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It happens about once a month here, on the barren foothills of one of America's green-energy boomtowns: A soaring golden eagle slams into a wind farm's spinning turbine and falls, mangled and lifeless, to the ground. 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.

White goods such as electric ovens would be affected by the proposals to fit all new appliances with sensors that could shut them down when the UK's generators struggle to meet demand for power. The measures proposed by the UK’s National Grid, along with its counterparts in 34 European countries, to install the controversial devices are backed by one of the European Union's most influential energy bodies. They are pushing for the move because green energy sources such as wind farms are less predictable than traditional power stations, increasing the risk of blackouts The proposals are outlined in documents drawn...

A group of 17 Northern Michigan residents have filed a lawsuit claiming a new Consumers Energy wind farm has been making people sick. According to the lawsuit, the $250 million Lake Winds Energy Park wind farm, south of Ludington in Mason County, was built too close to homes. The lawsuit says residents are suffering from dizziness, sleeplessness, headaches and other physical symptoms because of the noise. The 56 turbines (some as far away as a half mile) also are causing vibrations and flickering lights in houses, the lawsuit says. Economic losses are also claimed in the suit. The Shineldecker house...

BP is putting its wind business on the block, its latest retreat from renewable energy as the company moves to focus on its core oil and gas operations. The British oil giant has touted the growth of its wind operations in recent years, but is adjusting “as part of a continuing effort to become a more focused oil and gas company and reposition the company for sustainable growth into the future,” said spokesman Matt Hartwig in an emailed statement. The company has interest in 16 operating wind farms in nine states, including its Sherbino wind farm in West Texas. Just...

Two wind turbines towering above the Cape Cod community of Falmouth, Mass., were intended to produce green energy and savings -- but they've created angst and division, and may now be removed at a high cost as neighbors complain of noise and illness. "It gets to be jet-engine loud," said Falmouth resident Neil Andersen. He and his wife Betsy live just a quarter mile from one of the turbines. They say the impact on their health has been devastating. They're suffering headaches, dizziness and sleep deprivation and often seek to escape the property where they've lived for more than 20...

With the announcement of the indefinite suspension of nuclear refueling of the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the White House has signaled a new shift in naval technology - away from costly and potentially hazardous fossil fuels, towards non-toxic and environmentally stable wind power. Not letting Republican obstructionism of the budget process go to waste, President Obama's national defense team is putting together a plan to retrofit US warship with 'tried-and-true' sails, taking advantage of free, naturally occurring wind rather than diesel and nuclear fuels that put crews at constant risk of causing an ecological disaster.

Why subsidize an industry that kills millions of birds and has no environmental benefit? 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...

Four years ago, Shell Wind Energy, a unit of the oil company, looked for a suitable site for a wind farm on the Northern California coast. Its scouts found a large acreage — cattle pastures — high on the hills about six miles from the town of Ferndale. They secured permission from the rancher-owners to use the land and announced the project. All hell broke loose. The local weekly in the tight-knit town was flooded with concerned letters to the editor: One of two narrow roads into the hill area carried all the daily traffic of a large hinterland; the...

Masschusetts governor Deval Patrick is as green-power mad as any up-and-coming Democrat, and he has set an ambitious goal for the commonwealth’s utilities: begin producing 2,000 megawatts of power from environmentally preferred sources by 2020. Patrick’s green dreams are way up in the air; on the ground, things look starkly different.Last September in the tiny town of Princeton, Mass., the general manager of the local utility authority sent out an extraordinary little memo that is one part standard bureaucratic posterior-covering and one part cry for help, noting that a modest wind-energy project already has lost nearly $2 million —...

American Superconductor Corp. (AMSC) unveiled plans to reduce the size of its workforce by 25% as weak demand weighs on the wind-energy sector, leading the turbine-systems maker to reduce its fiscal third-quarter outlook. Shares were down 15% at $2.35 in premarket trading. Through Tuesday's close, the stock is down 25% this year. The company cited financing and cash flow issues among customers, which it anticipates will lead to shipment delays for some of its products. American Superconductor now expects a fiscal third-quarter adjusted per-share loss of 31 cents on revenue of more than $20 million, from its prior estimate for...

PORTLAND, Oregon—Because of its variable nature, wind energy is not suited to be the lone or primary source of a grid’s total electricity, according to a new Cascade Policy Institute–Reason Foundation study. If used to produce more than 10-20 percent of a system’s electricity, wind power increases operating costs, due to the need for expensive storage facilities or continuously available CO2-emitting backup power generation facilities.

