PASAULYJE
Ispanijoje vėjo jėgainės kasmet nužudo 6-18 milionus paukščių ir šikšnosparnių
Paskelbta 2012 m. sausio 14d.
2012 m. sausio 12 d. Jerez de la Fronteroje, Ispanijoje vyko pirmasis mokslinis Vėjo energetikos ir laukinės gamtos išsaugojimo kongresas. Ispanijos ornitologijos draugija (SEO / BirdLife) viešai pateikė skaičiavimus, kad kasmet 18 000 Ispanijos vėjo jėgainių nužudo 6-18 mln. paukščių ir šikšnosparnių (1).Vidutiniškai vienai jėgainei tenka 333 - 1000 mirčių per metus ir tai visiškai neatitinka JAV vėjo pramonės paskaičiavimų t. y. 2-4 paukščių žūtys arba Amerikos Paukščių Saugos paskaičiavimus 400000 paukščių per metus visoje Amerikoje, kurioje vėjo jėgainių yra dukart daugiau nei Ispanijoje.
Į šiuos paskaičiavimus taip pat įtraukti ir šikšnosparniai, komentuoja Mark Duchamp, tarptautinės erelių išsaugojimo organizacijos (STEI) prezidentas. „ Todėl, darant prielaidą, kad vėjo jėgainės nužudo šikšnosparnių dukart daugiau nei paukščių, skaičiai būtų: 111 - 333 paukščių vėjo jėgainei per metus ir 222 - 666 šikšnosparniai vėjo jėgainei per metus. Mirtingumo skaičiai, kurie buvo užregistruoti Vokietijoje ir Švedijoje devintojo dešimtmečio pradžioje, po viso šito neatrodo neįprasti“, - pastebi jis. Citata iš Kalifornijos energetikos komisijos tyrimo: „ Vėjo jėgainių poveikio paukščiams tyrimo santraukoje (1993) pateikiami rezultatai, kad Vokietijoje vienai vėjo jėgainei paukščių mirčių tenka 309, o Švedijoje – 895“. (2)
Duchamp'as visada teigė, kad ankstesni tyrimai, kai paukščių mirtingumas dėl jėgainių poveikio nebuvo toks svarbus dalykas, buvo daug patikimesni nei dabartiniai. „Tai yra tam tikras verslas, kai konsultantai, kurie numato mažiausią paukščių mirtingumą, pasirašo kontraktus. Jie daro tai, ko jų paprašo. Šis neetiškas elgesys pasmerkė Tasmanijos pleištauodegį erelį išnykimui (3) ir visai neseniai tas pats atsitiko su Amerikos auksiniu ereliu. (4) Kitas veiksnys yra tai, kad vėjo jėgainių darbuotojai slepia paukščių kūnus, tai nurodyta SEO laukinių paukščių ataskaitoje.“ (5)
Ataskaitoje taip pat pabrėžiama, kad net mažas mirtingumas tų paukščių rūšių, kūrių populiacija yra negausi, gali privesti jas prie išnykimo. „Apie tai aš kalbu jau daug metų“, skundžiasi Markas, kuriam buvo uždrausta dalyvauti ornitologų forumuose, dėl jo pateikiamų nepageidaujamų blogų naujienų. „Dabar mano vardas reabilituotas, bet tai nebeišgelbės paukščių“, sako jis.
SEO / BirdLife kaltina prastai atliktus poveikio aplinkai tyrimus. Tokius kaltinimu pateikė ir Duchamp'as, jau 2004 m.:
„... (paukščių poveikio vertinimai) ... yra kartais didelės apimties ir painūs, kartais trumpi ir aiškūs, bet visada melagingi, kadangi juose sumažinams poveikis laukiniams paukščiams .Jie tarnauja tam tikslui, kuriam ir yra skirti: leisti vykdytojams statyti vėjo jėgaines kur jie nori, nekreipiant jokio dėmesio į paukščius.“ (6)
Markas jau seniai teigė, kad buvo kvaila mintis atiduoti poveikio aplinkai tyrimų vykdymą į vėjo jėgainių statytojų rankas. Dabar atrodo, kad jis buvo teisus. Klausimas, kuriuo jis baigia: „ar ilgai ši nenormali situacija dar tęsis?“
Mark Duchamp, Prezidentas
[email protected]
Juan Avalos Schlegel, Viceprezidentas, Ispanija
[email protected]
www.savetheeaglesinternational.org
Šaltiniai:
(1) - SEO/Birdlife internetinėje svetainėje:
http://www.seo.org/sala_detalle.cfm?idSala=6140&CFID=5713153&CFTOKEN=27775615&jsessionid=aa306c3dc5133e6b06d3 Internete: http://www.abc.es/20120112/natural-biodiversidad/abci-parques-eolicos-aves-201201121310.html
(2) – PIER(Viešo Intereso Energijos Tyrimas) Kalifornijos energetikos komisijostyrimas (2002). Žiūrėti psl. 12, pirma pastraipa - D. Sterner‘is, Kalifornijos energetikos komisijai (2002 gruodis) PIER mokslinių tyrimų veiksmų planas dėl paukščių susidūrimų su vėjo turbinomis Kalifornijoje.http://www.iberica2000.org/documents/EOLICA/REPORTS/Dave_Sterner_2002.pdf
(3) – Įtartinos konsultanto klaidos pasmerkia Tasmanijos erelį išnykimui http://www.iberica2000.org/Es/Articulo.asp?Id=4382 (4) – JAV Auksinis erelis pavojuje http://savetheeaglesinternational.org/?page_id=755
(5) - SEO/Birdlife pranešimas: http://www.seo.org/media/docs/Manual_molinos.pdf žiūrėti psl. 11 - 2)
(6) – Šiurpinanti statistika http://www.iberica2000.org/Es/Articulo.asp?Id=1875
2012 m. sausio 12 d. Jerez de la Fronteroje, Ispanijoje vyko pirmasis mokslinis Vėjo energetikos ir laukinės gamtos išsaugojimo kongresas. Ispanijos ornitologijos draugija (SEO / BirdLife) viešai pateikė skaičiavimus, kad kasmet 18 000 Ispanijos vėjo jėgainių nužudo 6-18 mln. paukščių ir šikšnosparnių (1).Vidutiniškai vienai jėgainei tenka 333 - 1000 mirčių per metus ir tai visiškai neatitinka JAV vėjo pramonės paskaičiavimų t. y. 2-4 paukščių žūtys arba Amerikos Paukščių Saugos paskaičiavimus 400000 paukščių per metus visoje Amerikoje, kurioje vėjo jėgainių yra dukart daugiau nei Ispanijoje.
Į šiuos paskaičiavimus taip pat įtraukti ir šikšnosparniai, komentuoja Mark Duchamp, tarptautinės erelių išsaugojimo organizacijos (STEI) prezidentas. „ Todėl, darant prielaidą, kad vėjo jėgainės nužudo šikšnosparnių dukart daugiau nei paukščių, skaičiai būtų: 111 - 333 paukščių vėjo jėgainei per metus ir 222 - 666 šikšnosparniai vėjo jėgainei per metus. Mirtingumo skaičiai, kurie buvo užregistruoti Vokietijoje ir Švedijoje devintojo dešimtmečio pradžioje, po viso šito neatrodo neįprasti“, - pastebi jis. Citata iš Kalifornijos energetikos komisijos tyrimo: „ Vėjo jėgainių poveikio paukščiams tyrimo santraukoje (1993) pateikiami rezultatai, kad Vokietijoje vienai vėjo jėgainei paukščių mirčių tenka 309, o Švedijoje – 895“. (2)
Duchamp'as visada teigė, kad ankstesni tyrimai, kai paukščių mirtingumas dėl jėgainių poveikio nebuvo toks svarbus dalykas, buvo daug patikimesni nei dabartiniai. „Tai yra tam tikras verslas, kai konsultantai, kurie numato mažiausią paukščių mirtingumą, pasirašo kontraktus. Jie daro tai, ko jų paprašo. Šis neetiškas elgesys pasmerkė Tasmanijos pleištauodegį erelį išnykimui (3) ir visai neseniai tas pats atsitiko su Amerikos auksiniu ereliu. (4) Kitas veiksnys yra tai, kad vėjo jėgainių darbuotojai slepia paukščių kūnus, tai nurodyta SEO laukinių paukščių ataskaitoje.“ (5)
Ataskaitoje taip pat pabrėžiama, kad net mažas mirtingumas tų paukščių rūšių, kūrių populiacija yra negausi, gali privesti jas prie išnykimo. „Apie tai aš kalbu jau daug metų“, skundžiasi Markas, kuriam buvo uždrausta dalyvauti ornitologų forumuose, dėl jo pateikiamų nepageidaujamų blogų naujienų. „Dabar mano vardas reabilituotas, bet tai nebeišgelbės paukščių“, sako jis.
SEO / BirdLife kaltina prastai atliktus poveikio aplinkai tyrimus. Tokius kaltinimu pateikė ir Duchamp'as, jau 2004 m.:
„... (paukščių poveikio vertinimai) ... yra kartais didelės apimties ir painūs, kartais trumpi ir aiškūs, bet visada melagingi, kadangi juose sumažinams poveikis laukiniams paukščiams .Jie tarnauja tam tikslui, kuriam ir yra skirti: leisti vykdytojams statyti vėjo jėgaines kur jie nori, nekreipiant jokio dėmesio į paukščius.“ (6)
Markas jau seniai teigė, kad buvo kvaila mintis atiduoti poveikio aplinkai tyrimų vykdymą į vėjo jėgainių statytojų rankas. Dabar atrodo, kad jis buvo teisus. Klausimas, kuriuo jis baigia: „ar ilgai ši nenormali situacija dar tęsis?“
Mark Duchamp, Prezidentas
[email protected]
Juan Avalos Schlegel, Viceprezidentas, Ispanija
[email protected]
www.savetheeaglesinternational.org
Šaltiniai:
(1) - SEO/Birdlife internetinėje svetainėje:
http://www.seo.org/sala_detalle.cfm?idSala=6140&CFID=5713153&CFTOKEN=27775615&jsessionid=aa306c3dc5133e6b06d3 Internete: http://www.abc.es/20120112/natural-biodiversidad/abci-parques-eolicos-aves-201201121310.html
(2) – PIER(Viešo Intereso Energijos Tyrimas) Kalifornijos energetikos komisijostyrimas (2002). Žiūrėti psl. 12, pirma pastraipa - D. Sterner‘is, Kalifornijos energetikos komisijai (2002 gruodis) PIER mokslinių tyrimų veiksmų planas dėl paukščių susidūrimų su vėjo turbinomis Kalifornijoje.http://www.iberica2000.org/documents/EOLICA/REPORTS/Dave_Sterner_2002.pdf
(3) – Įtartinos konsultanto klaidos pasmerkia Tasmanijos erelį išnykimui http://www.iberica2000.org/Es/Articulo.asp?Id=4382 (4) – JAV Auksinis erelis pavojuje http://savetheeaglesinternational.org/?page_id=755
(5) - SEO/Birdlife pranešimas: http://www.seo.org/media/docs/Manual_molinos.pdf žiūrėti psl. 11 - 2)
(6) – Šiurpinanti statistika http://www.iberica2000.org/Es/Articulo.asp?Id=1875
__Exasperated planners shut wind farm down
Northern Times
Published: June 9, 2011
Updated: June 13, 2011
EXCLUSIVE by Caroline McMorran
THE LOCAL authority has forced Scottish and Southern Electricity to shut down a Sutherland wind farm after the company breached planning controls by failing to deal with excessive noise from the development.
People living close to the Achany wind farm near Rosehall are claiming their lives are being made a misery by the constant noise, and are angry that their complaints are being ignored.
In an unprecedented move, Highland Council issued a temporary stop notice on the 23-turbine wind farm at 3pm on Monday.
The turbine blades at the £55 million, 40MW windfarm, which came on stream in July last year, stopped turning that night.
The stop notice will remain in place for a month, until July 4, with the shut down representing a huge financial loss to the power company.
Highland Council's principal planner Gordon Moonie confirmed yesterday (Thursday) that it was the first time the authority had issued a notice of this type.
He said he was unaware of any other council taking similar action.
"This temporary stop notice was introduced under a 2006 Act and it hasn't been used very often, but it is quite an effective way of dealing with a breach of planning control. In a sense it affects the company where it hurts - in their pocket," he said.
Mr Moonie revealed that the problems with Achany had been ongoing for about a year, with constant complaints to planners about noise.
"We were getting complaints from the local people and the community and we weren't getting any action from SSE, so we decided that the best way forward was to serve this temporary stop notice," he said.
"It means that the windfarm has to cease operating and we can then get round the table and agree a way forward that is in everyone's interest."
According to the stop notice, SSE breached planning controls by failing to provide a scheme for mitigating noise levels prior to the development coming on stream.
They also failed to comply with a request to measure noise levels at two local properties - Rosehall Cottage and a home at Durcha - when specifically asked to do so following complaints from the householders.
The Durcha property is just 2km away from some of the turbines.
The company has further breached planning controls by failing to notify the local authority of the date the development first supplied electricity to the National Grid.
Local resident Andy Simpson is the chairman of Kyle of Sutherland Against Braemore (KoSAB), the group protesting against a proposed wind farm at Braemore, near Lairg.
He told the Northern Times:"The householder at Durcha has been complaining bitterly about the noise in certain weather conditions and said it has made life unbearable at times.
"Therefore, I'm really pleased that Highland Council have done the right thing.
"However, it gives me grave concern that a developer appears to have dismissed a genuine noise complaint once a wind farm has been constructed.
"This surely shows scant care or empathy for local communities from these large corporates."
He added: "An even greater cause for concern is the proposal for Braemore windfarm which KoSAB estimate is within 2km of 83 houses."
Rosehall resident Colin Gilmour, who chaired the Achany Windfarm Liaison Group said: "When Achany became operational in July 2010, we closed the liaison group down because in effect we did not really have any more to do with the development and we were not aware at the time that SSE had not met these conditions.
