Wind Power: Not Even Close to a Panacea for Energy Problems But It Sure Sucks Up A Lot Of Oxygen

CONTRIBUTORS
What New England’s foolhardy, clean energy policy looks like
The Oakfield Wind Project is now complete. A total of 48 turbines have been erected and are now producing electricity for SunEdison Inc.
By Chris O’Neil, Special to the Bangor Daily News
Posted Sept. 14, 2015, at 1:32 p.m.

Last Tuesday, Sept. 8, the New England electricity grid system operator (ISO-NE) had a terrible day. What played out Tuesday (and dozens of other days, especially in summer and winter) is a glaring example of our feel-good energy policies leading to catastrophic results.

Kill Eagles To Save Eagles: Wind Power Advocates… by Robert Bryce

NOTE: Horace Hildreth, the sole investor of Fox Island Wind, is also a longtime board member of Maine Audubon. Did the wind turbine company willingly comply with ALL federal regulations for an eagle “taking”? Because if it didn’t, wouldn’t it be a violation of its own mission for Maine Audubon to include on its board an investor who profits from exploiting the Endangered Species Act?

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE          WWW.NATIONALREVIEW.COM

DECEMBER 9, 2013 4:00 AM

‘Green’ Energy Kills Eagles

By Robert Bryce

We have to kill eagles in order to save them.

That’s now the official policy of the U.S. Interior Department. On Friday, the agency announced that it would grant some wind-energy companies permits that will allow them to kill or injure bald and golden eagles for up to 30 years without penalty.

The move is an unprecedented gift to the wind-energy industry, which has been lobbying for the 30-year permit for several years. Shortly after the deal was announced, the wind-energy lobby issued a statement that would make George Orwell proud. An official with the American Wind Energy Association declared that this “is not a program to kill eagles.” It is, he claimed, “about conservation.”

Well then. We can now rest easy. Big Wind is saving eagles by getting permits to kill them.

WGME News: At Record Hill, “Wind power … zero jobs”

SPECIAL REPORT: The Cost Of Wind Turbines In Maine
ROXBURY (WGME) — In a previous report, we showed you how some people in western Maine aren’t happy with a new wind farm in their backyards. Now, we’re turning our focus to who paid for the turbines.

Remember the economic stimulus we heard so much about back in 2009? Now News 13 Waste Watch is digging through government records to get some answers about that spending.

The goal of the stimulus was to keep the economy from spiraling into a depression. The government spent about a trillion dollars of your taxpayer money on various projects, including unemployment benefits, health care, and roads. $1.5 billion of that was spent here in Maine. At the top of that list more than a $100 million to build a wind farm in Oxford County.

Philip Paquette, homeowner: “There’s people in this town that can’t put food on the table but they can spend 100 million to put that up there.”

One full year into operation, the record hill wind project is generating power, enough for 20,000 Maine homes.

Gordon Gamble, Record Hill Wind: “We’re really pleased with how things are progressing but it is also generating anger.”

The stimulus was supposed to create jobs in Maine. While hundreds worked to build the site, recovery.gov reports the project created 0 jobs.

UK Mail: Are wind farms saving or killing us? A provocative investigation claims thousands of people are falling sick because they live near them

“… Robert Rand of Rand Acoustics in Maine, who has done work on wind farms and been a consultant in acoustics since 1980, says: ‘All wind turbines produce low-frequency noise. The reason it doesn’t show up on wind industry tests is that the equipment they use excludes low-frequency noise.’”

UK MAIL

By James Delingpole

PUBLISHED: 16:00 EST, 8 September 2012 | UPDATED: 16:00 EST, 8 September 2012

The symptoms they claim to have suffered may vary – including dizziness; increased blood pressure and depression – but the theme remains the same

Maine wind power: conflicts of interest abound

(The following from Citizens Task Force On Wind Power) On July 1, most of Central Maine Power’s customers unknowingly suffered a 19.6% increase in electrical transmission rates. If they did notice the shocking increase to their electric bill, they most likely failed to connect the rate hike with the aggressive agenda to push wind power in Maine.

