SOSS Editor Notes: In a week of shocking actions by the current administration...sadly this is just one of many! This is appalling! And clearly shows they fully expect to kill one of the worlds rarest birds with Wind Turbines! Industrialization of our open spaces accelrates!
In a reversal that has outraged environmentalists, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced it will not penalize a Southern California wind operator if its turbines kill or injure one California condor. One of the world's most critically endangered animals with fewer than 250 birds in the wild, the condor's range in the Tehachapi Mountains is being encroached on by intensive wind turbine development.
FWS biologist Ray Bransfield told ReWire that FWS has completed its Biological Opinion (BiOp) on condors for Google and Citicorp's Alta East project, which would be built and operated by wind developer Terra-Gen. Occupying 2,592 acres, mostly on public lands, near the intersection of state routes 14 and 58 in Kern County, Alta East would generate a maximum of 318 megawatts of electrical power with 106 wind turbines, each with 190-foot-long blades.
FWS's BiOp for Alta East includes an "incidental take statement" that in effect allows one "lethal take" of a California condor. "Incidental take" of a protected species is a term of art covering any kind of injury, harassment or disturbance, or even habitat damage that a project causes inadvertently. "Lethal take" is when the species in question dies. If the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) approves the project, FWS would require formal re-review of the project's impact on condors if a single condor is killed over the 30-year operating life of the facility.
According to FWS, other wind developers are welcome to apply for similar permits. "This is the first time we've authorized incidental takes of California condors -- and we're approaching them very cautiously," said FWS Director Dan Ashe in an interview with Louis Sahagun of the Los Angeles Times.
According to FWS press spokesperson Stephanie Weagley, the BiOp was issued approximately a week ago and delivered to the BLM, which is in the process of determining whether to approve Alta East. Standard practice dictates that BiOps for a project are made public when the lead agency -- the BLM, in this case -- issues a Record Of Decision on the project. Attempts by ReWire to obtain an advance copy of the Alta East condor BiOp have so far been unsuccessful.
Condors are especially threatened by the new generation of wind turbines because they fly slowly, their 9-foot wingspans making them somewhat slow to maneuver. They tend to soar while watching the ground, searching for activity of other scavengers. This habit makes them vulnerable to injury from blade tips approaching from above, often at speeds exceeding 150 miles per hour.
Alta East has come under heavy scrutiny for its threat to condors in the east Tehachapis. It's far from the only wind facility that poses such a threat: the area has seen startling growth in wind installations in the last four years, many of those installations every bit as much a threat to California's largest bird. According to Bransfield, the Alta East facility is the first to come up for incidental take consideration because it occupies BLM land. Asked in email whether this pending incidental take permit offered a precedent for neighboring facilities, Bransfield told ReWire:
Our biological opinion (and the incidental take statement included in the biological opinion) are specific to this project. We would need to evaluate any future projects on their own merits; therefore, I do not have an answer to that question. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that numerous wind projects are already in operation in this area; none of them applied for an incidental take permit from the Service; also, none of them are on Federal land, so this is the first to undergo consultation.
Of the 132 free-flying condors in California as of March 2013, nearly half -- 65 birds -- live in the Tehachapis, well within an easy day's flight of the burgeoning wind developments in the vicinity of Alta East. And according to telemetry from the transmitters worn by many of the birds, they're moving right up against the Tehachapi Wind Energy Area -- and in many cases flying across it.
Recent condor GPS locations mapped near wind development areas in the Western Mojave | Map: FWS
The revelation of the pending take permit caught many wildlife protection activists by surprise, and several told ReWire that it was difficult to offer a measured response on behalf of their organizations without access to the text of the BiOp. But the reaction of Center for Biological Diversity attorney Adam Keats quoted in Friday's Times article aptly summarized most of the sentiment ReWire found among activists: "This is a sad day for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service," Keats told the Times. "We're talking about perhaps one of the most endangered species on the planet, let alone in this country."
"It's premature and inappropriate," said condor expert Sophie Osborn, wildlife program director for the Wyoming Outdoor Council and author of "Condors in Canyon Country: The Return of the California Condor to the Grand Canyon Region." Osborn, who managed the Peregrine Fund's involvement with the Grand Canyon condor reintroduction for many years, told ReWire that the incidental take permit flies in the face of what we know about how to help birds survive wind energy development. "Proper siting means finding out which areas pose less threat to birds. It means not putting turbines in high use areas, not allowing development in places that have heavy wildlife traffic."
"This just seems like a recipe for losing condors," she added.
Osborn also took issue with a statement by Dan Ashe quoted in Louis Sahagun's Los Angeles Times piece, in which the FWS chief said "The good news is that we have an expanding population of condors, which are also expanding their range."
"The reason we have an expanding population is that we're breeding and releasing condors," said Osborn. "That doesn't offer an accurate picture of how they're doing once they're released."
If a condor is killed at Alta East during that 30-year period, the BLM will have to do what's known in the endangered species business as "reinitiating formal consultation" -- essentially restarting the process by which FWS determines whether a project will jeopardize the existence of an endangered species.
That's a reassuring-sounding prospect: FWS will assess whether a project that has killed an endangered animal poses further threat to the species. The process is often less reassuring in practice than it is in theory. Endangered species advocates were hoping for a "jeopardy" finding when solar developer BrightSource started finding hundreds more federally threatened desert tortoises on the site of its Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System than were forecast in that project's BiOp. The original BiOp and take permit allowed BrightSource to kill, harm, harass, or disturb no more than 40 tortoises. Once it was clear there were a lot more tortoises than that onsite, BLM estimated as many as 2,862 tortoises (including eggs) could be harmed by the project. Despite the 70-fold increase in potential "takes," FWS merely required a few changes to the project's tortoise relocation plan and issued a revised BiOp that allowed construction to proceed.
Reviewing a project's impact on condors after a single death may seem fairly stringent by comparison to the Ivanpah tortoise example, but compared to a year in prison and a fine of $100,000 -- the existing penalties under the Endangered Species Act for killing a condor -- it's definitely getting off easy. And the number of remaining tortoises in the Ivanpah Valley, as beleaguered as they are, is many times higher than the entire population of California condors worldwide.
This is an abrupt about-face for FWS, whose representatives were stating as recently as last year that issuing lethal take permits for the California condor to wind developers -- or anyone -- was out of the question. In a 2011 letter regarding Alta East sent to Jacqueline Kitchen of the Kern County Planning and Community Development Department -- and included as a public comment in the project's Final Environmental Impact Statement -- FWS's Assistant Field Supervisor Carl Benz said that "we consider avoidance of mortality of California condors to be the only acceptable conservation strategy at this point in time." That was the same point in time in which FWS was rebuking Kern County for downplaying the existence of condors on the site of a different proposed wind project. In a letter to the county's Board of Supervisors, Diane Noda -- Field Supervisor of the FWS Ventura office -- warned the county that careless approval of enXco's 350-megawatt Catalina wind project could land the county in hot water with regard to illegal take of condors, adding "We cannot envision a situation where we would permit the lethal take of California condors."
The decision also marks a change from policy stated recently in the behemoth Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP), an overarching Habitat Conservation Plan in the works for the California Desert, being prepared by FWS in cooperation with the California Energy Commission (CEC), the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). As recently as this past January, this is what the DRECP's planning documents had to say about the idea that wind developers would be granted permission to "take" condors:
Based on best available information for the California condor, it is anticipated that no lethal take would be authorized for condor, but that the DRECP would promote conservation of the species.
So what prompted this volte-face on FWS's part? It's hard to tell without looking at the Biological Opinion, which has not so far been made publicly accessible. Stephanie Weagley told ReWire that a commitment by Terra-Gen to implement a condor warning system played a role in FWS writing the first-ever incidental take statement for California condors.
"These measures include... a system to detect condors flying in the vicinity of the project [and] curtailment of operation prior to any bird entering the area of the wind turbines," Weagley told ReWire.
What this likely means, given the flaws inherent in standard detection tech such as bird radar, is that Terra-Gen has agreed to use a system that will detect the radio transmitters worn by many condors and slow their turbines when the alarm signals the birds' approach.
Those transmitters are worn by many condors. They are not worn by every condor. A double-digit percentage of condors in California may be without transmitters, and those with them may stop signaling due to equipment failure. "Transmitters often have failed batteries," Sophie Osborn points out. "They fall off. It's a hell of a lot of work to capture condors to attach new transmitters, especially if the condors in question aren't habituated to food subsidies. It can take weeks or months to recapture a condor whose transmitter has failed, or to capture a fledgling that's never had one attached. It takes a big commitment of people on the ground to do the work."
Condors' social behavior may offer some level of "herd immunity" to windmill strikes in that radio-silent condors will often be accompanying those with transmitters. But that's not by any means a certainty. Eventually, Terra-Gen will have to find some other way of detecting condors, and no reliable way other than constant live observation really exists.
FWS's Stephanie Weagley points out that this reality is in part what drove the Alta East BiOp's findings. "Because the detection system is not fool-proof," said Weagley, "the Service's biological opinion on the proposed action anticipates the lethal take of a single condor over the 30 year life of the project."
If condors do move into the area in increasing numbers, that poses another problem with mitigation through detection. Wind turbine operators are in business to sell power. If they're obliged to cut their output drastically every time a condor flies by, and if condors start flying by more than a few days a year, that cuts into profits, and into investors' income, and into the creditworthiness of the operator. The temptation to err on the side of threat to condors will grow with the local condor population.
And that threat may involve a single condor only rarely. Condors are intensely social animals -- one biologist has called them "primates with feathers." The birds tend to gather in huge flocks at a carcass, and they can assemble those huge flocks quickly, as shown in these camera trap images caught just a few moments apart:
Photo: FWS
Photo: FWS
It may turn out to be hard to kill only one California condor by accident.
Fish and Wildlife Director Daniel Ashe said the decision reflects a difficult reality. The threat of prosecution jeopardized the construction of large-scale alternative energy facilities... in the wild and windy places preferred by condors.
Which observation prompted one commenter on social media to point out in exasperated all-caps: "YES THAT IS WHAT IT IS SUPPOSED TO DO."
Credit: By TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI News staff | May 14, 2013 | www.ecori.org ~~
PORTSMOUTH — It’s status quo for the Portsmouth High School wind turbine. On Monday night, town planner Gary Crosby informed the Town Council that negotiations ceased with two possible developers interested in fixing or replacing the 336-foot-high turbine, which has been broken since June 2012.
The council allowed Crosby to issue a formal request to seek other bidders for the project.
The town is considering three options: replace the turbine’s broken gearbox; replace the entire turbine with a new, more reliable model; and take down the turbine and sell if for scrap.
“We’re asking to review the process and start again,” Crosby said.
Without the revenue from the sale of electricity, the townt is still paying for the turbine. It has two loans to pay for construction of the turbine. Quarterly interest payments of $4,983 are paid toward the $2.6 million Clean Renewable Energy bond. A principal payment of $173,333 is also due Dec. 15 for the bond.
A $400,000 loan from the state Economic Development Corpration is due a principal payment of $26,380 and interest payment of $3,079 on June 15.
When running, the wind turbine earned the town about $160,000.
Removing and replacing the gearbox costs some $780,000. It would likely require the town to maintain ownership of the turbine and make the debt payments.
Selling the turbine to a developer would likely mean the new owner would make the interest payments, with little to no revenue heading to the town.
Scrapping the turbine, which Crosby has called the “nuclear option,” would only generate a small, one-time payment from the sale of the scrap metal, and likely leave the town with a large portion of the debt.
There was little discussion by the Town Council or from the public at the May 13 meeting. “I think we’ve got to look over every stone in the landscape before we get to it,” council President James Seveney said.
The 1.5-megawatt turbine was commissioned in March 2009. The turbine had a 20-year life expectancy but was shutdown June 18, 2012 after the gearbox showed significant wear. An independent investigation blamed the damage on a faulty gearbox. The gearbox, however, was no longer covered by warranty, and the manufacturer of the turbine, AAER Wind Energy of Quebec, is no longer in business. Three of five turbines of the same make and model erected in California and Templeton, Mass., also suffered gearbox failure.
The manufacturer of the gearboxes, Jahnel Kestermann of Germany, had offered to sell two replacement gearboxes to the town for $203,000. It would cost the town an additional $407,000 to remove the old gearbox and install a new one. The two-for-one deal, however, no longer exists.
Crosby said at least one developer is interested in responding to the new request for proposal.
Source: By TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI News staff | May 14, 2013 | www.ecori.org
Obama administration allows wind farms to kill eagles, birds, despite federal laws
The Associated Press
Wind farms in this corner of Wyoming have killed more than four dozen golden eagles since 2009, one of the deadliest places in the country of its kind.
But so far, the companies operating industrial-sized turbines here and elsewhere that are killing eagles and other protected birds have yet to be fined or prosecuted - even though every death is a criminal violation.
The Obama administration has charged oil companies for drowning birds in their waste pits, and power companies for electrocuting birds on power lines.
But the administration has never fined or prosecuted a wind-energy company, even those that flout the law repeatedly.
"What it boils down to is this: If you electrocute an eagle, that is bad, but if you chop it to pieces, that is OK," said Tim Eicher, a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service enforcement agent based in Cody.
It's a double standard that some Republicans in Congress said Tuesday they would examine after an Associated Press investigation revealed that the Obama administration has shielded the wind power industry from liability and helped keep the scope of the deaths secret.
"We obviously don't want to see indiscriminate killing of birds from any sort of energy production, yet the administration's ridiculous inconsistencies begs questioning and clarity— clarity on why wind energy producers are let off the hook," said Sen. David Vitter, R-La.
The House Natural Resources Committee, which was at the beginning stages of an investigation, vowed to dig deeper Tuesday.
"There are serious concerns that the Obama administration is not implementing this law fairly and equally," said Jill Strait, a spokeswoman for the committee's chairman, Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash.
Wind power, a pollution-free energy intended to ease global warming, is a cornerstone of President Barack Obama's energy plan. His administration has championed a $1 billion-a-year tax break to the industry that has nearly doubled the amount of wind power in his first term.
"Climate change is really greatest threat that we see to species conservation in long run," said Fish and Wildlife Service director Dan Ashe in an interview with the AP on Monday. "We have an obligation to support well-designed renewable energy."
But like the oil industry under President George W. Bush, lobbyists and executives have used their favored status to help steer U.S. energy policy.
The result is a green industry that's allowed to do not-so-green things.
More than 573,000 birds are killed by the country's wind farms each year, including 83,000 hunting birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles, according to an estimate published in March in the peer-reviewed Wildlife Society Bulletin.
Getting precise figures is impossible because many companies aren't required to disclose how many birds they kill. And when they do, experts say, the data can be unreliable.
When companies voluntarily report deaths, the Obama administration in many cases refuses to make the information public, saying it belongs to the energy companies or that revealing it would expose trade secrets or implicate ongoing enforcement investigations.
Nearly all the birds being killed are protected under federal environmental laws, which prosecutors have used to generate tens of millions of dollars in fines and settlements from businesses, including oil and gas companies, over the past five years.
"We are all responsible for protecting our wildlife, even the largest of corporations," Colorado U.S. Attorney David M. Gaouette said in 2009 when announcing Exxon Mobil had pleaded guilty and would pay $600,000 for killing 85 birds in five states, including Wyoming.
The large death toll at wind farms shows how the renewable energy rush comes with its own environmental consequences, trade-offs the Obama administration is willing to make in the name of cleaner energy.
"It is the rationale that we have to get off of carbon, we have to get off of fossil fuels, that allows them to justify this," said Tom Dougherty, a long-time environmentalist who worked for nearly 20 years for the National Wildlife Federation in the West, until his retirement in 2008. "But at what cost? In this case, the cost is too high."
The Obama administration has refused to accept that cost when the fossil-fuel industry is to blame. The BP oil company was fined $100 million for killing and harming migratory birds during the 2010 Gulf oil spill. And PacifiCorp, which operates coal plants in Wyoming, paid more than $10.5 million in 2009 for electrocuting 232 eagles along power lines and at its substations.
But PacifiCorp also operates wind farms in the state, where at least 20 eagles have been found dead in recent years, according to corporate surveys submitted to the federal government and obtained by the AP. They've neither been fined nor prosecuted. A spokesman for PacifiCorp, which is a subsidiary of MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. of Des Moines, Iowa, said that's because its turbines may not be to blame.
By not enforcing the law, the administration provides little incentive for companies to build wind farms where there are fewer birds. And while companies already operating turbines are supposed to avoid killing birds, in reality there's little they can do once the windmills are spinning.
Wind farms are clusters of turbines as tall as 30-story buildings, with spinning rotors as wide as a passenger jet's wingspan. Though the blades appear to move slowly, they can reach speeds up to 170 mph at the tips, creating tornado-like vortexes.
Flying eagles behave like drivers texting on their cellphones; they don't look up. As they scan for food, they don't notice the industrial turbine blades until it's too late.
The rehabilitation coordinator for the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program, Michael Tincher, said he euthanized two golden eagles found starving and near death near wind farms. Both had injuries he'd never seen before: One of their wings appeared to be twisted off.
