failed to generate enough energy due to lack of sunlight.  The result was that for a week, the country's remaining conventional power plants had to take on the burden of providing all the country's energy supplies.  The report's author, Philipp Mueller, said:  "Open energy markets are a much better way to ensure energy security than intermittent generation systems like wind and solar.

New York Wind falls short... again.  By the end of 2013, wind energy represented 94% of the fuel used to meet New York State's RPS mandate.  Twenty wind power plants are operating in the state with an installed capacity of 1,730 megawatts.  We've been tracking NY's wind production figures since 2009 and its performance has not improved.  [The first table in this article], derived from the 2014 NY-ISO Gold Book, shows the actual wind generation and capacity factors by project between the years 2009 and 2013.  Only one project, Steel Winds II, ever achieved a capacity factor at, or over, 30% and that was for only one year.

This is why wind energy can neither have nor produce nice things.  The wind lobby has yet to give up on their quest to renew the egregiously generous production tax credit that essentially keeps the wind industry afloat by providing 2.3 cents for every kilowatt-hour of energy output during the first ten years of a given project's operation; that lucrative subsidy expired on January 1st of this year, but it wouldn't be the first time — or the second, or the third — that Congress has belatedly bestowed a retroactive extension.  Most recently, the wind industry was awarded a one-year extension of the credit at the start of 2013, with the new and convenient condition that any project that simply began construction in 2013 would receive the full benefits of the credit (whereas in the past, installations had to be completed) — and for a demonstration of just how precious that credit really is, here are a couple of handy visuals via The Atlantic.

The Crazy Economics of the Wind Industry in Two Charts.  The news from the wind industry last week didn't look good.  The booming business of minting money out of thin air had imploded between 2012 and 2013, as this chart from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) shows.

Oklahoma will charge homeowners who generate their own power.  Under the terms of a recently passed bill, expected to be signed by Governor Mary Fallin, homeowners who install their own private solar or wind turbine energy resources and sell some of the juice back to energy companies will be paying a fee for the privilege.

Wind Blows.  Despite the hundreds of square miles of wind turbines in the Lone Star State, just 6.4 percent of electricity used to keep the lights on in homes comes from wind.  Nationally, it's just 3 percent. [...] The earth is trashed in the process of building these farms, something big wind companies, so-called environmentalists, and the government don't want people to know.  Not only are hundreds of miles of land destroyed with concrete that is often left behind by companies when a farm is out of use, the products necessary to manufacture wind turbines are mined in China without regulation and with a byproduct of toxic, radioactive waste.

GOP: Administration stonewalling on bird deaths.  The Obama administration is refusing to turn over documents related to enforcement of environmental laws at wind farms where dozens of eagles and other protected birds have been killed, House Republicans charged Wednesday [3/26/2014].

U.S. Proposes 30-Year Eagle Kill Permits.  The Obama administration announced a proposal to grant 30-year permits for wind turbine facilities to kill bald and golden eagles, causing an uproar among environmentalist groups.  President Barack Obama frequently refers to wind power as a key component in reducing carbon dioxide emissions he says are causing a global warming crisis.  Wind power generation, like less-expensive hydroelectric and nuclear power, does not produce carbon dioxide emissions.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reports U.S. wind farms, which produce only 3 percent of the nation's electricity, kill an average of 440,000 birds every year.  In 2013, an independent, peer-reviewed study reported 1.4 million annual kills when adding bats to the equation.

State rejects plan for wind power farm off Atlantic City.  New Jersey energy regulators took the air out of a $188 million plan to build a wind power farm off the coast of Atlantic City on Wednesday [3/19/2014], rejecting the plan as too financially risky.

Federal Wind Subsidies Expire, but Lobbyists Persist.  Congress allowed longstanding taxpayer subsidies to wind power companies to expire at the end of 2013, putting into doubt the long-term future of the lucrative subsidies.  Wind power lobbyists hope to persuade Congress to restore the subsidies in early 2014, but for the first time in more than 20 years, Congress appears willing to put an end to the payouts.  Designed to promote wind power as part of an overall strategy to boost renewable energy, the production tax credit (PTC) gives wind power producers a payment of 2.2 cents per kilowatthour for electricity generated.  The taxpayer subsidies can be more than a third of the retail price of electricity.

Veterans Affairs wind turbine, built for $2.3 million, stands dormant.  A $2.3 million federal stimulus project at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in St. Cloud is giving green energy initiatives a bad name.  A 600-kilowatt wind turbine — some 245 foot [sic] tall — stands on the wintry VA grounds, frozen in time and temperature, essentially inoperable for the past 1½ years.  No one is working to fix it, though many attempts were made to repair the turbine, once billed as a model green energy project.

$2.3M Wind Turbine at Veterans Affairs Medical Center 'Inoperable' for Last 1½ Years.  A wind turbine at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in St. Cloud, Minnesota paid for with $2.3 million in federal stimulus funds has been "inoperable" for one and half years.  According to Fox News, the "600-kilowatt wind turbine — some 245 foot [sic] tall — stands... frozen" and no one is even trying to fix it.

Pikes, Pickets, and Scams.  Whenever the proponents of green energy argue for more money for these failed projects, they assert that the life of every bird, bee, snail, and minnow is precious and that green energy will save what nasty fossil fuels endanger.  We've already seen how the strict rules about killing endangered birds are waived when it comes to avian pâté-making windmills, now it appears that the huge Ivanpah Solar plant interferes with both aviation and bird life, but who's complaining?

Wind farms vs. hurricanes?  [R]egardless of whether you accept the expert consensus that human activity has contributed significantly to global warming over the last century, you might be encouraged by a new theory about our supposed capacity to affect the weather. [...] Consider this seemingly far-fetched assessment from Prof. [Mark Z.] Jacobson and his fellow researchers:  "Wind turbines could disrupt a hurricane enough to reduce peak wind speeds by up to 92 mph and decrease storm surge by up to 79 percent."  How?  Prof. Jacobson:  "We found that when wind turbines are present, they slow down the outer rotation winds of a hurricane.  This feeds back to decrease wave height, which reduces movement of air toward the center of the hurricane, increasing the central pressure, which in turn slows the winds of the entire hurricane and dissipates it faster."  Convinced?  Neither are we.

The Editor says...
The energy in a hurricane is so great that our resistance is futile.  The plan outlined above is like making a fence out of toothpicks and expecting it to confine wild horses.  Here's why:  (1) Hurricanes have wind speeds in excess of 74 mph.  The survival speed of commercial wind turbines is in the range of 89 to 161 mph.  The most common survival speed is 134 mph.[*]  At or above the survival speed, the windmill will break up, or the support tower will snap.  In addition, at any speed above the normal operating range, braking must be applied — either electrical or mechanical — otherwise the rotor speed will get out of control and the rotor will turn into a centrifuge and be destroyed as soon as the weakest part of it breaks off and the assembly is thrown out of balance.  In other words, the (excess) power extracted from the wind must be dissipated as heat.  Brakes that are adequate for occasional use may not survive sustained winds for several hours at a time without burning up.  (2) The biggest windmills are only 400 feet tall.  High winds extend thousands of feet up into the atmosphere.  Even if all the wind from a hurricane is confined within 400 feet of sea level, the conversion of wind to electricity in a windmill is not completely efficient.  In 1919 the physicist Albert Betz showed that no more than 16/27 (59.3%) of the kinetic energy of the wind can be captured by an ideal windmill.[*]  So even if a line of densely-packed windmills is several miles tall, well over 40 percent of the wind energy will still pass through.  So you see, ideas of this sort sound wonderful on the surface, but one should always dig deeper.

Could wind turbines tame hurricanes?  According to the study, large numbers of wind turbines could slow down the outer winds of the hurricane, decrease wave heights, and cause it to dissipate faster.  The authors say 78,000 300-foot turbines off the coast of New Orleans could have reduced Hurricane Katrina's wind speeds by as much as 98 miles per hour by the time they reached land and decreased storm surge by an incredible 79 percent.

The Editor says...
Yes, "an incredible 79 percent," indeed, since the scheme is simply not credible.

Will Hurricanes Wipe Out Offshore Wind Farms?  A team from Carnegie Mellon University used historical hurricane data to see if wind farms in different coastal areas could stand up to the storms.  They looked at four areas in the Atlantic and Gulf Coast regions currently under consideration as locations for wind farms.  They then modeled how much hurricanes in these areas could damage a 5-megawatt wind turbinedesign similar to those being installed in northern Europe.  According to the researchers' model, hurricanes ranked Category 3 (those with wind speeds of 50 miles per hour [sic]) and higher could buckle up to 46 percent of these traditional turbine towers.

The Editor says...
A Category 3 hurricane has winds of at least 50 meters per second, or 111 mph.