In fact, a mighty battle is now developing in Germany between green fantasists and practical realists. Because renewable energy must by law have priority in supplying the grid, the owners of conventional power stations, finding they have to run plants unprofitably, are so angry that they are threatening to close many of them down. The government response, astonishingly, has been to propose a new law forcing them to continue running their plants at a loss.

Perhaps coincidentally, Proposal 3, a ballot measure to impose a mandate on Michigan utilities to obtain 25 percent of the electricity they sell from “renewable” sources — read wind turbines — will come before voters just seven weeks before another taxpayer wind subsidy is set to expire. It’s a federal “production tax credit” that gives windmill operators a $22 tax break for every megawatt hour of juice they produce. According to a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, this is so generous that during hours of low demand wind producers actually pay grid operators to accept their power, just to get...

The government is effectively subsidizing the killing of federally protected birds, according to a report which highlights a wide range of subsidies given to the wind industry. “If Congress extends the PTC, federal taxpayers will, in effect, be subsidizing the killing of federally protected birds,” writes Robert Bryce, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the report’s author. “Despite numerous violations, the Obama administration — like the Bush administration before it — has unofficially exempted the wind industry from prosecution under the Eagle Protection and Migratory Bird Treaty Acts,” Bryce continues. “By exempting the wind industry from prosecution under the...

<p>BOISE -- The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission says Idaho Power's long-term purchase agreement with wind farms means that it must buy electricity from the farms even when demand for power is low.</p> <p>The commission's decision, reached Thursday, is good news for Idaho wind farms but a loss for the state's largest utility.</p>

  FAIRFIELD — A Spanish utility that is the world's largest developer of wind power is testing ways to quiet its Herkimer County turbine farm, using a special software that is new to the U.S. Iberdrola Renewables decided to install the new software, which adjusts blade positioning to reduce noise, after tests at its two-year-old, 37-unit Hardscrabble wind project found turbines were exceeding sound limits imposed by the towns of Fairfield and Norway. This is the first use in the U.S. of the quieting software, developed by Gamesa, the Spanish company that built the wind turbines, said Bernard Melewski, a lawyer...

A panel of experts who were appointed to work toward noise level guidelines for wind turbines in Michigan had their work discarded when state bureaucrats didn't like what the panel was coming up with and made up their own rules instead. As a result, there is now no specific state recommended decibel level limit for wind turbines. This means wind turbines can operate at 55 dBA (decibels adjusted to reflect the ear's response to sound), which is the standard Michigan had followed for at least two years. The panel was promoting reducing that level to 40 dBA...

A lack of transparency by top Obama administration officials has prompted an environmental group to sue the Interior Department to determine whether wind power projects are killing large numbers of bats and birds. The American Bird Conservancy (ABC) filed the lawsuit Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia accusing the government of intentionally withholding the information and refusing to comply with requests for certain documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). “It’s ridiculous that Americans have to sue in order to find out what their government is saying to wind companies about our wildlife,” ......

Tiny Pacific nations which are most at threat from rising seas have vowed to dump diesel and other dirty expensive fuels blamed for causing global warming and replace them with clean sources. Using coconut biofuel and solar panels, Tokelau -- which consists of three island dots half way between New Zealand and Hawaii -- plans to become self-sufficient in energy this year.

ONE of the great popular misconceptions about climate-change sceptics such as Ian Plimer, Bob Carter, Cardinal George Pell and me is that we're all Big-Oil-funded, Gaia-ravaging, nature-hating emissaries of Satan. We can't look at a lovely pristine beach, apparently, without praying for a nice, juicy oil slick to turn up and wipe out all the pelicans and turtles and sea otters. But this isn't actually true. I love our beautiful planet at least as much as your $180,000-a-year (for a three-day week) climate commissioner Tim Flannery does. One of my great heroes is Patrick Moore, the Canadian co-founder of Greenpeace...

Only months after Coconino County's first major wind energy farm got up and running this winter, the utility buying its power says more wind farms here are unlikely -- at least for now. Cost is the bottom line, with the sun beating the wind on both equipment prices and time-of-day power production. This disadvantage for wind could have some implications for a handful of other big wind projects proposed in Coconino County. A worldwide glut of solar panels produced at lower costs (including from China) has cut solar panel prices to a fraction of their former cost. So Arizona Public...