"However, the issue of noise from Achany has come up at the liaison group set up for the Rosehall Hill wind farm which is being constructed by E.ON.
"There is now a worry that houses at Durcha could be affected by noise from both wind farms and that one operator will blame the other.
"They need to sort out the Achany issue before Rosehall Hill wind farm becomes operational."
Mr Gilmour continued: "The householder at Durcha is particularly affected when the wind is coming from the north-east or in certain weather conditions. But he will be even closer to some of the Rosehall Hill turbines.
"Highland Council became a bit exasperated in the end with SSE over Achany because they just didn't meet the conditions.."
When asked for a comment, a spokesman for SSE yesterday (Thursday) responded: "Following a request from the Higland Council, we have temporarily suspended generation at our Achany wind farm, near Lairg. We are working closely with council officials and will be meeting representatives later today. We are confident that we can reach an agreement with the council very quickly."
Link: www.northern-times.co.uk/News/Exasperated-planners-shut-wind-farm-down-6934757.htm
Published: June 9, 2011
Updated: June 13, 2011
EXCLUSIVE by Caroline McMorran
THE LOCAL authority has forced Scottish and Southern Electricity to shut down a Sutherland wind farm after the company breached planning controls by failing to deal with excessive noise from the development.
People living close to the Achany wind farm near Rosehall are claiming their lives are being made a misery by the constant noise, and are angry that their complaints are being ignored.
In an unprecedented move, Highland Council issued a temporary stop notice on the 23-turbine wind farm at 3pm on Monday.
The turbine blades at the £55 million, 40MW windfarm, which came on stream in July last year, stopped turning that night.
The stop notice will remain in place for a month, until July 4, with the shut down representing a huge financial loss to the power company.
Highland Council's principal planner Gordon Moonie confirmed yesterday (Thursday) that it was the first time the authority had issued a notice of this type.
He said he was unaware of any other council taking similar action.
"This temporary stop notice was introduced under a 2006 Act and it hasn't been used very often, but it is quite an effective way of dealing with a breach of planning control. In a sense it affects the company where it hurts - in their pocket," he said.
Mr Moonie revealed that the problems with Achany had been ongoing for about a year, with constant complaints to planners about noise.
"We were getting complaints from the local people and the community and we weren't getting any action from SSE, so we decided that the best way forward was to serve this temporary stop notice," he said.
"It means that the windfarm has to cease operating and we can then get round the table and agree a way forward that is in everyone's interest."
According to the stop notice, SSE breached planning controls by failing to provide a scheme for mitigating noise levels prior to the development coming on stream.
They also failed to comply with a request to measure noise levels at two local properties - Rosehall Cottage and a home at Durcha - when specifically asked to do so following complaints from the householders.
The Durcha property is just 2km away from some of the turbines.
The company has further breached planning controls by failing to notify the local authority of the date the development first supplied electricity to the National Grid.
Local resident Andy Simpson is the chairman of Kyle of Sutherland Against Braemore (KoSAB), the group protesting against a proposed wind farm at Braemore, near Lairg.
He told the Northern Times:"The householder at Durcha has been complaining bitterly about the noise in certain weather conditions and said it has made life unbearable at times.
"Therefore, I'm really pleased that Highland Council have done the right thing.
"However, it gives me grave concern that a developer appears to have dismissed a genuine noise complaint once a wind farm has been constructed.
"This surely shows scant care or empathy for local communities from these large corporates."
He added: "An even greater cause for concern is the proposal for Braemore windfarm which KoSAB estimate is within 2km of 83 houses."
Rosehall resident Colin Gilmour, who chaired the Achany Windfarm Liaison Group said: "When Achany became operational in July 2010, we closed the liaison group down because in effect we did not really have any more to do with the development and we were not aware at the time that SSE had not met these conditions.
"However, the issue of noise from Achany has come up at the liaison group set up for the Rosehall Hill wind farm which is being constructed by E.ON.
"There is now a worry that houses at Durcha could be affected by noise from both wind farms and that one operator will blame the other.
"They need to sort out the Achany issue before Rosehall Hill wind farm becomes operational."
Mr Gilmour continued: "The householder at Durcha is particularly affected when the wind is coming from the north-east or in certain weather conditions. But he will be even closer to some of the Rosehall Hill turbines.
"Highland Council became a bit exasperated in the end with SSE over Achany because they just didn't meet the conditions.."
When asked for a comment, a spokesman for SSE yesterday (Thursday) responded: "Following a request from the Higland Council, we have temporarily suspended generation at our Achany wind farm, near Lairg. We are working closely with council officials and will be meeting representatives later today. We are confident that we can reach an agreement with the council very quickly."
Link: www.northern-times.co.uk/News/Exasperated-planners-shut-wind-farm-down-6934757.htm
_T. Bonne's Windy Misadventure And the Global Backlash Against Wind Energy
_Energy Tribune
July 28, 2011
by Robert Bryce
Three years ago this month, T. Boone Pickens launched a multi-million dollar crusade to bring more wind energy to the US. “Building new wind generation facilities,” along with energy efficiency and more consumption of domestic natural gas, the Dallas billionaire claimed, would allow the US to “replace more than one-third of our foreign oil imports in 10 years.” Those were halcyon times for the wind industry. These days, Pickens never talks about wind. He’s focused instead on getting a fat chunk of federal subsidies so he can sell more natural gas to long-haul truckers through his company, Clean Energy Fuels.
(Pickens and his wife, Madeleine, own about half of the stock of Clean Energy, a stake worth about $550 million.) While the billionaire works the halls of Congress seeking a subsidy of his very own, he's also trying to find a buyer for the $2 billion worth of wind turbines he contracted for back in 2008. The last news report that I saw indicated that he was trying to foist the turbines off onto the Canadians.
Being dumped by Pickens is only one of a panoply of problems facing the global wind industry. Among the issues: an abundance of relatively cheap natural gas, a growing backlash against industrial wind projects due to concerns about visual blight and noise, increasing concerns about the murderous effect that wind turbines have on bats and birds, the extremely high costs of offshore wind energy, and a new study which finds that wind energy’s ability to cut carbon dioxide emissions have been overstated.
Yeah, that’s a long list of things. But the mainstream media rarely casts a critical eye on the wind industry. So bear with me for a few minutes. And in doing so, consider how the backlash against industrial wind is playing out in Wales, where, on May 27, the BBC reports that some 1,500 protesters descended on the Welsh assembly, demanding that a massive wind project planned for central Wales be halted.
Earlier this month, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came out with another broadside (this one in the Wall Street Journal) against the Cape Wind project off Cape Cod, not far from the Kennedy clan’s place in Hyannisport. Kennedy says New England shouldn’t put 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound, instead, it should import hydropower from Canada. He neglected to say that Cape Wind likely won’t ever get built because the Department of Energy is withholding its financing of the project.
Over the past few days, protesters in Denmark have been camping on a wooded tract in Northern Jutland in order to prevent the clearing of a protected forest where the government plans to build a test center that aims to install a series of wind turbines 250 meters high.
The increasing opposition to industrial wind projects – opposition that’s coming from grassroots organizations all over the world – should be a wake up call for advocates of renewable energy. Instead, the wind industry’s apologists continue to claim that they are victims of a conspiracy, and that they are under attack from the “fossil fuel industry.” That’s been the typical response from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) and its hirelings, who prefer to use character assassination rather than engage in factual debate.
Here’s the reality: the wind industry is under a full-blown attack from market forces. Those markets are economic, political, social, and environmental. And the wind scammers are losing on nearly all fronts.
Let’s start with natural gas.
Few people know the natural gas business better than Pickens, and he’ll tell you that himself. Many times. Two years ago, shortly after he launched his high-profile plan, Pickens said natural gas prices must be at least $9 for wind energy to be competitive. In March 2010, Pickens was still hawking wind energy, but he’d lowered his price threshold saying “The place where it works best is with natural gas at $7.” By January of this year Pickens was complaining that you can’t “finance a wind deal unless you have $6 gas.”
That may be true, but on the spot market, natural gas now sells for about $4.50 per million Btu. Today’s relatively low natural gas prices are a direct result of the drilling industry’s new-found prowess at unlocking galaxies of methane from shale beds. Those lower prices are great for consumers but terrible for the wind business.
The difficulties faced by the wind industry are evident in the numbers: Last year, total US wind generation capacity grew by 5,100 megawatts, about half as much capacity as was added in 2009. During the first quarter of this year, new wind installations totaled just 1,100 megawatts, indicating that this year will likely be even worse than 2010.
For its part, the wind industry continues to claim that it’s creating lots of “green” – oops, I mean “clean” – energy jobs. Last year, after the lame-duck Congress passed a one-year extension of the investment tax credit for renewable energy projects, AWEA said it would “help save tens of thousands of American jobs.” Perhaps. But those jobs are so expensive that not even Pickens could afford many of them. Last December, about the same time that Congress was voting to continue the wind subsidies, Texas Comptroller Susan Combs reported that tax breaks for wind projects in the Lone Star State cost nearly $1.6 million per job. And that “green” job bonanza is happening in Texas, America’s biggest natural gas producer.
Few people in the Obama administration have been more fulsome in their backing of wind than Energy Secretary Steve Chu. A few weeks ago, while at the Aspen Institute, I ran into Chu at a cocktail party. During our conversation, Chu casually dismissed the widespread opposition to industrial wind projects as a bunch of “NIMBYs.” (That is, “not in my backyard.”)
If Chu had done even the smallest bit of homework, he would know that the European Platform Against Windfarms now has 485 signatory organizations from 22 European countries. In the UK, where fights are raging against industrial wind projects in Wales, Scotland, and elsewhere, some 250 anti-wind groups have been formed. In Canada, the province of Ontario alone has more than 50 anti-wind groups. The US has about 170 anti-wind groups.
Over the past year or so, I have personally interviewed people in Wisconsin, Maine, New York, Nova Scotia, Ontario, the U.K., New Zealand, and Australia. All of them used almost identical language in describing the health problems caused by the noise coming from wind turbines that had built near their homes.
Janet Warren, who was raising sheep on her 500-acre family farm near Makara, New Zealand, told me via email that the turbines put up near her home emit “continuous noise and vibration” which she said was resulting in “genuine sleep deprivation causing loss of concentration, irritability, and short-term memory effects.” A few months ago, Warren and her family decided they couldn’t stand to live with the noise any longer and moved out of their home to another location.
Or consider the case of Billy Armstrong, a plumbing and heating engineer who lives in County Durham, England. Armstrong must endure the noise from several wind turbines that were recently installed 800 yards from his home. When we talked by phone, Armstrong told me that he is frequently awakened by the noise from the turbines, particularly during the summer months. What is his advice for other rural landowners facing the prospect of wind turbines being built near their homes? His reply: “Fight them. Don’t let them do it.”
The problems associated with low-frequency noise caused by wind turbines if finally getting proper attention from the scientific community. The August issue of the journal Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, has nine articles that address various aspects of the turbine-noise issue. The most important: low-frequency noise, also known as infrasound. Although inaudible to most humans, infrasound can cause a number of maladies including headaches, sleeplessness, and vertigo.
One of peer-reviewed articles that appears in the Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, is by Carl V. Phillips, a Harvard-trained PhD. Phillips concludes that there is “overwhelming evidence that wind turbines cause serious health problems in nearby residents, usually stress-disorder type diseases, at a nontrivial rate.”
Among the most prominent critics of the wind industry on the noise issue is Dr. Robert McMurtry, an Ontario-based orthopedic surgeon. McMurtry has impeccable credentials. He’s a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada. Earlier this month he was named a Member of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian award.
Over the past two years, McMurtry has spearheaded the effort to stop industrial wind projects in Ontario while also leading efforts to get peer-reviewed medical studies done on the deleterious effects of turbine-produced infrasound. “The people who are forced to live near these turbines are being abused,” McMurtry told me a few months ago. “It is compromising their health.”
But the wind industry has taken a stand: never mind the science; ignore the complainers. That’s the stance taken by AWEA and other wind lobby groups who continue to deny that there are any problems with wind turbine noise and that those who are complaining merely need psychological counseling. In late 2009, AWEA and the Canadian Wind Energy Association, published a paper which attempted to quiet critics on the noise issue, by declaring that “There is no evidence that the audible or sub-audible sounds emitted by wind turbines have any direct adverse physiological effects.” It also suggested that the symptoms being attributed to wind turbine noise were psychosomatic and declared flatly that the vibrations from the turbines are “too weak to be detected by, or to affect, humans.”
And lest you think that the research being done on wind turbine noise is collegial, think again. Last year, during a webinar that was sponsored in part, by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, an arm of the US Department of Energy, Geoff Leventhall, a consultant who was working for AWEA, said that one of the researchers who has been investigating the health effects of infrasound caused by wind turbines was “stupid.”
If that’s the case, then there are thousands of stupid people protesting against industrial wind, and they are located all over the world. Here’s a small sampling of recent news:
-- Last November, five people, several of them from Earth First! were arrested near Lincoln, Maine, after they blocked a road leading to a construction site for a 60-megawatt wind project on Rollins Mountain. According to a story written by Tux Turkel of the Portland Press Herald, one of the protesters carried a sign which read “Stop the rape of rural Maine.”
-- On May 12, the first industrial wind facility proposed for rural Connecticut was rejected by the state’s siting council, which said the “visual effects” of the project were “in conflict with the policies of the state.” The project had been vigorously opposed by Save Prospect, a group founded by an affable high school teacher named Tim Reilly.
-- Denmark, the supposed Valhalla of wind energy, is seeing fierce opposition to the energy sprawl required by wind. On July 22, 2010, the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten reported that there are some 40 anti-wind groups in Denmark and that “more and more neighbors are protesting against new, large wind turbines.” It cited the Svendborg city council which recently refused to provide a permit for turbines over 80 meters high, after a local group “protested violently against two wind turbines” that had been erected a few months earlier. The story continued, saying that “neighbors complain especially about the noise” from the turbines. It then quoted the town deputy mayor as saying that due to “the violent protests and the uncertainty of low-frequency noise” coming from the turbines, the town would “not expose our citizens” to large wind turbines.