Nonprofits, including Farrakhan-tied group, enjoy windfall from farm subsidies.  Several nonprofits that have little to do with farming or are in poor standing with their local governments have been receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in farm subsidies over the past decade, federal records show.  They include an Islamic charity tied to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a Midwestern group devoted to waterfowl habitat, and a major conservation group with few farms to its name.  The group tied to Farrakhan, called the Three Year Economic Saving Program, has received nearly $160,000 in farm subsidies since 2002.

Germany's Energy Goals Backfire.  Germany's radical initiative to subsidize renewable electricity generation has resulted in higher carbon dioxide emissions and the most expensive electricity in Europe, with the poor disproportionately bearing the burden.

Kansas Renewable Mandates Causing Skyrocketing Electricity Prices.  In 2009 the Kansas legislature passed legislation creating the mandates, which require Kansans to purchase 20 percent of their electricity from designated renewable sources by the year 2020.  Since 2009, U.S. electricity prices have risen merely 2.4 percent, from 9.89 cents per kilowatt hour to 10.13 cents per kilowatt hour (data through October 2013, the most recent month for which the U.S. Energy Information Administration published data when this paper went to press).  In Kansas, by contrast, electricity prices have risen 19.4 percent since 2009, from 8.07 cents per kilowatt hour to 9.64 cents per kilowatt hour.

Green Energy [is] Not Fit for the Grid.  Germany's wind and solar power generation came to a standstill in late 2013.  More than 23,000 wind turbines ran out of wind and most of the one million photovoltaic systems ran out of sunlight.  For a whole week, coal nuclear and gas-powered plants generated an estimated 95 percent of Germany's electricity.  Britain has 3,500 wind turbines, but during a period of extreme cold they produced just 1.8% of UK's electricity.  But, gluttons for punishment, politicians intend building more.

It's not just the windmills...
Report: 4 billion birds die annually in building crashes, cat attacks.  The largest and most comprehensive study of bird collision deaths ever finds that nearly 1 billion birds die in building crashes every year, a shocking number that has fans of the feather[ed] creatures urging construction companies to use new materials to stop the annihilation.  The mortality study from over 92,000 records found that between 365 million and 988 million birds crash and die in the United States.  The number easily climbs over 1 billion when reports from Canada are included.

Ohio wind turbine project stopped near Lake Erie.  A group of birding enthusiasts hopes a decision to halt plans for a wind turbine at an Ohio National Guard base will send a message to developers proposing other wind power projects along Lake Erie.

Windfarm blades may go to landfill.  Unlike other parts of wind turbines — such as the foundations, tower and generator — the blades are made of complex materials which cannot be recycled.

It's time for wind power to stand or fall on its own.  Federal subsidies for wind are so lavish, that generators in places like west Texas (where wind is plentiful) have been known to bid electricity onto the grid at negative prices, just so it can collect the larger subsidy amount and pocket the difference.  Negative pricing is a great deal for whoever owns the generator, but can play havoc with electrical reliability, by undercutting other power sources and discouraging investment in new capacity.

Electricity Prices Rise Dramatically Under Ohio Renewable Mandates.  Electricity prices in Ohio have risen approximately triple the national average since Ohio enacted renewable power mandates in 2008.  The sharp rise in electricity prices occurred despite promises during 2008 legislative hearings that renewable power mandates would have little or no impact on electricity prices.  In 2008 the Ohio legislature passed legislation creating the state's renewable power mandates.  Under the mandates, Ohioans must purchase 25 percent of their electricity from designated renewable sources by the year 2025.

Native Americans Protest Eagle Deaths at Wind Farms.  In the face of continued raptor deaths and the Obama administration's ongoing efforts to encourage new industrial wind farm developments, American Indian tribes are becoming increasingly vocal opponents of new wind farms.  From the Osage Nation of northern Oklahoma to the Hopis and more than a dozen other tribes in Arizona, American Indians are urging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to abandon plans to permit wind farms to kill bald and golden eagles, which many tribes regard as culturally and spiritually important.

OK to kill endangered birds? Yes if you are a windfarm.  If a coal plant was wiping out thousands of birds and bats you can be sure Greenpeace would be launching a campaign.  But when an industrial turbine with blade-tips travelling at 180 mph does the killing, who cares?

Wind Company Destroys Trees, Environmental Group Sues Over Settlement.  A conservation group is suing the State of Connecticut to force it to throw out a settlement between state officials and a wind-power company that clear-cut 2.5 acres of state forest.  The Berkshire-Litchfield Environmental Council is suing the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and officials within that agency for settling out of court with the offender.  According to BLEC's complaint, the 111 largest trees that were cut down are worth more than $1.1 million.

Report: Turbines Kill Up To 328,000 Birds Annually.  Findings from the report include that mortality increases as the height of the turbines increases, and also that mortality rates are lower in the Great Plains regions relative to other regions in the United States.

Administration close to finalizing rule to give wind farms a pass on killing eagles for decades.  The Obama administration is moving toward finalizing a rule that would give alternative energy farms a pass for killing bald and golden eagles for decades, just weeks after it took legal action for the first time against a company for doing so.  The rule by the Interior Department extends the length of the permits that allow farms to unintentionally kill the eagles without penalty from five to 30 years, according to department records.

Obama to Sign Rule Allowing Death of Eagles.  The Obama administration is about to approve a rule that will ensure the death of golden and bald eagles for the next 30 more years.  Hundreds of thousands of birds die each year flying into the deadly turbine blades atop the soaring towers that compose wind farms.  The rule will give wind farms thirty year permits for the "non purposeful take of eagles — that is where the take is associated with but not the purpose of, the activity."  The take of eagles is also a euphemism for the slaughter of them.

Wind company pays fine over eagle deaths.  A renewable power company has agreed to pay $1 million over the deaths of more than a dozen protected eagles and other birds at its wind farms.  The settlement with Duke Energy is the first time the Obama administration, which has been a strong backer of wind power, has penalized a wind energy company for killing eagles.

Wind energy company pleads guilty to eagle deaths.  The government for the first time has enforced environmental laws protecting birds against wind energy facilities, winning a $1 million settlement Friday [11/22/2013] from a power company that pleaded guilty to killing 14 eagles and 149 other birds at two Wyoming wind farms.

Guilty plea in bird deaths at wind farms a first.  A major U.S. power company has pleaded guilty to killing eagles and other birds at two Wyoming wind farms and agreed to pay $1 million as part of the first enforcement of environmental laws protecting birds against wind energy facilities.

Wind farms creating 'dead zones' for military radar, report warns.  The construction of large wind farms could drive up the cost of air travel and cause delays in launching fighter aircraft on missions to protect Canada, Canadian Air Force officers are warning in a newly released report. [...] Wind farms are sprouting up around the world, but aviation specialists are raising concerns that the giant turbines are creating blackout zones for air-traffic control radar.  The spinning blades of the turbines are being detected by the radar, presenting false images or generating so much clutter on radar screens that controllers are losing track of airplanes as they fly near the wind farm sites.

Stagnating U.S. Wind.  The U.S. wind power market has staggered this year, adding less than seventy (70) megawatts of new wind in the first three quarters.  This is down from 4,743 megawatts installed during the same period in 2012.  Only three states reported wind expansions:  [California, Colorado, and Alaska].

Congress May Let Tax Credit for Wind Industry Expire.  The wind PTC faces opposition from fiscal hawks in Congress, free market groups, and an array of energy interests who argue the wind industry should be able to stand on its own after more than two decades of federal support.  Benjamin Cole, the communications director of the American Energy Alliance, an advocacy arm of the Institute for Energy Research, said it was time to take the federal training wheels off.  "It's not an infant industry," Cole said in an interview.  "It's a mature industry.  I don't know any start-up that has the resources to commit to permanent lobbying for mandates and subsidies.  [AWEA] is playing a big lobbying game at the highest level of power politics."

Wind turbines killed 600,000 bats in 2012.  Rough estimates point to nearly 600,000 bats being killed by wind turbines at wind energy facilities across the U.S., a new study suggests.  While it may be assumed that these bats died due to collisions with the wind turbines, they also died from trauma linked to sudden changes in air pressure caused by the moving of the high-speed blades.

£48,000 wind turbine in sheltered valley surrounded by buildings generates just £5 electricity a month.  A wind turbine built with £48,000 of taxpayers' money has been producing so little electricity it will take more than 400 years to repay the bill, it emerged yesterday [11/6/2013].  Despite being in a windy, coastal town, the 60ft structure was built in a sheltered valley and managed to generate only an average of £5 worth of electricity a month.

Dozens of families in a Cape Cod town sue over 'wind turbine syndrome'.  Dozens of residents of a small community in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, have filed lawsuits claiming that a trio of large wind turbines located near their homes have been harming their health.

'Wind Turbine Syndrome' Blamed for Mysterious Symptoms in Cape Cod Town.  The wind turbines have blown up a political storm in Falmouth that has resonated throughout the wind energy industry.  Are these plaintiffs just "whiners," or do they have a legitimate illness?