A year ago, a Reno clean energy businessman warned the Public Utilities Commission that if it didn’t set a few standards for NV Energy’s wind rebate program, its customers could end up footing the bill for turbines that rarely produce electricity. One reason behind his concern: To be eligible for rebates, customers didn’t need to prove that the wind actually blows enough to justify installing a turbine on their property. “This could allow unscrupulous developers to sell turbines to unsuspecting customers who will not generate electricity from an installed turbine because there is no wind to power the turbine,” Clean...

Scotland, one of Barack Obama’s models for his bogus wind power scam has literally seen the wind go out of her socialist politically correct sails. Scotland is the poster boy for the failure of wind power as a genuine source of energy. All of the high and mighty talk about wind as a viable alternative source of energy is now gone, not in the strong productive winds of the drawing board, but with the gentle breezes that are Scotland’s reality. The Scottish government’s ill-advised but politically correct “wind; not fossil fuel” scheme has so devastated the average Scottish household’s economy...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration offered new guidance Friday on where wind farms should be located to reduce the number of bird deaths while promoting increased use of wind power. A bird advocacy group that lobbied for mandatory standards said the new, voluntary guidelines will do little to protect hundreds of thousands of birds killed each year by wind turbines.

Taxpayers have put out billions in subsidies over the last three years for Barack Obama's green-energy stimulus program, which has produced such success stories as Solyndra, Beacon Power, and Ener1. But what happens when taxpayers subsidize efforts that actually produce electricity? As people in the Pacific Northwest have discovered, they end up subsidizing green-power generation -- and non-generation: CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Wind farms in the Pacific Northwest — built with government subsidies and maintained with tax credits for every megawatt produced — are now getting paid to shut down as the federal agency charged with managing the...

Analysis Two studies published this week calculate the astounding cost of Britain's go-it-alone obsession with using wind turbines to generate so much of the electricity the nation needs. Both studies make remarkably generous concessions that favour wind technology; the true cost, critics could argue, will be higher in each set of calculations. One study reckons that the UK can still meet its carbon dioxide emissions targets and save £140bn – but only if it dumps today's inefficient hippie technology. The other puts the potential saving at £120bn – pointing out that the same amount of electricity could be generated using...

A rush to green energy by spending billions covering much of the countryside with wind turbines would be an expensive blunder, a damning study has found. Professor Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University said the massive programme will cost consumers £120billion by 2020 through higher bills. This is almost ten times more than the £13billion it would cost to generate the same amount of electricity from efficient gas-fired power stations, according to the leading energy and environment economist. Professor Hughes said families are being forced to subsidise wind farms through their bills. Meanwhile business energy costs are also being driven up,...

You'd have to be a dim bulb -- perhaps one of those 13-watt compact fluorescents -- to believe that forcing utilities to purchase expensive offshore wind power will lead to economic prosperity. Yet this is precisely the reaction of the Boston press to a recent deal brokered by Gov. Deval Patrick. Gov. Patrick has been in a bind. With the Green Communities Act of 2008, the state legislature enacted a clean energy mandate requiring that 20% of Massachusetts' power come from renewable sources by 2025, joining 36 other states with "Renewable Portfolio Standards." Renewable energy, however, is expensive and especially...

The wind power industry is predicting massive layoffs and stalled or abandoned projects after a deal to renew a tax credit failed Thursday in Washington. The move is expected to have major ramifications in states such as Illinois, where 13,892 megawatts of planned wind projects — enough to power 3.3 million homes per year — are seeking to be connected to the electric grid. Many of those projects will be abandoned or significantly delayed without federal subsidies. The state is home to more than 150 companies that support the wind industry. At least 67 of those make turbines or components...

Hopes that a near-term extension of the production tax credit (PTC) for wind power would be included in legislation to extend the payroll tax cuts through the remainder of this year are nearly extinguished, as NAW has learned that congressional leaders have reached a tentative framework agreement on the payroll tax cut - but it does not contain a PTC extension. A House-Senate conference committee is expected to approve the deal, which will then go to the House and Senate as soon as today. Sources, who wished to remain anonymous, told NAW that both legislative bodies are expected to quickly...

...I want to believe in alt power, because sun and wind are free -- just as petroleum is free. It's only the extraction and distribution that cost...