-- Last August, the Danish Society for Nature Conservation filed a complaint with the European Union in order to stop the parliament’s move to install 250-meter high wind turbines in a protected area in northern Jutland. According to the Danish press, the government is going ahead with the plans for the wind turbine testing center, and in recent days, Danish police have been forced to call in reinforcements because more than 30 protesters have been camping in the forest to prevent the project from going forward.
-- Last September, the Copenhagen Post reported that “State-owned energy firm Dong Energy has given up building more wind turbines on Danish land, following protests from residents complaining about the noise the turbines make.” The article quotes company CEO Anders Eldrup, as saying “It is very difficult to get the public’s acceptance if the turbines are built close to residential buildings, and therefore we are now looking at maritime options.”
-- Residents of Falmouth, Massachusetts, a small town on Cape Cod, continue to complain about noise coming from a 1.65 megawatt turbine that was installed in their town. The July 12 issue of the Cape Cod Times quotes Falmouth resident Neil Andersen, who says that at certain times, the turbine “gets jet engine loud…To put it simple, they drive one crazy."
-- Residents of Vinalhaven, Maine continue to complain to state and local officials about the noise coming from turbines erected in their town. And some residents have chosen to abandon their homes rather than continue to live with the noise.
Of course, the wind industry claims that it has huge opportunities offshore. That’s true if money is no object. Building offshore wind projects costs about $5,000 per kilowatt, or about the same as a new nuclear plant, even though a nuclear plant will have a capacity factor at least three times that of the wind project. Put another way, building offshore wind costs about five times as much as the $1,000 or so per kilowatt needed for a new natural gas fired generator.
Those high costs will mean high costs for ratepayers. The likely cost for electricity from Cape Wind, the controversial wind project located off of Cape Code, will be about $0.21 per kilowatt-hour – if that project ever gets built.
Last year, an offshore project off the coast of Rhode Island, Deepwater Wind, was rejected by that state’s public utility commission because the cost of electricity from the project was expected to be $0.244 per kilowatt-hour with annual increases of 3.5% per year. For reference, the average retail price of electricity in the US is about $0.10.
While the wind industry continues to hope for more mandates and subsidies that will increase the cost of electricity for ratepayers, America’s wildlife is being subjected to a double standard. Indeed, the apparent appeal of “green” energy is so great that the US wind industry has a get-out-of-jail-free card when it comes to federal wildlife laws. Despite overwhelming evidence that shows tens of thousands of violations, the US wind industry has never been prosecuted under the Eagle Protection Act nor the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, one of the oldest wildlife laws in America.
In 2008, a study funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency, estimated that about 2,400 raptors, including burrowing owls, American kestrels, and red-tailed hawks – as well as about 7,500 other birds, nearly all of which are protected under the MBTA – are being killed every year by the wind turbines located at Altamont Pass, California.
Last month, the Los Angeles Times reported that 70 golden eagles per year are being killed by the turbines at Altamont Pass. But again, the federal government has not brought a single case against the wind industry. Wildlife biologists estimate that the region around the pass would need 167 pairs of nesting golden eagles to produce enough offspring in order to make up for all of the eagles being killed by the bird Cuisinarts at Altamont. But the region only has 60 pairs of eagles.
Indeed, the only time the wind industry has ever faced legal action for killing birds occurred last year when the state of California reached a $2.5 million settlement with NextEra Energy Resources for the bird kills at Altamont. As part of that deal, the company agreed to remove or replace all of the turbines at Altamont by 2015.
The lack of prosecution of the wind industry for bird kills underscores a pernicious double standard in the enforcement of federal wildlife laws: at the very same time that federal law enforcement officials are bringing cases against oil and gas companies and electric utilities under the MBTA, they have given a de facto exemption to the wind industry for any enforcement action under that same statute. Indeed, over the past two decades or so, federal authorities have brought hundreds of cases against the oil and gas industry for violations of the MBTA. A recent example: On August 13, 2009, Exxon Mobil pled guilty in federal court to charges that it killed 85 birds – all of which were protected under the MBTA. The company agreed to pay $600,000 in fines and fees for the bird kills, which occurred after the animals came in contact with hydrocarbons in uncovered tanks and waste water facilities on company properties located in five western states.
Despite the toll that wind turbines are taking on birds, the industry continues to claim that efforts to protect bird life are just too stringent. In May, the Fish and Wildlife Service announced guidelines for the siting of wind turbines, but AWEA immediately objected, with the lobby group’s boss, Denise Bode, denouncing the guidelines as “unworkable.”
Bats are getting whacked, too. On July 17, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that the 420 wind turbines that have been erected in Pennsylvania “killed more than 10,000 bats last year…That’s an average of 25 bats per turbine per year, and the Nature Conservancy predicts that as many as 2,900 turbines will be set up across the state by 2030.”
A study of a 44-turbine wind farm in West Virginia found that up to 4,000 bats had been killed by the turbines in 2004 alone. A 2008 study of dead bats found on the ground near a Canadian wind farm found that many of the bats had been killed by a change in air pressure near the turbine blades that causes fatal damage to their lungs, a condition known as “barotrauma.”
Bat Conservation International, an Austin-based group dedicated to preserving the flying mammals and their habitats, has called the proliferation of wind turbines “a lethal crisis.” In 2009, I interviewed Ed Arnett, who heads the group’s research efforts on wind power. He said that the head-long rush to develop wind power is having major detrimental effects on bat populations but few environmental groups are willing to discuss the problem because those groups are so focused on the issue of carbon dioxide emissions and the possibility of global warming. “To compromise today’s wildlife values and environmental impacts for tomorrow’s speculated hopes is irresponsible,” Arnett said. But Arnett added that only a handful of bat species are protected by federal law. And thus the killing of bats by wind turbines gets little attention from the media.
The final issue to be addressed is the one that drives the wind energy devotees to total distraction: carbon dioxide. For years, it has been assumed that wind energy can provide a cost-effective method of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The reality: wind energy’s carbon dioxide-cutting benefits are vastly overstated. Furthermore, if wind energy does help reduce carbon emissions, those reductions are likely too expensive to be used on any kind of scale.
Those are the findings of an exhaustive new study from Bentek Energy, a Colorado-based energy analytics firm. Rather than rely on computer models that use theoretical emissions data, the authors of the study, Porter Bennett and Brannin McBee, analyzed actual emissions data from electric generation plants located in four regions: the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Bonneville Power Administration, California Independent System Operator, and the Midwest Independent System Operator. Those four system operators serve about 110 million customers, or about one-third of the US population.
Bennett and McBee looked at more than 300,000 hourly records from 2007 through 2009. Their results show that the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) and other wind boosters have vastly overstated wind’s ability to cut sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide. Indeed, the study found that in some regions of the country, like California, using wind energy doesn’t reduce sulfur dioxide emissions at all. But the most important conclusion from the study is that wind energy is not “a cost-effective solution for reducing carbon dioxide if carbon is valued at less than $33 per ton.” With the US economy still in recession and unemployment numbers near record levels, Congress cannot, will not, attempt to impose a carbon tax, no matter how small.
The wind industry’s apologists are desperate to dismiss the Bentek study, which is a more thorough version of a similar study the firm did in early 2010.
But the Bentek study is similar to several other studies that have come to almost identical conclusions. For instance, in 2003, a paper presented at the International Energy Workshop in Laxenburg, Austria by a group of Estonian researchers concluded that using traditional power plants to compensate for the highly variable, incurably intermittent electricity produced by wind turbines “eliminates the major part of the expected positive effect of wind energy,” and that “In some cases the environmental gain from the wind energy use was lost almost totally.”
In 2004, the Irish Electricity Supply Board found that as the level of wind capacity increases, “the CO2 emissions actually increase as a direct result of having to cope with the variation of wind-power output.”
A 2008 article published in the journal Energy Policy, James Oswald and his two co-authors concluded that increased use of wind will likely cause utilities to invest in lower-efficiency gas-fired generators that will be switched on and off frequently, a move that further lowers their energy efficiency. Upon publication of the study, Oswald said that carbon dioxide savings from wind power “will be less than expected, because cheaper, less efficient [gas-fired] plant[s] will be used to support these wind power fluctuations. Neither these extra costs nor the increased carbon production are being taken into account in the government figures for wind power.”
In November 2009, Kent Hawkins, a Canadian electrical engineer, published a detailed analysis on the frequency with which gas-fired generators must be cycled on and off in order to back up wind power. Hawkins findings: the frequent switching on and off results in more gas consumption than if there were no wind turbines at all. His analysis suggests that it would be more efficient in terms of carbon dioxide emissions to simply run combined-cycle gas turbines on a continuous basis rather than use wind turbines backed up by gas-fired generators that are constantly being turned on and off. Hawkins concludes that wind power is not an “effective CO2 mitigation” strategy “because of inefficiencies introduced by fast-ramping (inefficient) operation of gas turbines.”
If wind energy doesn’t effectively cut carbon dioxide, then the wind sector has few reasons to exist. The Global Wind Energy Council claims that reducing the amount of carbon dioxide into atmosphere “is the most important environmental benefit from wind power generation.” For its part, the American Wind Energy Association insists that the wind business “could avoid 825 million tons of carbon dioxide annually by 2030.”
That 825 million tons sounds like a lot. It’s not. In 2010, global carbon dioxide emissions totaled 33.1 billion tons. Thus, if the US went on a wind energy binge, and installed thousands of turbines in every available location, doing so might reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by about 2.5%. And that calculation assumes that global carbon dioxide emissions will stay flat over the next two decades. They won’t.
And that leads to the obvious question: if wind energy doesn’t significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions, then why does the industry get such hefty subsidies? The key subsidy is the federal production tax credit of $0.022 for each kilowatt-hour of electricity. That amounts to subsidy of $6.44 per million BTU of energy produced. For comparison, in 2008, the Energy Information Administration reported that subsidies to the oil and gas sector totaled $1.9 billion per year, or about $0.03 per million BTU of energy produced. In other words, subsidies to the wind sector are more than 200 times as great as those given to the oil and gas sector on the basis of per-unit-of-energy produced.
If those fat subsidies go away, then the US wind sector will be stopped dead in its tracks. And for consumers, that should be welcome news.
The wind energy business is the electric sector’s equivalent of the corn ethanol scam: it’s an over-subsidized industry that depends wholly on taxpayer dollars to remain solvent while providing an inferior product to consumers that does little, if anything, to reduce our need for hydrocarbons or cut carbon dioxide emissions. Indeed, it only increases costs and complexity for the utilities, which, in turn, means higher costs for consumers.
A final point: whenever you hear people like Steve Chu complain about “NIMBYs” who don’t want wind turbines on their property, be sure to include billionaires on the list of NIMBYs.
You see, people like Boone Pickens are eager to have wind turbines and transmission lines put up on other people’s land, not theirs. In 2008, Pickens declared that his 68,000-acre ranch located in the Texas Panhandle, one of America’s windiest regions, will not sport a single turbine. “I'm not going to have the windmills on my ranch,” Pickens declared. “They're ugly.”
Robert Bryce is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His fourth book, Power Hungry: The Myths of ‘Green’ Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future was recently issued in paperback.
Link: www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm/8120/T-Boones-Windy-Misadventure-And-the-Global-Backlash-Against...
July 28, 2011
by Robert Bryce
Three years ago this month, T. Boone Pickens launched a multi-million dollar crusade to bring more wind energy to the US. “Building new wind generation facilities,” along with energy efficiency and more consumption of domestic natural gas, the Dallas billionaire claimed, would allow the US to “replace more than one-third of our foreign oil imports in 10 years.” Those were halcyon times for the wind industry. These days, Pickens never talks about wind. He’s focused instead on getting a fat chunk of federal subsidies so he can sell more natural gas to long-haul truckers through his company, Clean Energy Fuels.
(Pickens and his wife, Madeleine, own about half of the stock of Clean Energy, a stake worth about $550 million.) While the billionaire works the halls of Congress seeking a subsidy of his very own, he's also trying to find a buyer for the $2 billion worth of wind turbines he contracted for back in 2008. The last news report that I saw indicated that he was trying to foist the turbines off onto the Canadians.
Being dumped by Pickens is only one of a panoply of problems facing the global wind industry. Among the issues: an abundance of relatively cheap natural gas, a growing backlash against industrial wind projects due to concerns about visual blight and noise, increasing concerns about the murderous effect that wind turbines have on bats and birds, the extremely high costs of offshore wind energy, and a new study which finds that wind energy’s ability to cut carbon dioxide emissions have been overstated.
Yeah, that’s a long list of things. But the mainstream media rarely casts a critical eye on the wind industry. So bear with me for a few minutes. And in doing so, consider how the backlash against industrial wind is playing out in Wales, where, on May 27, the BBC reports that some 1,500 protesters descended on the Welsh assembly, demanding that a massive wind project planned for central Wales be halted.
Earlier this month, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came out with another broadside (this one in the Wall Street Journal) against the Cape Wind project off Cape Cod, not far from the Kennedy clan’s place in Hyannisport. Kennedy says New England shouldn’t put 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound, instead, it should import hydropower from Canada. He neglected to say that Cape Wind likely won’t ever get built because the Department of Energy is withholding its financing of the project.
Over the past few days, protesters in Denmark have been camping on a wooded tract in Northern Jutland in order to prevent the clearing of a protected forest where the government plans to build a test center that aims to install a series of wind turbines 250 meters high.
The increasing opposition to industrial wind projects – opposition that’s coming from grassroots organizations all over the world – should be a wake up call for advocates of renewable energy. Instead, the wind industry’s apologists continue to claim that they are victims of a conspiracy, and that they are under attack from the “fossil fuel industry.” That’s been the typical response from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) and its hirelings, who prefer to use character assassination rather than engage in factual debate.
Here’s the reality: the wind industry is under a full-blown attack from market forces. Those markets are economic, political, social, and environmental. And the wind scammers are losing on nearly all fronts.
Let’s start with natural gas.