"There is nothing in the evolution of eagles that would come near to describing a wind turbine. There has never been an opportunity to adapt to that sort of threat," said Grainger Hunt, an eagle expert who researches the U.S. wind-power industry's deadliest location, a northern California area known as Altamont Pass. Wind farms built there decades ago kill more than 60 per year.
Eagle deaths have forced the Obama administration into a difficult choice between its unbridled support for wind energy and enforcing environmental laws that could slow the industry's growth.
Former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, in an interview with the AP before his departure, denied any preferential treatment for wind. Interior Department officials said that criminal prosecution, regardless of the industry, is always a "last resort."
"There's still additional work to be done with eagles and other avian species, but we are working on it very hard," Salazar said. "We will get to the right balance."
Meanwhile, the Obama administration has proposed a rule that would give wind-energy companies potentially decades of shelter from prosecution for killing eagles. The regulation is currently under review at the White House.
The proposal, made at the urging of the wind-energy industry, would allow companies to apply for 30-year permits to kill a set number of bald or golden eagles. Previously, companies were only eligible for five-year permits.
In exchange for the longer timetable, companies agree that if they kill more eagles than allowed, the government could require them to make changes. But the administration recently said it would cap how much a company could be forced to spend on finding ways to reduce the number of eagles its facility is killing.
The Obama administration said the longer permit was needed to "facilitate responsible development of renewable energy" while "continuing to protect eagles."
A similar explanation was given when the Fish and Wildlife Service recently authorized the killing of a single California condor, an endangered species, by a proposed wind farm in California. It also authorized a real estate developer to disturb four birds for its project.
That's because without a long-term authorization to kill eagles, investors are less likely to finance an industry that's violating the law.
Typically, the government would be forced to study the environmental effects of such a regulation before implementing it. In this case, though, the Obama administration avoided a full review, saying the policy was nothing more than an "administrative change."
"It's basically guaranteeing a black box for 30 years, and they're saying 'trust us for oversight.' This is not the path forward," said Katie Umekubo, a renewable energy attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council and a former lawyer for the Fish and Wildlife Service. In private meetings with industry and government leaders in recent months, environmental groups have argued that the 30-year permit needed an in-depth environmental review.
The tactics have created an unexpected rift between the administration and major environmental groups favoring green energy that, until the eagle rule, had often been on the same side as the wind industry.
Those conservation groups that have been critical of the administration's stance from the start, such as the American Bird Conservancy, have often been cut out of the behind-the-scenes discussions and struggled to obtain information on bird deaths at wind farms.
"There are no seats at the exclusive decision-making table for groups that want the wind industry to be held accountable for the birds it kills," said Kelly Fuller, who works on wind issues for the group.
The eagle rule is not the first time the administration has made concessions for the wind-energy industry.
Last year, over objections from some of its own wildlife investigators and biologists, the Interior Department updated its guidelines and provided more cover for wind companies that violate the law.
The administration and some environmentalists say that was the only way to exact some oversight over an industry that operates almost exclusively on private land and generates no pollution, and therefore is exposed to little environmental regulation.
Under both the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, the death of a single bird without a permit is illegal.
But under the Obama administration's new guidelines, wind-energy companies — and only wind-energy companies — are held to a different standard. Their facilities don't face additional scrutiny until they have a "significant adverse impact" on wildlife or habitat. But under both bird protection laws, any impact has to be addressed.
The rare exception for one industry substantially weakened the government's ability to enforce the law and ignited controversy inside the Interior Department.
"U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service does not do this for the electric utility industry or other industries," Kevin Kritz, a government wildlife biologist in the Rocky Mountain region wrote in government records in September 2011. "Other industries will want to be judged on a similar standard."
Experts working for the agency in California and Nevada wrote in government records in June 2011 that the new federal guidelines should be considered as though they were put together by corporations, since they "accommodate the renewable energy industry's proposals, without due accountability."
The Obama administration, however, repeatedly overruled its experts at the Fish and Wildlife Service. In the end, the wind-energy industry, which was part of the committee that drafted and edited the guidelines, got almost everything it wanted.
"Clearly, there was a bias to wind energy in their favor because they are a renewable source of energy, and justifiably so," said Rob Manes, who runs the Kansas office for The Nature Conservancy and who served on the committee. "We need renewable energy in this country."
The government also declared that senior officials in Washington, many of whom are political appointees, must approve any wind-farm prosecution. Normally, law-enforcement agents in the field have the authority to file charges with federal attorneys.
While all big cases are typically cleared through headquarters, such a blanket policy has never been applied to an entire industry, former officials said.
"It's over," Eicher said. "You'll never see a prosecution now."
Not so, says the Fish and Wildlife Service. It said it is investigating 18 bird-death cases involving wind-power facilities, and seven have been referred to the Justice Department. A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to discuss the status of those cases.
Ashe said his agency always made it clear to wind companies that if they kill birds they could still be liable.
"We are not allowing them to do it. They do it," he said of the bird deaths. "And we will successfully prosecute wind companies if they are in significant noncompliance."
But officials acknowledge that their priority is cooperating with companies before wind farms are built to encourage them to be put where they won't harm birds. Once they are built, there is little companies can do except shut down turbines or remove them — and that means reducing the amount of electricity they generate and violating deals struck with companies purchasing their electricity.
By contrast, there are easy fixes for oil companies and companies operating power lines to stop killing birds. The government often requests companies take such steps before it decides to prosecute.
"We just can't be bringing a criminal case against a company that is up and running if there is not a solution," said Jill Birchell, head of the Fish and Wildlife Service law enforcement office in California and Nevada. "We can fine them, but that doesn't help eagles."
In the meantime, birds continue to die. The golden eagle population in the West, prior to the wind energy boom, was declining so much that the government's conservation goal in 2009 was not to allow the eagle population to decrease by a single bird.
The reason boils down to biology. Eagles take five years to reach the age when they can reproduce, and often they only produce one chick a year.
In its defense, the wind-energy industry points out that more eagles are killed each year by cars, electrocutions and poisoning than by turbines.
Ashe noted that the government doesn't require other industrial facilities to disclose the numbers of birds they kill.
Documents and emails obtained by the AP offer glimpses of the problem: 14 deaths at seven facilities in California, five each in New Mexico and Oregon, one in Washington state and another in Nevada, where an eagle was found with a hole in its neck, exposing the bone.
Unlike the estimates, these are hard numbers, proof of deaths, the beginnings of a mosaic revealing the problem.
One of the deadliest places in the country for golden eagles is Wyoming, where federal officials said wind farms have killed more than 50 golden eagles since 2009, predominantly in the southeastern part of the state. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the figures.
At a different facility, Duke Energy's Top of the World wind farm, a 17,000-acre site with 110 turbines located about 35 miles east of Casper, 10 eagles have been killed in the first two years of operation. It is the deadliest of Duke's 15 wind power plants for eagles.
The company's environmental director for renewable energy, Tim Hayes, said Duke is doing all it can, not only because it wants to fix the problem but because it could reduce the company's liability. Two of the company's wind farms in Wyoming — Top of the World and Campbell Hill — are under investigation by the federal government for the deaths of golden eagles and other birds, according to a report the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week. The report was filed after the AP visited a Duke facility in Wyoming and asked senior executives about the deaths.
Duke encourages workers to drive slower so as not to scare eagles from their roosts. They remove dead animals that eagles eat. And they've removed rock piles where the bird's prey lives. They also keep internal data on every dead bird in order to determine whether these efforts are working. The company is also testing radar technology to detect eagles and is considering blaring loud noises to prevent the birds from flying into danger.
The only other option is shutting off the turbines when eagles approach. And even that method hasn't been scientifically proven to work.
At Top of the World, Duke shut down 13 turbines for a week in March, often the deadliest time for eagles. The experiment, the company says, paid off. Not a single eagle was killed that month.
Hayes says the company has repeatedly sought a permit from the federal government to kill eagles legally, but was told it was killing too many to qualify.
When an eagle is killed, Duke employees are also prohibited by law from removing the carcass.
Each death is a tiny crime scene. So workers walk out underneath the spinning rotors and cover the dead bird with a tarp. It lies there, protected from scavengers but decaying underneath its shroud, until someone from the government comes to get it.
Editor's Note: In the original version of this story, the last name of Patricia Johnson, a zoning board of appeals member, was incorrect.
FALMOUTH — The zoning board of appeals declared two town-owned wind turbines a nuisance in a 4-1 vote Thursday night
The decision overturned Building Commissioner Eladio Gore's determination that noise from the turbines did not constitute a nuisance. Turbine abutter Neil Andersen, of 211 Blacksmith Shop Road, appealed that decision in November, and the board closed that hearing last week.
"I personally feel like this is a nuisance to Mr. Andersen," said board member Scott Zylinski. "Otherwise, why would he put himself through all this?"
Andersen's appeal complained about the noise at the town's wastewater treatment facility on Blacksmith Shop Road, which contains two 1.65-megawatt turbines, Wind 1 and Wind 2. Since the first turbine began spinning three years ago, abutters have complained they create excessive noise and cause health problems such as headaches and vertigo.
The zoning board has no enforcement authority, and its decision now goes to Gore's office, which will draft the decision to be signed by board members.
It was not immediately clear on Thursday what Gore's options are with regard to enforcement action.
Gore did not return a voicemail left at his home after the decision Thursday night.
"I'm surprised by the decision," said Selectman Douglas Jones. "I guess I'm a little surprised that the ZBA would step in to countermand what the building commissioner wanted to do."
The decision, which required four votes to pass, came after the board spent about 45 minutes discussing the vague guidelines in town bylaws for what amounts to a nuisance. Bylaws define a noise nuisance as "offensive, obnoxious and objectionable."
Gore's ruling that the turbines do not create a nuisance was based on a November report by the state Department of Environmental Protection that the turbines do not exceed daytime noise limits, board Chairman Matthew McNamara said. But the DEP limit is out of date and does not properly address noise created by turbines, he said.
"I don't believe there is a standard," said McNamara, who added that the DEP is considering revisiting its noise standards. "What is obnoxious, what is objectionable really comes down to our sensibilities."
The one dissenting board member, Patricia Johnson, said the complaints were not based on fact, and that the nuisance guidelines are too vague for the zoning board to use in the case.
"I just don't get this nuisance standard that you're using," Johnson said to McNamara. "I don't think you can establish (what is a nuisance)."
The vote comes as Falmouth residents prepare to vote on whether the town will fund the removal of the two town-owned turbines.
Selectmen placed a question on the May 21 election ballot that asks voters to allow a Proposition 2½ debt exclusion to fund the decommissioning, dismantling and removal of the turbines and to repay grants, prepaid renewable energy credits and other costs associated with removal.
If voters say yes, any debt incurred to remove the turbines would be exempt from the limits of Proposition 2½, which caps property tax increases at 2.5 percent above the tax base.
The question does not specify the cost of removal.
State officials last month told the town there would be no forgiveness for about $1 million in prepaid renewable energy credits and nearly $5 million in stimulus grants used to construct the turbines.
Town Manager Julian Suso has estimated removing the turbines will cost a total of $14 million.
Walkers had a narrow escape as blades on a wind turbine ripped off in high winds across common moor land.
The 17m turbine blades split and scattered across Ovenden Moor Wind Farm, Cold Edge Road, Wainstalls, Halifax.
Walkers and local residents were stunned at what could have been a nasty accident and fear for further blade breakages.
Energy provider E-on has a total of 23 wind turbines which tower at 32 metres tall on Ovenden Moor Wind Farm.
After the accident, a workman erected a safety fence around the turbine and a sign saying “danger, falling objects” was attached to the moor entrance gate.
But local resident Ann Arran, 64, of Lower Hazel Hurst Farm, Wainstalls, Halifax, who discovered blade debris said: “The safety fence they’re erecting after the carnage is inadequate as broken blade pieces could fly and land anywhere in high winds.”
Sue Midgley, 37, of Spring Mill Fold, Wainstalls, was out walking with Ann. “I couldn’t believe what we saw, it was frightening having to continue walking across the land.”
Ann said: “At any minute more of the blades could shatter and who knows how long it will be until other turbine blades break - with disastrous consequences.
“It’s public land. More must be done to protect the people.”
E-on issued the following statement: “We can confirm that one of the turbines at our Ovenden Moor Wind Farm has suffered damage due to a technical issue and is under further investigation.
“Health and safety is of utmost importance to us. A fence has been erected to secure the area as a precaution with a 24 hour security presence on site.”
The wind power farm has been in operation since 1993. In 2012, Calderdale Council Planning permitted the construction of nine turbines, up to 115 metres to blade tip, on Ovenden Moor Wind Farm.
SOSS Editor Note Here is how your $117 Million is being spent to enrich First Wind on its Kahuku Hawaii project. I assume this includes lots of travel to hawaii to make sure things are going smooth.
Step 1(The Promise) Secretary Chu Announces Closing of $117 Million Loan Guarantee for Kahuku Wind Power Project July 27, 2010
... Before the recent fire, the Kahuku wind farm only produced an average of 36 megawatt-hours a day of energy during the first half of this year, according to Josh Strickler, chief researcher at the PUC.
But the wind farm is supposed to be producing about 250 megawatt-hours a day, according to PUC documents.
In an email to Civil beat, First Wind blamed the poor output on HECO maintenance work, which shut down the wind farm for part of this summer. ...
...In May 2011, less than two months after the wind farm was up and running, an inverter caught fire, destroying one of 10 modules that are critical components of the energy storage system that smooths out power to HECO’s electric grid, according to a lawsuit filed by Xtreme Power Solutions, a First Wind contractor that manufactured the battery storage system.
The battery storage facility will be demolished after hazardous material from the facility is removed and shipped to the mainland, according to Galvez.
Repairs to the Kahuku wind farm are not expected to be completed until the third quarter of 2013, according to Siegel, who said that a decision had not yet been made as to whether it will again include battery storage.
Step 4(The abandonment) Xtreme Power to Sell Battery Factory, Focus on Software
Xtreme Power, the Lyle, Texas-based startup with a decades-old advanced lead-acid battery technology and about 77 megawatts of grid-scale storage deployed around the world, is getting out of the battery-making business to focus on a less capital-intensive field -- building and managing the software platforms that integrate these expensive batteries into the grid.
If you had told environmentalists on Election Day 2008 that four years later there’d be no successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, that a Democratic Congress would not have enacted any meaningful climate legislation, that domestic oil production would be soaring even after a catastrophic offshore oil spill, and that the environmental community would be having a lively internal debate about whether it should support reviving nuclear power, most might have marched into the ocean to drown themselves. Yet that’s the state of play four months into President Obama’s second term.
Start with climate change. Early in March, the hacker or leaker of the two email caches from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia that rocked the climate science world in 2009 and again in 2011 released the remaining batch of material. The news produced barely a shrug even among climate skeptics, partly because the file contains 220,000 emails and documents (as opposed to about 1,000 in round one, and 5,000 in round two), making it impossible to review comprehensively. But it also appears unnecessary, as the climate change story has been overtaken by facts on the ground. Most significant: The pause in global warming—now going on 15 years—has become so obvious that many of the leading climate scientists are grudgingly admitting that global warming has stopped. James Hansen, who recently stepped down as NASA’s chief climate scientist to become a full-time private sector alarmist, is among those admitting that the recent temperature record has flatlined.
After two decades of steady and substantial global temperature increase from 1980 to 1998, the pause in warming is causing a crisis for the climate crusade. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. The recent temperature record is falling distinctly to the very low end of the range predicted by the climate models and may soon fall out of it, which means the models are wrong, or, at the very least, something is going on that supposedly “settled” science hasn’t been able to settle. Equally problematic for the theory, one place where the warmth might be hiding—the oceans—is not cooperating with the story line. Recent data show that ocean warming has noticeably slowed, too.
These inconvenient data are causing the climate science community to reconsider the issue of climate sensitivity—that is, how much warming greenhouse gases actually cause—as I predicted would happen in these pages three years ago: “Eventually the climate modeling community is going to have to reconsider the central question: Have the models the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] uses for its predictions of catastrophic warming overestimated the climate’s sensitivity to greenhouse gases?”
A steady stream of scientific studies (often government-funded) published in peer-reviewed scientific journals that conclude climate sensitivity is overestimated were ignored by the media, with the notable exception of New York Timesscience blogger Andrew Revkin. But the media blackout was broken in dramatic fashion by the Economist in its March 30 edition, with a long feature about the growing doubts over the catastrophic warming projections that have been the lifeblood of the climate campaign. The Economist reviewed a number of new findings that conclude the likely range of future warming will be much more modest—and manageable—than the Al Gores of the world have been claiming.
That the Economist would break with the pack is significant because the august British newsweekly had been among the most prominent media voices beating the drum for climate catastrophe and radical action to suppress hydrocarbon energy. Now it offers this zinger: “If climate scientists were credit-rating agencies, climate sensitivity would be on negative watch.” A Reuters story last week notes that scientists are “struggling” to explain the pause in warming. Expect other media to follow—if they continue to give the issue much coverage at all. The New York Times shut down its environment news desk in January and discontinued its Green Blog in March, concessions to the fact that readers are thoroughly bored with the issue. Recent opinion surveys find that public concern about climate change is at 20-year lows, not just in the United States but almost everywhere.