Egypt currently has a total electricity capacity of about 23,500 megawatts, which the government hopes to increase to 58,000 megawatts by 2027. A prime potential element in increasing this electrical output? Renewables. One might think, given Egypt’s climate, solar? Wrong again – wind power, which currently contributes less than 1 percent to Egypt’s energy mix. In 2003 Egypt had its wind potential assessed and published a wind atlas, which found that with wind speeds of 7-10 meters per second, almost the entire nation was ideal for wind power installations, with the country’s best areas being along the Gulf of Suez...

For decades, electric companies have swung into emergency mode when demand soars on blistering hot days, appealing to households to use less power. But with the rise of wind energy, utilities in the Pacific Northwest are sometimes dealing with the opposite: moments when there is too much electricity for the grid to soak up. So in a novel pilot project, they have recruited consumers to draw in excess electricity when that happens, storing it in a basement water heater or a space heater outfitted by the utility. The effort is rooted in some brushes with danger. In June 2010, for...

BOSTON (AP) -- A federal appeals court on Friday overturned the Federal Aviation Administration's ruling that Cape Wind's turbines present no danger for local air traffic. The decision could further delay construction of the wind farm first proposed a decade ago. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the FAA misread its own rules when assessing Cape Wind, which aims to be the nation's first offshore wind farm. The court said the FAA did not adequately determine whether Cape Wind's 130 turbines - each 440-feet tall - would pose a danger to pilots relying on sight...

Windmills to shut at night following demise of rare batKathy Mellott - The Tribune-Democrat October 17, 2011 LILLY — Night operation of the windmills in the North Allegheny Windpower Project has been halted following discovery of a dead Indiana bat under one of the turbines, an official with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday. The finding marks only the second location where an Indiana bat has been found dead under a wind turbine. Two Indiana bats were found under turbines in the Mid-west, said Clint Riley, supervisor for Fish and Wildlife’s Pennsylvania field office. “While finding the dead...

You may have gotten wind of the seven North Dakota oil companies recently charged in federal court with the deaths of 28 migratory birds. The birds allegedly landed in oil waste pits in western North Dakota last spring; the maximum penalty for each charge under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act is six months in prison and a $15,000 fine, the AP said. But did you know that wind-power companies are responsible for more than 400,000 bird deaths annually, and not one has faced a single charge? The Wall Street Journal knows it, opining yesterday that the prosecutions are “bird-brained,” especially...

Our ever-campaigning president heads off to a fundraiser held by a politically connected businessman whose company took a $100 million stimulus tax credit. Solyndra didn't stop pay-for-play the "Chicago Way."

Scandal: Our ever-campaigning president heads off to a fundraiser held by a politically connected businessman whose company took a $100 million stimulus tax credit. Solyndra didn't stop pay-for-play the "Chicago Way." Tone-deaf somehow does not seem adequate to describe President Obama's silent indifference to the Solyndra scandal of his making as he rushes off to another fundraiser, a $25,000 per person affair in Missouri on Oct. 4 organized by another beneficiary of our stimulus tax dollars. Tom Carnahan, of the Missouri Carnahans, arguably that state's most prominent political family, is listed on President Obama's campaign website as a host of...

These pointless monstrosities will continue to proliferate until the Government sees sense. Three separate news items on the same day last week reflected three different aspects of what is fast becoming a full-scale disaster bearing down on Britain. The first item was a picture in The Daily Telegraph showing two little children forlornly holding a banner reading “E.On Hands Off Winwick”. This concerned a battle to prevent a tiny Northamptonshire village from being dwarfed by seven 410-foot wind turbines, each higher than Salisbury Cathedral, to be built nearby by a giant German-owned electricity firm. The 40 residents, it was reported,...

General Electric, the U.S.-based industrial giant and leading manufacturer of wind-power turbines, is scaling back efforts to expand its presence in the offshore wind power market. The rationale: there is no meaningful offshore wind market to speak of – at least not yet. Given slower-than-expected industry growth, the offshore market may not mature as rapidly as many wind boosters once believed.

As California attempts to divorce itself from fossil-fueled electricity, it may be trading one environmental sin for another -- although you don't hear state officials admitting it. Wind power is the fastest growing component in the state's green energy portfolio, but wildlife advocates say the marriage has an unintended consequence: dead birds, including protected species of eagles, hawks and owls. "The cumulative impacts are huge," said Shawn Smallwood, one of the few recognized experts studying the impact of wind farms on migratory birds. "It is not inconceivable to me that we could reduce golden eagle populations by a great deal,...

