Testimony from Ohio Power Siting Board staffer Stuart Siegfried on Wednesday in Columbus left no doubt that Champaign County is a lost little dog in the state's fledgling process to begin certifying industrial scale wind utilities in Ohio. Siegfried showed a disturbing lack of understanding of OPSB's own process with regard to determining whether to certify Buckeye Wind's application to site 70 wind turbines of up to 492 feet in height on Champaign County's east side.

Though a final decision has yet to be made, the Blaine County Commission made it clear this week that it does not favor allowing wind energy facilities in the "scenic corridor," the area visible from state Highway 75. It's the biggest issue the commission faces while continuing deliberations on a proposed ordinance regulating wind energy facilities. The meeting Tuesday at the Old County Courthouse in Hailey was the fifth public hearing on the issue and another, possibly the last, is set for Tuesday, Nov. 24, at 2 p.m.

The O'Malley administration's desire to build offshore wind turbines as part of its renewable energy program is running into an unlikely source of resistance: the military. The fear is that turbines placed in the Atlantic Ocean could disrupt flight and weapon test ranges ..."When you start to place turbines out in the Atlantic Ocean, they will create an artificial image on the radar, and we might not be able to see aircraft because we think the aircraft is really the turbine spinning around out there," said Todd Morgan, president of the Southern Maryland Navy Alliance.

Salisbury officials have only recently become aware that 10 wind turbines could be built less than a quarter-mile off Salisbury Beach if the state's draft Ocean Management Plan were adopted. A serious concern of both Salisbury Selectman Jerry Klima and Planning Board Chairman Don Egan is that after only recently seeing a map showing the turbine area less than 1,500 feet from shore ..."I never saw anything like this before that from the state," Klima said yesterday.

Despite pressure from the governor and other state officials, National Grid has again rejected a proposal to buy clean power from a developer proposing to build a $200-million wind farm off Block Island. In a letter filed late Wednesday afternoon with state regulators, Rhode Island's largest electric utility said it would not agree to the latest offer from Deepwater Wind for power from the eight-turbine wind farm that would provide electricity to Block Island because the price is still too high.

Two years ago, a company started looking into the potential for placing wind turbines along Mt. Harris in Dixmont. Since then, local residents have been talking about what that could mean for them-- and Thursday, the issue comes to a vote. Mt. Harris Wind had plans to build about ten turbines along this ridge in Dixmont, says project partner Andrew Price.

After two months of talks, Deepwater Wind LLC and National Grid are still unable to agree upon a contract for the utility to purchase electricity from the developer's offshore wind farm. ...National Grid submitted an unsigned power-purchase agreement, saying the two sides remained apart over the issue of price. National Grid said the cost of electricity from the eight-turbine wind farm planned off the coast of Block Island would be 25.3 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2013, the first full year of operation. The price would rise 3.5 percent each year after that.

A major selling point for the green jobs movement has been the near guarantee that renewable energy and green tech sector jobs will be tied to U.S. soil -- wind farm technicians and solar panel installers in China or India can't service turbines in Iowa and roofs in California. The resulting theology of the green energy movement is that investments in alternative energy will yield millions of new U.S. jobs that cannot be shipped overseas. But Sen. Charles Schumer's, D-N.Y., recent irritation over a proposed Texas wind project eligible to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in stimulus funding has shown just how erroneous this thinking is.

Wyoming lawmakers will soon take up the thorny issue of whether to impose new taxes on wind energy development, a proposal that developers say could stunt the fledgling industry's growth in Wyoming. Supporters of a new tax say it's only fair for wind projects to contribute to state and local governments equal to other energy industries. Opponents say Wyoming taxes are already high compared to surrounding states and any new tax would be premature. The Joint Revenue Committee will consider two proposals to tax wind electricity generation at a Wednesday meeting in Cheyenne.