But it may not have mattered whether these troubles came to the climate campaign. Even if the full-monty doom and gloom case still looked persuasive, the massive and unexpected resurgence of hydrocarbon energy over the last few years has made the green dream of hydrocarbon energy suppression more implausible than ever, chiefly because the “renewable” alternatives are still so much more expensive, inferior in performance, and inadequate to our energy needs. The boom in natural gas production is being accompanied by an equally substantial boom in domestic oil production for the same reason—advances in directional drilling technology and hydraulic fracturing.
Domestic oil production has reversed its long slow decline—heretofore thought irreversible by every public and private forecast—and is at its highest level in more than 20 years. The International Energy Agency forecasts that the United States is on its way to becoming the world’s top oil producer, without, it is worth noting, opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or large new areas of offshore reserves that have been the center of contention for the last 30 years. Barack Obama has done what any clever politician would do: claim credit for the boom, even though most of the new activity has occurred on private and state land. Obama’s regulators are still slow-walking permit applications for drilling on federal land. It has to be awfully discouraging for environmentalists to have won most of those access fights but still find U.S. oil production soaring.
The consequences for the U.S. energy picture are staggering. Oil imports have fallen by one-third over the last five years; the sour economy accounts for less than half of this decline. The United States is within striking distance of doing without Middle Eastern oil if it wishes. Although Europe and Asia have lagged the United States in deploying new technology to unlock oil and gas, they are catching up quickly. The “peak oil” hypothesis looks more and more like the population bomb, imminent resource exhaustion, and other busted Malthusian forecasts of the 1970s.
Meanwhile, renewable energy—wind, solar, and biofuels—is sputtering everywhere, as one would expect of any product wholly dependent on subsidies in a time of budgetary constraints. Tax credits and subsidies for wind and solar power survived the fiscal cliff deal on January 1, the result of some fancy footwork by renewable lobbyists months before, but aren’t likely to survive much longer. In Europe, subsidies for renewable energy are being cut just about everywhere. Britain, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, the Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, and Poland have all announced cuts in renewable energy subsidies; South Africa, India, and China, too. At the same time, Europe’s carbon emissions trading scheme—the cornerstone of its climate policy—is near collapse. On April 16, the European parliament narrowly voted down a last-minute attempt to rescue the sagging carbon-trading system. Most investment banks that jumped on the carbon-trading bandwagon have closed their carbon desks. It may yet survive, but it has almost no enthusiastic support. On top of everything else, coal use in Europe is actually on the rise, some of it imported from the United States.
Despite these relentless setbacks for the climate campaign, environmentalists are not going gentle into this well-lit night, nor will they abandon their decades-old crusade to kill off hydrocarbon energy. The movement is too well funded, and has established ample footholds in the policy machinery stretching down to the local level in the United States. Having a “climate action policy” is de rigueur for just about every self-respecting city council and county commission in the country, typically raising numerous regulatory hurdles for new development. Moreover, the fallback position for the climateers—Environmental Protection Agency regulation under the Clean Air Act—is just getting into high gear, though “high gear” for the EPA is an excruciatingly slow process.
And that process just got a bit slower. Last year the EPA announced a draft of “new performance standards” for power plant greenhouse gas emissions that would have the practical effect of making it impossible to build new coal-fired power plants, except with unproven and uneconomical carbon sequestration technology. Only natural gas plants could meet the new standard. The EPA was supposed to finalize the rule a week ago, but withdrew it at the last minute, probably because the proposed rule was unlikely to survive a legal challenge. The EPA has solid legal ground to develop greenhouse gas regulations (unfortunately), but an arbitrary anti-coal rule might have been tossed out in court just about the time a new president arrives in town four years from now—perhaps a Republican who would scupper the whole thing. The EPA has not announced a timetable for a revised rule, but the new EPA administrator-designate, the true-believing Gina McCarthy, will no doubt push hard for aggressive regulations. The EPA is already talking about tough new performance standards for existing coal plants over the next 18 months.
The most high profile energy controversy remains the Keystone XL pipeline. Obama punted on a decision before the election, and now that the State Department’s latest environmental review gave the project a thumbs up, he’s in a difficult political spot. If he okays the pipeline, his vocal environmental supporters, such as Tom Steyer, the anti-Keystone San Francisco billionaire who hosted a fundraiser for the president two weeks ago, will go berserk. But the business community, organized labor, a solid Senate majority, and, according to polls, a solid majority of the public, favor Keystone. The Canadian government, after observing a cautious stance of staying out of domestic American politics, has started making unusual public noises that a denial of Keystone will strain relations. Obama can’t vote “present” on Keystone forever.
What he may do is tentatively approve Keystone along with a major policy shift that will please environmentalists and subject Keystone to further and perhaps fatal delays. There is talk that the administration may expand the scope of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to require that proposed projects like Keystone document their impact on global warming in the permit approval process. It would be a bonanza for environmental lawyers, who would have new grounds for filing lawsuits to challenge the adequacy of environmental impact statements. Activists have implicated global warming in everything from AIDS to zoonotic diseases (see The Warmlist, www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm, for a complete dossier), so environmental impact statements could become multivolume affairs with endless court challenges and costly “mitigation” steps required for permits.
While this might thrill environmentalists, it risks a major backlash. The problem with environmental statutes such as NEPA, the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act is that taken literally they could prohibit almost all human activity. Environmental regulation has always been subject to realistic political constraints, though regulators strain at the leash to see how much they can get away with. This slow, insidious process tends to go on regardless of which party occupies the White House. But an overreach by Obama could finally prompt Congress to consider revising the basic statutes that give regulators so much leeway. The landmark environmental statutes of the 1970s have been politically sacrosanct, but red state Democrats would surely not be fond of a dramatic expansion of environmental regulation.
The final unexpected aspect of the global hydrocarbon renaissance is that it is starting to cause a few environmentalists to have second thoughts about . . . nuclear power. For nearly 30 years nuclear power was the only form of energy environmentalists despised more than hydrocarbons. But even with Japan’s nuclear power plant disaster of 2011, some environmentalists have come to see a positive tradeoff of nuclear power over coal and natural gas. James Hansen recently co-authored a paper concluding that nuclear power has saved 1.8 million lives over coal and gas-fired alternative electricity sources since 1970, and will prevent 7 million deaths by midcentury if it supplants a significant portion of fossil fuel electricity. In June a new documentary film, Pandora’s Promise, will feature prominent environmentalists, such as Stewart Brand, who have changed their mind on nuclear power. The film was screened to good reviews at the most recent Sundance Film Festival; apparently the resolutely anti-nuke host, Robert Redford, hadn’t noticed it on the program. But there’s a lot the old fossils of environmentalism don’t notice these days, starting with the dead-end road they’ve hit.
Steven F. Hayward is the Thomas Smith fellow at the Ashbrook Center, and the William Simon distinguished visiting professor at Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Public Policy.
More than half the U.S. states with laws requiring utilities to buy renewable energy are considering ways to pare back those mandates after a plunge in natural gas prices brought on by technology that boosted supply.
April 22 (Bloomberg) -- Jack Gerard, chief executive officer of the American Petroleum Institute, talks about factors which may lead to U.S. energy independence. Gerard, speaking to Alix Steel on Bloomberg Television's "Lunch Money," also discusses the natural gas market and the impact of energy policy on the U.S. economy. (Source: Bloomberg)
Sixteen of the 29 states with renewable portfolio standards are considering legislation that would reduce the need for wind and solar power, according to researchers backed by the U.S. Energy Department. North Carolina lawmakers may be among the first to move, followed by Colorado and Connecticut.
“We’re opposed to these mandates, and 2013 will be the most active year ever in terms of efforts to repeal them,” said Todd Wynn, task force director for energy of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or Alec, a lobby group pushing for the change. “Natural gas is a clean fuel, and regulators and policy makers are seeing how it’s much more affordable than renewable energy.”
Conference Discussion
President Jack Gerard of the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group for the oil and gas industry, along with the former governors of Colorado and New Mexico will speak about the issue today in New York at a conference hosted by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Hydraulic-fracturing technology opened aging reservoirs for natural gas drilling, driving prices down about 72 percent from their record 2005 high. That’s making more expensive wind and solar power projects harder for utility regulators to justify, according to Alec and its allies, which include the Heritage Foundation in Washington.
“The shale revolutions are not just having ramifactions politically and economicaly in the U.S. but also around the world,” said Michael Liebreich, chief executive officer of Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “In 17 years, not that far away, we could reach peak energy use. This is not generally accepted.”
The push at the state level replicates efforts in Washington. Opposition from Republican lawmakers delayed the extension of a federal tax credit for wind power, prompting Vestas, the biggest turbine maker after GE, to fire 10 percent of its workforce at two Colorado factories.
“There haven’t been any outright repeals yet, but we’ve seen some watering-down,” said Justin Barnes, senior policy analyst at the North Carolina Solar Center. “Activity against renewable portfolio standards has been increasing in the past year. Their arguments are mostly on cost.”
The Raleigh, North Carolina-based research group is supported by the Energy Department and operates the DSIRE database of state incentives.
U.S. Renewables
U.S. investment in renewable power and energy efficiency fell 54 percent last year to $4.5 billion as government support waned, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The level may slip again this year if states dilute their requirements, which have pushed utilities to contract power from renewable providers and scale-back use of coal- and natural gas-fired generation.
Alec wants to repeal state mandates, arguing that the free market is a better way to determine the most cost-effective source of power, Wynn said. It typically drafts model legislation for state lawmakers to use as a blueprint when drafting bills, including the Electricity Freedom Act, which was published in October.
The anti-renewable mandate effort is also fueled by the Heartland Institute, the lobby group that’spushing to repeal clean-energy goals that it says increase power prices, cost jobs and do little to improve the environment, according to Heartland’s website. Officials from the organization weren’t available for comment.
North Carolina
North Carolina’s renewable requirements will cost state ratepayers as much as $1.8 billion from 2008 to 2021, the Heartland Institute said in an April 2 policy statement, citing a report from the John Locke Foundation and Beacon Hill Institute.
Repealing the state’s RPS policy “would help increase disposable income, attract more business investment and make energy more affordable for consumers,” according to the statement.
“We expect in the next year or two that state-based incentives will disappear,” said SolarCity Chief Executive Officer Lyndon Rive. “Whenever you see the effort, peel the onion and find out who’s behind it, who’s funding the effort. It’s very annoying that people can get away with the shell efforts and call it the people’s voice when it’s funded by coal.”
Legislative Debate
North Carolina lawmakers began debating this month a bill that would cap utilities’ required purchases of renewable energy at 6 percent of demand in 2015, half the current target, and eliminate the requirement in 2021.
“North Carolina is leading the nation in protecting consumers from the mandates for high-cost energy,” Wynn said in an interview. “It will show other states how to follow suit.” North Carolina’s bill revises the targets in the existing 2007 law and isn’t based on Alec’s template legislation.
A House committee already approved it and General Assembly Majority Whip Mike Hager, who introduced the legislation in March, said he expects it will pass this year.
“We could never have imagined in 2007 such an abundance of domestic natural gas,” Hager said in an interview. “We need that Marcellus shale gas to offset the high cost of renewables and prevent electricity prices from rising further. It’s like raising children: they need to grow up learn to live in the real world.”
Republican Push
Hager is a Republican whose top campaign donors include Duke Energy and the Charlotte, North Carolina-based utility owner’s Progress Energy (PGN) unit, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, a Helena, Montana-based non-profit group. He expects the bill to pass through the GOP- controlled legislature, and that Governor Pat McCrory, also a Republican, will sign it.
Duke hasn’t taken a position on the North Carolina bill, said Jeff Brooks, a spokesman who confirmed the company has supported Alec.
Colorado’s state senate passed a bill April 16 that would increase the amount of energy utilities must get from renewable sources, and also expands the definition to include non- renewable sources such as methane produced from coal mining.
Connecticut is following a similar strategy, by including large hydroelectric plants in its definition of renewable energy. That will help utilities meet the state’s goal of 20 percent renewable energy by 2020, said Nick Culver, an analyst at New Energy Finance in New York.
“Connecticut has thrown up the white flag on its ambitious renewable targets, and is now negotiating its terms of surrender,” Culver said. “Instead of simply easing back targets, they intend to widen eligibility criteria to include imported hydropower from Canada that would have been built regardless, which amounts to pretty much the same thing.”
Proposed Bills
Other states considering similar policies include Missouri, Ohio and Kansas. Thirty of the proposed bills in those states were deemed “significant,” meaning they have the potential to affect demand for renewable power, by the North Carolina Solar Center, a partnership between the Energy Department and North Carolina State University that tracks such activity for the U.S. Energy Department.
Alec’s Wynn said groups in six additional states are planning attacks on renewable-energy policies.
The wind and solar industries are beating back efforts to reduce demand with their own lobbying, said Carrie Hitt, vice president of state affairs at the Washington-based Solar Energy Industry Association.
“This is a deliberate campaign by conservative think- tanks, the Heartland Institute and Alec to overturn renewable energy policy that threatens the fossil industry,” Hitt said in an interview.
To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Martin in New York atcmartin11@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net
Posted April 23, 2013, at 11:38 a.m.
Last modified April 23, 2013, at 4:30 p.m.
Jim Anderberg
A fire on Jan. 16, 2013, destroyed this turbine at TransCanada's Kibby Mountain wind farm. A cause of the fire is still unknown, according to a company spokesman.
Jim Anderberg
A fire on Jan. 16, 2013, destroyed this turbine -- one of 44 at TransCanada's Kibby Mountain wind farm in northern Franklin County.
A fire destroyed a multimillion-dollar wind turbine at the Kibby Mountain wind farm in northern Franklin County, which has generated concern about the safety and reliability of turbines, and the process by which these fires are reported to government officials and the public.
Companies that operate wind farms in Maine are not currently required to report turbine fires to any state agency.
TransCanada, the Calgary-based energy company that built the 44-turbine Kibby Mountain wind farm in 2010, confirmed for the Bangor Daily News that a fire in the early morning hours of Jan. 16 destroyed one of its wind turbines — primarily the nacelle, which is the rectangular structure behind the blades that holds the gearbox and electrical components. With the capacity to generate 132 megawatts of electricity, Kibby Mountain is the largest wind farm in New England. (TransCanada is also the company behind the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline proposal.)
The fire’s aftermath troubles Bob Weingarten, president of the Friends of the Boundary Mountains, an organization that has fought against the Kibby Mountain project since the beginning. He calls the company’s handling of the event a “cover-up” and believes there should be an official notification system to inform all stakeholders, including the public, when such an incident occurs.
“The permitting agencies haven’t done anything to establish a system of responsibility,” he said. “If there was a tragedy, everyone would say, ‘Why didn’t everybody know about this?’ To me, that’s irresponsible.”
The turbine fire did not affect other nearby turbines or spread to the surrounding forest, according to Grady Semmens, a TransCanada spokesman.
“The Kibby turbines have built-in fire detection systems,” Semmens wrote in an email to the BDN. “In the event of a fire, a smoke alarm detects this and automatically shuts off the turbine. That is what happened in this case. Our power system operators identified a problem at the facility and when TransCanada’s employees arrived at the site the following morning, the fire was out.”
Whether the company will replace the turbine depends on the results of the insurance claim and other economic considerations, according to Semmens.
This is the first reported case of a turbine fire at a Maine wind farm, according to Samantha Warren, a Maine Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman.
The threat of turbine fires to the surrounding forest has received cursory attention during past public hearings on Maine wind farms, but never much serious scrutiny, Warren told the BDN.
That could change.
Are turbines more dangerous than logging equipment?
The DEP has looked into the issue “quickly as a formality,” Warren said. “Given this latest incident, we’ll look into it more seriously in the future.”
But advocates for Maine’s wind farm industry argue turbine fires are extremely rare, and that the Kibby Mountain fire should not cause a knee-jerk reaction from state regulators.
“Applications for wind projects in Maine are already highly scrutinized,” said Jeremy Payne, executive director of the Maine Renewable Energy Association. “Every wind development in Maine has to develop a preparedness plan, which includes public safety setbacks. … In addition, the clearing done to build the turbines and the pads that they are built upon limit the ability of fire to spread.”
Maine law already requires a licensed civil engineer’s recommendations be considered when determining setbacks and gives the siting authority, whether the DEP or the Land Use Planning Commission, the chance to ask for additional information as part of any application process, Payne said.
Paul Williamson, director of the Maine Ocean & Wind Industry Initiative, points out that wind turbines are not the only pieces of machinery operating in Maine’s woods.
“Where is the concern for fires in logging operations? Where is the concern for fires in machinery operated at ski areas? These are all common uses that require machinery in a forested area,” Williamson said. “This is really not dramatically different than those other uses.”
The cause of the Kibby Mountain fire is not yet known, Semmens said. Vestas, the turbine manufacturer, is leading an investigation, which also involves an independent third party, to determine the cause. Semmens said the third party is an “approved fire investigator,” but wouldn’t disclose a name. The investigation is anticipated to be complete by June, he said.