Nuclear power vs wind farms: the infographic the Government doesn't want you to see.  Hat-tip to our Energy Correspondent Emily Gosden for this Department of Energy & Climate Change infographic.  It was deleted from Gov.uk this week "because of sensitivities", according to a DECC press officer. [...] It turns out that the Renewable Energy Association called it "unhelpful" in a press release, pleading that "as Ed Davey stressed... it is not an either/or choice".

'Mini-nukes' beat monster wind farms on every count.  As the shambles of Britain's energy policy and soaring bills continues to make shock headlines, many in the south-west of England are staring in angry amazement at plans by foreign-owned firms to build two of the largest offshore wind farms in the world just off their coastlines.  The German power company RWE hopes to spend £4 billion on its "Atlantic Array", covering 125 square miles of sea between Devon and South Wales with 240 vast 5 MW turbines, more than 600 ft high.

Delight as four wind turbines in the Yorkshire Dales become the first in Britain to be torn down.  It is a sight that will cheer campaigners across the land.  After blighting the Yorkshire Dales for more than two decades, four giant turbines have been removed from the stunning landscape — the first ever windfarm in Britain to be scrapped.  To the delight of residents and walkers there are once again unspoilt views across the rolling hills and deep blue waters of Chelker Reservoir, near Ilkley.

At last, a move to curb the wind farms.  The drive to build wind farms will no longer automatically trump protecting the landscape, and from today ministers will be able to step in on the side of residents.  In a major boost for anti-wind farm campaigners, Eric Pickles announced new measures to make sure their concerns about the visual and environmental impact must be taken into account.

Global Warming Alarmism Wrecks European Economy.  Many Europeans complain about their high energy costs, largely due to their increasing dependence on renewables — the most costly energy sources.  But European political parties as well as a majority of people still want government to promote costly options, especially wind and solar power.  This is killing European economies.  Electricity costs in Europe are more than double the cost of electricity in the U.S.  High electricity costs make it difficult for businesses to operate if they need a lot of electricity.

Blowin' in the Wind.  Today's wind turbines aren't the picturesque, gentle windmills that one associates with, say, the Dutch countryside.  They're more like something out of Blade Runner:  monstrous, dystopian-looking things that can stand as tall as a 20-story building and carry 200-foot-long blades, utterly dominating their typically bucolic surroundings.  They're murder on birds, killing more than a half-million each year in the United States alone, according to an Associated Press analysis.

How Europe's Economy Is Being Devastated By Global Warming Orthodoxy.  Many Europeans complain about their high energy costs, largely due to their increasing dependence on renewables — the most costly energy sources.  But European political parties as well as a majority of people still want government to promote costly options, especially wind and solar power.  This is killing European economies.  Electricity costs in Europe are more than double the cost of electricity in the U.S.

Time for Solar Energy and Wind Farm Supporters to Stop Living in the Stone Age.  We've done wind and solar already.  They don't work too well.  Solar is great if you're sending a satellite into space outside the atmosphere.  If you want to power a modern home, it doesn't work unless you raise the price of electricity so sharply that solar suddenly becomes competitive.  And that's the environmentalist tactic.

Wind farms and renewable energy: a modern version of a medieval scam.  It is not the opponents of wind farms that are backward looking and atavistic, but those who champion them.  It is difficult to think of a more medieval technology than wind mills.  They were cutting edge when Henry II was king and Richard the Lionheart was launching crusades.  The first certain reference to a wind mill in Europe dates from 1185 AD Yorkshire, apparently.  Of course, the climate was warmer back then, as even the UN's International Panel on Climate Change now accepts.

Obama in center of fight over bald eagle deaths.  Wildlife conservationists are battling an Obama administration rule that would give wind energy companies lengthy permits for wind farms that end up killing bald and golden eagles.  Hundreds of thousands of birds are killed every year after they fly into gigantic wind turbine blades.

Study: Wind farms killed 67 eagles in 5 years.  The research represents one of the first tallies of eagle deaths attributed to the nation's growing wind energy industry, which has been a pillar of President Barack Obama's plans to reduce the pollution blamed for global warming.

Bias alert!
The Associated Press article immediately above is subtle about its bias, but there it is:  "Obama's plans to reduce the pollution blamed for global warming."  The so-called pollution is carbon dioxide, which is not a pollutant.  Yes, CO2 get the "blame" for global warming, but water vapor has a far greater heat-trapping role in the atmosphere.  And if the long-term trend is in the cooling direction, we should enjoy the warming while we can.  In the next sentence, the article goes on to say, "Wind power releases no air pollution," as if to say that windmills are the ideal power source.  Even if we stipulate that the windmills themselves emit no pollution, the wind can stop blowing at any moment, which means the Plan B power plant has to be kept running continuously.  Wind power augments traditional power supplies but can never replace them — unless you don't mind going a few days at a time with no electricity.

Sequestration nation: DoD doles out $7 billion in wind-energy contracts.  Why the Obama administration insists upon using the military as a sponsor of what they, rather than the free market, have arbitrarily and falsely deemed to be practical and cost-effective sources of energy, it pains me to think on — but the point is that the U.S. military is currently choosing to spend big money on energy sources that do not offer them the biggest bang for their buck.  Even better, the Pentagon dished out a similarly sized set of contracts for solar energy companies last month; and this is all on top the Navy's push to outfit a number of cruisers, destroyers, and fighter jets with biofuel-blended gas.

We could soon be paying billions for this wind back-up.  Occasionally, one comes across a story so mind-blowingly unexpected and out-of-left-field that it seems hard for readers to take on board that it is true.  Such is the story I first reported here last month, under the heading, "Our lights will stay on, but it'll cost us a fortune", about the scheme being devised by the National Grid to solve what has long been the most intractable problem created by the Government's plan to see the best part of £110 billion spent in seven years on building tens of thousands more wind turbines — namely, how to keep our national grid "balanced" when it has to cope with all those unpredictably wild fluctuations in the speed of the wind.

The constantly varying output power from wind and solar facilities puts a physical strain on Plan B.
Cycling Damages Power Plants.  Natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) and coal-fired power plants are supposed to be started, ramped up to speed, and run under constant conditions until being shut down.  That's why they are called base load power plants — they provide a steady output of electricity.  They are not designed to be load following plants, where the power plant ramps up and down to follow the load, i.e., demand.  If they are forced to follow the load, which is the case when wind and solar are on the grid, the sudden changes in temperature damages parts in the boilers and turbines.

How 40 mph winds wrecked this turbine.  A single crooked blade dangling precariously from its rotor is all that remains of this wind turbine, which was left badly damaged as gusts reached 40 mph.  Two blades of the turbine were torn off altogether following storms last week, with one piece of debris estimated to have been thrown about 60 yards, after a suspected technical fault was 'magnified' by the wind.  The incident has prompted calls for similar structures to be removed from nearby schools.

California's Smoke Signals.  Like so many other emergencies in California, this one is government-made and a warning about its green political obsessions. [...] To hit the renewable mandate, utilities are building long transmission lines to deliver power from distant solar and wind projects to population centers.  Most large-scale solar plants in California are being built in dry, sunny desert and valley regions.  Wind farms are concentrated in the mountains.  Both are fire-prone.

The Wind Farms That Generate Enough Power to make a Few Cups of Tea.  One wind farm Trysglwyn, which is in Anglesey in Wales, was producing a total of 6 kilowatts (KW) — just enough to boil two kettles each with 3 KW of power.  The wind farm has 14 turbines and a theoretical capacity of 5.6 megawatts (MW).  In other words, the wind farm was producing just 0.001 percent of its maximum capacity.  Little Cheyne Court wind farm, which consists of 26 turbines each of them 377 ft high, was producing 129 KW of electricity last Thursday afternoon.  The wind farm, which was hugely controversial when it was built at a cost of £50 million on the site of Romney Marsh in Kent, is the largest in the south east of England.

The Editor says...
3,000 watts is a lot of power for a tea kettle, but the writer made his point even with a poor analogy.

Wind farms are a breach of human rights says UN. No, really.  The United Nations, as we know, is the very belly of the beast; the onlie begetter of almost all the world's most far-reaching and dangerous environmental policies.  It was under the auspices of two UN organisations — the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation — that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established.

Official: wind turbines are an iniquitous assault on property rights.  As I have reported before, rural estate agents (and the poor [chumps] trying to sell their turbine-blighted homes) have long known about the deleterious effects of wind turbines on property values.  Price drops of 25 percent are not uncommon and there have been cases where houses located near wind turbines have been rendered simply unsellable.  This ought to have been a major national scandal years ago.

Secret wind farm report into house price blight.  Owen Paterson, the Environment Secretary, has commissioned a consultancy to investigate whether renewable technologies — including wind turbines — lower house prices in the countryside.  Coalition sources said the report is being blocked by officials at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), run by Ed Davey, a Liberal Democrat, amid fears it will conclude that turbines harm property prices.  Mr Paterson has made clear that he intends to make the document public as soon as it is completed.

