Free Republic

Gina McCarthy, President Obama’s choice to replace Lisa Jackson at the Environmental Protection Agency, has been chastised for having lied to Congress, in claiming that EPA did not use “dangerous manmade climate change” to justify new 54.5 mpg standards for cars and light trucks. She’s also been implicated in the agency’s practice of using fake emails to hide questionable dealings and activities. These issues highlight attitudes toward ethics, law and public policy that prevail at EPA and too many other government agencies. However, that attention should not distract from other important matters. Ms. McCarthy may be the worst of the...

Australia has slammed the door shut on any new government-funded investment in renewable energy schemes as Prime Minister Tony Abbott extends his “war on wind power”. In doing so Mr Abbott has sent a clear message to the mendicant green renewable energy sector that there will be no more cheap state-supplied financing for its projects.

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 per cent more expensive than the industry’s official estimates – according to new research conducted by the University of Utah.

What do you get if you take the blades off a wind turbine? A better wind turbine. That sounds like a joke, but that’s actually more or less the model of a new wind turbine prototype. Instead of blades that turn in the breeze, the turbine is just a hollow straw that sticks up 40 feet from the ground and vibrates like a guitar string when the wind thrums by. The Spanish engineers who founded Vortex Bladeless in 2010 said they were inspired by the Tacoma Narrows Bridge disaster (maybe not the best pitch for clean energy to a disaster-wary...

It's been five years since BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and released 5 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Environmentalists are highlighting the disaster by pointing to the 800,000 birds that have died because of the spill in the five years since the disaster, but activists have been eerily silent about the fact that way more birds have been killed by wind turbines — a supposedly “eco-friendly” energy source.The liberal blog Mother Jones reports that 800,000 birds have been killed and the Pelican population in the Gulf has decreased 12 percent. While the 2010 Gulf spill was...

Look what’s cooking in the world of renewable energy The solar and wind innovations that got us where we are today — and those waiting in the wings — point to a hopeful future. Photo courtesy of 1366 Technologies Writer Phil McKenna@mckennapr Freelance writerShareTweet Facebook Share on Google+ Linkedin   April 6, 2015 — Inside a sprawling single-story office building in Bedford, Mass., in a secret room known as the Growth Hall, the future of solar power is cooking at more than 2,500 °F. Behind closed doors and downturned blinds, custom-built ovens with ambitious names like “Fearless” and “Intrepid”...

Called the "Vindskip," the Norwegian design uses the high sides of its container ships as sails, turning the whole vessel into a wind-assisted airfoil. Designed by Lade AS, the Oslo-based company says the hybrid merchant ship -- which would still have a liquefied natural gas-powered engine -- could achieve fuel savings of 60% and reduce emissions by 80%. It's the brainchild of Terje Lade, who used his skills as a speed sailor to develop his aerodynamic design. He says the futuristic container ship works more like an airplane than a conventional sailing ship. .... The ship would be able to...

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.” On January 6, the two power companies, National Grid and Northeast Utilities, that had agreed to purchase most of the electricity Cape Wind was to generate, terminated their contracts with the developers due to missed...

The once-distant promise of clean, affordable hydrogen-powered cars is starting to become a reality. Several major automakers, including Toyota, Honda and Hyundai, have started or will soon start selling these cars, which will be more expensive than comparable gasoline models but a lot cheaper than they were just a few years ago. Executives at Toyota say that the cost of making the critical components of hydrogen vehicles has fallen 95 percent since 2008. […] The broad adoption of hydrogen-powered cars, which emit only water and heat, could play an important role, along with electric vehicles, in lowering emissions of carbon...

In what appears to be the first of its kind ruling in the United States, the Board of Health in Brown County, Wisconsin, where Green Bay is located, has declared a local industrial wind plant to be a human health hazard. The specific facility consists of eight 500-foot high, 2.5 megawatt industrial wind turbines. The board made its finding with a 4-0 vote (three members were not present) at an Oct. 14 meeting after it had wrestled with health complaints about the wind plant for more than four years. Ultimately, the board’s ruling was based on a year-long survey which...

A Mexican ecologist has blown the whistle on the corruption, lies and incompetence of the wind industry - and on the massive environmental damage it causes in the name of saving the planet. 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.

One of the weirder facts of contemporary life is that “environmentalists” generally prefer wind power to fracking. Unless you suffer from an anti-carbon fetish, there is no comparison, as the Telegraph reports: 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 MacKay said that a shale gas site uses less land and “creates the least visual intrusion”, compared with a wind farm or solar farm capable of producing the equivalent amount of energy over 25 years. This...

Nearly 120 wind turbines catch fire each year – ten times the number reported by the industry – according to new research. The figures show that fires are the second biggest cause of accidents in wind turbines, after blade failure. ... because the turbines are so far off the ground, it is almost impossible to put the fires out, leading to the whole structure potentially being destroyed. Dr Guillermo Rein of Imperial College said: “Fires are a problem for the industry, impacting on energy production, economic output and emitting toxic fumes. “This could cast a shadow over the industry’s green...

A few years ago, Vice President Joe Biden called a wind turbine facility in Saginaw one of the top "100 Recovery Act Projects that are Changing America." In 2010, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act awarded Merrill Technologies Group a $22 million advanced energy manufacturing tax credit that then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm's office said was used to buy advanced manufacturing equipment needed to create wind turbine components in a facility in Saginaw. The Recovery Act also gave Merrill Technologies another $3 million. The former governor trumpeted the facility as the future of Michigan's economy that would help create 89,918 clean energy...

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts we can’t stop the impact of rising seas and flooded cities, and demands radical cuts to carbon emissions or Doomsday will be worse. The loudest climate alarmists demand energy options that produce zero carbon, and show it by supporting the continued river of tax dollars washing toward promises of producing lots of our power from pleasant breezes and rays of sunshine: wind and solar. It would be easier to take this all more seriously if they’d propose realistic solutions. Skeptics of the Doomsday scenarios are constantly beat about the head regarding the...

Hard facts often trump breezy liberal logic supporting renewable energy. Parade Magazine columnist Marilyn Vos Savant, once considered the smartest person in the world, wrote on May 11 that wind power may actually disrupt local weather. While this information contradicts climate alarmist attempts to reduce extreme weather to a consequence of global warming, it adds to the list of environmental problems with wind turbines. Vos Savant claimed that wind turbines “will have an impact on the weather,” in addition to causing “ground warming and drying.” She pointed out that wind turbines “remove energy from the wind” which logically has an...

<p>ST. CLOUD, Minn. – 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 tall -- stands on the wintry VA grounds, frozen in time and temperature, essentially inoperable for the past 1 1/2 years.</p>

Investments in renewable energy were supposed to be a sure thing, with wind park operators promising annual returns of up to 20 percent. More often than not, however, such pledges have been illusory -- and many investors have lost their principal to boot. Indications are mounting, however, that green capitalism will not be able to meet all expectations. In courts around the country, complaints are mounting from wind park investors who haven't received a dividend disbursement in years or whose parks went belly up. Consumer protection activists are complaining that many projects are poorly structured and lack transparency. In the...

The Obama administration said Friday it will allow companies to kill or injure eagles without the fear of prosecution for the lifespan of (a) wind farm. An investigation by The Associated Press earlier this year documented bald and golden eagles being killed by the giant, spinning blades of wind turbines. Obamalaw "reluctance" to prosecute such cases (while keeping) the scope of the eagle carnage secret. This Interior Department sanction, " is not a program to kill eagles. is about conservation." John Anderson, director of the Wind Energy Assoc. Interior Department refuses to release any information.

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.