Few people know the natural gas business better than Pickens, and he’ll tell you that himself. Many times. Two years ago, shortly after he launched his high-profile plan, Pickens said natural gas prices must be at least $9 for wind energy to be competitive. In March 2010, Pickens was still hawking wind energy, but he’d lowered his price threshold saying “The place where it works best is with natural gas at $7.” By January of this year Pickens was complaining that you can’t “finance a wind deal unless you have $6 gas.”
That may be true, but on the spot market, natural gas now sells for about $4.50 per million Btu. Today’s relatively low natural gas prices are a direct result of the drilling industry’s new-found prowess at unlocking galaxies of methane from shale beds. Those lower prices are great for consumers but terrible for the wind business.
The difficulties faced by the wind industry are evident in the numbers: Last year, total US wind generation capacity grew by 5,100 megawatts, about half as much capacity as was added in 2009. During the first quarter of this year, new wind installations totaled just 1,100 megawatts, indicating that this year will likely be even worse than 2010.
For its part, the wind industry continues to claim that it’s creating lots of “green” – oops, I mean “clean” – energy jobs. Last year, after the lame-duck Congress passed a one-year extension of the investment tax credit for renewable energy projects, AWEA said it would “help save tens of thousands of American jobs.” Perhaps. But those jobs are so expensive that not even Pickens could afford many of them. Last December, about the same time that Congress was voting to continue the wind subsidies, Texas Comptroller Susan Combs reported that tax breaks for wind projects in the Lone Star State cost nearly $1.6 million per job. And that “green” job bonanza is happening in Texas, America’s biggest natural gas producer.
Few people in the Obama administration have been more fulsome in their backing of wind than Energy Secretary Steve Chu. A few weeks ago, while at the Aspen Institute, I ran into Chu at a cocktail party. During our conversation, Chu casually dismissed the widespread opposition to industrial wind projects as a bunch of “NIMBYs.” (That is, “not in my backyard.”)
If Chu had done even the smallest bit of homework, he would know that the European Platform Against Windfarms now has 485 signatory organizations from 22 European countries. In the UK, where fights are raging against industrial wind projects in Wales, Scotland, and elsewhere, some 250 anti-wind groups have been formed. In Canada, the province of Ontario alone has more than 50 anti-wind groups. The US has about 170 anti-wind groups.
Over the past year or so, I have personally interviewed people in Wisconsin, Maine, New York, Nova Scotia, Ontario, the U.K., New Zealand, and Australia. All of them used almost identical language in describing the health problems caused by the noise coming from wind turbines that had built near their homes.
Janet Warren, who was raising sheep on her 500-acre family farm near Makara, New Zealand, told me via email that the turbines put up near her home emit “continuous noise and vibration” which she said was resulting in “genuine sleep deprivation causing loss of concentration, irritability, and short-term memory effects.” A few months ago, Warren and her family decided they couldn’t stand to live with the noise any longer and moved out of their home to another location.
Or consider the case of Billy Armstrong, a plumbing and heating engineer who lives in County Durham, England. Armstrong must endure the noise from several wind turbines that were recently installed 800 yards from his home. When we talked by phone, Armstrong told me that he is frequently awakened by the noise from the turbines, particularly during the summer months. What is his advice for other rural landowners facing the prospect of wind turbines being built near their homes? His reply: “Fight them. Don’t let them do it.”
The problems associated with low-frequency noise caused by wind turbines if finally getting proper attention from the scientific community. The August issue of the journal Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, has nine articles that address various aspects of the turbine-noise issue. The most important: low-frequency noise, also known as infrasound. Although inaudible to most humans, infrasound can cause a number of maladies including headaches, sleeplessness, and vertigo.
One of peer-reviewed articles that appears in the Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, is by Carl V. Phillips, a Harvard-trained PhD. Phillips concludes that there is “overwhelming evidence that wind turbines cause serious health problems in nearby residents, usually stress-disorder type diseases, at a nontrivial rate.”
Among the most prominent critics of the wind industry on the noise issue is Dr. Robert McMurtry, an Ontario-based orthopedic surgeon. McMurtry has impeccable credentials. He’s a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada. Earlier this month he was named a Member of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian award.
Over the past two years, McMurtry has spearheaded the effort to stop industrial wind projects in Ontario while also leading efforts to get peer-reviewed medical studies done on the deleterious effects of turbine-produced infrasound. “The people who are forced to live near these turbines are being abused,” McMurtry told me a few months ago. “It is compromising their health.”
But the wind industry has taken a stand: never mind the science; ignore the complainers. That’s the stance taken by AWEA and other wind lobby groups who continue to deny that there are any problems with wind turbine noise and that those who are complaining merely need psychological counseling. In late 2009, AWEA and the Canadian Wind Energy Association, published a paper which attempted to quiet critics on the noise issue, by declaring that “There is no evidence that the audible or sub-audible sounds emitted by wind turbines have any direct adverse physiological effects.” It also suggested that the symptoms being attributed to wind turbine noise were psychosomatic and declared flatly that the vibrations from the turbines are “too weak to be detected by, or to affect, humans.”
And lest you think that the research being done on wind turbine noise is collegial, think again. Last year, during a webinar that was sponsored in part, by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, an arm of the US Department of Energy, Geoff Leventhall, a consultant who was working for AWEA, said that one of the researchers who has been investigating the health effects of infrasound caused by wind turbines was “stupid.”
If that’s the case, then there are thousands of stupid people protesting against industrial wind, and they are located all over the world. Here’s a small sampling of recent news:
-- Last November, five people, several of them from Earth First! were arrested near Lincoln, Maine, after they blocked a road leading to a construction site for a 60-megawatt wind project on Rollins Mountain. According to a story written by Tux Turkel of the Portland Press Herald, one of the protesters carried a sign which read “Stop the rape of rural Maine.”
-- On May 12, the first industrial wind facility proposed for rural Connecticut was rejected by the state’s siting council, which said the “visual effects” of the project were “in conflict with the policies of the state.” The project had been vigorously opposed by Save Prospect, a group founded by an affable high school teacher named Tim Reilly.
-- Denmark, the supposed Valhalla of wind energy, is seeing fierce opposition to the energy sprawl required by wind. On July 22, 2010, the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten reported that there are some 40 anti-wind groups in Denmark and that “more and more neighbors are protesting against new, large wind turbines.” It cited the Svendborg city council which recently refused to provide a permit for turbines over 80 meters high, after a local group “protested violently against two wind turbines” that had been erected a few months earlier. The story continued, saying that “neighbors complain especially about the noise” from the turbines. It then quoted the town deputy mayor as saying that due to “the violent protests and the uncertainty of low-frequency noise” coming from the turbines, the town would “not expose our citizens” to large wind turbines.
-- Last August, the Danish Society for Nature Conservation filed a complaint with the European Union in order to stop the parliament’s move to install 250-meter high wind turbines in a protected area in northern Jutland. According to the Danish press, the government is going ahead with the plans for the wind turbine testing center, and in recent days, Danish police have been forced to call in reinforcements because more than 30 protesters have been camping in the forest to prevent the project from going forward.
-- Last September, the Copenhagen Post reported that “State-owned energy firm Dong Energy has given up building more wind turbines on Danish land, following protests from residents complaining about the noise the turbines make.” The article quotes company CEO Anders Eldrup, as saying “It is very difficult to get the public’s acceptance if the turbines are built close to residential buildings, and therefore we are now looking at maritime options.”
-- Residents of Falmouth, Massachusetts, a small town on Cape Cod, continue to complain about noise coming from a 1.65 megawatt turbine that was installed in their town. The July 12 issue of the Cape Cod Times quotes Falmouth resident Neil Andersen, who says that at certain times, the turbine “gets jet engine loud…To put it simple, they drive one crazy."
-- Residents of Vinalhaven, Maine continue to complain to state and local officials about the noise coming from turbines erected in their town. And some residents have chosen to abandon their homes rather than continue to live with the noise.
Of course, the wind industry claims that it has huge opportunities offshore. That’s true if money is no object. Building offshore wind projects costs about $5,000 per kilowatt, or about the same as a new nuclear plant, even though a nuclear plant will have a capacity factor at least three times that of the wind project. Put another way, building offshore wind costs about five times as much as the $1,000 or so per kilowatt needed for a new natural gas fired generator.
Those high costs will mean high costs for ratepayers. The likely cost for electricity from Cape Wind, the controversial wind project located off of Cape Code, will be about $0.21 per kilowatt-hour – if that project ever gets built.
Last year, an offshore project off the coast of Rhode Island, Deepwater Wind, was rejected by that state’s public utility commission because the cost of electricity from the project was expected to be $0.244 per kilowatt-hour with annual increases of 3.5% per year. For reference, the average retail price of electricity in the US is about $0.10.
While the wind industry continues to hope for more mandates and subsidies that will increase the cost of electricity for ratepayers, America’s wildlife is being subjected to a double standard. Indeed, the apparent appeal of “green” energy is so great that the US wind industry has a get-out-of-jail-free card when it comes to federal wildlife laws. Despite overwhelming evidence that shows tens of thousands of violations, the US wind industry has never been prosecuted under the Eagle Protection Act nor the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, one of the oldest wildlife laws in America.
In 2008, a study funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency, estimated that about 2,400 raptors, including burrowing owls, American kestrels, and red-tailed hawks – as well as about 7,500 other birds, nearly all of which are protected under the MBTA – are being killed every year by the wind turbines located at Altamont Pass, California.
Last month, the Los Angeles Times reported that 70 golden eagles per year are being killed by the turbines at Altamont Pass. But again, the federal government has not brought a single case against the wind industry. Wildlife biologists estimate that the region around the pass would need 167 pairs of nesting golden eagles to produce enough offspring in order to make up for all of the eagles being killed by the bird Cuisinarts at Altamont. But the region only has 60 pairs of eagles.
Indeed, the only time the wind industry has ever faced legal action for killing birds occurred last year when the state of California reached a $2.5 million settlement with NextEra Energy Resources for the bird kills at Altamont. As part of that deal, the company agreed to remove or replace all of the turbines at Altamont by 2015.
The lack of prosecution of the wind industry for bird kills underscores a pernicious double standard in the enforcement of federal wildlife laws: at the very same time that federal law enforcement officials are bringing cases against oil and gas companies and electric utilities under the MBTA, they have given a de facto exemption to the wind industry for any enforcement action under that same statute. Indeed, over the past two decades or so, federal authorities have brought hundreds of cases against the oil and gas industry for violations of the MBTA. A recent example: On August 13, 2009, Exxon Mobil pled guilty in federal court to charges that it killed 85 birds – all of which were protected under the MBTA. The company agreed to pay $600,000 in fines and fees for the bird kills, which occurred after the animals came in contact with hydrocarbons in uncovered tanks and waste water facilities on company properties located in five western states.
Despite the toll that wind turbines are taking on birds, the industry continues to claim that efforts to protect bird life are just too stringent. In May, the Fish and Wildlife Service announced guidelines for the siting of wind turbines, but AWEA immediately objected, with the lobby group’s boss, Denise Bode, denouncing the guidelines as “unworkable.”
Bats are getting whacked, too. On July 17, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that the 420 wind turbines that have been erected in Pennsylvania “killed more than 10,000 bats last year…That’s an average of 25 bats per turbine per year, and the Nature Conservancy predicts that as many as 2,900 turbines will be set up across the state by 2030.”
A study of a 44-turbine wind farm in West Virginia found that up to 4,000 bats had been killed by the turbines in 2004 alone. A 2008 study of dead bats found on the ground near a Canadian wind farm found that many of the bats had been killed by a change in air pressure near the turbine blades that causes fatal damage to their lungs, a condition known as “barotrauma.”
Bat Conservation International, an Austin-based group dedicated to preserving the flying mammals and their habitats, has called the proliferation of wind turbines “a lethal crisis.” In 2009, I interviewed Ed Arnett, who heads the group’s research efforts on wind power. He said that the head-long rush to develop wind power is having major detrimental effects on bat populations but few environmental groups are willing to discuss the problem because those groups are so focused on the issue of carbon dioxide emissions and the possibility of global warming. “To compromise today’s wildlife values and environmental impacts for tomorrow’s speculated hopes is irresponsible,” Arnett said. But Arnett added that only a handful of bat species are protected by federal law. And thus the killing of bats by wind turbines gets little attention from the media.
The final issue to be addressed is the one that drives the wind energy devotees to total distraction: carbon dioxide. For years, it has been assumed that wind energy can provide a cost-effective method of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The reality: wind energy’s carbon dioxide-cutting benefits are vastly overstated. Furthermore, if wind energy does help reduce carbon emissions, those reductions are likely too expensive to be used on any kind of scale.
Those are the findings of an exhaustive new study from Bentek Energy, a Colorado-based energy analytics firm. Rather than rely on computer models that use theoretical emissions data, the authors of the study, Porter Bennett and Brannin McBee, analyzed actual emissions data from electric generation plants located in four regions: the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Bonneville Power Administration, California Independent System Operator, and the Midwest Independent System Operator. Those four system operators serve about 110 million customers, or about one-third of the US population.
Bennett and McBee looked at more than 300,000 hourly records from 2007 through 2009. Their results show that the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) and other wind boosters have vastly overstated wind’s ability to cut sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide. Indeed, the study found that in some regions of the country, like California, using wind energy doesn’t reduce sulfur dioxide emissions at all. But the most important conclusion from the study is that wind energy is not “a cost-effective solution for reducing carbon dioxide if carbon is valued at less than $33 per ton.” With the US economy still in recession and unemployment numbers near record levels, Congress cannot, will not, attempt to impose a carbon tax, no matter how small.
The wind industry’s apologists are desperate to dismiss the Bentek study, which is a more thorough version of a similar study the firm did in early 2010.
But the Bentek study is similar to several other studies that have come to almost identical conclusions. For instance, in 2003, a paper presented at the International Energy Workshop in Laxenburg, Austria by a group of Estonian researchers concluded that using traditional power plants to compensate for the highly variable, incurably intermittent electricity produced by wind turbines “eliminates the major part of the expected positive effect of wind energy,” and that “In some cases the environmental gain from the wind energy use was lost almost totally.”