Obama's Climate Plan: Kill Birds and Bats by the Hundreds of Millions.  A newly published peer-reviewed study reports U.S. wind turbines kill 1.4 million birds and bats every year, even while producing just 3 percent of U.S. electricity.  The numbers in the study from Wildlife Society Bulletin reveal President Obama's global warming plan will kill hundreds of millions of birds and bats while doing little if anything to reduce global temperatures.

Alternative, Green ("Clean") Solar and Wind.  Only recently, the offshore wind industry was seen as an opportunity to regenerate Germany's coast.  But amid changing political attitudes and spiraling costs, several companies are struggling to survive.  Is the wind boom over before it even really began?

Dangerous Negawatts.  A distributed generation system is needed for wind and solar, especially where individuals can sell power back to the grid.  It's also behind the drive for combined heat and power (CHP).  It has also spawned an effort for greater demand management, which is where negawatts enter the picture:  Demand management is for dropping load when the grid is operating near its peak.

Shepherds Flat developers took full advantage of taxpayer subsidies.  For Shepherds Flat wind farm, the $30 million in tax credits that received final approval from Oregon Department of Energy last month were frosting on a multi-layered cake of federal, state and local subsidies.  Its developers gorged themselves on hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers, and government officials were well aware it was over-subsidized.

Wind Farm Rotor Failures.  There is a wind farm in western New York State consisting of 67 turbines that have been in operation for around three years.  Recently there have been several units shut down while 10 blades were repaired.  If each came from a different turbine it would mean the wind farm was producing 10% less electricity than planned while the turbines were out of service.  It could also support the contention that the life of wind farms will be less than planned.

Wind farm bird deaths.  A new study just published in the United States has estimated that around 573,000 birds were killed by wind turbines in 2012 (including 83,000 birds of prey), an increase of 30 percent on a previous estimate by the US fish and Wildlife Service in 2009.  Bats are even worse hit, says author K Shawn Smallwood, and probably top 888,000 killed per year.

Comparing bird and bat fatality-rate estimates among North American wind-energy projects.  Estimates of bird and bat fatalities are often made at wind-energy projects to assess impacts by comparing them with other fatality estimates.  Many fatality estimates have been made across North America, but they have varied greatly in field and analytical methods, monitoring duration, and in the size and height of the wind turbines monitored for fatalities, and few benefited from scientific peer review.

Global warming scare is dying.  It's been a tough week for the global warming purists.  They are getting blowback in Germany, where people are not only getting sick and tired of paying more for electricity — the same strategy that has been destroying the morale of Ontarians paying higher bills — but because people in rural parts of the country are getting increasingly restless as the government insists on building more of those wind energy monstrosities.

Wind farms [are being] paid £30 million a year to stand idle.  Wind farms are being given around £30million a year in compensation to switch off or slow down their turbines because nearly half the electricity they make is not needed.  The cash, which comes from household bills, is paid when the National Grid is unable to cope with the extra power produced during high winds or periods of low demand.  Known as "balancing", the arrangement is intended to compensate firms for energy they are unable to sell.

Scots 'face world's biggest energy bills' from wind power.  The unreliability of wind power could mean an independent Scotland would have to import energy from England — leaving it with the highest household bills in the world, it was claimed yesterday [8/3/2013].  In an interview with Scotland on Sunday, Sir Donald Miller, former chairman of both the South of Scotland Electricity Board and of ScottishPower, has described the SNP's current energy policy on producing 100 per cent of Scotland's needs from renewables as "disastrous".

Property owners file suit over planned wind project.  A group of property owners who voiced concern about the proposed wind farm on Lookout Mountain have filed suit against the two companies involved in the project and some of their neighbors who allegedly have agreed to have wind turbines placed on their property.

Eco-Blowback: Mutiny in the Land of Wind Turbines.  Germany plans to build 60,000 new wind turbines — in forests, in the foothills of the Alps and even in protected environmental areas.  But local residents are up in arms, costs are skyrocketing and Germany's determination to phase out nuclear power is in danger.

Wind turbines ARE a human health hazard: the smoking gun.  How much more dirt needs to come out before the wind industry gets the thorough investigation it has long deserved?  The reason I ask is that it has now become clear that the industry has known for at least 25 years about the potentially damaging impact on human health of the impulsive infrasound (inaudible intermittent noise) produced by wind turbines.  Yet instead of dealing with the problem it has, on the most generous interpretation, swept the issue under the carpet — or worse, been involved in a concerted cover-up operation.

Fleming Amendment Ends Another Taxpayer Bailout.  The Obama 2009 stimulus bill cost taxpayers about $830 billion, and much of it was wasted on growing government and administration giveaways, like a $3.25 billion loan program that put taxpayers on the hook for failed green energy projects.  A company could take a government loan and walk away from a project without paying taxpayers back, even if the company remained in business.

Green Energy's Too Expensive.  While Republicans realize the embarrassing failure of the stimulus bill's green energy programs, Democrats want to keep spending — often in the face of opposition from their usual supporters.  One of the most controversial commercial green energy projects, Cape Wind, provides a case in point.

Massachusetts Town Bans Use of Wind Turbines at Night.  The Fairhaven, Massachusetts Board of Health voted to shut down the town's two wind turbines each night between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. after dozens of residents filed more than 400 complaints against the turbines.  Testing showed the turbines exceeded state noise regulations and the noise limitations specified in their operating permits.  Residents in 56 households filed 486 complaints with the Fairhaven Board of Health.  Complaints included excessive noise and vibrations causing headaches and other symptoms in area residents.

The Editor says...
Solar panels are also outlawed at night — by the laws of physics!

Feds Give Wind Producers Free Pass to Kill Condors.  Federal wildlife officials announced they will allow wind producers in California's Tehachapi Mountains to kill endangered California condors without fear of prosecution.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the free pass will apply only when wind power companies inadvertently kill or harass the large and highly endangered birds, but such harassment and deaths are a foreseeable and unavoidable consequence of "green" wind power.

Maryland Wind Farm Threatens Bald Eagles.  U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials report a proposed wind energy project in Maryland would pose a "significant risk to eagles" and the developer should trim back its construction plans.  The U.S. Navy has also expressed concern about the project, noting the turbines might skew nearby radar readings.

Osage Tribe Opposes Wind Turbines, Seeks Eagle Protections.  The Osage Native American Nation is protesting proposed wind turbines that will kill bald eagles and other birds the nation holds sacred.  The Wind Capital Group plans to place 94 wind turbines in Osage County, Oklahoma.  The turbines would be in the heart of historical Osage Nation lands where many Osage still live and honor tribal traditions.  According to Osage lore, the eagle is the only creature than can look God in the eye, but the proposed wind turbines would likely kill several of the scarce and protected eagles each year.

The Editor says...
The Osage Indians are asking the federal government to protect the "sacred" objects of their religion (animism).  Yet the "separation of church and state" people are all silent on this issue.

Another day, another wind farm scandal .  [T]he National Grid has been secretly forking out millions on diesel-generated power in order to stop the lights going out.  And why does the National Grid need this hugely expensive, dirty energy available on standby?  For all those occasions when the wind isn't blowing, is why.  The greater the proportion of our total energy capacity taken up by wind, the more unstable our grid becomes.  But rather than admit the scale of the problem (already causing havoc in places like Germany), the Coalition has had to persist in the charade that renewables are an essential part of our energy mix.

Green Vandalism: Historic City Of York Threatened By A Circle Of 40 Wind Farms.  One of Britain's most historic cities is being threatened by a circle of 40 wind farms under plans drawn-up by its Labour-led authority.

Rare bird last seen in Britain 22 years ago killed by wind turbine in front of crowd.  There had been only eight recorded sightings of the white-throated needletail in the UK since 1846.  So when one popped up again on British shores this week, twitchers were understandably excited.  A group of 40 enthusiasts dashed to the Hebrides to catch a glimpse of the brown, black and blue bird, which breeds in Asia and winters in Australasia.  But instead of being treated to a wildlife spectacle they were left with a horror show when it flew into a wind turbine and was killed.

This bird rare enough for you, greenies?  If it weren't so sad and unnecessary it would almost be funny:  "It is tragic.  More than 80 people had already arrived on the island and others were coming from all over the country.  But it just flew into the turbine.  It was killed instantly."  You can imagine it in a Mike Leigh movie:  the twitchers with their anoraks and their long lenses; the cries of jubilation at the sighting; then, "thud".

The 'Great Renewables Scam' unravels.  Energy insiders have long known that the notion of 'renewable energy' is a romantic proposition — and an economic bust.  But it is amazing what the lure of guaranteed 'few strings attached' government subsidies can achieve.  Even the Big Oil companies bought into the renewables revolution, albeit mostly for PR reasons.  Like Shell, however, many quickly abandoned their fledgling renewable arms.  Post-2008, they knew, the subsidy regimes could not last.  Neither was the public buying into the new PR message.

Wind power has failed to deliver what it promised.  The wind-power industry is expensive, passes costs on to the consumer and does not create many jobs in return.