The Untold Story of Wind Turbine Permitting at Record Hill

The following is from Steve Thurston, Friends of Maine Mountains. Very instructive.

In view of Angus King’s intention to seek election to the US Senate, and in light of recent revelations about the lack of justification for the Federal Loan Guarantee that Record Hill Wind sought and was granted,  I am reposting (1) the following blog post as well as (2) my comment to the DOE during the public comment period on the loan application, and (3) the relevant section of the report titled, 

Why The Wind Industry Is Full Of Hot Air And Costing You Big Bucks, by Robert Bryce

Fox Islands Wind has been the focus of a “charm offensive” with various proponents claiming what a great success the project has been, ignoring the significant ongoing controversy over wind turbine noise that has marred the project’s reputation both within the wind industry and in the press. The charm offensive relates mainly to tax subsidies set to expire in 2013, as detailed by Robert Bryce below.

December 21, 2011
Robert Bryce

The American Wind Energy Association has begun a major lobbying effort in Congress to extend some soon-to-expire renewable-energy tax credits. And to bolster that effort, the lobby group’s CEO, Denise Bode, is calling the wind industry “a tremendous American success story.”

News: Fox Islands Wind Neighbors files petition against State of Maine

(For news reports, click on “Vinalhaven in the News” in the pages section) Neighbors of the Vinalhaven wind turbine farm filed a lawsuit (Fox Islands Wind Neighbors Petition for Review) against the state of Maine yesterday for failing to enforce noise regulations against Fox Islands Wind, the turbine operator. The neighbors’ lawsuit charges that the decision by Maine DEP (Department of Environmental Protection) on June 30th was arbitrary and capricious and driven by political meddling against the recommendation of DEP regulatory staff.

Everywhere industrial wind turbines are placed too close to residences, there are complaints. What distinguishes Vinalhaven from other aggrieved victims of wind turbine noise is the extent to which neighbors initiated their own acoustical measurements and engagement with state regulators who admit that state standards fail to capture the acoustical impacts of wind turbines. For a year and a half, Vinalhaven neighbors carefully documented violations of the state noise standard while the wind turbine farm operator, Fox Islands Wind, continuously denied it was breaking state law.

In a separate matter, the neighbors recently filed a complaint against the Vinalhaven Electric Cooperative with the Maine Public Utilities Commission, charging that the utility had improperly billed ratepayers for the turbine operator’s expenses related to ongoing regulatory issues. But at this week’s annual meeting of the Fox Islands Electric Coop, the issue was not even on the agenda. The local utility is required to respond to the Maine PUC by August 1st.

The complaint filed yesterday in Superior Court seeks to vacate the DEP decision and compel the agency to go back to the recommendations of regulatory staff that put the burden of noise compliance on the wind turbine operator and not on citizens bearing the costs.

On the Global Backlash Against Wind Energy, Vinalhaven Included

A comprehensive report on the wind industry, mentioning Vinalhaven, appeared today in Energy  Tribune. Robert Bryce, who has authoritatively written for Forbes Magazine on wind power escapades, establishes why the promoted benefits of wind are “spin” to generate subsidies benefiting investors, not consumers. It is a long article but filled with points like this: “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.” 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.”  Read on:

FIWN files complaint against FIEC with Maine Public Utilities Commission

For readers unfamiliar with the positions of Fox Islands Wind Neighbors, the complaint filed against Fox Island Electric Coop with the Maine Public Utilities Commission contains a library of information. You can read the entire MPUC Complaint here. By August 1st, FIEC must respond to a series of questions from the Maine PUC. One of the key points made by neighbors is that the turbine operator, FIW, should be shouldering the costs of noise violations and not FIEC ratepayers. Tom Zeller wrote for Huffington Post on the complaint.