In 2004, the Irish Electricity Supply Board found that as the level of wind capacity increases, “the CO2 emissions actually increase as a direct result of having to cope with the variation of wind-power output.”
A 2008 article published in the journal Energy Policy, James Oswald and his two co-authors concluded that increased use of wind will likely cause utilities to invest in lower-efficiency gas-fired generators that will be switched on and off frequently, a move that further lowers their energy efficiency. Upon publication of the study, Oswald said that carbon dioxide savings from wind power “will be less than expected, because cheaper, less efficient [gas-fired] plant[s] will be used to support these wind power fluctuations. Neither these extra costs nor the increased carbon production are being taken into account in the government figures for wind power.”
In November 2009, Kent Hawkins, a Canadian electrical engineer, published a detailed analysis on the frequency with which gas-fired generators must be cycled on and off in order to back up wind power. Hawkins findings: the frequent switching on and off results in more gas consumption than if there were no wind turbines at all. His analysis suggests that it would be more efficient in terms of carbon dioxide emissions to simply run combined-cycle gas turbines on a continuous basis rather than use wind turbines backed up by gas-fired generators that are constantly being turned on and off. Hawkins concludes that wind power is not an “effective CO2 mitigation” strategy “because of inefficiencies introduced by fast-ramping (inefficient) operation of gas turbines.”
If wind energy doesn’t effectively cut carbon dioxide, then the wind sector has few reasons to exist. The Global Wind Energy Council claims that reducing the amount of carbon dioxide into atmosphere “is the most important environmental benefit from wind power generation.” For its part, the American Wind Energy Association insists that the wind business “could avoid 825 million tons of carbon dioxide annually by 2030.”
That 825 million tons sounds like a lot. It’s not. In 2010, global carbon dioxide emissions totaled 33.1 billion tons. Thus, if the US went on a wind energy binge, and installed thousands of turbines in every available location, doing so might reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by about 2.5%. And that calculation assumes that global carbon dioxide emissions will stay flat over the next two decades. They won’t.
And that leads to the obvious question: if wind energy doesn’t significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions, then why does the industry get such hefty subsidies? The key subsidy is the federal production tax credit of $0.022 for each kilowatt-hour of electricity. That amounts to subsidy of $6.44 per million BTU of energy produced. For comparison, in 2008, the Energy Information Administration reported that subsidies to the oil and gas sector totaled $1.9 billion per year, or about $0.03 per million BTU of energy produced. In other words, subsidies to the wind sector are more than 200 times as great as those given to the oil and gas sector on the basis of per-unit-of-energy produced.
If those fat subsidies go away, then the US wind sector will be stopped dead in its tracks. And for consumers, that should be welcome news.
The wind energy business is the electric sector’s equivalent of the corn ethanol scam: it’s an over-subsidized industry that depends wholly on taxpayer dollars to remain solvent while providing an inferior product to consumers that does little, if anything, to reduce our need for hydrocarbons or cut carbon dioxide emissions. Indeed, it only increases costs and complexity for the utilities, which, in turn, means higher costs for consumers.
A final point: whenever you hear people like Steve Chu complain about “NIMBYs” who don’t want wind turbines on their property, be sure to include billionaires on the list of NIMBYs.
You see, people like Boone Pickens are eager to have wind turbines and transmission lines put up on other people’s land, not theirs. In 2008, Pickens declared that his 68,000-acre ranch located in the Texas Panhandle, one of America’s windiest regions, will not sport a single turbine. “I'm not going to have the windmills on my ranch,” Pickens declared. “They're ugly.”
Robert Bryce is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His fourth book, Power Hungry: The Myths of ‘Green’ Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future was recently issued in paperback.
Link: www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm/8120/T-Boones-Windy-Misadventure-And-the-Global-Backlash-Against...
Operation Dynamo triggers Overlord beaches furore
_
Financial Times
August 1, 2011
by Pilita Clark, Environment Correspondent
Financial Times
August 1, 2011
by Pilita Clark, Environment Correspondent
_For more than 60 years, anyone standing on France’s
D-day landing beaches has been able to stare out to sea and imagine the
bloody launch of the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe.
So when the French government recently confirmed plans to install an array of towering wind turbines in the sea off the Normandy coast, some war veterans were appalled.
“We’ve had calls from Canada, England, the US, saying ‘France cannot do this’,” said Jean-Louis Butré, Paris-based chairman of the European Platform Against Windfarms. “They are upset.”
For Mr Butré, who cheerfully calls himself “the nightmare of the wind turbine industry”, the French project offers fresh ammunition in a battle over wind power that is now facing a new phase of intensity.
Opposition to wind farms is not new in Europe, long the world wind leader with 43 per cent of global generating capacity.
Arguments about the turbines’ threat to passing birds, bats, planes and fish – not to mention human eardrums and scenic views – are well known.
But they are likely to intensify as the European Union strives to meet ambitious renewable energy targets, and countries such as Germany move to phase out nuclear power and double renewable sources of energy.
The 84 gigawatts of installed wind-generating capacity in the EU comes from 70,488 onshore wind turbines, mostly in Germany and Spain, and another 1,132 offshore turbines, according to a European Wind Energy Association report published on Monday. By 2020, that 84 gW would nearly triple to 230 gW under one scenario in the report.
That does not mean the number of turbines would triple: newer, more advanced models can pump out more power than many existing machines.
But it does suggest thousands more turbines will be built every year. And though it might be less contentious if they were built at sea (away from D-day beaches), financial realities mean most will be on land.
As EWEA chief executive, Christian Kjaer, explains, the costs of building offshore farms and connecting them to the electricity grid makes them 70 to 80 per cent per kilowatt hour more expensive than onshore ones.
Those costs should come down but until they do, onshore developers will continue to grapple with opposition groups and what analyst Eduardo Tabbush of Bloomberg New Energy Finance says is a “notoriously cumbersome” planning process in some countries, especially the UK and France.
“A lot of developers have pretty much given up on onshore wind and decided to focus on offshore in the UK,” he says.
Planning delays in the UK are now “intolerable”, according to RWE Innogy, the renewable energy division of Germany’s RWE utility group, which is still trying to build a relatively small 10-turbine wind farm in Essex after a five-year battle that has gone to the High Court.
Smaller UK developers, such as REG Windpower, have been to court trying to put up just one turbine.
“There does seem to be a hardcore element prepared to go further than people were prepared to go five years ago,” said Fraser McLachlan, chief executive of the GCube renewable energy underwriter.
The number of applications for onshore wind farms in England and Wales last year was the lowest in at least five years, according to figures obtained under freedom of information laws by the Scottish commercial law firm McGrigors.
And the number of onshore projects being refused planning permission has jumped from 29 per cent in 2005 to 48 per cent in 2010.
France has also seen a recent drop-off in permits, says Nicolas Wolff, president of the French Wind Energy Association.
“It’s a real concern,” he said. “About five years ago the anti-wind groups said they wouldn’t accept wind farms onshore. Now the same groups say they’re also against offshore wind farms.”
It’s a problem because they are extremely influential; they do slow down the process.”
Mr Wolff says it already takes about four years to get a wind farm installed in France from the early development stages, double the time required in other European countries.
About 1,000 megawatts of wind power capacity has been installed each year in France for the past three years, he said, but he worries about whether that rate can continue.
And if it cannot, the chances of Europe meeting its renewable energy targets grow more difficult.
Link: www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d00ee282-bb5f-11e0-a7c8-00144feabdc0.html
“We’ve had calls from Canada, England, the US, saying ‘France cannot do this’,” said Jean-Louis Butré, Paris-based chairman of the European Platform Against Windfarms. “They are upset.”
For Mr Butré, who cheerfully calls himself “the nightmare of the wind turbine industry”, the French project offers fresh ammunition in a battle over wind power that is now facing a new phase of intensity.
Opposition to wind farms is not new in Europe, long the world wind leader with 43 per cent of global generating capacity.
Arguments about the turbines’ threat to passing birds, bats, planes and fish – not to mention human eardrums and scenic views – are well known.
But they are likely to intensify as the European Union strives to meet ambitious renewable energy targets, and countries such as Germany move to phase out nuclear power and double renewable sources of energy.
The 84 gigawatts of installed wind-generating capacity in the EU comes from 70,488 onshore wind turbines, mostly in Germany and Spain, and another 1,132 offshore turbines, according to a European Wind Energy Association report published on Monday. By 2020, that 84 gW would nearly triple to 230 gW under one scenario in the report.
That does not mean the number of turbines would triple: newer, more advanced models can pump out more power than many existing machines.
But it does suggest thousands more turbines will be built every year. And though it might be less contentious if they were built at sea (away from D-day beaches), financial realities mean most will be on land.
As EWEA chief executive, Christian Kjaer, explains, the costs of building offshore farms and connecting them to the electricity grid makes them 70 to 80 per cent per kilowatt hour more expensive than onshore ones.
Those costs should come down but until they do, onshore developers will continue to grapple with opposition groups and what analyst Eduardo Tabbush of Bloomberg New Energy Finance says is a “notoriously cumbersome” planning process in some countries, especially the UK and France.
“A lot of developers have pretty much given up on onshore wind and decided to focus on offshore in the UK,” he says.
Planning delays in the UK are now “intolerable”, according to RWE Innogy, the renewable energy division of Germany’s RWE utility group, which is still trying to build a relatively small 10-turbine wind farm in Essex after a five-year battle that has gone to the High Court.
Smaller UK developers, such as REG Windpower, have been to court trying to put up just one turbine.
“There does seem to be a hardcore element prepared to go further than people were prepared to go five years ago,” said Fraser McLachlan, chief executive of the GCube renewable energy underwriter.
The number of applications for onshore wind farms in England and Wales last year was the lowest in at least five years, according to figures obtained under freedom of information laws by the Scottish commercial law firm McGrigors.
And the number of onshore projects being refused planning permission has jumped from 29 per cent in 2005 to 48 per cent in 2010.
France has also seen a recent drop-off in permits, says Nicolas Wolff, president of the French Wind Energy Association.
“It’s a real concern,” he said. “About five years ago the anti-wind groups said they wouldn’t accept wind farms onshore. Now the same groups say they’re also against offshore wind farms.”
It’s a problem because they are extremely influential; they do slow down the process.”
Mr Wolff says it already takes about four years to get a wind farm installed in France from the early development stages, double the time required in other European countries.
About 1,000 megawatts of wind power capacity has been installed each year in France for the past three years, he said, but he worries about whether that rate can continue.
And if it cannot, the chances of Europe meeting its renewable energy targets grow more difficult.
Link: www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d00ee282-bb5f-11e0-a7c8-00144feabdc0.html
Das neue Natursterben
__8. Januar 2011
von Roland Tichy
Mit der Natur ist das so eine Sache - unberührt gibt es sie nicht mehr, und deshalb retten sie alle. Das könnte sie aber endgültig zerstören.
Ohne menschliche Eingriffe wäre Deutschland immer noch von dichten Laubwäldern bedeckt; durch Unterholz und Farne bräche gelegentlich eine Rotte Wildschweine, in den Wipfeln wäre keine Ruh'. Der berühmte deutsche Wald ist eher arm an Tier- und Pflanzenarten. Immer wieder hat die Umgestaltung der Landschaft auch geistesgeschichtliche Veränderungen provoziert: Der Verlust des Waldes sorgte für eine überschäumende Naturromantik; gegen die Verstädterung und Industrialisierung zogen sozialdemokratische Naturfreunde, libertäre Wandervögel, bürgerliche Wandervereine und eine völkische Bewegung in die „freie“ Natur hinaus. Das „Waldsterben“ der Siebzigerjahre war der Wendepunkt hin zu einer Ökologisierung des Bewusstseins, das von den Rändern in das Zentrum von Politik und Wirtschaft wucherte. Das ist gut so, denn der Natur- und Ressourcenverbrauch plündert den Blauen Planeten, von dem wir kein zweites Exemplar im Rucksack haben. Umso erstaunlicher ist, dass die jüngste Phase der Naturzerstörung nicht thematisiert wird: die Ökoindustrialisierung Deutschlands im Zeichen der erneuerbaren Energien, die Naturlandschaften nicht nur nachhaltig verändert, sondern auch so schnell wie nie zuvor.
Bis auf wenige Kilometer ist bereits die gesamte Nordseeküste verspargelt – riesige Windkrafttürme mit gigantischen Rotoren beherrschen den Horizont. Auch in den Mittelgebirgen schießen die Betonspargel in den Himmel, selbst der Hochschwarzwald bleibt nicht verschont. Dass die Gemeinde Waging, in der einst der legendäre Grüne Sepp Daxenberger Bürgermeister war, sich dagegen wehrt, erinnert an den Widerstand des kleinen gallischen Dorfes im Asterix-Comic. Dass der Tübinger Grünen-OB Boris Palmer mit seinen Stadtwerken in Windparks in der Nordsee investiert, entspricht mehr dem neuen Ökozeitgeist: hinaus aufs Meer, wo Bürgerinitiativen keinen Zulauf finden. Wir schützen ferne Korallenriffe, aber verjagen Zugvögel. Rund 8000 Kilometer neue Windstromautobahnen von wenigstens 90 Meter Breite sollen Deutschland von Nord nach Süd zerschneiden. Gerade ging der Tauberlandpark ans Netz – was romantisch klingt, ist ein 80 Fußballfelder großes Meer aus Solarspiegeln, das Strom für gerade mal eine Kleinstadt liefern soll. Heute sehen in Süddeutschland viele altehrwürdige Bauernscheunen aus wie notgelandete Ufos – total solarverspiegelt. Kein Winkel bleibt verschont vom Eifer der Strombauern: An der Alz, dem lange Zeit letzten unverbauten Fluss Bayerns, surren neuerdings Kleinwasserkraftwerke vor einer Beton-Staumauer. Die Äcker Nord- und Mitteldeutschlands verwandeln sich derweil in Rapsfelder für Biodiesel – grellgelb blühende Monokulturen, in denen Bienen wohl nur noch mit Sonnenbrille überleben. Der Naturbrennstoff Holz wächst in Form neuer Pappelwälder – aber es sind nicht die himmelhoch rauschenden Pappeln unserer Imagination. Der Wald besteht vielmehr aus Gestrüpp, das nach drei Jahren automatisch „geerntet“ wird.