At a public hearing on the Galloo Island Wind Farm payment-in-lieu-of-taxes deal, no one from the town of Hounsfield raised a voice in support of or in opposition to a plan that will bring $2.14 million annually to the county, town, Sackets Harbor Central School and Jefferson County Industrial Development Agency. You have to wonder why. ...Add it all up, and you can see just how much this "private sector" developer will rely on federal, state and local taxpayers to permit him to make profits. Especially galling is the extent to which local officials, especially the IDA, are doling out hard-won tax dollars to bring, at best, a handful of jobs to the region, and a short-lived flurry of construction money.

One would not think it difficult to reconcile support of renewable energy with the love of the environment, yet this summer we found ourselves in exactly this situation. After years of living with conservation as a mantra, we could never imagine being opposed to a "green" energy project, but ironically that's what has happened. ...After months of research, we've learned that wind power is just not the "green" energy source we've all been told it is. If applied on a small residential scale, it can be very effective; however on an industrial level, there are enormous problems.

In the distance, the dark, low expanse of the island is punctuated by three white lines jutting through the horizon. Three giant wind turbines rise from the interior of the island, visible from miles away, above pines, above homes, above Vinalhaven's granite bones. And on Tuesday, the $14.5 million Fox Islands Wind project officially goes on line with a ribbon-cutting event ...The Lindgrens said the noise can be more intrusive then they were led to believe it would be. The noise is constant, said Britta Lindgren, like a jet passing overhead, "but it never passes." And there's an odd pressure in the air, indefinable, like low frequencies that have begun since the turbines started.

A remote corner of East County is shaping up as a battleground between companies pushing wind farms as clean and cheap power generators and activists who view them as a blight on the landscape. It has put environmentalists in the position of opposing renewable energy because, they say, it's in the wrong place. Drawing the most attention is a plan by the Spanish conglomerate Iberdrola to build about 100 skyscraper-sized towers in and near the McCain Valley, a federal conservation area abutting Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

A fight over whether a proposed wind turbine project bordering Naples will go forward heated up last week when the developer filed a lawsuit against the town, where 17 turbines were to go up. The Article 78 action, filed in state Supreme Court in Monroe County by developer Ecogen Wind LLC, seeks to overturn the Town Board's decision to stop the project by denying approvals and placing a moratorium on its development.

The Massachusetts native who helped found controversial wind-energy developers Cape Wind and First Wind expressed surprise late last week at news that his one-time partner in a separate wind-energy company in Italy has been arrested and charged with fraud. "I read about it in the papers, and I was very surprised," Brian Caffyn said from Hong Kong, where he is now building wind-energy farms in China and the Philipines.

The Government's renewable energy strategy is in tatters after a report exposing the true costs of generating electricity by wind power. An internal document from the National Grid, seen by the Sunday Express, says wind turbine energy will at times cost over 3,000 per cent more than conventional power. Industry experts say over-reliance on wind power could mean fuel poverty for consumers, as older power plants reach the end of their working lives while Britain's new generation of nuclear stations is still a long way off completion.

In his letter to the editor on Nov. 6, Jeff Wennberg painted a ridiculously benign picture of the impact on the mountains of Ira if construction of about 40 wind turbines takes place there. For instance, Jeff states, "Anyone who has seen a completed wind farm on forested land knows that these projects follow the contours of the terrain." He cites the Lempster wind turbine site as an example. ...The blasting and construction of wide service roads and tower base areas there have changed the contours of the land so drastically that, when I now stand in the area of this project, I have a hard time imagining what the terrain looked like before.

Jefferson County homeowners, dairy farmers and small businesses will pay the price in higher taxes to subsidize tax breaks for developers of the Galloo Island Wind Farm under the terms of a tax agreement worked out with the Jefferson County Industrial Development Agency. ...It's a lousy deal for taxpayers, and it gets worse. PILOTs and other preferential treatment for developers are meant to foster job growth, but the wind farm will generate a handful of permanent jobs beyond the short-term construction work.

A proposal to build a dozen wind turbines, part of a larger project to build as many as 100 in East County, has been denied by the Boulevard planning group. The planning group voted 5-0 last week to reject the wind project, with residents saying they felt it would hurt their property values while providing no benefits to the high desert community. Iberdrola Renewables wants to build turbines that would produce 200 megawatts of electricity.