Andrew Longeteig, a Vestas spokesman, would not comment on the potential causes of the fire.
“Until the root-cause analysis is complete, we cannot speculate on the cause of the incident,” Longeteig wrote in an email to the BDN.
When asked whether the investigation’s findings will be made public, Longeteig wrote: “We can’t determine who will receive the results of the investigation until the root cause is found.”
Turbine fires rare, but expensive
The turbines installed at Kibby Mountain are the Vestas V90-3.0 MW model. Immediately after the Kibby Mountain fire, the company reviewed 1,000 turbines of the same model that are deployed in the United States and Canada, according to Longeteig. All were found to be operating normally.
Vestas has nearly 50,000 installed turbines worldwide, including nearly 14,000 in North America, “and fires are a rare occurrence,” Longeteig said.
Turbine fires are rare, agreed Paul Veers, chief engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s National Wind Technology Center. “But when they do happen, it’s a big deal,” he said.
TransCanada wouldn’t reveal the cost of the damage, but Veers estimates that a single turbine costs in the vicinity of $4 million.
“These are capital-intensive investments,” Veers said. “You pay for everything upfront except for minor maintenance costs and expect to get revenue to pay for that over 20 years, so the loss of a turbine is a big deal for the industry.”
There are no incident reporting requirements for wind farm operators, so no reliable data exist on just how rare these fires are or what causes them, Veers said. He believes the most likely causes of turbine fires are lightning strikes and electrical shorts, but no matter the cause, figuring out a way to help prevent them should be given more attention, he said.
“The objective of these machines is to make them operate flawlessly for their lifetime, and a failure in a system or a couple of systems that allows a fire to begin is a huge deal,” Veers said. “It hasn’t risen as an important element across the industry because they’re so rare, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not important.”
On April 2, just two weeks after Longeteig’s comments to the BDN, another Vestas turbine, though of a different model from those installed at Kibby Mountain, caught fire at a wind farm in Ontario. In October 2012, another Vestas turbine — again, a different make than the ones at Kibby — caught fire at a wind farm in Nebraska. While the cause of the Ontario fire is still unknown, an investigation discovered the source of the Nebraska fire, but Longeteig wouldn’t disclose its findings.
Following the disclosure, Vestas identified 10 turbines at Kibby Mountain that needed new gearboxes. Longeteig said five were replaced last year, with five more scheduled for replacement this summer. When asked whether the turbine that caught fire was identified as having a gearbox with faulty bearings, he replied in an email: “I don’t know.”
In December 2011, high winds caused a turbine fire in Scotland. The incident was caught on video and the images have been used by anti-wind activists as evidence of the threat wind farms pose.
Clyde MacDonald of Hampden is one such activist who has testified at public hearings on Maine wind farms several times — and wrote opinion pieces for the BDN — about the threat turbine fires pose to Maine’s wilderness. He maintains regulators weren’t aware of turbine fires when he first raised the issue. He hopes this incident will bring the issue to the forefront.
“I’m not castigating them for not knowing, but once I showed them the evidence, I got hot under the collar because they didn’t take it seriously,” MacDonald said.
While TransCanada is not required to report a fire to state officials, companies are required to report any potential spills of oil or other hazardous materials to the DEP. Because a wind turbine contains some oil and other potentially hazardous materials, TransCanada did file an oil and hazardous material spill report with the DEP on Jan. 23, seven days after the fire. The DEP determined the fire did not cause enough of a hazardous material spill that required a response, Warren said.
“There were follow-up communications with the department and the [Land Use Planning Commission] in early February as we got more details on the event, not because it is mandatory that they be reported to us, but because we think it is important to track these incidents so we can develop regulations in the future that mitigate their environmental impact,” Warren wrote in a follow-up email.
Other state agencies reported being told of the fire, but possessed no authority over the event or its aftermath.
The Office of the State Fire Marshal wouldn’t get involved in a wind turbine fire unless criminal activity were suspected, according to Stephen McCausland, spokesman for Maine’s Department of Public Safety, which includes the fire marshal’s office.
Bill Hamilton, chief forest ranger for the Maine Forest Service, the state agency tasked with fighting forest fires, didn’t hear about the fire until several days after the fact. And he learned about it not from TransCanada, but because he was copied on a complaint about the fire that was emailed to the fire marshal’s office.
But Hamilton wasn’t worried that the company didn’t immediately notify the Maine Forest Service about the fire because, he said, there was never any danger that it would spread to the nearby forest.
“In mid-January, I don’t think — or, I know — it’s not possible for a fire to spread to nearby forests when there’s 3 feet of snow up there,” he said.
However, a different season would be a different story.
“In the summertime, if there was a windmill that burned and spread to nearby timber, we’d certainly need to be notified about it.”
There are no specific laws that require a company such as TransCanada to notify the Maine Forest Service if its turbine is on fire, just like a timber company wouldn’t be required to call the forest service if a piece of its machinery caught fire. However, if that fire spread to the forest, then law would kick in, Hamilton said.
“The law that would be most appropriate is Title 17-A, Section 804, Failure to Report or Control a Dangerous Fire,” Hamilton said after looking through statutes.
This law wouldn’t apply to the Kibby Mountain turbine fire, he pointed out, because there was no risk of it spreading. He added also there’s no evidence TransCanada would not have contacted the Maine Forest Service if the fire had spread.
Nevertheless, having a more structured notification system in place would make sense, he said.
“I think it would be a good idea for — and we probably should have done this before — but it would probably be a good idea to have a mechanism for them to notify us of any fire in what I would call the summer-fire season,” Hamilton said. “It would make good business practice to let us know.”
Even though the January fire doesn’t worry him, Hamilton did take a helicopter to Kibby Mountain to get a closer look at the burned-out turbine and to learn what he could do to help prepare the forest service and himself in the event of a future turbine fire.
“My concern is not elevated dramatically, but I do think it’s a good opportunity to look at it and improve our communication network with the windmill company and get an on-the-ground look around and increase our situational awareness of what may happen,” he said. “I’m not expecting problems, but it’s not a bad idea to take a look around and understand what’s going on.”
Regulators have asked the Maine Forest Service about the risk of turbine fires in the past, but it has always regarded the risk as very low, according to Doug Denico, the agency’s director.
“We haven’t seen anything there that is inordinately risky that we can’t take care of with the equipment we’ve got and the policies and procedures in place,” Denico said.
Denico said he wasn’t aware of the forest service participating in any joint training exercises with TransCanada on handling a turbine fire that spreads to the surrounding woods. TransCanada said it has emergency procedures in place, but wouldn’t offer details on them.
Turbine fires have been known to start forest fires, according to the Confederation of Fire Protection Associations in Europe, which in September 2012 released a document of best practices and guidelines of how to handle fires at wind farms. A search for a similar document among the codes and standards issued by the U.S. National Fire Protection Association produces no results.
The European document warns that these type of forest fires can be difficult to extinguish. “Very often long distance between the wind energy plant and the fire station, and the strong wind prevailing in these places, are both factors that can promote the quick spreading of forest fires,” the document reads.
Sprague Wise, fire chief in Eustis, the closest town to the Kibby Mountain wind farm, said he heard about the fire “maybe a week or two after it happened.” Even if his fire department had been notified, there’s not much it could have done, Wise said. Not only does it lack firefighting equipment that could reach the turbines, which are 260 feet above the ground, but the roads to the wind farm weren’t plowed, he said.
TransCanada doesn’t expect local fire departments to fight blazes at the wind farm, Semmens said.
“We do not expect local fire departments to risk the safety of their firefighters by going up a tall turbine tower in the event of a fire that does not pose a risk to people,” he wrote. “Most fire equipment is not designed to manage fires at such a height, and common industry practice is to allow wind turbine fires to burn out on their own.”
Warren at the DEP said it’s possible the expedited pace of past wind farm approvals could have led to the issue of turbine fires receiving less attention than it deserved. While Gov. John Baldacci was a strong supporter of wind energy and helped put in place an expedited permitting process, Gov. Paul LePage has criticized wind energy for being too expensive and preventing job creation.
“These are things we’re learning as we go along,” she said. “This industry is evolving and so is our regulatory review of it as a result. Previous administrations were really gung-ho about wind and put in place expedited permitting processes. That came at the expense of review sometimes, perhaps like this fire suppression issue. So we’re trying to not put on the brakes, but subject this sort of industrial project to the same review as other industrial development in the state.”
In January 2005, legendary car designer Henrik Fisker founded a company to bring innovative new thinking to the automobile industry.
Between that date and today, Fisker Automotive would create perhaps the most beautiful car ever made, raise almost $1.4 billion dollars from investors as diverse as Leonardo di Caprio and Kleiner Perkins, obtain a $528 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy, balloon to 600+ employees, default on loans or investment conditions at least four separate times, spend $535,000 on a website, get sued by its own employees, get evicted from its primary business location, and be investigated by the government — apparently for its incredible ability to burn a billion dollars while delivering only a few thousand actual completed cars.
What a wild, crazy ride it’s been.
“Fisker spent a stunning $900,000 for each vehicle it produced,” PrivCo chief executive Sam Hamadeh told me. “Then they sold them to dealers for an invoice price of just $70,000.”
PrivCo, the intelligence source on non-public companies, has compiled an exhaustive dossier on Fisker, its cash, its commitments, and its massive failure to produce anything like a functional, profitable business. While burning through $1.4 billion dollars, it produced fewer than 2,200 cars, PrivCo data shows, 600 of which remain unsold on dealers’ lots. And 1,200 investors, which include university endowment funds and company pension plans, are learning that their cash has been completely wiped out.
Even worse?
The government was grossly negligent in both its issuing of the Fisker loan — the biggest public loss since the infamous Solyndra Solar debacle, which cost the government as much as half billion dollars. Not only did the U.S. Department of Energy apply “negligent underwriting standards” in granting the Fisker loans, it also failed to enforce the loan conditions as Fisker breached the loan terms, PrivCo says. That failure cost the U.S. taxpayer an extra $192.3 million.
That’s bad enough. But sadly, it gets even worse.
Even as Fisker continued private fundraising efforts, when the DOE privately issued a Drawdown Stop Notice to halt payments to the stumbling car company, it failed to warn future investors that Fisker was in default. As PrivCo writes in its report:
U.S. Department of Energy made no announcement to the public that Fisker was in Default of Its Loan and Credit Agreements and no longer had access to the remaining balance of $336.4 Million, resulting in continued reliance on hundreds of additional individual investors purchasing Fisker stock in the hundreds of millions of dollars through the Advanced Equities “Fisker Funds” limited partnerships as well as reliance on that reasonable assumption that Fisker had continued and substantial access to the remaining $336.4 Million of credit line liquidity through the U.S. government.
At the end of the long, sad story, Hamedeh says, Fisker has less than $20 million cash in hand, has stopped paying all creditors, and faces multiple lawsuits.
“Fisker Automotive may well go down as the most tragic venture capital-backed debacle in recent history,” Hamadeh said in a statement. “The sheer scale of investment capital and government loan money — over $1.3 billion in all — was squandered so rapidly and with so little to show for it that the wreckage is breathtaking. Bankruptcy will be the end of Fisker, but for the taxpayers, venture capital firms, individual investors, and Fisker’s suppliers, it will all be too little too late.”
SOSS Editor Note: $2 Trillion in Renewable Energy has failed....and the eco-powers can not admit that conservation, efficiency and nuclear power are the only way of making a difference in CO2. Just read that funding was drying up for Fusion power, a clean potentially unlimited power source that needs development. With $2 Trillion making little difference we need to re-prioritize away from wind and solar which randomly work 10%-35% of the time requiring a carbon source 65%-90% of the time! What about natural gas cars....why not that? What is tragically comical, is just the other day, read a commentary how India and China are leading us in Solar and Wind Energy development.
LONDON—The world has made almost no progress over the past 20 years in reducing the carbon content of its energy supplies, despite more than $2 trillion of investment into renewable-energy projects such as wind and solar power, the International Energy Agency said on Wednesday.
In its third annual report tracking the progress of clean energy, the IEA, which advises rich and industrialized countries on energy policy, paints a bleak picture of global efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
Carbon-dioxide emissions from each unit of energy consumed have fallen by less than 1% since 1990, largely because of coal's continued dominance as a fuel for electricity generation, the IEA said. As energy consumption has grown, this means total global emissions of CO2 rose 44% from 1990 to 2010, it said.
The IEA estimates that a cut in carbon emissions per unit of energy of more than 60% is needed to prevent global average temperatures rising by more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit in the long term, and maintaining current levels would yield a temperature rise of 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit.
"The drive to clean up the world's energy system has stalled," IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven said. "We cannot afford another 20 years of listlessness. We need a rapid expansion in low-carbon energy technologies if we are to avoid a potentially catastrophic warming of the planet."
Coal has been preferred in fast-growing Asian economies for decades because it is relatively inexpensive and abundant, the IEA said, and coal-fired generation "has far outpaced" the significant increase from non-fossil energy.
China and India accounted for 95% of the growth in global coal demand in 2000 to 2011, the IEA said.
This month, the Asian Development Bank warned that Asia's use of fossil fuels was likely to keep rising for the next 20 years, doubling the region's carbon output by 2035 and leaving the prospects for emissions control looking grim.
"The goal of stabilizing global temperatures at acceptable levels is nowhere in sight," said Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the launch of the IEA's report in New Delhi.
Even in Europe, which has some of the world's most ambitious emissions-reduction targets, coal use is rising, the IEA said. In Europe's largest economy, Germany, CO2 emissions edged higher last year as more coal was burned because it was cheaper than natural gas, according to the government's federal environmental agency.
The IEA warned that little is happening to mitigate the environmental impact of coal's continued dominance in power generation. Many new coal-fired power plants continue to use inefficient technologies, offsetting measures to close some older and dirtier plants. Projects to develop the technology that would allow the capture and storage of carbon emitted by power plants have made little progress, it added.
Germany remains on track to meet its emissions-reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol, said Jürgen Maass, a spokesman for the country's environment ministry. Agreements like Kyoto have had the desired effect because had there not been any climate-protection policies over the past few years, the world's greenhouse-gas emissions would have increased even more, he said.
The IEA report comes as long-standing climate-protection policies in Europe are increasingly under threat. On Tuesday, the world's flagship plan to tackle global warming, the European Union's Emissions Trading System, was put in doubt after the European Parliament rejected a proposal to support the carbon market.
Popular support for renewable-energy subsidies is also falling. Spain recently made retroactive cuts to such subsidies in a bid to keep down electricity costs.
The European Commission, the EU's executive body, wasn't immediately able to comment on the IEA report. This month, the bloc's energy chief, Günther Oettinger, said it should adopt more modest low-carbon goals in light of the Continent's economic problems.
—Jan Hromadko in Frankfurt and Saurabh Chaturvedi in New Delhi contributed to this article
FAIRHAVEN — In a move that brought some in the audience to tears, Selectmen Chairman Charlie Murphy Tuesday night apologized to residents and called for a meeting of selectmen and the health board to discuss shutting down the town's two wind turbines at night.
Murphy said he hopes to provide some relief for the 57 families who have filed complaints about the turbines at the wastewater treatment plant on Arsene Street, including the noise they generate.
"I am sorry for all of your suffering and what you have been through," he said. "I realize that many of you tried to speak out and were denied a place on our agenda, and I thank you for your persistence."
Said Murphy, "I feel everyone in town should get a good night's sleep."
About 10 members of Windwise, a group that opposes the turbines, attended the meeting and a few of them burst into tears at Murphy's announcement. It was not on the agenda and he said that neither Selectman Bob Espindola nor Selectman Geoffrey Haworth were aware that it was coming prior to the meeting.
Murphy's comments mark a significant change in the town leadership's opinion of the turbines, in part brought on by the April 1 town election in which Haworth ousted former Selectmen Chairman Brian Bowcock.
Haworth ran for office on a platform that he would be more willing to listen to turbine complaints than his opponent. Espindola, who won his seat in 2012, ran for office as the Windwise candidate.
Reached by phone Tuesday night, turbine developer Sumul Shah declined to comment.
At the meeting, Town Counsel Thomas Crotty said the town still has jurisdiction over the turbines despite not owning them.
"The town has not given up its authority over the health and welfare of its citizens," he said. He also cautioned the board not to "embroil" itself in a costly action and to work with Shah if possible.
Any decision regarding the turbines would need to be made by the Board of Health, which is currently in limbo because the results of its April 1 election remain unresolved.
The sequester has led to dire warnings from many camps, including advocates of clean energy, who argue that Washington's modest cuts could derail America's green future. But from my vantage as a CEO in the wind-power business, the sequester offers Washington a rare opportunity to roll back misguided subsidies and maybe help reverse wind power's stalling momentum.
Since 2009, as part of the president's stimulus, wind-farm developers have been able to get a federal cash grant or tax credit covering up to 30% of their capital investment in a new project. This is especially attractive compared with another tax credit that rewards wind farms based on how much power they actually produce. Through May 2012, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Washington spent some $8.4 billion on these cash grants.
But under the sequester, Uncle Sam is cutting the cash-grant program by 8.7% between March 1 and Sept. 30. Advocates of clean energy should welcome this haircut and urge for even more fundamental policy change.