Die herrschende ökologistische Lehre geht davon aus, dass Kohle, Öl und Gas die größten Posten in der deutschen Importrechnung sind – und irgendwann sei der Vorrat verbrannt, das Klima ruiniert. Der Naturschutz der vergangenen vier Jahrzehnte müsse daher zwingend der Energie-Industrialisierung geopfert werden. Über das Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz fließen Hunderte von Milliarden Euro in Formen der Energiegewinnung, die auf absehbare Zeit extrem unwirtschaftlich bleiben. Was lange Spielerei der Ökobewegten war, ist heute eine Subventionsmaschine für den ökoindustriellen Komplex, der flächendeckend die Natur dem Geschäft mit dem Klimawandel unterwirft; dominiert wird dieser von Industriegiganten, die sich auf diese Weise auch noch ein grünes Mäntelein umhängen.
Es wäre an der Zeit, eine neue Ökologiebewegung zu gründen, die gegen diese Ökoprofitbewegung zu Felde zieht und realistische Kosten-Nutzen-Abwägungen trifft, statt eine subventionierte Ideologiewirtschaft zu betreiben.
Link: www.wiwo.de/blogs/chefsache/2011/01/08/das-neue-natursterben
von Roland Tichy
Mit der Natur ist das so eine Sache - unberührt gibt es sie nicht mehr, und deshalb retten sie alle. Das könnte sie aber endgültig zerstören.
Ohne menschliche Eingriffe wäre Deutschland immer noch von dichten Laubwäldern bedeckt; durch Unterholz und Farne bräche gelegentlich eine Rotte Wildschweine, in den Wipfeln wäre keine Ruh'. Der berühmte deutsche Wald ist eher arm an Tier- und Pflanzenarten. Immer wieder hat die Umgestaltung der Landschaft auch geistesgeschichtliche Veränderungen provoziert: Der Verlust des Waldes sorgte für eine überschäumende Naturromantik; gegen die Verstädterung und Industrialisierung zogen sozialdemokratische Naturfreunde, libertäre Wandervögel, bürgerliche Wandervereine und eine völkische Bewegung in die „freie“ Natur hinaus. Das „Waldsterben“ der Siebzigerjahre war der Wendepunkt hin zu einer Ökologisierung des Bewusstseins, das von den Rändern in das Zentrum von Politik und Wirtschaft wucherte. Das ist gut so, denn der Natur- und Ressourcenverbrauch plündert den Blauen Planeten, von dem wir kein zweites Exemplar im Rucksack haben. Umso erstaunlicher ist, dass die jüngste Phase der Naturzerstörung nicht thematisiert wird: die Ökoindustrialisierung Deutschlands im Zeichen der erneuerbaren Energien, die Naturlandschaften nicht nur nachhaltig verändert, sondern auch so schnell wie nie zuvor.
Bis auf wenige Kilometer ist bereits die gesamte Nordseeküste verspargelt – riesige Windkrafttürme mit gigantischen Rotoren beherrschen den Horizont. Auch in den Mittelgebirgen schießen die Betonspargel in den Himmel, selbst der Hochschwarzwald bleibt nicht verschont. Dass die Gemeinde Waging, in der einst der legendäre Grüne Sepp Daxenberger Bürgermeister war, sich dagegen wehrt, erinnert an den Widerstand des kleinen gallischen Dorfes im Asterix-Comic. Dass der Tübinger Grünen-OB Boris Palmer mit seinen Stadtwerken in Windparks in der Nordsee investiert, entspricht mehr dem neuen Ökozeitgeist: hinaus aufs Meer, wo Bürgerinitiativen keinen Zulauf finden. Wir schützen ferne Korallenriffe, aber verjagen Zugvögel. Rund 8000 Kilometer neue Windstromautobahnen von wenigstens 90 Meter Breite sollen Deutschland von Nord nach Süd zerschneiden. Gerade ging der Tauberlandpark ans Netz – was romantisch klingt, ist ein 80 Fußballfelder großes Meer aus Solarspiegeln, das Strom für gerade mal eine Kleinstadt liefern soll. Heute sehen in Süddeutschland viele altehrwürdige Bauernscheunen aus wie notgelandete Ufos – total solarverspiegelt. Kein Winkel bleibt verschont vom Eifer der Strombauern: An der Alz, dem lange Zeit letzten unverbauten Fluss Bayerns, surren neuerdings Kleinwasserkraftwerke vor einer Beton-Staumauer. Die Äcker Nord- und Mitteldeutschlands verwandeln sich derweil in Rapsfelder für Biodiesel – grellgelb blühende Monokulturen, in denen Bienen wohl nur noch mit Sonnenbrille überleben. Der Naturbrennstoff Holz wächst in Form neuer Pappelwälder – aber es sind nicht die himmelhoch rauschenden Pappeln unserer Imagination. Der Wald besteht vielmehr aus Gestrüpp, das nach drei Jahren automatisch „geerntet“ wird.
Die herrschende ökologistische Lehre geht davon aus, dass Kohle, Öl und Gas die größten Posten in der deutschen Importrechnung sind – und irgendwann sei der Vorrat verbrannt, das Klima ruiniert. Der Naturschutz der vergangenen vier Jahrzehnte müsse daher zwingend der Energie-Industrialisierung geopfert werden. Über das Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz fließen Hunderte von Milliarden Euro in Formen der Energiegewinnung, die auf absehbare Zeit extrem unwirtschaftlich bleiben. Was lange Spielerei der Ökobewegten war, ist heute eine Subventionsmaschine für den ökoindustriellen Komplex, der flächendeckend die Natur dem Geschäft mit dem Klimawandel unterwirft; dominiert wird dieser von Industriegiganten, die sich auf diese Weise auch noch ein grünes Mäntelein umhängen.
Es wäre an der Zeit, eine neue Ökologiebewegung zu gründen, die gegen diese Ökoprofitbewegung zu Felde zieht und realistische Kosten-Nutzen-Abwägungen trifft, statt eine subventionierte Ideologiewirtschaft zu betreiben.
Link: www.wiwo.de/blogs/chefsache/2011/01/08/das-neue-natursterben
Wind farm opponents call for European moratorium
_BRUSSELS, May 26 (Reuters) - Europe should halt the construction of any more wind farms until it has further examined their impact on wildlife, landscapes and the value of nearby houses, a new anti-wind farm group said on Tuesday.
"Wind farms represent the worst-case scenario," the European Platform Against Windfarms (EPAW) said in a letter to European Union commissioners and parliamentarians, in which it called for a moratorium on all wind projects.
"EPAW considers it unacceptable that European institutions should promote the despoiling of the European landscape ... with thousands of wind farms stretching from Lapland to Gibraltar," said the pressure group, founded in October.
But wind industry officials said EPAW had failed to take account of the true danger of climate change and the slow growth of other renewable alternatives to fossil fuels.
Wind is expected to play a key role in the European Union's ambition of getting a fifth of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, up from about 7 percent today.
Huge EU-backed projects such as a North Sea supergrid, linking thousands of turbines, are also designed to bolster EU energy security by curbing its heavy dependence on gas imports from Russia.
The complaints of EPAW, an alliance of 340 local pressure groups, are not new. They say wind farms are ugly, can drive down the price of neighbouring houses and damage local ecology.
But it is the first time opponents have united at an EU level.
EPAW said the wind industry is not economical without being subsidised by the taxpayer, an assertion the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) rejects.
"Wind energy is an intelligent investment that puts EU citizens' money to work in their own economies rather than transferring it to a handful of fuel-exporting nations," EWEA Chief Executive Christian Kjaer told Reuters recently.
(Reporting by Pete Harrison, Editing by Peter Blackburn)
Tue May 26, 2009 1:12pm EDT
"Wind farms represent the worst-case scenario," the European Platform Against Windfarms (EPAW) said in a letter to European Union commissioners and parliamentarians, in which it called for a moratorium on all wind projects.
"EPAW considers it unacceptable that European institutions should promote the despoiling of the European landscape ... with thousands of wind farms stretching from Lapland to Gibraltar," said the pressure group, founded in October.
But wind industry officials said EPAW had failed to take account of the true danger of climate change and the slow growth of other renewable alternatives to fossil fuels.
Wind is expected to play a key role in the European Union's ambition of getting a fifth of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, up from about 7 percent today.
Huge EU-backed projects such as a North Sea supergrid, linking thousands of turbines, are also designed to bolster EU energy security by curbing its heavy dependence on gas imports from Russia.
The complaints of EPAW, an alliance of 340 local pressure groups, are not new. They say wind farms are ugly, can drive down the price of neighbouring houses and damage local ecology.
But it is the first time opponents have united at an EU level.
EPAW said the wind industry is not economical without being subsidised by the taxpayer, an assertion the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) rejects.
"Wind energy is an intelligent investment that puts EU citizens' money to work in their own economies rather than transferring it to a handful of fuel-exporting nations," EWEA Chief Executive Christian Kjaer told Reuters recently.
(Reporting by Pete Harrison, Editing by Peter Blackburn)
Tue May 26, 2009 1:12pm EDT
Clean Energy Splits France
__
It's Carbon vs. Countryside in Environmental Battle Over Plan for Windmills Near Coastal Shrine
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 11, 2009
MONT-SAINT-MICHEL, France -- Over the centuries, this iconic shrine on the Normandy coast has seen more than its share of battles. The latest skirmish involves not knights in shining armor, but opposing camps of environmentalists, jousting over the wisdom of installing windmill farms on nearby hillsides to turn sea breezes into clean energy.
Although played out in a medieval setting, it is a conflict of the times -- and in many ways a struggle between two good causes. On one side are those who want to reduce carbon emissions by drawing electricity out of wind. On the other stand equally dedicated ecologists who say the sight of 21st-century windmills churning above the tidal flats around Mont-Saint-Michel would detract from one of the world's most striking and best-known monuments.
"Mont-Saint-Michel represents 13 centuries of history," said Corinne Gressier, a nurse who lives in the ridge-top village of Argouges, where some of the disputed windmills would rise. "Excuse me, but if we can't prevent this site from being ruined, I don't know what to tell you."
The project has the support of local officials and President Nicolas Sarkozy's government. For these advocates of the environment, it would be a worthy contribution to France's program to expand its 2,500 windmills producing 4,500 megawatts a year to 8,500 producing 25,000 megawatts by 2020.
A push to curb climate change by slashing carbon emissions has gained ground across Europe. In December, the European Union adopted stringent goals to limit greenhouse gases. Last week, it recommended that its 27 member countries invest an additional $70 billion in clean energy over the next decade, including tripling windmill construction to produce up to 20 percent of Europe's electricity.
But the potential political impact of environmental concerns has become particularly clear in France, where Green party candidates did surprisingly well in European elections in June. Since then, Sarkozy has intensified efforts to identify his center-right government with environmental themes, seeking to lure Green voters from their natural alliance with the opposition Socialists.
The activists here have no quarrel with the quest for clean energy, but, they argue, putting windmills on the ridgeline above Mont-Saint-Michel is not the way to do it. Backed by allies around the country, they have mounted a campaign to prove that the windmills -- even at 10 miles away -- would desecrate the vista for the more than 3 million visitors who come every year to admire the rock-top monastery rising from tidewater more than 500 feet into the sky.
In some ways, the activists are tilting at windmills. Mont-Saint-Michel's mayor, Eric Vannier, has remained aloof from the struggle, more concerned about an engineering project to flush silt from the tidal flats. A letter to the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which has listed Mont-Saint-Michel as a World Heritage Site, went unanswered. Sarkozy's ecology minister, Jean-Louis Borloo, has espoused windmills as essential to the effort to reduce carbon emissions.
Still, when about 600 people, Gressier among them, gathered below the monastery late last month to protest the plan, they gained national attention for their cause. More concretely, they pooled their money with national environmental groups and hired lawyers to sue the local government. A court ruling is expected in the spring.
"If we win, we will have saved Mont-Saint-Michel. They'll have to put everything back beyond 30 kilometers," about 18 1/2 miles, said Gressier, who runs a group named Windmills: Turbulences. "But if we lose, it's over."
In general, French law bans windmills closer than 1,500 feet from historical monuments. The case before the court in Nantes concerns plans to erect three 300-foot-high windmills on farmland in Argouges, on a green plateau a little more than 10 miles southeast of Mont-Saint-Michel.
At that distance, tourists at the monument would see only tiny blades peeking over the horizon, André Antolini, president of the industry's Renewal Energies Syndicate, told reporters last month. "Our adversaries are not serious," he added.
Mayor Louis Lemouland of Argouges agreed. In a communication to his village's 600 residents, he said the planned windmills will adhere to all government regulations, adding that the turning blades would "not have a significant visual impact on the monument" because they would "melt into the horizon."
But for Gressier and a national alliance of environmental groups, the three windmills at Argouges, if permitted, would be just the beginning. Several companies have drawn up plans for an arc of 80 towers in farming communities all along the ridgeline, they said, which would produce a horizon of whirring blades beyond the monument -- tiny at that distance, perhaps, but visible nonetheless.
Farmers and their village councils, often one and the same, tend to embrace proposals to install windmills in their fields, the groups said, because farmers get stipends for use of the land and villages get tax revenue on income from electricity, which is sold to the national grid at favorable prices by the private companies that build the windmills.
"It's a flourishing business," said Jean-Louis Butré, president of the Durable Environment Federation in Paris.
Although the fight in Argouges revolves around Mont-Saint-Michel, Butré's group has organized nationwide against Sarkozy's effort to expand the use of windmills as a way to reduce carbon emissions. The mills deface the landscape everywhere, he said, and are not an economical way to reach Europe's clean-energy goals.
France already gets nearly 80 percent of its energy from nuclear reactors, Butré explained, and draws another 12 percent from hydraulic generators. That leaves about 8 percent produced by oil, coal, natural gas, solar panels or windmills. If the government wanted to fill that gap with windmills, Butré noted, it would have to install so many that they would be part of the scenery in up to a third of the country.