Hazy, Lazy Reporting.  The nameplate rating is in Megawatts, which is 1,000 Kilowatts, but it's the amount of electricity generated over a year, in KWh, that's important.  A typical 1.5 MW wind turbine has the potential to generate 3.9 million KWh of electricity, but it doesn't.  The wind doesn't blow all the time, and it's always changing its speed.  Therefore, the output of a wind turbine is measured over one year to determine how much electricity is actually generated, and this is then compared with the amount that could theoretically be generated based on its nameplate rating, to arrive at a capacity factor.  The average capacity factor for land based wind turbines is less than 30%, which means that a wind turbine actually produces less than one third of its nameplate rating.

The Rationale for Wind Power Won't Fly.  To understand the folly that drives too much of the nation's energy policies, consider these basic facts about wind energy.  After decades of federal subsidies — almost $24 billion according to a recent estimate by former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm — nowhere in the United States, or anywhere else, has an array of wind turbines replaced a single conventional power plant.  Nowhere. [...] The promise that wind and solar power could replace conventional electricity production never really made sense.  It's known to everybody in the industry that a wind turbine will generate electricity 30% of the time — but it's impossible to predict when that time will be.  A true believer might be willing to do without electricity when the wind is not blowing, but most people will not.

Europe Wants "Backsies" on Green Energy Policies.  Wind and solar power come at a premium; setting quotas for energy produced from these sources is going to drive prices up.  This is what happens when you try and prop up technologies not ready to compete on their own merits.  You become less competitive with regions that haven't handicapped themselves.

Why do I call them bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco crucifixes?  [Scroll down]  Consider the plight of the communities in Canada, where the wind industry is even more aggressive than it is here.  One Ontario resident, Esther Wrightman, so objected to the Golgotha of 400 foot wind turbines being planned for her area that she created a satirical website mocking the wind developer NextEra energy.  She even filmed them chopping down a tree with an eagle's nest in it in order to make way for the turbines.  How did NextEra — market capitalisation $32 billion — respond to her not exactly unreasonable objections?  Why by suing the pants off her, of course.

Indiana man faces possible jail time for nursing bald eagle back to health.  This reminds me of a 2011 story in which an 11-year-old Virginia girl rescued a woodpecker from the family cat only to be approached by a Fish & Wildlife agent flanked by an armed state trooper informing them of a court date and a $500 fee.

True cost of Britain's wind farm industry revealed.  A new analysis of government and industry figures shows that wind turbine owners received £1.2 billion in the form of a consumer subsidy, paid by a supplement on electricity bills last year.  They employed 12,000 people, to produce an effective £100,000 subsidy on each job.  The disclosure is potentially embarrassing for the wind industry, which claims it is an economically dynamic sector that creates jobs.  It was described by critics as proof the sector was not economically viable, with one calling it evidence of "soft jobs" that depended on the taxpayer.

Administration Doubles Down on Expensive Offshore Wind.  According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), offshore wind is 2.6 times more expensive as onshore wind power and is 3.4 times more expensive than power produced by a natural gas combined cycle plant.  On a kilowatt hour basis, offshore wind power is estimated to cost 22.15 cents per kilowatt hour, while onshore wind is estimated to cost 8.66 cents per kilowatt hour, and natural gas combined cycle is estimated to cost 6.56 [cents] per kilowatt hour.

Big Wind's Trail of Wings.  One eagle was found lying lifeless with a hole in its neck that exposed the bone.  Another was found starving and near death with limbs that appeared to be twisted off.  Struck down by wind turbines, these eagles were victims of a federal crime.  The government prosecutes individuals and companies that kill birds in violation of federal law, yet a recent Associated Press investigation revealed that the Obama administration has never taken legal action against a wind energy company for killing birds, even though wind turbines kill more than 573,000 birds annually.

Wind-Power's Fundamental Flaw.  A study by Jonathan A. Lesser at Continental Economics shows the fundamental problem of wind power:  it's not there when you need it.  In Wind Intermittency and the Production Tax Credit: a High Cost Subsidy for Low Value Power, Lesser shows that wind turbines fail to produce power when it's most needed:  during the peak daytime hours, and during the summer, when air conditioning demand soars.

Story Ideas for a Press Turning Against Obama.  Last week the Associated Press ran an astonishing story about how America's windmills have been killing thousands of rare birds, including golden eagles, while getting a free pass from the Obama administration. [...] How did the mainstream press manage to ignore this story for four years?  And did its final emergence have something to do with the discovery that the administration had been reading the AP's phone records?

Wind farms get pass on eagle deaths.  Killing these iconic birds is not just an irreplaceable loss for a vulnerable species.  It's also a federal crime, a charge that the Obama administration has used to prosecute oil companies when birds drown in their waste pits, and power companies when birds are electrocuted by their power lines.  But the administration has never fined or prosecuted a wind-energy company, even those that flout the law repeatedly.  Instead, the government is shielding the industry from liability and helping keep the scope of the deaths secret.

Don't expect Big Green to save Falmouth.  It slaughters eagles by the dozen, uses tons of fossil fuels every day, emits a greenhouse gas that's like CO2 on steroids, can't do the job it's made for, costs taxpayers exorbitant fees, and makes the federal government look mentally ill for giving it outrageous subsidies.  Oh, it also chops up the scenery with roads and tall machines.  The "it" is wind power, of course.

14,000 Idle Wind Turbines [are] a Testament to Failed Energy Policies.  When Element Power announced on April 10 the closing of a deal to build wind turbines for Blackrock in Ireland, nothing was said about the more than 14,000 other wind turbines lying idle around the world. [...] Nothing was said about Element's recent termination of another deal to build 40 wind turbines over 4,000 acres on top of Black Lava Butte and Flat Top Mesa in California, citing in its "request to relinquish" that there were "insufficient wind resources" to make that project viable.

Renewable Energy: Bringing Blackouts Back to California?  The epidemic of power outages and "rolling blackouts" which nearly shut down California in the early 2000s may be returning.  Back then, the culprits were unscrupulous energy providers like Enron and a poorly-thought out process of deregulation.  This time, renewable energy would be to blame, as the state has pushed to increase the use of solar and wind energy without ensuring that there is enough traditional power generation to keep the grid stable on cloudy, windless days.

Wind Farms Deliver Less Electricity than Promised.  Wind farms do not produce as much electricity as claimed by renewable energy lobbyists, energy economist Donn Dears reports in an excellent article on his Power For USA website.  Dears expertly summarized a report, The Performance of Wind Farms in the United Kingdom and Denmark, finding wind turbine output drops dramatically just a few years after wind turbines go online.  According to Dears, "These results are amazing, in that the literature usually indicates a consistent capacity factor of 30%, which is what financial projections are typically based on.  The report holds even worse news for off-shore wind farms.

Minnesota Wind Farm Seeks Permit to Kill Bald Eagles.  A wind energy company is seeking federal approval to kill several bald eagles each year within the Mississippi River Flyway in southeastern Minnesota in the process of providing intermittent wind power for local electricity consumers.  U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials report the proposed New Era Wind Farm will likely kill between eight and 14 bald eagles each year in addition to numerous other protected birds and bats.

Mass. delegation pushes for Energy Dept. loan for Cape Wind.  The Department of Energy has identified a goal for the United States to develop 54 gigawatts of offshore wind power, which would create 40,000 American jobs and a robust domestic supply chain that would economically revitalize several U.S. ports.

The Editor says...
Really?  This sounds like pork barrel politics at its worst.  The 40,000 jobs would only be temporary, unless it takes 40,000 people to maintain the windmills, and I suspect the project "would economically revitalize" only the individuals and companies with good political connections.  And at $5,506,608 per megawatt (see immediately below), the DOE goal of 54 gigawatts will cost the taxpayers almost $300 billion, and electric utility bills will "necessarily skyrocket," exactly as Barack Obama intended.

Maryland's "Wind Powered Welfare".  Offshore wind is, by far, the most expensive source of electricity.  An offshore wind farm would have to receive 34¢/kWh, wholesale, just to break even over a typical 30-yr plant lifetime.  34¢/kWh is almost three times the average retail residential electricity rate in the U.S.  The much ballyhooed Cape Wind project, off Cape Cod, is projected to have a 454 MW installed capacity.  It will cost approximately $2.5 billion to build.  This works out to $5,506,608 per MW.  A natural gas plant generally costs less than $900,000 per MW.

BP to Sell Entire U.S. Wind Power Business for Long-Term Financial Growth of Company.  BP will sell its entire American wind power business in an effort to "position the company for sustainable growth" and return to its core business of oil and gas production. [...] BP operates 16 wind farms in nine states that together produce about 2,600 megawatts of power.  It is also selling undeveloped projects that could produce an additional 2,000 megawatts.