The Wind-Energy MythThe claims for this "green" source of energy wither in the Texas heat. Hot? Don’t count on wind energy to cool you down. That’s the lesson emerging from the stifling heat wave that’s hammering Texas. Over the past week or so, Texans have been consuming record-breaking quantities of electricity, and ERCOT, the state’s grid operator, has warned of rolling blackouts if customers don’t reduce their consumption.  Texas has 10,135 megawatts of installed wind-generation capacity. That’s nearly three times as much as any other state. But during three sweltering days last week, when the state set new records for...

Federal authorities are investigating the deaths of at least six golden eagles at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's Pine Tree Wind Project in the Tehachapi Mountains, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday. So far, no wind-energy company has been prosecuted by federal wildlife authorities in connection with the death of birds protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. A prosecution in the Pine Tree case could cause some rethinking and redesigning of this booming alternative energy source. Facilities elsewhere also have been under scrutiny, according to a...

An investigative report in the L.A. Times exposes California’s solar and wind power economy, and for good reason. Key quotes include: > Accidents involving wind turbines alone have tripled in the last decade > Technicians have fallen hundreds of feet; others have been crushed by wayward parts or trapped in twisting machinery > Electrical explosions last year left a worker in Illinois with third-degree burns and two others in San Diego County with similar injuries > Workers could asphyxiate inside turbine enclosures or inhale harmful gases and vapors when buffing and resurfacing blades, the Department of Labor cautions > Wind...

Hard to believe we live in a world where $287,000 per stimulous job would look like a good deal. Thankfully, Obamanomics is full of surprises. A RedState post today highlights a Spain-based company Iberdrola is building windmills in New Hampshire for $100 million with a little help from the US taxpayer to the tune of $34 million. But wait there more…the “green jobs” created (or saved) for the construction of the windmills are going to go to the Spain-based Iberdrola Engineering Construction company. Is it to quixotic to expect that the jobs created by tax credits go to American workers?

Because wind does not blow all the time, wind power is an “intermittent” technology that needs other power as back-up to ensure that the lights stay on. Currently, wind capacity is backed up by existing fossil fuel capacity (natural gas or coal), but Britain has determined that it will need an additional 17 natural-gas powered plants to keep the lights on by 2020. The generators that will be used when the wind does not blow will cost UK consumers 10 billion pounds.[i] To cover the cost of this additional standby capacity, the utility companies are asking for capacity paymentsthat will...

Chancellor Merkel is pinning her hopes on an expansion of wind power Germany's dramatic rethink over nuclear power has thrown up new problems, as the consequences of a retreat from atomic technology emerge. Just after Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster in March, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a review of energy policy and ordered Germany's oldest reactors to be shut down immediately, and perhaps permanently. Only a few months earlier, she had decided to keep the reactors running past their original shutdown dates. But only now comes the hard bit. Power companies have warned of higher prices because of the shutdown; Germany...

Lawmakers in Oregon, Washington, Montana and California set the table by establishing aggressive mandates for renewable power that "ratchet higher" over the next 15 years. Oregon's large utilities are required "mandated" at rate payer expense" to serve 5 percent of their demand with "renewable" this year, increasing to 25 percent by 2025. California's standard is 33 percent by 2020, and Washington's is 15 percent by 2020.

Pursuing a new green energy economy in the United Kingdom has led to lost jobs and higher energy prices. President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and other political luminaries such as Arnold Schwarzenegger promise us a bright green future, but let’s look at how things have worked out in Europe, where green energy has been tested extensively. Does green energy lead to green jobs? This article is the second in a series that will look Europe’s experience. This time, we focus on the United Kingdom.Our Commonwealth cousins across the pond have also embraced the “green power...

Wind energy took another blow—this time in Massachusetts. Wind One is the 400-foot-tall wind turbine owned by the town of Falmouth, on the southwestern tip of Cape Cod. The residents of Falmouth initially welcomed Wind One as a symbol of green energy and a handy way to keep local taxes down. Electricity generated by the turbine would be used to power the municipality’s infrastructure, thus shaving about $400,000 a year off its utility costs. Installed in the spring of 2010 at a cost of $5.1 million (with some $3 million derived through grants, government kickbacks, and credits), the huge turbine...