Barbara Kelley
Government subsidies to new wind farms have only made the industry less focused on reducing costs. In turn, the industry produces a product that isn't as efficient or cheap as it might be if we focused less on working the political system and more on research and development. After the 2009 subsidy became available, wind farms were increasingly built in less-windy locations, according to the Department of Energy's "2011 Wind Technologies Market Report." The average wind-power project built in 2011 was located in an area with wind conditions 16% worse than those of the average project in 1998-99.
The Department of Energy admits that this trend is due at least in part to the 2009 federal subsidy: Because the grants that companies receive aren't based on how much power they produce, "it is possible that developers have seized this limited opportunity to build out the less-energetic sites." Meanwhile, wind-power prices have increased to an average $54 per megawatt-hour, compared with $37 in 2005.
If our communities can't reasonably afford to purchase and rely on the wind power we sell, it is difficult to make the moral case for our businesses, let alone an economic one. Yet as long as these subsidies and tax credits exist, clean-energy executives will likely spend most of their time pursuing advanced legal and accounting methods rather than investing in studies, innovation, new transmission technology and turbine development.
A quick glance at the American Wind Energy Association's website illustrates this. In July, the association is planning a Capitol Hill event aimed at "educating legislators" on the importance of industry tax credits. Never mind improving the underlying fundamentals of the wind business.
My own company began by delivering clean energy (in the form of natural gas) to rural China, where families still used animal dung for cooking fuel. We entered the wind business in the late 1990s, when a wind-turbine company asked us to provide electricity from its site when the wind wasn't blowing. Years later, we oversaw a similar project but in reverse: In 2008, without a government subsidy, we built a wind farm in Lubbock, Texas, to supplement at lower costs the delivery of electricity to a cottonseed-oil company.
Such projects are likely the industry's future. Wind energy will make marginal—not revolutionary—contributions. The industry's success in Texas (where my company is based, and which is the nation's largest and cheapest producer of wind power) suggests that wind farms do make sense in relatively windy areas where electricity shortages occur.
But policy matters. California, which isn't located in the "wind belt," is America's second-largest wind-energy producer but also its costliest. The state's high costs are partly due to "aggressive renewable energy policies . . . that give developers a strong negotiating position," according to the Department of Energy report.
The wind industry has largely been out-competed by natural gas, which has proved to be a clean, reliable and cheap power source for the future without subsidies or even venture-capital funding. As such, my company isn't planning any new investments in the wind business, even though we would love to still be worth the $2 billion we were several years ago.
Of course, we could yet be proven wrong by technological innovation. Without subsidies, the wind industry would be forced to take a hard fresh look at its product. Fewer wind farms would be built, eliminating the market-distorting glut. And if there is truly a need for wind energy, entrepreneurs who improve the business's fundamentals will find a way to compete.
Mr. Jenevein is CEO of the Dallas-based Tang Energy Group.
SOSS Editor Note: Town to Fight State over Misrepresented Wind Energy.
By Scott A. Giordano THE BULLETIN Posted Apr 04, 2013 @ 07:57 PM
The Falmouth Board of Selectmen and the Falmouth Finance Committee held a joint April 4 meeting and unanimously stood by the selectmen’s prior vote to remove the town’s wind turbines, despite receiving none of their requested financial assistance from the state to do so. The latest estimate is that it will cost the town about $14 million to remove both Wind 1 and Wind 2 at the Falmouth Wastewater Treatment Facility.
Selectmen voted to support removing the industrial-sized turbines, which have been a source of division in the community, in January. They since have tried to secure a financial commitment from state officials to help them do so, prior to drafting final language for warrant articles in the April 9 special Town Meeting.
Wind 1 was funded by a mix of general obligation bonds, grants and advanced payments on renewable energy credits (RECs), which are generated when carbon-neutral electricity is produced and then sold on the market. On April 2, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) asked its board of directors to authorize the board chairman to appoint a subcommittee that will potentially modify the existing REC purchase agreement with Falmouth. However, the MassCEC staff memorandum that makes this request also states that Falmouth will not receive a contract waiver if Wind 1 is decommissioned and removed.
Wind 2 was funded entirely by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 through the state’s Clean Water State Revolving Fund grant/ loan program. Town Manager Julian Suso stated April 4 that he received electronic communication from Susan Perez, executive director of the Massachusetts Water Pollution Abatement Trust (MWPAT), which is the state's "pass-through" agency for the federal stimulus funds. Perez stated the MWPAT is requiring the town enter into an agreement to operate Wind 2 at a level that qualifies as an ‘energy efficient' project, or it will reinstate the town’s obligation to pay principle and interest on the loan and “take such other actions as it deems necessary and appropriate.”
Selectmen Chairman Kevin Murphy said he believes the state is being punitive. "I think it’s fair to say that the state does not want to see what the Board of Selectmen wanted to see happen," Murphy said.
Despite this, the selectmen and Finance Committee stood firm and united in requesting an indefinite postponement of Article 21 and supporting Articles 22 and 23 at special Town Meeting.
Article 21 was postponed because its content is now addressed in the proposed Article 22, as an attempt to vote on everything together at the special Town Meeting. "I took considerable effort with Town Counsel to develop a recommendation on one article so the town can take one vote and one motion to represent the town’s goals," said Heather Harper, Falmouth's assistant town manager on April 4.
Article 22 will require a 2/3 majority of Town Meeting voters for Falmouth to borrow money to pay for costs related to dismantling and decommissioning the wind turbines. Special legislation is also required to both remove an asset like the wind turbines, and to potentially resell the turbines to a non-government entity. The total estimated obligation to remove Wind 1 and Wind 2 is now listed as about $14 million in this warrant article.
Article 23 will not require a 2/3 majority vote, since it does not borrow money. Instead, this article would transfer $140,000 from the town's free cash fund to supplement the FY 13 and FY 14 operating budgets necessitated by the curtailment or shutdown of both turbines.
Murphy said he is resolute that the issue be brought to voters. "Sometimes you have to take a step back in order to take two steps forward. We have a lot of things facing this community in dollars and cents. But it’s important we gain the trust of the entire community," he said.
More details to come in the April 11 issue of The Bulletin.
I am writing to answer three questions we have received lately from you, our supporters, regarding recent Cape Wind events. I also want to assure you that with your continued help, we will defeat this struggling project. With five federal lawsuits facing Cape Wind, public outrage over its high cost, and financing uncertainty, 2013 looms large as the beginning of the end for Cape Wind.
Q. I read that National Grid recently added a sunset clause to Cape Wind’s contract. What is the significance of this?
A. This is a positive development for our cause because now Cape Wind’s contracts with both NStar and National Grid have termination clauses. If Cape Wind does not begin construction by the end of 2015, they will have NO buyers for their expensive electricity.
Q. Is it true that Cape Wind has finally secured financing?
A. No, Cape Wind has not secured financing. It has, however, announced that it is working with Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi to help arrange the debt financing. Cape Wind also needs equity investors as well as a loan guarantee from the US Department of Energy (DOE). While Cape Wind clearly has strong political support at state and federal levels, two Congressional subcommittees are investigating DOE’s potential loan guarantee to Cape Wind, given the waste of taxpayer dollars to bankrupt companies like Solyndra.
Q. What happened to Cape Wind’s commitment to create local jobs with Mass Tank?
A. Cape Wind turned its back on an agreement to use Mass Tank, a local Massachusetts company, to manufacture the bases of its wind turbines and create local jobs. Instead, Cape Wind now plans to buy its massive foundations from a European firm, abandoning Mass Tank after using the company for political gain.
From lawsuits and bait-and-switch construction deals, to financial challenges and termination clauses, Cape Wind is watching its prospects growing dimmer by the day. Our job is to stay strong until we defeat Cape Wind and preserve our beautiful Nantucket Sound for all to enjoy.
Together, we can make sure 2013 is the beginning of the end for Cape Wind. Please consider making a DONATION today. Thank you!
Audra Parker
President and CEO
Reminder: Thank you for your comments to the Department of Energy regarding Cape Wind's Loan Request. If you have not already done so, we encourage you to submit your comments to: Cape_Wind@hq.doe.gov. Please visit our website for talking points and remember to include your name, address, and phone number.
SOSS Editor note: Once again a Wind Energy promises to do better is found to be UNTRUE! Once again the federal government fails to enforce the Eagle Protection Act!!!! This death is a window onto the thousands that die and aren't found! Whole colonies are being killed off. Thousands of Burrowing Owls are being annihilated! US Fish and Wildlife is being subjugated to the renewable lobby for MONEY!
"the wind farm was applauded for its “groundbreaking mitigation measures,” including “ an advanced radar system designed to protect birds and bats."
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is investigating a groundbreaking Nevada wind farm after finding a dead golden eagle on its premises last month. The Las Vegas Review-Journalreports that the Spring Valley Wind Farm may face a $200,000 fine because it does not have a federal permit that allows for incidental deaths of the bird. Wind-energy facilities are not required to have the permits, but without one, the FWS can investigate and persecute them for eagle deaths, leveling a fine of up to $200,000. This is the only eagle Spring Valley has killed since the farm’s opening last August.
The eagle’s death comes a few months after the installation was recognized for its “environmental leadership.” It won the award at an international conference in December, where the wind farm was applauded for its “groundbreaking mitigation measures,” including “an advanced radar system designed to protect birds and bats.” Environmental groups opposed the farm’s construction over concerns about the impact it might have on wildlife.
Representatives from the FWS said the wind farm “did all the things they were supposed to” following an eagle’s death, but that they “really prefers that wind developers work with the service early on in the process” and secure a permit.
Spring Valley is not actually a breeding ground for golden eagles, but they do migrate through the region, as bald eagles do occasionally, too. Both species are given specific protections by a 1940 federal law, and both have been easy prey for the increasing number of wind farms across the U.S. Deroy Murdock wrote about the issue for NRO last May — as many as 500 golden eagles a year may be killed in the western U.S. by wind turbines.
Below find a letter from Megan Amsler , a member of the Massachusetts, Falmouth Energy Committee who makes money from Industrial Wind Turbine promotion and is fine forcing Industrial Wind Turbines into other people's neighborhoods. As you can see by her letter, her concern for her fellow residents being harmed is non existence . It is ONLY 19 FAMILIES BEING HARMED..but really more like FIFTY, but she doesn't care! It is sad that people like Ms Amsler are so caviler to harm others while grabbing as much money as they can while pedaling their agenda. SHAME ON HER!!! You discredit other's who not only have a concern for their "environment", but a concern for their fellow humans. Ms Amsler maybe you should be more forth coming in what money you get for peddling this agenda to harm others? Your actions make renewables look like a money grabbing fraud that is fine with callously harming others and ignoring actual impact for the sake of money!
An education and advocacy session for the greater Scituate MA community, was held on Saturday, March 23, 2013, hosted by the neighbors affected by the Scituate Industrial Wind Turbine.
Topics Included: The South Shore / Scituate Experience
- Acoustics 101: (Rick James, Principal Consultant at E-Coustic Solutions) Min 13.11
- Light Strobe: A Real Life Experience (Mark McKeever) Min: 48:42
- Health and safety: (Dr. Jeffry Silver, MD. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Certified by American Board of Internal Medicine- subspecialty- Sleep Medicine.)
Min: 1.07:29
- Green Community Legislation: Leaving Communities Black and blue
- Reasons for and request for support of Town Meeting Warrant # 28 -rescind special permit granted to Scituate Wind. Min: 1.42:20
Background:
Organizers hoped to draw residents from other areas of the Town who are not directly impacted by the noise and strobing light emanating from the industrial wind turbine. The event's goal was to shed light on the real health and safety impacts being experienced by folks living too close to this inappropriately sited industrial wind turbine, and with accurate information in hand, encourage our friends and neighbors to understand, support and advocate on behalf of the negatively impacted residents.
Matters of Opinion with Ira Wood (former Wellfleet Selectmen)
Ira Wood, Former Chairman of the Wellfleet BoS, Recalls Wellfleet's "Vastly Unpopular Decision" in 2010 NOT to Install a Wind Turbine; Discusses "the Falmouth Experience"; and Offers "a Modest Proposal" to Alleviate Suffering and Satisfy Skeptics in Falmouth.
In the radio editorial on that originally aired a few weeks ago, Mr. Ira Wood, former Chairman of the Wellfleet Board of Selectmen expresses relief that Wellfleet has been spared "the Falmouth Experience" and contrasts the manner in which Wellfleet approached its own wind turbine proposal -- cautiously -- vs. the hasty approval process in Falmouth in which the Falmouth Board of Selectmen exempted itself from the Special Permit process.
Noting that several residents in Falmouth, quoted in the newspaper and posting on social media like Facebook, seem to doubt the existence of any significant adverse impacts from the Falmouth wind turbines -- or, even worse, seem to be completely devoid of any sympathy, or sense of responsibility, for their suffering -- former selectman Wood offers a facetious "modest proposal": why not adopt a plan to transfer the homes of affected residents to people who actually enjoy
wind turbine noise, or are immune from it?
The point is that all of this could have been avoided had officials in Falmouth, including the Chairman of the Falmouth Energy Committee, had the sense "to look a gift horse in the mouth" with a healthy sense of skepticism, especially since it seemed that this deal (already refused by several towns) seemed almost too good to be true, done their homework and listened to critics who questioned the wisdom of installing wind turbines in a residential area.
The Town of Falmouth is mired in its current difficulties precisely because the town exempted itself from the Special Permit process, an approval process which is specifically designed to provide a robust discovery process for such consequential proposals as Wind I and Wind II; to force the proponents of the project to make their case to the Planning Board for approval by a super-majority; and to provide a full and fair public hearing of the proposal which enables all members of the public and interested parties to bring forth pertinent information for consideration by the Planning Board and to express their views on the potential benefits and detriments of the project.
In the case of Wellfleet, the Board of Selectmen initially endorsed an initial proposal to install a Vestas V90 wind turbine (410 feet high) on town owned land in the heart of the Cape Cod National Seashore -- a proposal that was enthusiastically supported by the Superintendent of the national park. Within six months, after delving into the details of the project and listening to all sides, the Wellfleet BoS voted unanimously to withdraw all funding and to kill the project.
Along the way, the sitting Chairman of the Wellfleet Energy Committee resigned when he was unable to persuade other members to abandon the project because of its divisive effect upon the community. And soon after the project was repudiated by the BoS, another key member of the Wellfleet Energy Committee who had obtained the initial grant funds for the project, publicly stated, to his credit, that he had been wrong and that "Wellfleet is no place for a wind turbine"
because of its proximity to homes.
In 1984 the California Energy Commission said “many institutional, engineering, environmental and economic issues must be resolved before the industry is secure and its growth can be assured.” Though it was not clearly stated, the primary environmental issue alluded to was the extreme hazard that wind turbines posed to raptors.
Since the early 1980s, the industry has known there is no way its propeller-style turbines could ever be safe for raptors. With exposed blade tips spinning in open space at speeds up to 200 mph, it was impossible. Wind developers also knew they would have a public relations nightmare if people ever learned how many eagles are actually being cut in half – or left with a smashed wing, to stumble around for days before dying.
To hide this awful truth, strict wind farm operating guidelines were established – including high security, gag orders in leases and other agreements, and the prevention of accurate, meaningful mortality studies.
For the industry this business plan has succeeded quite well in keeping a lid on the mortality problem. While the public has some understanding that birds are killed by wind turbines, it doesn’t have a clue about the real mortality numbers. And the industry gets rewarded with subsidies, and immunity from endangered species and other wildlife laws.
Early studies identified the extent of the problem
To fully grasp the wind turbine mortality problem, one needs to examine the 2004 report from theAltamont Pass Wind Resource Area (APWRA). The study lasted five years (1998-2003), and researchers did not have full access to all the Altamont turbines.
This careful, honest effort analyzed turbine characteristics in relation to mortality and estimated mortality from body counts compiled in careful searches. Researchers then adjusted mortality numbers by examining statistical data based on searcher efficiency and other factors, such as carcass removal by predators and scavengers. The report even suggested that the mortality estimates probably erred on the low side, due to missed carcasses and other human errors.
This study stands in marked contrast to studies being conducted today, especially the Wildlife Reporting Response System that is currently the only analysis happening or permitted at most wind farms. The WRRS is the power companies’ own fatality reporting system, and allows paid personnel to collect and count carcasses. It explains why mortality numbers are always on the low side and why many high-profile species are disappearing near turbine installations.
Incredibly, the APWRA report actually admitted: “We found one raptor carcass buried under rocks and another stuffed in a ground squirrel burrow. One operator neglected to inform us when a golden eagle was removed as part of the WRRS. Based on these experiences, it is possible that we missed other carcasses that were removed.” (Chap. 3, pg. 52) It’s easy to see how human “errors” keep bird mortality low.
The APWRA study also documented that raptor food sources, turbine sizes and turbine placement all directly affect raptor mortality. It was thus able to identify many of the most dangerous turbines or groups of turbines – those with a history of killing golden eagles, kestrels, burrowing owls and red-tailed hawks.