Renewable Energy Myths.  Miskelly and Quirk found 3 types of power output; the first is Installed Capacity which is the power which would be produced if the plant were running all the time.  The second is Capacity Factor which is what is actually produced averaged over a year; and the third is the Reliability Point which is the probability of the Capacity Factor occurring at any one time.  They found wind's Capacity Factor is about 30% but wind's Reliability Point is between 2 and 6% at any wind farm.  That means there is only a small chance that a wind farm can be relied upon to be producing power at any time.

Wind Industry: Killing 200,000 birds per year is 'most benign'.  ExxonMobil paid $3.1 million for the deaths of 85 birds in 2009.  On that scale, the wind industry should pay $7.3 billion annually.

Some basic facts about wind energy, It doesn't work.  If only wind energy worked, it would be great.  But it does not — at least not that well. [...] Wind turbines do not last as long as promised.  They do not produce as much energy as hoped.  Moreover, they require more maintenance than anyone imagined.  Wind energy turns out to be a lot like solar energy.

Hiding the slaughter.  Since the early 1980s, the industry has known there is no way its propeller-style turbines could ever be safe for raptors.  With exposed blade tips spinning in open space at speeds up to 200 mph, it was impossible.  Wind developers also knew they would have a public relations nightmare if people ever learned how many eagles are actually being cut in half — or left with a smashed wing, to stumble around for days before dying.

Energy gap leaves Britain freezing in the dark.  "It's payback time for our insane energy policy," snarled London's Sunday Telegraph newspaper.  Hypothermia has killed thousands, losses to the economy have soared into the billions, and the wintry spring has wrought mayhem on the roads, closed businesses and smashed power lines. [...] Why?  Because instead of developing its vast natural gas resources to fuel gas-fired generators, Britain has been building wind turbines, which provide almost no electricity during frigid weather.

Nevada wind farm could face fine over eagle death.  An eastern Nevada wind farm could face a fine of up to $200,000 over the death of a golden eagle.

Eco madness and how our future is going up in smoke.  [Scroll down]  Germany, which already has five times as many wind turbines as Britain, is now desperately building 20 new coal-fired stations in the hope of keeping its lights on.  The first, opened last September, is already generating 2,200 megawatts; nearly as much as the average output of all of Britain's wind farms combined.

The Dream of a World Without Oil.  [Mark Z.] Jacobsen's article provides a thorough assessment of the future of WWS [wind, water and solar].  Unfortunately, rather than buttress his argument, his figures undermine the conclusion that we don't need fossil fuels.

Rethinking wind power.  [T]he latest research in mesoscale atmospheric modeling, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, suggests that the generating capacity of large-scale wind farms has been overestimated.

Bad News for Wind Energy.  It's generally been recognized that using wind to generate electricity is inefficient, costly and unreliable.  Now the news is getting out that it's even worse than previously thought.  The report, The Performance of Wind Farms in the United Kingdom and Denmark, issued by the Renewable Energy Foundation, London, UK, established that capacity factors for on-shore wind farms decline from 24% in the first year of operation, to 15% in year ten, and 11% in year 15.  These results are amazing, in that the literature usually indicates a consistent capacity factor of 30%, which is what financial projections are typically based on.  The report holds even worse news for off-shore wind farms.

Texas Wind Power: New Record, Bad Economics.  Last month, a cold front propelled Texas to a new record for wind power, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).  Wind-generated electricity provided 9,481 MW on Feb. 9, almost 28 percent of the power generated in ERCOT at that time.  This surpassed the previous record of 8,667 MW set only two weeks earlier.  Hold the applause. [...] Before the wind started blowing heavily on Feb. 9, the electricity that was soon to be replaced by wind power was being supplied by gas turbines.  Once the wind began blowing, the gas turbines had to stop generating electricity to accommodate wind electricity.

When will this green madness cease?  When is a bird not a bird?  When it's one of the millions of avian species splattered, decapitated, clunked, winged, brained or otherwise condemned to death by a wind turbine.  Mysteriously, in the eyes of environmentalists — and bird conservation bodies such as the Audubon Society and the RSPB — all those deaths, no matter how rare the species involved, are acceptable collateral damage in the great war to save the world from the unproven threat of "man-made global warming."

The wind industry has a de facto grant of immunity from federal prosecution under some of America's oldest wildlife laws.
Subsidizing Bird Kills.  The wind industry not only has the production tax credit, it also has mandates covering about two thirds of the US population, and a de facto grant of immunity from federal prosecution under some of America's oldest wildlife laws. [...] In the late 1980s, federal authorities estimated that about 500,000 birds were being killed every year by open oil pits.  Using that number, they aggressively prosecuted violators in the oil patch.  Today, the agency estimates that nearly the same number of birds are being killed by wind turbines — recall they estimate the wind-energy sector is killing about 440,000 birds per year — and yet federal authorities are ignoring the problem, presumably because wind energy is "green."

Kelsey Grammer blew 6 figures investing in windmills.  Former Frasier star Kelsey Grammer told TMZ on Tuesday [3/12/2013] that wind technology was the worst investment he's ever made.  Grammer told the tabloid that though his finances are good, he lost hundreds of thousands of dollars on a small wind investment.  "I'm OK, but I didn't make up for it.  It's just one of those things that's just a straight loss," he said.  "You'd think it would be lucrative, but it's not really a friendly environment for new technology, it really isn't."

Big wind just got smaller.  A new paper by Amanda Adams and David Keith reports that once deployed on a large scale wind farms may generate even less power than previously thought.

Renewable Energy Investment Goes Up in Smoke.  The Spanish Parliament approved a law on Thursday [2/14/2013] that cuts subsidies for alternative energy technologies, backtracking on its push for green power.  That measure, along with other recent laws including a tax on power generation that hit green energy investments especially hard, will virtually wipe out profits for photovoltaic, solar thermal and wind plants, sector lobbyists say.

Windpower propaganda: At a School Near You?  Any parent involved with their children's homework or school knows that "green" is in.  But too often more than that, "green" notions are presented as self-evident truths where there should be critical thinking and discussion.  Also too often, federal and state funds are being dispensed to create the 'greenest' possible hearts and minds for tomorrow.  Such is the case with an industry that is economically useless and environmentally destructive:  industrial wind power.

Green Energy Has A Brownout Problem.  How do you keep the power on when the wind won't blow and the sun won't shine?  As California has discovered, it's a problem that's neither easy nor cheap to solve in the brave new world of renewables.

Energy bills could hit £3,500 a year because of windfarm costs.  In countries where industrial wind power has been added to the grid in any volume, consumer costs have rocketed.  The two countries with the highest numbers of installed commercial wind turbines, Germany and Denmark, now have the highest electricity bills in Europe.

In England:
Conservationists win landmark High Court victory against wind farm.  Conservationists today [3/8/2013] won a landmark High Court battle against plans for a giant wind farm that would have blighted one of the most important surviving Elizabethan gardens in England.  A judge ruled that a planning inspector made a "flawed" decision to give the go-ahead to plans for four 415 ft turbines on farmland just a mile from Lyveden New Bield, a Grade I listed National Trust property.  English Heritage and the National Trust, who backed the legal challenge to the development, said the case had national implications.

California is "greening" itself toward a third world electrical grid.  Alas, California's ecotwits have forced most of the state's fossil fueled power plants into mothballs.  The ones that are still limping along will likely be shuttered by 2020 thanks to onerous and prohibitively expensive upgrades required under the Clean Air Act.  So what will happen on cloudy, windless days?

Say, Why Doesn't America Have Any Off-shore Wind Farms?  [O]ver time we've learned that the electricity from Cape Wind is going to be quite a bit more expensive than originally proposed, and will increase the costs for the islands who would receive the electricity.  It can also reduce property values, hurt tourism, and cost jobs.

Surplus wind power costs verified: Fedeli.  [Ontario's] Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) says unless market rules change, surplus wind power will cost electricity ratepayers up to $200 million a year.

Wind farms will create more carbon dioxide, say scientists.  Thousands of Britain's wind turbines will create more greenhouse gases than they save, according to potentially devastating scientific research to be published later this year.

The Corruption of Wind Energy.  We always knew that wind power came with a heavy 'social levy'.  That social levy was the accepted high price that would 'underpin' the true initial cost of wind power until the industry 'matured'.  We would suffer its unreliability, its intermittence, its aesthetic impact on the landscape, the "shockingly high" number of bird deaths and the noise and strobe effects that torment the lives of residents.  "Trust us", the wind industry intoned, "the enormous public investment is just seed-funding.  It will be well worth it as costs fall in the cause of saving Mother Gaia".

Windpower Propaganda: At A School Near You?  Any parent involved with their children's homework or school knows that "green" is in.  But too often more than that, "green" notions are presented as self-evident truths where there should be critical thinking and discussion.  Also too often, federal and state funds are being dispensed to create the 'greenest' possible hearts and minds for tomorrow.  Such is the case with an industry that is economically useless and environmentally destructive:  industrial wind power.