Butré challenged Sarkozy's policy last year in a book titled "Fraud: Why windmills are a danger for France." Former president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, a champion of nuclear power, provided a preface in which he called windmills a false solution.
"It is a question of denouncing an unacceptable waste of public funds, a deceptive public discourse, an often questionable business," Giscard said.
He added: "It is also a question of saving the landscapes of France, our countryside and soon, our seashore, which is also threatened."
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/10/AR2009101001901.html
It's Carbon vs. Countryside in Environmental Battle Over Plan for Windmills Near Coastal Shrine
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 11, 2009
MONT-SAINT-MICHEL, France -- Over the centuries, this iconic shrine on the Normandy coast has seen more than its share of battles. The latest skirmish involves not knights in shining armor, but opposing camps of environmentalists, jousting over the wisdom of installing windmill farms on nearby hillsides to turn sea breezes into clean energy.
Although played out in a medieval setting, it is a conflict of the times -- and in many ways a struggle between two good causes. On one side are those who want to reduce carbon emissions by drawing electricity out of wind. On the other stand equally dedicated ecologists who say the sight of 21st-century windmills churning above the tidal flats around Mont-Saint-Michel would detract from one of the world's most striking and best-known monuments.
"Mont-Saint-Michel represents 13 centuries of history," said Corinne Gressier, a nurse who lives in the ridge-top village of Argouges, where some of the disputed windmills would rise. "Excuse me, but if we can't prevent this site from being ruined, I don't know what to tell you."
The project has the support of local officials and President Nicolas Sarkozy's government. For these advocates of the environment, it would be a worthy contribution to France's program to expand its 2,500 windmills producing 4,500 megawatts a year to 8,500 producing 25,000 megawatts by 2020.
A push to curb climate change by slashing carbon emissions has gained ground across Europe. In December, the European Union adopted stringent goals to limit greenhouse gases. Last week, it recommended that its 27 member countries invest an additional $70 billion in clean energy over the next decade, including tripling windmill construction to produce up to 20 percent of Europe's electricity.
But the potential political impact of environmental concerns has become particularly clear in France, where Green party candidates did surprisingly well in European elections in June. Since then, Sarkozy has intensified efforts to identify his center-right government with environmental themes, seeking to lure Green voters from their natural alliance with the opposition Socialists.
The activists here have no quarrel with the quest for clean energy, but, they argue, putting windmills on the ridgeline above Mont-Saint-Michel is not the way to do it. Backed by allies around the country, they have mounted a campaign to prove that the windmills -- even at 10 miles away -- would desecrate the vista for the more than 3 million visitors who come every year to admire the rock-top monastery rising from tidewater more than 500 feet into the sky.
In some ways, the activists are tilting at windmills. Mont-Saint-Michel's mayor, Eric Vannier, has remained aloof from the struggle, more concerned about an engineering project to flush silt from the tidal flats. A letter to the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which has listed Mont-Saint-Michel as a World Heritage Site, went unanswered. Sarkozy's ecology minister, Jean-Louis Borloo, has espoused windmills as essential to the effort to reduce carbon emissions.
Still, when about 600 people, Gressier among them, gathered below the monastery late last month to protest the plan, they gained national attention for their cause. More concretely, they pooled their money with national environmental groups and hired lawyers to sue the local government. A court ruling is expected in the spring.
"If we win, we will have saved Mont-Saint-Michel. They'll have to put everything back beyond 30 kilometers," about 18 1/2 miles, said Gressier, who runs a group named Windmills: Turbulences. "But if we lose, it's over."
In general, French law bans windmills closer than 1,500 feet from historical monuments. The case before the court in Nantes concerns plans to erect three 300-foot-high windmills on farmland in Argouges, on a green plateau a little more than 10 miles southeast of Mont-Saint-Michel.
At that distance, tourists at the monument would see only tiny blades peeking over the horizon, André Antolini, president of the industry's Renewal Energies Syndicate, told reporters last month. "Our adversaries are not serious," he added.
Mayor Louis Lemouland of Argouges agreed. In a communication to his village's 600 residents, he said the planned windmills will adhere to all government regulations, adding that the turning blades would "not have a significant visual impact on the monument" because they would "melt into the horizon."
But for Gressier and a national alliance of environmental groups, the three windmills at Argouges, if permitted, would be just the beginning. Several companies have drawn up plans for an arc of 80 towers in farming communities all along the ridgeline, they said, which would produce a horizon of whirring blades beyond the monument -- tiny at that distance, perhaps, but visible nonetheless.
Farmers and their village councils, often one and the same, tend to embrace proposals to install windmills in their fields, the groups said, because farmers get stipends for use of the land and villages get tax revenue on income from electricity, which is sold to the national grid at favorable prices by the private companies that build the windmills.
"It's a flourishing business," said Jean-Louis Butré, president of the Durable Environment Federation in Paris.
Although the fight in Argouges revolves around Mont-Saint-Michel, Butré's group has organized nationwide against Sarkozy's effort to expand the use of windmills as a way to reduce carbon emissions. The mills deface the landscape everywhere, he said, and are not an economical way to reach Europe's clean-energy goals.
France already gets nearly 80 percent of its energy from nuclear reactors, Butré explained, and draws another 12 percent from hydraulic generators. That leaves about 8 percent produced by oil, coal, natural gas, solar panels or windmills. If the government wanted to fill that gap with windmills, Butré noted, it would have to install so many that they would be part of the scenery in up to a third of the country.
Butré challenged Sarkozy's policy last year in a book titled "Fraud: Why windmills are a danger for France." Former president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, a champion of nuclear power, provided a preface in which he called windmills a false solution.
"It is a question of denouncing an unacceptable waste of public funds, a deceptive public discourse, an often questionable business," Giscard said.
He added: "It is also a question of saving the landscapes of France, our countryside and soon, our seashore, which is also threatened."
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/10/AR2009101001901.html
Top executives arrested in Italy wind farm probe
_Financial Times
By Guy Dinmore in Rome
Published: November 12 2009 02:00 | Last updated: November 12 2009 02:00
Excerpt: "The Financial Times was told in April that a large number of wind farms had been built with public subsidies but had never functioned."
Italian finance police, mounting an operation code named "Gone with the wind", yesterday said they had arrested two of the country's most prominent businessmen in the wind energy sector.
Police said the charges related to fraud involved in obtaining public subsidies to construct wind farms. They are also investigating the sale of wind farms to foreign companies.
Oreste Vigorito, head of the IVPC energy company and president of Italy's National Association of Wind Energy, was arrested on Tuesday in Naples. Vito Nicastri, a Sicilian business associate, was arrested in Alcamo, Sicily.
Two other men were arrested in Sicily and the Naples area, while 11 others were charged but not arrested.
IVPC, a leading constructor and operator of wind farms in Italy, did not return calls asking for comment. Mr Vigorito is also well known as president of the Benevento football club.
"Gone with the wind", mounted by the finance ministry's anti-fraud police, started in 2007 and began by blocking public subsidies worth €9.4m ($14m, £8.4m) granted by the ministry for economic development. Last year police confiscated seven wind farms with 185 turbines in Sicily linked to IVPC.
Anti-Mafia prosecutors in Sicily have launched a parallel investigation. The Financial Times was told in April that a large number of wind farms had been built with public subsidies but had never functioned.
Police said yesterday they had sent requests for documentation to five foreign companies - two in the Netherlands and three in Spain - that were linked to IVPC. Other companies in Ireland and the UK, said to be Italian affiliates of IVPC, have been asked by Italian authorities to provide information.
Police also said they were carrying out checks on 12 companies in Italy, including nine with company names that are variations of IP Maestrale and which share the same street name and number as IVPC in Avellino, near Naples.
International Power of the UK, the largest operator of wind farms in Italy last year with a market share of about 15 per cent, said it owned the IP Maestrale companies.
International Power acquired its Maestrale portfolio of wind farms in 2007 for €1.8bn from Trinergy, an Irish company that had bought them from IVPC two years earlier. Some of the projects had been developed by Mr Nicastri, although IP told the FT in April it had no direct relationship with him.
International Power, which has not been charged with any wrongdoing, said in London yesterday: "We are aware of the arrests made in Italy yesterday. Criminal proceedings in Italy are conducted on a confidential basis and we will not make any comment on either the arrests or the individuals involved at this time."
Mr Nicastri told the FT in April he had developed the "majority" of Sicily's wind farms. He had then sold some of the projects to IVPC for further sale to foreign companies.
All were functioning, he said at the time. His office declined to comment yesterday.
Additional reporting by Giulia Segreti
Link: www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e219fa7e-cf2b-11de-8a4b-00144feabdc0.html
By Guy Dinmore in Rome
Published: November 12 2009 02:00 | Last updated: November 12 2009 02:00
Excerpt: "The Financial Times was told in April that a large number of wind farms had been built with public subsidies but had never functioned."
Italian finance police, mounting an operation code named "Gone with the wind", yesterday said they had arrested two of the country's most prominent businessmen in the wind energy sector.
Police said the charges related to fraud involved in obtaining public subsidies to construct wind farms. They are also investigating the sale of wind farms to foreign companies.
Oreste Vigorito, head of the IVPC energy company and president of Italy's National Association of Wind Energy, was arrested on Tuesday in Naples. Vito Nicastri, a Sicilian business associate, was arrested in Alcamo, Sicily.
Two other men were arrested in Sicily and the Naples area, while 11 others were charged but not arrested.
IVPC, a leading constructor and operator of wind farms in Italy, did not return calls asking for comment. Mr Vigorito is also well known as president of the Benevento football club.
"Gone with the wind", mounted by the finance ministry's anti-fraud police, started in 2007 and began by blocking public subsidies worth €9.4m ($14m, £8.4m) granted by the ministry for economic development. Last year police confiscated seven wind farms with 185 turbines in Sicily linked to IVPC.
Anti-Mafia prosecutors in Sicily have launched a parallel investigation. The Financial Times was told in April that a large number of wind farms had been built with public subsidies but had never functioned.
Police said yesterday they had sent requests for documentation to five foreign companies - two in the Netherlands and three in Spain - that were linked to IVPC. Other companies in Ireland and the UK, said to be Italian affiliates of IVPC, have been asked by Italian authorities to provide information.
Police also said they were carrying out checks on 12 companies in Italy, including nine with company names that are variations of IP Maestrale and which share the same street name and number as IVPC in Avellino, near Naples.
International Power of the UK, the largest operator of wind farms in Italy last year with a market share of about 15 per cent, said it owned the IP Maestrale companies.
International Power acquired its Maestrale portfolio of wind farms in 2007 for €1.8bn from Trinergy, an Irish company that had bought them from IVPC two years earlier. Some of the projects had been developed by Mr Nicastri, although IP told the FT in April it had no direct relationship with him.
International Power, which has not been charged with any wrongdoing, said in London yesterday: "We are aware of the arrests made in Italy yesterday. Criminal proceedings in Italy are conducted on a confidential basis and we will not make any comment on either the arrests or the individuals involved at this time."
Mr Nicastri told the FT in April he had developed the "majority" of Sicily's wind farms. He had then sold some of the projects to IVPC for further sale to foreign companies.
All were functioning, he said at the time. His office declined to comment yesterday.
Additional reporting by Giulia Segreti
Link: www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e219fa7e-cf2b-11de-8a4b-00144feabdc0.html
Neighbours on the barricades against wind turbines in Denmark
Danish protests
By Peter Skeel Hjorth, journalist. July 24, 2010
The postcard image of Denmark in harmony with wind turbines has shattered.
Protests from more and more Danish neighbours of wind turbines on land have stopped wind power projects and made local politicians reluctant to approve licences. This is evident from a front page article in yesterday's edition of Jyllandsposten which is one of the country's biggest national newspapers.
Denmark has up till now systematically been highlighted as the good example where the population live in harmony with more than 5000 wind turbines that produce 20 per cent of the country's electricity. The postcard image of Denmark with Vestas and Siemens as the main producers of wind turbines has shattered.
Several places around the country see acrimonious conflicts between the authorities and neighbours of wind turbines, writes Jyllandsposten.
The case about a national test centre is not the only example of growing resistance. With a broad majority behind it in the Danish parliament the government will build a test centre for seven 250 meter high sea wind turbines in Northern Jutland and clear 5 square kilometres of forest area to create the right wind conditions. For more information click here www.nationalttestcenter.dk
One of the strongest critics of Danish wind power, the well-known journalist and columnistr Claes Kastholm Hansen, calls it a democratic scandal.
“People are thoroughly fed up having their property devalued and their sleep disturbed by big wind turbines 130 and up to 200 meters high” , says the chairperson of a new Danish national association to Jyllandsposten.
The association was started about a year ago. 40 Danish protest groups have already joined, and more are on their way. Several places protests have put a stop to the erection of wind turbines or made the council exercise restraint, writes the newspaper. On Sealand the Swedish energy giant Vattenfal has been forced to abandon the erection of three huge wind turbines. A narrow majority in the local council voted no to two of them after severe pressure from protesting neighbours.
The article in Jyllandsposten jp.dk/indland/article2131636.ece
PSH 24.7.2010
By Peter Skeel Hjorth, journalist. July 24, 2010
The postcard image of Denmark in harmony with wind turbines has shattered.
Protests from more and more Danish neighbours of wind turbines on land have stopped wind power projects and made local politicians reluctant to approve licences. This is evident from a front page article in yesterday's edition of Jyllandsposten which is one of the country's biggest national newspapers.
Denmark has up till now systematically been highlighted as the good example where the population live in harmony with more than 5000 wind turbines that produce 20 per cent of the country's electricity. The postcard image of Denmark with Vestas and Siemens as the main producers of wind turbines has shattered.
Several places around the country see acrimonious conflicts between the authorities and neighbours of wind turbines, writes Jyllandsposten.
The case about a national test centre is not the only example of growing resistance. With a broad majority behind it in the Danish parliament the government will build a test centre for seven 250 meter high sea wind turbines in Northern Jutland and clear 5 square kilometres of forest area to create the right wind conditions. For more information click here www.nationalttestcenter.dk
One of the strongest critics of Danish wind power, the well-known journalist and columnistr Claes Kastholm Hansen, calls it a democratic scandal.