Studies worsen as turbines proliferate and increase in size
The study also discussed how higher raptor mortality occurred when smaller towers were “upgraded” with larger turbines and proportionally longer blades. These wind turbines offered what raptors perceived as intermediate to very big windows of opportunity to fly through what looked like open spaces between towers, but were actually within the space occupied by much longer, rapidly moving rotor blades.
The result was significantly more fatalities of golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, American kestrels, burrowing owls, mallards, horned larks and western meadowlarks. Turbines with slower rotations per minute actually made it appear that there was more space and “greater windows of time.” This fooled birds, by giving them the illusion that they had open flight space between the rotating blades.
In fact, the illusion fools people, too. The newest turbines move their blades at 10-20 rotations per minute, which appears to be slow – but for their blade tips this translates into 100-200 mph!
All this was very important, because the industry was moving away from smaller turbines and installing much larger turbines, with much longer blades. However, the industry not only ignored the APWRA findings and rapidly installed thousands of these much larger turbines across America, despite their far greater dangers for birds and raptors. It also kept the APWRA out of the public’s awareness, and focused attention on new study results that reflected far less accurate (and honest) searches and surveys.
How the wind industry hides raptor mortality
The APWRA report also looked at the placement of carcasses in relation to turbine types. It documented that the distances carcasses were found from turbine towers increased significantly as turbine megawatt ratings and blade lengths increased. Based on sample of about 800 carcasses, the report revealed that birds were found an average of 94 feet (28.5) meters from 100-Kw turbines on towers 81 feet (24.6 meters) high.
Obviously, taller turbines with longer blades and faster blade tip speeds will catapult stricken birds much further. Figure 1 shows how a turbine 2.5 times larger will result in an average carcass distance of 372 feet (113.5 meters) from the tower. The wind industry is acutely aware of this.
That is why it has restricted search areas to 165 feet (50 meters) around its bigger turbines. This ensures that far fewer bodies will be found – and turbine operators will not need to explain away as many carcasses.
Recent mortality studies like those conducted at the Wolfe Island wind project (2.3-MW turbines) and Criterion project in Maryland (2.5-MW turbines) should have used searches 655 feet (200 meters) from turbines, just to find the bulk (75%-85%) of the fatalities. Of course, they did not do so. Instead, they restricted their searches to 165 feet – ensuring that they missed most raptor carcasses, and could issue statements claiming that their turbines were having minimal or “acceptable” effects on bird populations.
Other methods and biased formulas allow the industry to exclude or explain away carcasses. The latest Altamont Pass studies found far more bird carcasses, but Altamont operators still claim mortality declines by using new adjustment formulas and other exclusionary factors. (Figure 2) For example, industry analysts:
· Exclude certain carcasses. The 2005-2010 WRRS data show that 347 carcasses (primarily raptors) – plus 21 golden eagle carcasses – were excluded from mortality estimates, because industry personnel claimed they were found outside standard search procedures, said the “cause of death was unknown” (even when the birds’ heads had been sliced off), or removed carcasses ahead of a scheduled search.
· Exclude mortally wounded or crippled birds found during searches, even if they display turbine-related injuries. Even though many birds hit by turbine blades die within days, if they are still breathing when found, they are considered mobile – and thus not fatalities.
· Simply avoid searching near some of the most dangerous and lethal turbines. The industry justifies this exclusion by claiming that “the number of turbines monitored was reduced and spatially balanced for a randomized rolling panel design.” That this “reduction and balancing” excluded the most deadly portion of the Altamont facility was presented as coincidental or part of a proper scientific methodology.
The cold reality is that honest, scientific, accurate mortality studies in the Altamont Pass area would result in death tolls that would shock Americans. They would also raise serious questions about wind turbines throughout the United States, especially in major bird habitats like Oregon’s Shepherds Flat wind facility and the whooping cranes’ migratory corridor from Alberta, Canada, to Texas.
The techniques discussed here help ensure that “monitoring” studies match the facility operators’ desired conclusions, and mortality figures are kept at “acceptable” levels.
The bird mortality disaster must no longer be hidden
Not only has the wind industry never solved its environmental problem, it has been hiding at least 90% of this slaughter for decades. In fact, the universal problem of hiding bird (and bat) mortality goes from bad to intolerable beyond the Altamont Pass boundaries, because studies in other areas across North America are far less rigorous, or even nonexistent, and many new turbines are sited in prime bird and bat habitats.
The real death toll, as reported by Paul Driessen and others, is thousands of raptors a year – and up to 39 million birds and bats of all species annually in the United States alone, year after year! This is intolerable, and unsustainable. It is leading to the inevitable extinction of many species, at least in many habitats, and perhaps in the entire Lower 48 States.
Meanwhile, assorted “experts” continue to insist that the greatest threats to golden eagles are other factors like hikers getting too close to their nests, even when most abandoned nests in Southern California are nowhere near any hiking trails and wind turbines continue to slaughter eagles.
It is essential that people realize that no energy source comes anywhere close to killing as many raptors as wind energy does. No other energy companies are allowed to pick up bodies of rare and protected species from around their production sites on a day-to-day basis, year-in and year-out. No other energy producer has a several thousand mile mortality foot print (the highly endangered whooping cranes’ migratory corridor) like what wind energy has.
Once people understand all of this, they will rightfully demand that the wind industry obey the same environmental rules that all other industries must follow. This will require that wind turbines be sited only where the risk of bird deaths is minimal to zero; that turbines be replaced with new designs that birds recognize as obstacles and thus avoid; that fines be levied for every bird death, as is done with other industries; and that industrial wind facilities not be permitted where these requirements cannot be met.
America’s wildlife, and proper application of our environmental laws, require nothing less.
Jim Wiegand is an independent wildlife expert with decades of field observations and analytical work. He is vice president of the U.S. region of Save the Eagles International, an organization devoted to researching, protecting and preserving avian species threatened by human encroachment and development.
SOSS Editor: The following is a response to an article on Cape Cod Online/Cape Cod Times concerning a letter form Megan Amsler.
Chairman of the Falmouth Energy Committee, Megan Amsler, has implored the state energy secretary not to heed Falmouth selectmen's request for assistance in removing Falmouth's wind turbines because "a silent majority" supports their operation, regardless of consequences to their neighbors.
Ms. Amsler declares that she is "ashamed" that the town asked for aid because they "bother 19 people within 1/3 mile" of the wind turbines. Although Ms. Amsler declares that she was a member of the committee that explored various options for dealing with the wind turbines, she appears not to have been paying attention to the number of people who reported experiencing adverse impacts from their operation (over 50) or the severity of their symptoms (including headaches, ringing in the ears, tinnitus, sleep deprivation, soaring blood pressure, anxiety and depression, not to mention intense shadow flicker and severe impact on home values).
Of course, Ms. Amsler was instrumental in bringing the wind turbines to Falmouth in the first place and in encouraging the Town of Falmouth not to bother adhering to the Special Permit process to assess the potential negative impacts of the wind turbines on the community.
Wellfleet residents may also recall that Ms. Amsler appeared at the Wellfleet Forum on March 1, 2010 to extol the virtues of the Falmouth wind turbines (before they had begun operation) and to urge Wellfleet to approve the installation of an even larger wind turbine on town land in the heart of the Cape Cod National Seashore. The Wellfleet Selectmen voted unanimously to kill the project on March 31, 2010 and have repeatedly expressed their gratitude to citizens who alerted them to the detriments of the project and their relief over having avoided the tragic experience of Falmouth.
No doubt Ms. Amsler considers the five selectmen in Wellfleet -- like the selectmen in Falmouth -- to be part of the "vocal minority" who are incapable of hearing the voices of the "silent majority" who secretly wish that Wellfleet had installed its own wind turbines and replicated the Falmouth experience.
Or maybe the reason why no one else can hear the voices of the "silent majority" is because they speak only to Ms. Amsler.
Why Ms. Amsler believes that anyone should listen to the voices of the "silent majority" inside her head, rather than to the voices of the innocent victims who have the misfortune to live in the wrong place or to their neighbors who rightly insist that the town has not right to deprive them of their health and well-being, the quality of their life or the reasonable use and enjoyment of their property, no matter how lucrative to the town, is known only to Ms. Amsler.
The chairman of Falmouth's energy committee has asked the state's energy secretary not to help pay to take down the town's two wind turbines.
In a letter dated March 4, Megan Amsler told state Executive Office of Energy and Environment Secretary Richard Sullivan that a silent majority in town supports the turbines' continued operation.
"I don't think the decision-makers are hearing the voice of people saying, 'Hey, wait a second, we do want these things in the community,'" Amsler said in an interview Friday. "My feelings are pretty clear."
Amsler's letter was sent in reaction to the town's request for state help in taking down the two 1.65-megawatt turbines at Falmouth's wastewater treatment facility. In the three years since the first of the two began operating, Wind 1 and Wind 2 have become a focal point in town because neighbors say they cause health problems.
Selectmen have placed three articles on the April 9 special town meeting warrant that collectively would order the turbines to be decommissioned and removed. If town meeting approves them, the question of whether to remove the turbines will appear on the town election ballot May 21.
Town Manager Julian Suso estimates decommissioning and removing the turbines could cost up to $15.2 million.
Amsler has led the energy committee since its founding in 2002. In her letter, she wrote that the turbines provide clean energy for Falmouth's wastewater treatment plant and stabilize the town's electricity costs. She noted that she served on a panel last year that recommended turbine mitigation options to selectmen and that she is familiar with the neighbors' unwillingness to compromise.
"I am ashamed that the town has even deigned to ask the state for aid in removing the turbines because they bother 19 people within a 1/3 mile," the letter said. "Please do not set a precedent by helping our community remove them."
Selectman Kevin Murphy, board chairman, said that anyone has the right to contact state officials to weigh in on the matter. But he warned that the ongoing outcry against the turbines could jeopardize other renewable projects in town.
In the fall, town meeting will likely be asked to approve a partnership between Falmouth and the air conditioning and heating company Trane to retrofit windows and other sections of town buildings to make them more energy efficient, Murphy said.
The turbine controversy could make the project a more difficult sell to town meeting.
"It's my belief that if the turbines are left up they will continue to be a symbol," Murphy said Friday. "If the symbol remains ... any renewable energy project will be scrutinized to the nth degree."
Todd Drummey, an abutter and outspoken opponent of Wind 1 and Wind 2, said Amsler's letter didn't faze him. In the coming weeks, many people will contact officials about the issue, he predicted.
Sullivan's office already has been contacted by people on both sides of Falmouth's turbine argument, a spokeswoman said. These communications include a petition signed by 96 Falmouth residents in favor of keeping the turbines up and running.
But with the April town meeting vote approaching, many of the financial details surrounding the possible removal of the turbines remain up in the air.
At their last meeting, selectmen endorsed an article that would pay the operating costs of the turbines through fiscal 2014. The board is withholding its stance on the decommissioning and dismantling of the turbines until town meeting.
As of Friday, town officials still don't know if Falmouth will have to pay back nearly $5 million in federal stimulus funds that it received in 2010 to construct Wind 2, Murphy said.
The town could also be on the hook for about $1 million that the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center prepaid for renewable energy credits it expected the turbines would produce. CEC officials will not discuss the issue until their next meeting on April 2.
Richard Koehler, who serves on Falmouth's energy committee, said he agrees with Amsler, and believes the state should not help Falmouth fund the removal of the turbines.
He plans to write a few letters himself. "The only solution they offered was take the turbines down and that puts us $12 million to $18 million in the hole," Koehler said. "That seems like a lot for just a little noise."
A WARNING to communities considering wind energy: The Falmouth experience continues
This piece was written by Mark J. Cool, a resident of Falmouth, Massachusetts. Mark lives 1500 feet from one of the two wind turbines installed by the town. He provides a detailed look at the history and impacts of the decision to site the towers so close to where people live.
March 20, 2013 by Mark J. Cool
Human and Financial Impact of Falmouth turbinesMark J. Cool: Falmouth Resident
Distance from Industrial Turbine: 1500 feet
History
Falmouth's Town Administration and various Boards have tried to engage in finding information for, and protecting the well being of Residents.
Feb 2011 - Selectmen imposed a wind speed restriction. The town's wind turbine was turned off when winds were greater than 23 mph.
Summer 2011 - Town Administration held two Wind Information meetings.
Nov 2011 - Agreement made by Selectmen, durning Town Meeting, to temporary shut down Wind I, with limited operation of Wind 2 for the purpose of studying the noise and health effects on neighbors.
April 2012 - Spring Town Meeting voted in favor to shut off the town's turbines until November Town Meeting. 45 minutes later, Town Meeting voted in favor of supporting the Board of Selectmen's plan to mitigate abutter complaints and operate the turbines.
May 2012 - Selectmen are informed by MassDEP that Wind1 violated state noise guidelines. Selectmen impose night curtailment between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m.
May 2012 - The Wind Turbine Option Process (WTOP) began a political dialog to develop a possible compromise.
May 2012 - Falmouth Board of Health held an emergency hearing to publicly record health testimonials from adversely impacted citizens.
Nov 2012 - Town Meeting did not support a private petitioners article to shut town turbine operations - counted vote of 73 in favor and 101 in opposition.
Jan 2013 - Selectmen, after review of the WTOP final report and public comment, voted to petiton Town Meeting for the appropriation of funds necessary for the decommissioning and removal of town turbines.
Human Health Impact
Falmouth Board of Health packaged a summation of the May 24, 2012 public testimonial data.
The major health effect reported was sleep deprivation (85%) with attendant stress (53%), mental health problems (45%), hearing problems (32%), cognitive difficulties (25%).
Number and Percent of People with Health Effects by Specific Category of Health Effect
Difficulty with spatial relationships, Vertigo, loss of balance 6 (12.8%)
Eye problems 3 (6.4%)
Difficult interpersonal relationships 2 (4.3%)
Thoughts of or attempted suicide 2 (4.3%)
Have symptoms; requested interview 6 (12.8%)
Total number with health effects 47
Determining that the statistical analysis offered a significant prevalence of symptoms, the Falmouth Board of Health urgently requested interim guidance from MassDEP, and requested assistance from MassDPH for construction, administration and interpretation of a health survey impact to Falmouth residents.
To date, MassDEP has not responded to the interim guidance request. MassDPH, though initially supportive of the survey and were willing to help, in January 2013 retracted any sponsorship of, and all support for a health survey in Falmouth (http://www.falmouthmass.us/meeting.php?depkey=health&number=5359)
The Falmouth Board of Health, as of March 18, has decided to "table" any further wind turbine related complaints and concerns until new and more definitive scientific evidence can be presented to the Board.
Yet, the Board determined that the statistical analysis of public testimonials offered a significant prevalence of symptoms as recent as May 2012. Turbine night curtailment has effectively eliminated sleep deprivation. However, the balance of the other issues, during turbine daytime operations, persist. Negative health impact continues between 7 a.m and 7 p.m. and the town complaint record reflects that the health problems have not abated.
Financial Impact
Due largely to the mitigation strategies imposed during the first two years of the wind energy project and the continued night curtailment protocol, the fiscal result has given catalysts to petition town meeting three previous separate times for supplemental appropriations to make scheduled debt payments for the wind turbines, and operation and maintenance expenses. During this time period, the wind turbine sustainability fund ($1M of pre-sold contracted Renewable Energy Credits {RECs} has been depleted as well). In his presentation to the Falmouth Finance Committee, Town Manager Suso said that the current operational model in which the wind turbines are on 12 hours a day, was unsustainable. He was quoted by the Falmouth Enterprise "we are running at a net loss. We'd go bankrupt and it would put us out of business if that were to continue"
According to the WTOP final report to Selectmen, the 18-year fiscal projections, running the turbines without curtailment would create $7.7 million surplus for the Town. Yet, with imposed night curtailment, they are running at "a net loss." In fact, this year's April special Town Meeting, Selectmen are requesting to appropriate $140K for operating budget deficits resulting from the shutdown of Wind I and Wind II to supplement the Fiscal 2013 and Fiscal 2014 operating budget.
If the Turbines Stay
To make the turbine project fiscally sustainable (per the WTOP report), the turbines would require the night curtailment protocol removed. The conclusion supported by MassDEP testing is that a pronounce probability exists to deduce that violations are occurring at properties not tested. It was MassDEP's impression that it would be premature to limit the test sampling to only a single property and a set duration of time, given the randomness and volatility of weather and wind. A WTOP Technical Advisor suggested the need of 20-40 home acquisitions to assure noise guideline compliance. The average home price in the neighbors is $400K, thus the town cost to buy out property owners could range from $8M to $16M. Recall that 18 year fiscal projections created only $7.7M when turbines operate without curtailment.
If the Turbines are Removed
Falmouth is facing an estimated cost between $12.3M and $15.2M to decommission and take down the turbines. Town officials are unsure whether Falmouth will have to pay back nearly $5M in federal stimulus funds that were used to construct Wind 2. This cost includes the unexpected re-entry to the operational budget of the Wastewater Treatment plant's energy demand. The final cost will be determined largely by the amount of state assistance. That amount is yet to be revealed.