Lomborg: Electricity prices for German households have increased 61% since 2000 — renewables blamed.  Real German electricity prices for households have increased 61% since 2000.  One quarter of household costs now stems directly from renewable energy.  Also, the increase is *not* because of increasing production costs (which have actually slightly declined since 1978).  The increase is due to dramatically increasing taxes, most noticeably from the Renewable Energy Act (EEG).  In 2013 the EEG will increase 50% to 6.28 euro-cent (5.28 cents plus 19% VAT).

BC Hydro's Billion Dollar Climate Bill.  BC Hydro is highly regulated with respect to rates and operations and traditionally operated as an independent, apolitical entity.  That changed when politicians from all parties, driven by the media and statist intellectuals, recognized the increased revenue potential from surcharges and "green" taxes based on the notion of CO2-induced climate change.  BC Hydro became an instrument for public policy, and a new way for government indirectly fund green energy initiatives.  BC Hydro is forecast to lose one billion dollars over the next four years, as a result of the pursuit of green electricity.

So Called Wind Farms Dominate List of Bangor Hydro's Top Electricity Consumers.  While dominating the Top Ten is somewhat surprising, we have heard before that wind plants are large users of electricity from the outside grid.  That alone renders inaccurate that wind turbines do not put carbon in the air.

Energy consumption in wind facilities.  Large wind turbines require a large amount of energy to operate.  Other electricity plants generally use their own electricity, and the difference between the amount they generate and the amount delivered to the grid is readily determined.  Wind plants, however, use electricity from the grid, which does not appear to be accounted for in their output figures.  At the facility in Searsburg, Vermont, for example, it is apparently not even metered and is completely unknown.  The manufacturers of large turbines — for example, Vestas, GE, and NEG Micon — do not include electricity consumption in the specifications they provide.

Cape Wind hopes loan not blown.  Cape Wind is back in line for a big loan from the Obama administration, over the objections of project opponents and Republican congressmen who are sounding the alarm about investing taxpayer cash in another potential Solyndra.  The U.S. Department of Energy shelved the offshore wind developer's request for $2 billion in federal aid in 2011 because of a lack of progress, but recently reconsidered the application — although reportedly for a smaller amount.

Thousands of wind turbines to go up as subsidies cut.  Already there are 4,366 turbines in operation in the UK providing 8.2GW of power, enough to power 4.5 million homes for a year.  There are a further 7,843 turbines that have been approved but are yet to be built, bringing the total due to go up in the UK to more than 10,000.

Without Subsidies, the Wind Industry Is Over.  When the [Fish and Wildlife] regulations interfere with a favored project of the Obama administration, well, they didn't really mean it about regulations.  It's all relative, you see.  There are no permanent standards.  What difference, at this point, does it make?  Relativity as a philosophy is convenient, because you can use it anywhere, whenever it's needed.

There's always too little wind at a wind farm, except when there's way too much.
Wind turbine collapses in high wind.  The £250,000 tower, which stood as tall as a six storey building, was hit by gale force gusts of 50 mph.  The 50KW structure then collapsed at a farm in Bradworthy, Devon, leaving a "mangled wreck".  Margaret Coles, Chairwoman of Bradworthy District Council, said hail storms and strong winds have hit the area and the turbine, installed just three years ago, simply could not withstand the wind.

Wind farms vs wildlife: The shocking environmental cost of renewable energy.  Wind turbines only last for 'half as long as previously thought', according to a new study.  But even in their short lifespans, those turbines can do a lot of damage.  Wind farms are devastating populations of rare birds and bats across the world, driving some to the point of extinction.  Most environmentalists just don't want to know.  Because they're so desperate to believe in renewable energy, they're in a state of denial.  But the evidence suggests that, this century at least, renewables pose a far greater threat to wildlife than climate change.

Wind Power's Negative Externalities: Here Come the Lawsuits (Part II).  The damage of industrial wind turbines is also an international issue.  Denmark worked with premeditation and created a "loss of value" clause, 2008, passed to compensate property values depreciated by proximity to turbine arrays, but this has turned out to be a double-edged sword.  People may be awarded for a portion of projected losses, but of the 551 claims from persons living next to wind turbines, the average compensated value was only 57,000 kroner ($8,478 US), nothing even close to the actual property losses of upwards of 20%.

Ontario's Liberals get an "F".  The fuse is very short now; people cannot continue to be forced from homes, have livelihoods, homesteads, and legacies squashed as a willfully blind government continues to jam more turbines, transmission lines and substations into rural residential communities, areas of tourism, pristine wildlife habitat and migratory bird paths.  We have no sense that government is working for the best interest of the people.

Wind farms can interfere with forecasts says Met Office.  The Met Office has objected to the construction of a giant wind farm — claiming its turbines could affect the accuracy of its weather forecasts.  It says interference from dozens of giant blades would result in 'false warnings of severe and hazardous weather being issued', while heavy rainfall and flood alerts could be missed.

Big Wind Spends Big.  The wind energy sector spent big money in 2012 to protect its federal tax credits, lobbying disclosure reports released this week show.  The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) spent more than $2.1 million in 2012, a 61 percent increase from the $1.5 million it spent the previous year.  The dramatic increase came as the AWEA was fighting to protect the wind energy production tax credit (PTC), a lucrative tax-break set to expire at the end of the year.

Sting operations reveal Mafia involvement in renewable energy.  Inside a midnight-blue BMW, a Sicilian entrepreneur delivered his pitch to the accused mafia boss.  A new business was blowing into Italy that could spin wind and sunlight into gold, ensuring the future of the Earth as well as the Cosa Nostra:  renewable energy.

Financially Troubled Iberdrola Sells Off Some Assets, But Retains Tule Wind Project.  The Thousand Islands Sun, a small local newspaper with no online edition, reportedly published that Iberdrola Business Development Manager Jenny Briot has stated that the company is canceling 100 projects in the United States, according to leaseholder James Pitcher.  Copleman denies that 100 projects are being cancelled.  He told ECM that the company has shut down some meteorological towers as part of "right-sizing" but declined to state how many.

Iberdrola Renewables withdraws from Hammond wind leases.  "We are removing the meteorological towers and no longer developing the project."  Mr. Copleman said regulatory uncertainty and the wind energy market were factors in the company's decision.  He could not immediately say how many lease holders were affected.

Tracking NH's relationship with wind energy.  Hundreds of residents at various meetings have expressed opposition to the wind turbines, he said.  "They're ruining the aesthetics of the area here with these wind mills.  The only thing they're benefiting is some foreign company to come in here" and hurt the views, [Rep. Harold] Reilly said.  "It's not giving New Hampshire anything but a headache."

Voters to decide on solar farm moratorium; Special town meeting set tonight.  A moratorium on solar farms, a restrictive bylaw on solar farms, renovations to the library's children's room and the establishment of a veteran's volunteer service program will be in the hands of voters at tonight's [1/7/2013] special town meeting.

Fire Chief shuts down overcrowded Health Board meeting.  Fire Chief Timothy Francis shut down a meeting of the Board of Health Monday night [1/7/2013] after the room where the meeting was being held was overcrowded by members of the anti-turbine group Windwise.

Gamesa denies blade responsibility.  Spanish wind turbine maker Gamesa has denied any knowledge of or responsibility for a rotor blade that snapped off one of its 2MW G87 machines at the Allegheny Ridge wind farm in Pennsylvania over the weekend. [...] While no injuries or further damage occurred, Infigen shut down all 40 turbines as a temporary precaution.

Wind industry big lies no 3: wind turbines are eco-friendly.  Of all the many lies put out by the subsidy-troughing scum-suckers of the wind industry and their greenie fellow travellers, the biggest porkie of the lot is this:  that wind turbines are eco-friendly.  In order to believe this tosh, you'd first have to accept the warped view that being eco-friendly can legitimately entail wiping out millions of bats and birds.

Congress Extends Eagle-Killing Wind Incentive.  Congress extended wind energy tax credits worth billions of dollars in the last-minute deal hammered out by Congress to avoid the fiscal cliff, a move decried by free market organizations as corporate welfare.  The wind energy production tax credit (PTC) will be extended until the end of 2013 and dole out an estimated $12.1 billion in tax credits to the wind energy industry over the next decade.

Offshore wind found under-performing.  The performance of offshore wind is below expectations in the world's leading market, Britain, suggesting the emerging technology may deliver slightly less power than planned at least in its early stages.

Wind turbines 'only lasting for half as long as previously thought'.  Wind farms have just half the useful lifespan which has been claimed, according to new research which found they start to wear out after just 12 years.  A study of almost 3,000 turbines in Britain — the largest of its kind — sheds doubt on manufacturers claims that they generate clean energy for up to 25 years, which is used by the Government to calculate subsidies.