“People are thoroughly fed up having their property devalued and their sleep disturbed by big wind turbines 130 and up to 200 meters high” , says the chairperson of a new Danish national association to Jyllandsposten.
The association was started about a year ago. 40 Danish protest groups have already joined, and more are on their way. Several places protests have put a stop to the erection of wind turbines or made the council exercise restraint, writes the newspaper. On Sealand the Swedish energy giant Vattenfal has been forced to abandon the erection of three huge wind turbines. A narrow majority in the local council voted no to two of them after severe pressure from protesting neighbours.
The article in Jyllandsposten jp.dk/indland/article2131636.ece
PSH 24.7.2010
Assault on Sweden's nature and quality of life
__By Peter Skeel Hjorth, journalist
August 13, 2010
Having applied for the permission to erect 10 gigantic wind turbines near the little town of Färingtofta in Northern Scania, the world's second largest energy conglomerate has taken the first step in a process that will ultimately cause the destruction of much of what people like so much about Sweden: its quiet, undisturbed forests and rural landscapes.
E.ON's machines, reaching 180 meters in the sky, will stand out well above the tree line, creating a visual pollution for many miles around and disturb the nearby habitations with noise, low frequency sounds, shadow flickers and flashing lights.
At Färingtofta E.ON seeks to put to test the legal noise limit, which in Sweden is 40 dBA for the nearest habitations. A concerned resident telephoned Henrik Malmberg, E.ON's group manager for wind power planning in the Nordic countries. He was told: "we are fully aware that they will create disturbances. However, we want to test if the disturbances are within the legal limits."
To the very limit In the local community, there is strong opposition to the project. E.ON is fully aware of this: Henrik Malmberg said so at the opening of an information meeting for affected residents in March 2010. It was made abundantly clear by the group manager that the only restrictions to be considered would be the legal ones. EON is a business, not a charitable organisation: to them, implanting 180-meter-high wind turbines only 700 meters from people's homes is business as usual. In an e-mail, Mr Malmberg makes no bones about the fact that they will be seen and heard but refers to the present laws which say that disturbances at that distance are acceptable.
The wind power industry knows very well that wind turbines are noisy and disturbing. The New York Times reported a case in the US where the American company Caithness Energy offered 5,000 dollars to neighbours in the small town of Lone, Oregon, for renouncing their rights to complain or sue the company regarding nuisance caused by the wind turbines.
In the forest around Färingtofta, it is so quiet one can “hear the silence”. There are very few areas like this in Southern Sweden. The noise disturbance from the ten giant turbines is calculated to be 35-40 dBA spread over about 22 square kilometers. If planning approval is granted as submitted, the closest habitations will be at the very limit of the 40 dBA zone. In real life, however, they might be subject to sounds exceeding 40 dBA.
Trial of strength E.ON wants to test and enlarge the limit of what is permissible under Swedish environmental laws, says a centrally placed source at the multinational, mainly German-owned company. According to the source it is of particular importance to force through the Färingtofta project because of the strong resistance from the local community.
If this strategy is successful, the company and the wind power industry will have a clear path to install windfarms close to habitations as well as in quiet natural and undisturbed landscapes in the rest of Sweden. The neighbours will have to pay the price, as they are doing in the rest of Europe.
Thus, the stage is set for a trial of strength between the world's second largest energy company and the inhabitants of a small community. It is easy to imagine the outcome, especially as local politicians, who would have the right to veto the project, do not seem to be minded to do so.
E.ON is making a special effort to win this battle: the sheer volume of the application they submitted shows how important it is to the company. With its hundreds of pages, it is considerably more comprehensive than others. In the forests around Färingtofta, E.ON wants to break the sound barrier.
psh 13.8.2010
_
August 13, 2010
Having applied for the permission to erect 10 gigantic wind turbines near the little town of Färingtofta in Northern Scania, the world's second largest energy conglomerate has taken the first step in a process that will ultimately cause the destruction of much of what people like so much about Sweden: its quiet, undisturbed forests and rural landscapes.
E.ON's machines, reaching 180 meters in the sky, will stand out well above the tree line, creating a visual pollution for many miles around and disturb the nearby habitations with noise, low frequency sounds, shadow flickers and flashing lights.
At Färingtofta E.ON seeks to put to test the legal noise limit, which in Sweden is 40 dBA for the nearest habitations. A concerned resident telephoned Henrik Malmberg, E.ON's group manager for wind power planning in the Nordic countries. He was told: "we are fully aware that they will create disturbances. However, we want to test if the disturbances are within the legal limits."
To the very limit In the local community, there is strong opposition to the project. E.ON is fully aware of this: Henrik Malmberg said so at the opening of an information meeting for affected residents in March 2010. It was made abundantly clear by the group manager that the only restrictions to be considered would be the legal ones. EON is a business, not a charitable organisation: to them, implanting 180-meter-high wind turbines only 700 meters from people's homes is business as usual. In an e-mail, Mr Malmberg makes no bones about the fact that they will be seen and heard but refers to the present laws which say that disturbances at that distance are acceptable.
The wind power industry knows very well that wind turbines are noisy and disturbing. The New York Times reported a case in the US where the American company Caithness Energy offered 5,000 dollars to neighbours in the small town of Lone, Oregon, for renouncing their rights to complain or sue the company regarding nuisance caused by the wind turbines.
In the forest around Färingtofta, it is so quiet one can “hear the silence”. There are very few areas like this in Southern Sweden. The noise disturbance from the ten giant turbines is calculated to be 35-40 dBA spread over about 22 square kilometers. If planning approval is granted as submitted, the closest habitations will be at the very limit of the 40 dBA zone. In real life, however, they might be subject to sounds exceeding 40 dBA.
Trial of strength E.ON wants to test and enlarge the limit of what is permissible under Swedish environmental laws, says a centrally placed source at the multinational, mainly German-owned company. According to the source it is of particular importance to force through the Färingtofta project because of the strong resistance from the local community.
If this strategy is successful, the company and the wind power industry will have a clear path to install windfarms close to habitations as well as in quiet natural and undisturbed landscapes in the rest of Sweden. The neighbours will have to pay the price, as they are doing in the rest of Europe.
Thus, the stage is set for a trial of strength between the world's second largest energy company and the inhabitants of a small community. It is easy to imagine the outcome, especially as local politicians, who would have the right to veto the project, do not seem to be minded to do so.
E.ON is making a special effort to win this battle: the sheer volume of the application they submitted shows how important it is to the company. With its hundreds of pages, it is considerably more comprehensive than others. In the forests around Färingtofta, E.ON wants to break the sound barrier.
psh 13.8.2010
_
National Wind Watch supports European call for wind energy moratorium
__January 20th, 2009
European Platform Against Windfarms (EPAW) also calls for study of wind power's record to determine its true benefits, costs, and adverse impacts
Rowe, Mass., Jan. 15, 2009 -- On the morning of October 4, 2008, before the second national protest against industrial wind energy development in Paris, several groups from France and other European countries agreed to form the European Platform Against Windfarms (EPAW).
On November 24, with more groups having already joined them, EPAW publicized a letter [1] that they will send to the Commissioners of the European Union and Members of the European Parliament.
The letter calls for an immediate moratorium on wind energy projects throughout the E.U. and independent study of wind energy to assess its carbon savings and its economic, social, and environmental impacts.
National Wind Watch supports this call and wishes them well.
We have a lot to learn from Europe, where there is a long experience with substantial presence of wind energy on the grid. The time is long overdue that regulators and planners should stop talking about what wind energy "can" do and start examining what it actually has done.
North America and the rest of the world also should heed EPAW's request for a reality check.
In December 2008, the British Wind Energy Association was forced by the Advertising Standards Authority to reduce by half its claims of how much carbon emissions might be reduced by wind energy. [2] This and other claims by the wind energy industry need to be examined by independent experts, so that energy policy is based on facts rather than sales material.
On the other side of the scale, the industry has long downplayed adverse impacts as "in the past" or aberrations. In recent years, however, the cumulating effects of industrial wind energy development, along with heavy-duty support roads and transmission infrastructure -- on wetlands, on birds and bats, and on human neighbors -- has become impossible to deny.
Organizations devoted to protecting raptors and bats have expressed deep concern about the siting of giant wind turbines where they can endanger these animals. [3] And a forthcoming peer-reviewed epidemiological study by Dr. Nina Pierpont of Malone, New York, describes the effect on people as "wind turbine syndrome", a common and consistent set of symptoms that include tinnitus, nausea, and depression. [4] When people suffering from this syndrome leave the area, the symptoms subside. Several families have had to abandon their homes to regain their health.
On January 9, 2009, the New York Supreme Court annulled a town law regulating large wind turbines because the town board did not take a "hard look" at relevant areas of environmental concern, and it disregarded study committee recommendations for setbacks and noise standards to protect the health and well-being of residents. [5]
Everyone involved in promoting and supporting the spread of industrial wind needs to take a "hard look" at the facts. As Eric Rosenbloom, president of National Wind Watch, said, "If we have learned anything from the last eight years, from the collapse of Enron who helped create the modern wind industry [6] to the demise of Lehman Brothers who invested heavily in wind to avoid paying taxes [7], we can not trust the players themselves to look out for our or the environment's interests. We need policies based on facts, not promotional materials or wishful thinking."
[1] http://www.epaw.org
[2] http://www.wind-watch.org/news/?p=20985
[3] For example: Wilderness Society and Center for Biological Diversity, http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/?p=1165
American Society of Mammalogists, http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/?p=1039
North American Symposium on Bat Research, http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/?p=1037
Virginia Dept. of Game and Inland Fisheries, http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/?p=158
Hawk Migration Association of North America, http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/?p=1202
[4] http://www.windturbinesyndrome.com
[5] http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/?p=1198
[6] Most notably, Enron invented "green tags" to sell wind energy production twice. Also see: "Enron's Ken Lay asks for Texas Gov. Bush's help in securing tax credits for wind", http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/?p=1055
"How the White House Energy Plan Benefitted Enron", http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/?p=1075
[7] http://www.wind-watch.org/news/?p=20756
National Wind Watch is a nonprofit corporation established by campaigners from around the U.S. in 2005 to promote knowledge and raise awareness of the negative environmental and social impacts of industrial wind energy development. Information, analysis, and other materials are available on their web site: www.wind-watch.org.
_
European Platform Against Windfarms (EPAW) also calls for study of wind power's record to determine its true benefits, costs, and adverse impacts
Rowe, Mass., Jan. 15, 2009 -- On the morning of October 4, 2008, before the second national protest against industrial wind energy development in Paris, several groups from France and other European countries agreed to form the European Platform Against Windfarms (EPAW).
On November 24, with more groups having already joined them, EPAW publicized a letter [1] that they will send to the Commissioners of the European Union and Members of the European Parliament.
The letter calls for an immediate moratorium on wind energy projects throughout the E.U. and independent study of wind energy to assess its carbon savings and its economic, social, and environmental impacts.
National Wind Watch supports this call and wishes them well.
We have a lot to learn from Europe, where there is a long experience with substantial presence of wind energy on the grid. The time is long overdue that regulators and planners should stop talking about what wind energy "can" do and start examining what it actually has done.
North America and the rest of the world also should heed EPAW's request for a reality check.
In December 2008, the British Wind Energy Association was forced by the Advertising Standards Authority to reduce by half its claims of how much carbon emissions might be reduced by wind energy. [2] This and other claims by the wind energy industry need to be examined by independent experts, so that energy policy is based on facts rather than sales material.
On the other side of the scale, the industry has long downplayed adverse impacts as "in the past" or aberrations. In recent years, however, the cumulating effects of industrial wind energy development, along with heavy-duty support roads and transmission infrastructure -- on wetlands, on birds and bats, and on human neighbors -- has become impossible to deny.
Organizations devoted to protecting raptors and bats have expressed deep concern about the siting of giant wind turbines where they can endanger these animals. [3] And a forthcoming peer-reviewed epidemiological study by Dr. Nina Pierpont of Malone, New York, describes the effect on people as "wind turbine syndrome", a common and consistent set of symptoms that include tinnitus, nausea, and depression. [4] When people suffering from this syndrome leave the area, the symptoms subside. Several families have had to abandon their homes to regain their health.
On January 9, 2009, the New York Supreme Court annulled a town law regulating large wind turbines because the town board did not take a "hard look" at relevant areas of environmental concern, and it disregarded study committee recommendations for setbacks and noise standards to protect the health and well-being of residents. [5]
Everyone involved in promoting and supporting the spread of industrial wind needs to take a "hard look" at the facts. As Eric Rosenbloom, president of National Wind Watch, said, "If we have learned anything from the last eight years, from the collapse of Enron who helped create the modern wind industry [6] to the demise of Lehman Brothers who invested heavily in wind to avoid paying taxes [7], we can not trust the players themselves to look out for our or the environment's interests. We need policies based on facts, not promotional materials or wishful thinking."
[1] http://www.epaw.org
[2] http://www.wind-watch.org/news/?p=20985
[3] For example: Wilderness Society and Center for Biological Diversity, http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/?p=1165
American Society of Mammalogists, http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/?p=1039
North American Symposium on Bat Research, http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/?p=1037
Virginia Dept. of Game and Inland Fisheries, http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/?p=158
Hawk Migration Association of North America, http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/?p=1202
[4] http://www.windturbinesyndrome.com
[5] http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/?p=1198
[6] Most notably, Enron invented "green tags" to sell wind energy production twice. Also see: "Enron's Ken Lay asks for Texas Gov. Bush's help in securing tax credits for wind", http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/?p=1055
"How the White House Energy Plan Benefitted Enron", http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/?p=1075
[7] http://www.wind-watch.org/news/?p=20756
National Wind Watch is a nonprofit corporation established by campaigners from around the U.S. in 2005 to promote knowledge and raise awareness of the negative environmental and social impacts of industrial wind energy development. Information, analysis, and other materials are available on their web site: www.wind-watch.org.
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