Final Personal Note
A wind energy project that lacks the conclusive rigor of evidence, either in health or fiscal impact, is not worth an outcome as in Falmouth where it's to be endlessly debatable. In the end, as misguided and under-informed as Falmouth was, residents will be paying a costly price from our wallets, and for not moving towards sensible renewable energy solutions.
Neither the House nor the Senate saw fit to extend this overly generous corporate benefit when it was considered on its own merits and the PTC did, in fact, expire. Yet in the final hours of the fiscal cliff [1] negotiations, a package of energy tax extenders[2] was surreptitiously added to the bill which assured the PTC a $12 billion, 1-year extension.
This move was done behind closed doors, without debate or opportunity for amendment and no obligation of the Congress to find a way to pay for it.
The abuse of the Public Trust did not end there.
With this extension, a critical change to the PTC was introduced that relaxed the eligibility requirements for the credit. Renewable energy projects now need only 'commence construction' by January 1, 2014 to qualify for the credit, instead of projects being 'placed-in-service' by that date.
Since the law did not define what it means to 'commence construction', the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) must determine the intent of the Congress and develop clarifying guidance.
Not surprisingly, this is leading potential PTC beneficiaries and wind energy proponents to pressure the IRS to accelerate its rulemaking process. In February, 30 members of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition (SEEC) sent a letter to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Department of the Treasury encouraging them to act swiftly in issuing guidance on the eligibility qualifications for the credit. The American Wind Energy Association supports the IRS moving quickly to provide guidance that generally adheres to relaxed criteria adopted under the Section 1603 cash grant program.
Since the law is silent on when a qualifying project must go into service, the incentives for gaming the 'commence construction' requirement are substantial -- especially given the potential value of the tax credits in scale and duration, and the anticipated expiry of the program itself at the end of this year. David Burton, partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, has stated that developers who plan well and bank enough 2013 PTC-eligible component parts , "may be able to continue to construct PTC-eligible wind farms indefinitely." This particular form of regulatory 'gaming' would encumber taxpayers with subsidy obligations for projects that may not go into production for many years after the PTC provision has expired.
With the Treasury and the Department of Energy already under fire for their mishandling of the Section 1603 cash grants and Section 1705 loan guarantees, it is essential that Congress exercise its oversight responsibilities in this matter. Representative James Lankford, chair of the newly formed House Oversight Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Health Care and Entitlements has already stated that his Subcommittee will be watching the PTC and not leave the rule making in the hands of Government regulators.
Based on past actions by the wind industry, there are several criteria for defining "commence construction" that deserve consideration:
1. Institute an in-service date for projects.
- Current law only designates a start construction date.
2. Require project financing and permitting to be secured.
- Projects must demonstrate evidence that all local, state and federal permits are in place and project financing is secured.
3. Prohibit the safe harbor when determining start construction as used under the 1603 cash grant program.
- Prohibit the counting of monies expended for project components by the developer or by contacted vendors when determining start construction.
4. Require available transmission.
- Projects must demonstrate available transmission before starting construction.
5. Proof of meaningful construction.
- Require a minimum percentage of project completion to be achieved by January 1, 2014 which includes a physical metric that is measurable. Project construction applies to the entire proposed site; individual wind turbines within a larger project will not be treated as projects independent of development plans. Site preparation including land clearing is insufficient proof of 'commencing' project construction.
Time to Act
At the end of 2012, lobbyists for the wind industry teamed with the Senate and the Administration to push through this latest extension of the PTC with no debate or opportunity for amendment. They turned pressure to avoid the putative fiscal cliff to their advantage, while leaving American taxpayers to pay the price. Unless Congress intervenes, it appears likely that the problems associated with the extension of this subsidy may be compounded – not alleviated – in the IRS rulemaking process.
This week, over two thousand American Taxpayers sent letters from nine different states with members on Chairman Lankford's Subcommittee asking that they follow through on the Chairman's public statements to oversee the IRS rulemaking process for the PTC.
____________________________________
[1] American Taxpayer Relief Act (P.L. 112-240)
[2] Energy tax extenders were part of the Senate Finance Committee mark-up of S. 3521 (112th): Family and Business Tax Cut Certainty Act of 2012 which was reported by the Committee but died with no vote or debate by the full Senate.
Research Suggests Scientists have Overestimated Capacity of Wind Farms to Generate Power
SOSS Editors note: The research shows that wind energy may be 1/2 to 1/4 of estimates. Potential power estimates of 2-4 watts per sq meter may really only yield 1 watt?
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Feb. 27, 2013 - People think of wind as an energy source with few limits, offering an unending power source with distinct capacity advantages over sources that deplete, such as fossil fuel.
Yet, new research in mesoscale atmospheric modeling by UNC Charlotte's Amanda S. Adams and Harvard University's David W. Keith, published Monday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, suggests that the power capacity of large-scale wind farms may have been significantly overestimated.
With large-scale wind farms, as many as hundreds of turbines mounted on tall towers and connected to the electrical grid capture the kinetic energy of the wind. Each wind turbine creates a "wind shadow" behind it, in which the turning blades slow the air. In an effort to reduce the impact of the wind shadows, wind farms space the turbines apart, while still locating as many turbines as they can on the land.
Current estimates of the global wind power resource over land range from 56 to 400 terawatts. Most of these estimates assume implicitly that the turbines extracting the wind energy have little impact on the atmosphere and, therefore, little effect on the energy production.
The new research says that scientists have underestimated the impact that large numbers of wind turbines have on energy production within large farms. Estimates of wind capacity that ignore the effect of wind turbine drag on local winds have assumed that wind power production of 2 and 4 watts per square meter could be sustained over large areas.
The new modeling results suggest that the generating capacity is more likely limited to about 1 watt per square meter at wind farms that are larger than 100 square kilometers.
"It's easy to mistake the term renewable with the term unlimited when discussing energy," said Adams who is lead author. "Just because you can keep generating new energy from a source does not mean you can generate energy in an unlimited amount."
The research suggests the potential for wind energy could be significantly less than previously thought.
"It's important to take into account all factors impacting the wind energy, so we can assess the capacity of this critical power resource," Adams said. "One of the inherent challenges is how harvesting the resource changes it, making it difficult to accurately calculate how much energy can be produced. The modeling we have done provides information that can help in the understanding of our ability to count on renewable energy sources."
The research also considers the impact of wind energy production on temperatures and by extension possibly climate. Wind farms change the natural wind shear and produce various scales of turbulence. Higher potential temperatures are mixed downward due to this turbulence and result in low level warming, the research indicates.
"Our research suggests that how densely the turbines are placed affects not only energy production but also environmental impacts," Adams said. "We see this impact on average temperatures not only at large-scale farms, but also in small-density wind farms. Some things to consider are the magnitude of temperature changes and also the size of the area affected. We think these findings indicate that additional research is needed in these areas."
The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada funded the research.
Adams' primary research interests focus on mesoscale phenomena, processes, and modeling with an emphasis on phenomena that involve boundary layer processes and/or topographic influences. In recent years, she and her research group at UNC Charlotte have focused on the link between small-scale processes and climate, particularly at the atmosphere and earth surface interface. Her research group concentrates primarily on question at the interface between energy, weather and climate.
Current questions her group is addressing include: How will large scale wind energy development impact the Great Plains low level jet? What are the meteorological conditions that lead to wind turbine icing? How does temperature variability in urban areas impact electricity demand? Can we quantify the risks of off shore wind turbines to hurricanes? The energy-related research that Adams' group is conducting includes collaborations with San Diego Gas & Electric, Xcel Energy, and the Weather Underground.
SOSS Editor Note: What can you say...A child can't play basketball in his yard due to HEALTH EFFECT FROM Industrial WindTurbine. SHAME ON THE STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS FOR EXPERIMENTING ON FAMILIES WITH THEIR INDUSTRIAL WIND ENERGY PROGRAM!
LELAND ROAD- Middle-school student Brian Reilly says he can’t play basketball on Leland Road when the strobing effect from the Kingston Wind Independence (KWI) Turbine’s shadow flicker is at full throttle. “I get a wicked bad headache so I have to go inside,” Brian told the Journal as he stood on the front steps of his neighbors house.
Dan Alves, also a resident of Leland Road, refuses to allow his epileptic son to stay in his bedroom when the KWI Turbine’s shadow flicker penetrates into his house. “That’s pretty much the rule,” Alves told the Journal on Friday afternoon. “We don’t want him in his room but we’re not always home so we can’t control it.”
The KWI Turbine can be seen behind Dan Alves’ home on Leland Road during a cloudy day.
Alves said that he has asked next-door neighbors to check on his son when he’s not home. “My next-door neighbor actually came over and asked [my son] to leave the room,” Alves said.
“You can’t concentrate,” Alves said as he sat in his dining room speaking with reporters and squinting into the flicker from the KWI Turbine. “You can’t read a book, you can’t read the paper, you can’t relax.”
Alves said his wife is also affected by the KWI Turbine and has refused to use her kitchen when the flicker occurs.
Shadow flicker at the Kingston Transfer Station as seen from underneath the KWI Turbine.
The Journal spent nearly an hour and a half at Alves’ Leland Road residence on Friday and documented flicker from 4:35 to 5:20 p.m.
Alves said the flicker had begun 15 minutes beforethe Journal arrived, which would bring the duration of Friday’s shadow-flicker event to 60 minutes at the Alves homestead.
“If folks knew exactly what was going on with our daily lives…we can’t enjoy our own property…they would side with us,” Alves said.
The 404-foot tall KWI Turbine.
Alves also said he believes that the public misconceives the effects that the KWI Turbine has on areas within range of the turbine’s shadow flicker and noise pollution. “It is hard to believe, I’ll admit it,” Alves said.
Alves added that he does not think the siting of the KWI Turbine, which sits atop the capped landfill on land leased from the Town of Kingston, was appropriate.
“Shut the turbine off,” Alves said. “That’s the only thing I’ll be satisfied with…it just doesn’t make sense to put this [turbine] in the middle of a residential neighborhood.”
To see the full effects of shadow flicker, and the full video of KingstonJournal.com’sinterview with Dan Alves, simply press play on the embedded video at the top of this story.
SOSS Editor : Cape Wind $2.6 Billion in funding...no moving jobs offshore...random output! I thought we had to close the white tours as we had no more money...still plenty for European Wind Energy Manufactures & their Lobbyists. Hmm?
Cape Wind — which has touted its intention to boost the local economy — has basically pulled a bait and switch. The proposed $2.6 billion project jettisoned its local supplier for the massive steel foundations that will support the giant wind turbines slated for Nantucket Sound. Cape Wind insists the foundations must be fabricated in Europe because no U.S. firm has the expertise to build them — despite a contention by a local supplier that it spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to learn how to do it right. Carl C. Horstmann, president of Mass Tank, which signed a non-binding (as it turned out) letter of intent with Cape Wind for the project, made the disclosures in a letter to federal energy officials after his former business partners backed out of the deal.
“Cape Wind used our intended participation to garner public support,” Horstmann wrote. He thought “we were initiating a mutually beneficial business arrangement that would pay dividends to the state and the region.
“But now I can only conclude I was wrong and question Cape Wind’s commitment to Mass Tank and the local manufacturing jobs was ever made in good faith.” Horstmann said the deal would have created 150 to 300 new jobs. The point is that taxpayers, who are subsidizing this project, and ratepayers — who will pay the higher costs ad infinitum — at least counted on some payback for local businesses and workers. More importantly, having broken one promise, what’s to keep Cape Wind from breaking the rest of them? http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/opinion/editorials/2013/03/promise_in_the_wind
Despite many victories, communities around the world are still facing a plague of industrial wind projects that like hideous War of the Worlds steel monsters are destroying communities, mountains, and wildlands, slaughtering birds and bats, sickening people and driving them from their homes.
Even though these wind projects do not reduce greenhouse gases or fossil fuel use, they have dreadful environmental, social and economic impacts on whole regions. But they are a tool for energy companies and investment banks to make billions in taxpayer subsidies that get added to our national debt.
The good news is that communities worldwide are learning how to defeat these dreadful projects. More and more laws and moratoriums are being passed against them, while other projects are defeated on legal grounds or by overwhelming public opposition.
In Hawaii, an industrial wind project that would have constructed ninety 42-story turbine towers across seventeen square miles of Molokai has been defeated by a determined two-year effort of the island’s residents. In the process we learned many tactics, which I’ve tried to summarize below and are further described in Saving Paradise:
Show wind projects for what they are: industrial. Not environmental, not green, not renewable, and cause no reductions in greenhouse gases or fossil fuel use, no long-term jobs and few short-term ones.
Don’t be nice. These wind developers are your enemies: they want to destroy where you live, steal your money (property values), and are quite happy to literally drive you from your homes. They will lie, cheat, bribe, buy politicians, and do whatever else they can to win. They won’t be fair and you can’t trust them.
Create a group and get your community behind you. Point out property value loss, human health issues, environmental destruction, tourism impacts, and all the other dreadful results of industrial wind. If you have a homeowners’ associations, make them aware of the danger so they can join the fight.
Publicize your case. In the newspapers, TV and radio, on blogs and in nationwide petitions. Use videos and good graphics. Go viral, worldwide. Develop a good professional website with lots of information and ways for viewers to participate. Community members should write op-eds and letters to the editor. A very powerful tool is frequent press releases that pass on news reports from National Wind Watch, Industrial Wind Action Group and other organizations about the devastating impacts of industrial wind. These press releases should be sent to all relevant media outlets and local, state and national legislators.
Do mailings to everyone. In Molokai we sent two mailings to all the island’s 2,700 addresses. The first mailer described the dangers of the project and included a survey with a stamped return envelope. We had a massive response, with 97% of responses against the project, and our group gained hundreds of new members. A year later we sent a second mailer with photo mockups showing how the turbines would tower over homes and landscapes. This mailer also included a bumper sticker which many residents then put on their cars.
Be visible. Put up lots of signs, both homemade and professionally done. Put up billboards if you can. Professional signs show you mean business, and are taken more seriously.
Find legislators who will help you. On the state level, Republicans are often more responsive and more concerned about the environment than traditionalist Democrats who have bought the idea that wind is environmental (or who are receiving contributions from wind companies).
Litigate. Find every avenue to impair or slow the wind developers. Once the Washington industrial welfare subsidies are removed, industrial wind companies will vanish overnight.
Get property value loss appraisals. Average losses of 40% or more are being reported; in Molokai, one of the reasons the landowner planning the project cancelled it was they estimated a 75% property value loss on their lands near the project. Publicize the loss of assessed value at county level, and how that will reduce tax revenues. In most cases, property value loss far exceeds any revenue the county might receive from the project.
Civil disobedience. Politicians and energy companies are terrified of this. Don’t be afraid to go to jail to protect the land and homes you love. On Molokai we planned if necessary to start a hunger strike on the island, and there were people ready to starve to death to protect our island. The level of your commitment is equal to the level of your success.
After far too long, financial information has been made available. What these documents show is shocking.
There are redactions, large black strips covering certain entries. Eight redactions appear for the trial balance of fiscal 2011 and seven appear for the current fiscal year to date. One can only wonder how many will be seen at the end of the fiscal year, on June 31.
The statements released actually show the total of redacted transactions reaching a total of $636,505. So the compact is telling us, the public, that it has spent $636,505 but will not tell us who received the funds, or why. All the money the compact receives and spends comes from the public, individual citizens.
Reading further into these incredible documents one sees that one law firm, BCK Law Firm, has been paid just under $3 million since 2006, and for that same period the compact's income from charges to every electric bill on Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard has totaled $5.7 million. This law firm represents the compact and Cape & Vineyard Electric Cooperative Inc. jointly. Does this represent possible conflict of interest? Further, the records show that the compact has paid more than $2.8 million to the cooperative.
It appears from what information the compact has provided that the net public benefit derived from its activities is less than zero: $3.2 million less. At least someone has profited from the compact's river of public funds. The fact that the benefit has gone to one attorney and that his total fees are nearly $3 million should be troubling to those we have elected and those whom our elected officials have hired and/or appointed to do the people's business.
Also, the cooperative received a $400,000 grant — public funds — from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center for its failed wind power projects in Harwich and Brewster.
The redactions conceal identities of recipients of $636,505 in compact payments. And there are several "miscellaneous" charges, as well as entries for undisclosed or unknown charges. Do we now know why the compact has been so resistant to releasing its complete financial statements and why the cooperative has also been unwilling to share the exact details of its financial relationship with the compact or its professional relation relationship with BCK Law Firm?
As we are urged toward consolidation of municipal authority in regional hands, meaning Barnstable County, we would be well-advised to consider the experiences with these two entities. The two senior county officials, the administrator and his deputy control the operations and budgets of both bodies. They personally for well over a year have blocked all efforts to obtain full financial disclosure.
Although the cooperative has one member appointed to its board of directors from each Cape Cod town and one from Dukes County, it is actually controlled by three people — Barnstable County Administrator Mark Zielinski, his deputy, compact executive director Maggie Downey, and assistant Barnstable Town Attorney Charles McLaughlin. These three seats on the cooperative's executive committee are permanent.
The cooperative's by-laws specifically direct that the authority of the full board of directors may be directed to the executive committee. These same three were the original incorporators of the cooperative. So the cooperative is actually controlled not by a majority vote of its member towns, but by the town of Barnstable and Barnstable County.