Big Wind Meets an Ill Wind.  [Scroll down]  Increasingly, this seems to be the fate of Big Wind, one of the two mainstays of President Obama's "alternative energy" plan.  The other is solar energy where the Obama Administration's record is one mostly of failures.  For the federal government to subsidize research and development of promising technologies is one thing, but acting as a venture capitalist is quite another.  It thought it picked winners, but got losers by throwing dollars at several failing solar panel manufacturers.  The wind farm business is now feeling the cumulative effects of opposition by neighbors and potential neighbors, bird lovers and people who oppose inefficient, uneconomical government projects.

Let's Be Gone With the Wind.  President Obama likes to talk about making sure "the biggest corporations pay their fair share."  Treasury secretary Tim Geithner calls for tax reform to close loopholes and subsidies.  Budget hawks say federal spending must be curbed.  Congress and federal environmental regulators claim they are doing everything they can to save endangered species.  By doing nothing and waiting for December 31 to pass, all of those folks could strike a blow in support of each of these policies.  All they have to do is let the federal production tax credit (PTC) for wind energy expire on schedule this coming Monday.

Replace expensive, unreliable wind power with natural gas.  Industrial wind facilities are similar to that disappointing Christmas toy, the one that says "batteries not included" — only worse.  While our parents could scramble to purchase batteries necessary to restore household tranquility, no practical means exists to store wind energy's volatile energy production.

Wind farms no match for nuclear power plants.  Just look at the situation in India's state of Tamil Nadu, which at one time allocated huge tracts of land to accommodate wind farms.  India has been perennially suffering from power shortages, with its appetite for electricity rising by the year as its economy grows.  So, several wind generators dot the Western Ghat mountain range.  The idea was for them to constantly generate very cheap electricity, except that, after the winds suddenly changed direction, most of the power plants simply grounded to a halt.

PTC: Costly Climate Policy Dud.  The wind energy production tax credit (PTC) expires at the stroke of midnight, Dec. 31, unless Congress votes to renew the tax break.  A one-year extension would add an estimated $12.1 billion to deficit spending over 10 years.  A six-year extension, advocated by the wind industry, could add $50 billion.  The fiscal cliff looms and the national debt already exceeds GDP, but if Congress cared more about the general interest of taxpayers than about the special interests of campaign contributors, the nation would not be sliding towards insolvency.

Harvard Needs Remedial Energy Math.  Wind and solar power cannot possibly meet the world's growing need for more electricity.

The Multiple Distortions of Wind Subsidies.  Federal subsidies for new wind-power generation will end on Dec. 31 unless they are renewed by Congress.  For the sake of our economy and the smooth operation of the energy market, Congress should let the subsidies lapse.  They waste taxpayer money, subvert the allocation of capital, and generate a social cost many times the price tag of the subsides themselves.

Wind-worn.  If the lifetime of a wind turbine is 15 years rather than 25, that presumably means that the electricity it generates is going to be much, much more expensive.

Wear and Tear Hits Wind Farm Output and Economic Lifetime.  The results show that after allowing for variations in wind speed and site characteristics the average load factor of wind farms declines substantially as they get older, probably due to wear and tear.  By 10 years of age the contribution of an average UK wind farm to meeting electricity demand has declined by a third.

Driessen: Big Wind tax credit exterminates endangered species.  "New studies reveal that these appalling [bird kill] estimates are frightfully low and based on misleading or even fraudulent data."

Feds look other way as wind farms kill birds — but haul oil and gas firms to court.  Lights left on during a foggy night last year at a West Virginia wind farm are thought to be behind the grizzly deaths of nearly 500 songbirds.  It was the third time it happened — and each time, the federal government looked the other way.  Fast forward to last week.  Following the deaths of a dozen migratory birds in Montana, Wyoming and Nebraska several years back, a Denver-based oil company was fined $22,500.  The company was also ordered to make an additional $7,500 payment to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Under Siege.  The Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind power expires at the end of this year unless Congress takes affirmative action to renew the law.  This expire-renew cycle has occurred seven times since the PTC was first put into effect in 1992.  However, unique events are in play this year that signal waning support for its renewal. [...] Forgotten by many proponents is the justification for the PTC in the first place:  to reduce CO2 emissions.  When the PTC was originally enacted, this justification was blindly accepted by many states without independently confirming CO2 reduction claims.

Is the wind industry entering panic mode?  The wind lobby is working like their livelihoods depend on it — which is mainly because, they do — to convince Congress to extend the production tax credit, set to expire at the start of the new year, that has diverted taxpayer money their way for decades now. Without the guarantee of continued federal assistance, the wind industry is already starting to bleed jobs [...]

Wind Turbine Projects at Long-Range Radar Sites in Alaska Were Not Adequately Planned.  Completing a wind study would have provided 611th CES personnel the information necessary to determine the most advantageous location at which to build the turbine.  Because 611th CES personnel did not complete a wind study at Tin City before construction, the turbine is located in an area with turbulent winds, and therefore, according to 611th CES personnel, produces sporadic, unusable power.

So, how's your green energy stock doing?  RENIXX® World, the Renewable Energy Industrial Index of the world's top green energy companies, hit an all-time low below 146 on November 21, down more than 90 percent from the December 2007 peak.  The RENIXX index was established in 2006.  It's composed of the world's 30 largest renewable energy companies with more than 50 percent of revenues coming from wind, solar, biofuel, or geothermal energy, or the hydropower or fuel cell sector.

Wind Energy Policy.  America needs an energy policy that embraces the nation's abundant natural resources.  Yet the government's continues to push wind energy, which has done little to create more affordable or reliable energy.  After 20 years of government subsidies for the wind industry spearheaded by the Production Tax Credit (PTC), wind energy remains unreliable, economically disastrous, and harmful to the environment.

Windmills Overload East Europe's Grid Risking Blackout: Energy.  Germany is dumping electricity on its unwilling neighbors and by wintertime the feud should come to a head.  Central and Eastern European countries are moving to disconnect their power lines from Germany's during the windiest days.  That's when they get flooded with energy, echoing struggles seen from China to Texas over accommodating the world's 200,000 windmills.

Installing Windmills Doesn't Make the Wind Blow.  For years, wind advocates have been bragging about the growth of installed wind-power capacity, which they compare to other energy sources.  What they rarely (if ever) talk about is production.

After Sandy, No One Lined Up for Wind Turbines.  The greens want to go 'beyond oil,' but without it we'd freeze in the dark.

$14 Billion in Stimulus Spending Generates Just 1.2 Percent of Electricity.  Despite more than $14 billion in cash payments to solar, wind, and other renewable energy project developers since 2009, just 48 terawatt hours of additional annual electricity generation were expected to be added through funds authorized by the stimulus, according to documents released by the Department of Treasury.  The more than 45,000 projects brought online through 2012 would represent less than 1.2 percent of overall electricity generation, according to figures provided by the U.S. Energy Information Administration for 2011.

Wind Power Fiasco: Call Your Congressman.  Windmills don't work when the wind isn't blowing.  The wind power lobbyists don't emphasize that point.  There are very few places where the wind always blows, and, not surprisingly, hardly anybody lives near those mostly unpleasant places.  Somehow, the environmentalist love of windmills is seemingly without limit.  If you bother an eagle — even pluck a feather from a dead eagle — you are looking at hard time in the federal pen.  But if you operate wind turbines that kill eagles on an industrial scale, you don't have to worry.  Eagle-killing windmills are specifically exempted from liability.

Big Wind: the most corrupt and corrupting industry in the world.  The reason the industry is so corrupt is quite simply that without the lies it tells as a matter of course and without the cosy stitch-ups it arranges with regulators and politicians at taxpayers' expense, it simply would not exist.  Take the noise regulations which are currently the subject of an enquiry by the Institute of Acoustics.  The reason these noise regulations so badly need re-examining is that the original parameters for noise limits were set by people working for the wind industry with a vested interest in making it as easy as possible for wind farms to be built in as many places as possible.

Maine DEP Rejects Passadumkeag Wind Project.  The Maine Department of Environment Protection has denied a 14-turbine industrial wind site atop Passadumkeag Mountain.

What AWEA Doesn't Want You To Know About Wind Power:  [I]n 2010, wind power produced just 2.3 percent of our generation, making wind energy subsidies cost $56.29 per megawatt hour, while coal subsidies were just $0.64 per megawatt hour and natural gas and petroleum subsidies were the same as coal on a per megawatt hour basis.  That is, wind subsidies were 88 times higher than those for coal or natural gas and petroleum on a unit of production basis.

A Case of Gas.  T. Boone Pickins [sic], himself a backer of natural gas as an alternative to diesel-powered trucks, predicts that in seven years, a majority of long-haul trucks will be powered by natural gas because 70 percent of the fleet operate in "defined regional areas," and a natural gas truck can go 600 miles on one fill-up.  As the driver of a truck that gets over 1,100 miles on a single fill-up, I respectfully submit that much work remains to be done and that the federal role should be minimized, unless we want the government do for natural gas trucks what the Education Department has done for scholastic achievement, or what the Energy Department has done for energy independence, or what the Transportation Department has done for road conditions, or what Obamacare is about to do for your access to a doctor.