How transparent. Shame on them, but shame on us also for tolerating this.
An impressive number of health practitioners, researchers and acousticians around the world are voicing their concern about the effects of wind turbines on people’s health (1). Their list was just published by the Waubra Foundation, the European Platform Against Windfarms (EPAW) and the North-American Platform Against Windpower (NA-PAW), the latter two representing over 600 associations of windfarm victims from 27 countries. These health professionals should be honored, assert the three NGOs: it takes courage to uphold the rights of victims against the powerful coalition of vested interests which supports the wind industry.
In Australia, where the controversy is reaching new heights, a wind industry executive has been singling out Dr Sarah Laurie in a bid to make the public forget the many other health professionals who alert to the dangerous effects of wind turbines: "...the largest public relations issue for the industry at the moment is the theory of an ex-doctor that infrasound or low frequency noise from wind turbines is likely to make anyone within 10 km of a wind turbine sick."
The blog Stopthesethings, which rose to fame denouncing the wind industry, replied: "So, the largest public relations issue for the wind industry is Sarah Laurie? One woman against the deep pockets of the pro-wind lobby. One woman speaking with local communities. One woman gathering data about the other side of your story, the one not covered in your press releases, presentations, websites, newsletters, advertisements, promoted by your highly paid PR consultants, and not covered by the Clean Energy Council with its
army of lobbyists and government access. One woman speaking out, working for two and a half years as a volunteer. What a compliment!" (2)
Sarah Laurie is a physician who has taken time off to fight her own cancer, and look after her family. “She is by no means an `ex-doctor´,”says EPAW’s Mark Duchamp. “She replied to that libelous spin at a Senate hearing on wind turbines” (3).
Dr Nina Pierpoint, PhD, MD, who intensively studied the health problems of 10 windfarm neighbor families, and coined the phrase Wind Turbine Syndrome in the process, has also been attacked and vilified. “Yet her meticulous, scholarly and pioneering work has been used around the world by turbine victims and their physicians, to better understand the reported symptoms and illnesses. The study has been rigorously peer reviewed, translated into multiple languages, and even quoted by health officials”, adds Duchamp. Dr Sarah Laurie, CEO of the Waubra Foundation, fully agrees: “Dr Pierpont used her multidisciplinary skills and academic experience to evaluate the data she collected. Many of her colleagues do not understand why her study is so important, until they start seeing the sick people.”
Acousticians too are involved in the growing controversy (1). Some have published research demonstrating that wind turbines emit infrasound and low frequency noise (ILFN), and that these emissions resonate inside homes to the point where residents sometimes resort to sleeping on the veranda rather than in their bedrooms. An important acoustic study, just published, concludes that "enough evidence and hypotheses have been given herein to classify LFN (low frequency noise) and infrasound as a serious issue, possibly affecting the future of the (wind) industry." (4)
What makes that study special, among all others that collected similar evidence? Sherri Lange of NA-PAW replies: “It was conducted by four different firms of acousticians: two of them have done work for the wind industry, whereas the other two never did. The idea was to ensure objectivity.”
Not least among acousticians speaking up for the victims is Professor Henrik Moeller, Denmark’s most highly regarded acoustician. In spite of the risk for his career, he has severely criticized his government for manipulating the data to allow the siting of wind turbines too close to homes. We know now that this causes chronic sleep deprivation, leading to a debilitated immune system and a variety of diseases.
“This list below reveals some of the true heroes of our times. They will be vindicated,” concludes Lange.
Contacts:
Mark Duchamp +34 693 643 736 (Spain) Skype: mark.duchamp Executive Director, EPAW www.epaw.org save.the.eagles@gmail.com
Sherri Lange +1 416 567 5115 (Canada) CEO, NA-PAW www.na-paw.org kodaisl@rogers.com
Dr Sarah Laurie + 61 439 865 914 (Australia) CEO, Waubra Foundation sarah@waubrafoundation.com.au
LINKS:
To follow the heated battle as it unfolds in Australia: www.stopthesethings.com
Health effects of ILFN can cause death: http://www.epaw.org/documents.php?lang=en&article=ns50
To access Dr Pierpont’s peer reviewed study and other material: www.windturbinesyndrome.com
FOOTNOTES:
(1) - List of health practitioners, researchers and acousticians who have investigated or voiced concern for the health and well-being of wind turbine neighbors: see at the end, or Pdf attached, or go to: http://www.epaw.org/documents.php?lang=en&article=ns53
(2) - http://stopthesethings.com/2013/01/10/wind-energy-and-the-reconstructed-smoking-milk-bottle/
(3) - http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;db=COMMITTEES;id=committees%2Fcommsen%2Fc400af4f-682e-4745-a5c7-a550b12826a2%2F0003;query=Id%3A%22committees%2Fcommsen%2Fc400af4f-682e-4745-a5c7-a550b12826a2%2F0000%22
(4) - Low Frequency and Infrasound at the Shirley Wind Farm in Brown County, Wisconsin http://www.windaction.org/documents/36887 The quote itself is to be found here, just before 5.0 Recommendations: Report Number 122412-1 21-18-12 FINAL (3).pdf
* * *
Below is the list of health practitioners, researchers and acousticians who have investigated or voiced concerns for the health of wind turbine neighbors - apologies to those we forgot to mention, and please advise us of errors and omissions at dmette@epaw.org
In alphabetical order
1 - Professor Mariana Alves Pereira, Biomechanical Engineer (Portugal, 2007)
2 - Dr Ian Arra, Public Health Physician (Canada, 2013)
3 - Mr Stephen Ambrose, Noise Engineer (USA, 2011)
4 - Associate Professor Jeffrey Aramini, Epidemiologist (Canada, 2010)
5 - Dr Huub Bakker, Engineer, (New Zealand, 2010)
6 - Dr Linda Benier, Ear Nose & Throat specialist (Canada, 2011)
7 - Dr Owen Black, Ear Nose & Throat specialist (USA, 2009)
8 - Mr Wade Bray, Noise Engineer (USA, 2011)
9 - Professor Arline Bronzaft, Psychologist & Researcher (US, 2010)
10 - Dr Nuno Castelo Branco, Pathologist (Portugal, 2007)
11 - Dr Christian Buhl, Institute of Biomedicine, Aarhus University (Denmark)
12 - Dr Micheal Cooke, General Practitioner (Ireland, 2012)
13 - Mr Steven Cooper, Acoustician (Australia, 2011)
14 - Dr Herb Coussos, Medical Practitioner (US, 2010)
15 - Dr R Crunkhorne, Ear Nose & Throat specialist (UK, 2013)
16 - Mrs Jane Davis, Nurse (UK, 2010)
17 - Professor Phillip Dickinson, Acoustician (New Zealand, 2009)
18 - Associate Professor Con Doolan, Mechanical Engineer (Australia, 2012)
19 - Mr Chuck Ebbing, Noise Engineer (USA. 2013)
20 - Dr Alun Evans, Epidemiologist (Ireland, 2011)
21 - Dr Amir Farboud, Ear Nose & Throat Specialist (UK, 2013)
22 - Professor Jerome Haller, Neurology and Paediatrics (US, 2008)
23 - Professor Colin Hansen, Mechanical Engineer (Australia, 2010)
24 - Dr Chris Hanning, Sleep Physician (UK, 2010)
25 - Professor John Harrison, Physicist (Canada, 2010)
26 - Dr Amanda Harry, Rural Medical Practitioner (UK, 2003),
27 - Professor Henry Horn, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (US, 2008)
28 - Mr Les Huson, Acoustician (Australia, 2011)
29 - Dr David Iser, Rural Medical Practitioner (Australia, 2004),
30 - Associate Professor Rick James, Noise Engineer (USA, 2009)
31 - Dr Roy Jeffrey, Rural Medical Practitioner (Canada, 2010)
32 - Dr Mauri Johansson, Occupational Physician (Denmark, 2012)
33 - Mr George Kamperman, Noise Engineer (USA, 2009)
34 - Professor Ralph Katz, Epidemiologist (US, 2008)
35 - Dr Noel Kerin, Occupational Physician (Canada, 2010)
36 - Ms Carmen Krogh, Pharmacist, Researcher (Canada, 2009)
37 - Dr Eckhard Kuck, Oral Surgeon (Germany, 2012) 38 - Dr Sarah Laurie, Former Rural Medical Practitioner (Australia, 2010)
39 - Dr David Lawrence, Rural Medical Practitioner (USA, 2012)
40 - Professor Joel Lehrer, Earn Noise & Throat specialist (US, 2008)
41 - Dr Hazel Lynn, Medical Officer of Health, Grey/Bruce County, ON (Canada, 2012)
42 - Dr Robert McMurtry, Former Dean of Medical & Dental School, University of Western Ontario (Canada, 2010)
43 - Dr Andja Mitric Andjic, Rural Medical Practitioner (Australia, 2011)
44 - Dr Sarah Myhill, Rural Medical Practitioner, Wales (UK, 2012)
45 - Professor Henrik Moller, Acoustician, Aalborg University (Denmark, 2011)
46 - Dr Michael Nissenbaum, Medical Practitioner (US, 2010),
47 - Dr Helen Parker, Psychologist (US, 2011)
48 - Dr Robyn Phipps, Researcher (NZ, 2007)
49 - Professor Christian Sejer Pedersen, Acoustician (Denmark, 2011)
50 - Dr Eja Pedersen, Medical Sociologist (Sweden, 2006)
51 - Dr Nina Pierpont, PhD, MD, Specialist Paediatrician, Fellow American Academy of Paediatrics (US, 2009)
52 - Professor Carl Phillips, Epidemiologist (USA, 2010)
53 - Dr Peter Prinds, Physician (Denmark)
54 - Mr Rob Rand, Noise Engineer (USA, 2011)
55 - Mr Bruce Rapley, Scientist (NZ, 2013)
56 - Dr Sandy Reider, Medical Practitioner (USA, 2013)
57 - Professor Alec Salt, Neurophysiologist (USA, 2010)
58 - Dr Paul Schomer, Noise Engineer (USA, 2012)
59 - Norma Schmidt, Retired Nurse (Canada, 2010)
60 - Associate Professor Vivi Schunsslen, Occupational Physician (Denmark, 2012)
61 - Dr Daniel Shepherd, Psychologist, Psychoacoustician (New Zealand, 2010)
62 - Dr Wayne Spring, Sleep Physician (Australia, 2011)
63 - Mr Mike Stigwood, Acoustician (UK)
64 - Dr Scott Taylor, Rural Medical Practitioner (Australia, 2011)
65 - Dr Henning Theorell, Medical Practitioner (Sweden, 2012)
66 - Dr Bob Thorne, Psychoacoustician (Australia, NZ)
67 - Mr Peter Trask, Psychologist (Australia, 2012)
68 - Dr A Trinidade, Ear Nose & Throat specialist (UK, 2013)
69 - Dr Alan Watts, Rural Medical Practitioner (Australia, 2011)
70 - Dr Colleen Watts, Scientist (Australia, 2011)
71 - Associate Professor Libby Wheatley, Medical Sociologist (USA, 2012)
WHO definition of Health
“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”.
Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization as adopted by the International Health Conference, New York, 19-22 June, 1946; signed on 22 July 1946 by the representatives of 61 States (Official Records of the World Health Organization, no. 2, p. 100) and entered into force
on 7 April 1948.
The Definition has not been amended since 1948.
Extract from British Institute of Acoustics Code of Conduct
All members of the Institute shall at all times:
• order their conduct as to uphold the dignity and reputation of the profession and of the Institute and of its members and officers
• safeguard the public interest in matters of safety, health and the environment
• exercise their professional skill and judgement to the best of their ability
discharge their professional responsibilities with integrity, honesty and diligence.
SaveOurSeaShore Editor Note: This shows the cost of wanton renewables investment both monetarily and CO2 wise. From the Wall Street Journal March 2, 2013 "Germany Debates Fracking as Energy Costs Rise", exposes the results of Germany's rush for misguided solar and wind renewable investments and its abandonment of low Carbon Nuclear Power and the resulting scramble for reliable and affordable low carbon non-renewable energy! After massive renewables investment...CO2 output went up 1.6% last year!!!
Highlights:
Subsidies for renewable-energy producers that are financed in part through household electricity bills are causing electricity prices for ordinary consumers and industry to rise. Germany's biggest industrial power consumers have seen electricity prices per kilowatt hour rise nearly 40% in the past five years, according to the Cologne Institute for Economic Research, also known as IW. Electricity prices for industry are nearly 15% higher than the average in the 27-nation European Union, IW said.
"We have reached the pain threshold," said Michael Hüther, IW's director. He added that data show that energy-intensive industries are already beginning to curtail investment in Germany because of higher electricity charges.
"We are beginning to observe a creeping disinvestment," he said.
As the country turns its back on nuclear power, it is also seeing its carbon emissions rise. Long a leader in cutting carbon-dioxide emissions, Germany's emissions rose 1.6% last year, according to the Environment Ministry, the first rise in years.
BERLIN—Germany is debating whether to allow hydraulic fracturing, a controversial drilling technique to extract natural gas from shale, amid concern that rising energy costs in the country could threaten its industrial backbone.
The German public is deeply suspicious of the drilling practice, commonly known as fracking. Many Germans worry that the process, which involves using a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals to break apart energy-rich rocks, could contaminate underground water supplies.
This week the government unveiled a proposal that it hopes can bridge the gap between pro-fracking advocates in industry and environmentally conscious voters. Through a change to existing laws, the government is proposing banning fracking near any water supply and in all national parks and conservation areas. Drilling anywhere else would be subject to approval based on an environmental-impact study.
The fracking debate comes as Germany is pursuing a radical restructuring of its energy sector. In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011, Chancellor Angela Merkel abruptly declared that Germany would abandon nuclear power and transition to renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. As the use of nuclear power declines, Germany is filling the gap with a combination of renewable energy and coal-fired plants.
Yet Ms. Merkel's "energy revolution," as the shift away from nuclear has been dubbed, is having unexpected side effects.
Subsidies for renewable-energy producers that are financed in part through household electricity bills are causing electricity prices for ordinary consumers and industry to rise. Germany's biggest industrial power consumers have seen electricity prices per kilowatt hour rise nearly 40% in the past five years, according to the Cologne Institute for Economic Research, also known as IW. Electricity prices for industry are nearly 15% higher than the average in the 27-nation European Union, IW said.
"We have reached the pain threshold," said Michael Hüther, IW's director. He added that data show that energy-intensive industries are already beginning to curtail investment in Germany because of higher electricity charges.
"We are beginning to observe a creeping disinvestment," he said.
As the country turns its back on nuclear power, it is also seeing its carbon emissions rise. Long a leader in cutting carbon-dioxide emissions, Germany's emissions rose 1.6% last year, according to the Environment Ministry, the first rise in years.
It is unclear what immediate impact increased natural-gas supplies would have on German electricity bills. Still, the availability of cheaper natural gas could help avert a large-scale return to coal in 2020. That is the year that Germany will shut down about six nuclear power stations and many of the country's coal-fired power plants will also shut down due to age. A plentiful supply of domestic natural gas could provide a better bridge fuel to replace nuclear power as Germany continues to build its alternative energy supply, say analysts.
If fracking is ultimately banned in Germany, analysts warn that Germany could miss out on a broader European energy boom. Eastern European countries like Poland and Ukraine have large shale deposits and are keen to exploit them.
Experts don't believe Germany has the kind of massive shale-gas deposits that are transforming the U.S. energy market. But there could be enough natural gas trapped underground to meet Germany's gas needs for about 50 years, based on the current rate of gas consumption, at costs below what Germany now pays for imported gas, analysts say.
So far, Ms. Merkel has sided with her wary public, expressing doubts about the viability of fracking in Germany and pledging to allow it only if it can be proven entirely safe. Ms. Merkel is trying to please the broader public, which surveys show is frightened by fracking, while not alienating industry, which is lobbying the government to do something about Germany's soaring energy costs.
"The compromise here is to allow for pilot projects to do testing," said Miranda Schreurs, director of the Berlin-based Environmental Policy Research Center and an adviser to the German government on the issue. "The government is trying to keep the door open for fracking to be able to say that if they do it, it will be safe."
Germany's energy industry welcomed the fact that the government has shied away from an outright ban on any fracking. The government's proposals are a compromise between the environment minister, who initially wanted to ban fracking, and the economy minister, who wants to allow it. Industry sees the compromise as a step that would allow for some testing and which could help determine whether fracking is harmful to the environment.
"Only at the end [of testing] will we be able to judge using all relevant criteria whether this makes sense—economically, environmentally, and regarding its acceptance by society," a spokesman for chemical and energy group BASF AG BAS.XE -0.48%said. "To do that, we need the framework which is now being established."
Germany's powerful environmental lobby says the government's proposals don't go far enough and demand an outright ban. The opposition Green Party called the government's move a smoke screen. "It's like banning skiing in the Sahara," said Oliver Krischer, a Green Party member of parliament. "An environmental-impact study, which is also embraced by the gas industry, will do little."
