facts, analysis, exposure of wind energy's real impacts Windaction http://www.windaction.org/articles/c52+66?theme=atom Xarayar 2006-06-12T02:16:27Z .38301 2013-05-07T21:38:19Z 2013-05-07T21:38:19Z

Many city representatives say that they are unlikely to give any go-ahead that would effectively enroll customers, who would have the option to opt out, without seeing final rates and having a clearer idea of where the program will get its electricity and how green it will be. ...Benefits, including local energy projects that could create jobs, are "intriguing," Kyes said. "But there really isn't any information yet that shows that's more than talk."

.37742 2013-03-15T13:18:18Z 2013-03-15T13:18:18Z

The utilities have warned that the push to buy renewable power will raise customers' bills. PG&E, for example, estimates that renewable contracts will add about 1 to 2 percent to bills each year through 2020. ...Long-term power purchase contracts with wind farms, solar plants and other renewable energy facilities averaged 9.9 cents per kilowatt hour.

.37550 2013-02-27T14:50:52Z 2013-02-27T14:50:52Z

California is weighing how to avoid a looming electricity crisis that could be brought on by its growing reliance on wind and solar power. ...the surplus generating capacity doesn't guarantee steady power flow. Even though California has a lot of plants, it doesn't have the right mix: Many of the solar and wind sources added in recent years have actually made the system more fragile, because they provide power intermittently.

.37546 2013-02-27T13:13:03Z 2013-02-27T13:13:03Z

Economists are more skeptical about the long-term benefit to the county. They point out that solar and wind farms bring in an initial boom of constriction jobs, but require very few workers once they're up and running. The five projects being built in Imperial County will generate 1,946 temporary construction jobs but only 71.5 permanent ..."Once you build them you don't need many folks to maintain them."

.36716 2012-12-10T10:37:40Z 2012-12-10T10:37:40Z

The power they produce can suddenly disappear when a cloud bank moves across the Mojave Desert or wind stops blowing through the Tehachapi Mountains. In just half an hour, a thousand megawatts of electricity can disappear and threaten stability of the grid. To avoid that calamity, fossil fuel plants have to be ready to generate electricity in mere seconds.

.36614 2012-11-22T14:08:53Z 2012-11-22T14:08:53Z

A low price for credits and minimal demand for future offsets suggest California will see a mere fraction of the $1 billion that Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers estimated the state would receive this fiscal year. If demand remains similar in two forthcoming auctions, the state would generate only about $140 million.

.36534 2012-11-14T20:19:06Z 2012-11-14T20:19:06Z

Barbara Boyle, a senior representative at the Sierra Club's regional field office in Sacramento, says Ivanpah could have been located at any number of other locations where it would have had less impact on the environment and the tortoises that live there. Boyle says there are multiple areas in Southern California, including old dried-up agricultural lands and mining areas, that would have been more suitable.

.33692 2011-11-24T16:37:09Z 2011-11-24T16:37:09Z

California's increasing use of renewable power will come at a price, pushing up electricity bills across the state. And while it's impossible to tell how big the cost to consumers will be, some experts fear the total cost of renewable energy in California will be in the billions of dollars.

.33485 2011-11-02T16:13:31Z 2011-11-02T16:13:31Z

Rep. Gary Miller issued a statement through his campaign committee, blaming short-sighted Democratic lawmakers in Sacramento who in 2002, with Gov. Gray Davis at the helm, mandated power companies in California to generate a greater percentage of "so-called" green energy.

.32912 2011-09-04T20:30:14Z 2011-09-04T20:30:14Z

The commission alleges DyoCore's claims for the energy-generation capacity of its turbine are 7.5 times greater than theoretically possible. Many of the sites where installations were made were in low wind areas that would not have supported power production.

.32757 2011-08-16T23:33:57Z 2011-08-16T23:33:57Z

Wind power is the fastest growing component in the state's green energy portfolio, but wildlife advocates say the marriage has an unintended consequence: dead birds, including protected species of eagles, hawks and owls. "The cumulative impacts are huge," said Shawn Smallwood, one of the few recognized experts studying the impact of wind farms on migratory birds.

.32572 2011-07-26T02:53:53Z 2011-07-26T02:53:53Z

Brown's goal, being fleshed out this week at an invitation-only conference at the University of California, Los Angeles, is to build 12,000 megawatts of distributed renewable energy, building on and extending former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's target of 5,000 MW by 2020.

.31163 2011-02-19T15:03:58Z 2011-02-19T15:03:58Z

Since the law was passed, 59 percent of the contracts the utilities have signed with renewable power developers have been more expensive than the levelized price of electricity from a new natural gas plant. The levelized price takes into account the costs of building, operating and fueling the plant. ..."The thrust of the message is, we need some kind of cost containment," said Yuliya Shmidt, a regulatory analyst with the commission's Division of Ratepayer Advocates.

.31178 2011-02-17T12:13:16Z 2011-02-17T12:13:16Z

The three-year fight over the Sunrise Powerlink, which is designed to carry solar, wind and geothermal energy, typifies the serious challenges facing President Obama and many of the nation's governors as they tout the power of renewable energy to put people to work and rescue the planet from the effects of climate change.

.31009 2011-02-04T00:32:27Z 2011-02-04T00:32:27Z

Superior Court Judge Ernest Goldsmith ruled that the air board approved the larger plan to implement AB32 prior to completing the required environmental review, and that the board failed to adequately consider alternatives to cap and trade. The Air Resources Board "seeks to create a fait accompli by premature establishment of a cap-and-trade program before alternative (sic) can be exposed to public comment and properly evaluated by the ARB itself."

.30842 2011-01-20T16:24:08Z 2011-01-20T16:24:08Z

"All this makes this whole situation so gray. And if you're a business trying to decide whether you should invest half a billion dollars in a wind farm in Oregon or Washington, or Montana for that matter, your financial folks are going to be pretty scared," said John Audley, deputy director of the Renewable Northwest Project.

.30426 2010-12-18T14:59:23Z 2010-12-18T14:59:23Z

"California is a very big variable," said Elliot Mainzer, who is Bonneville Power Administration's guru on how to balance future energy and environmental needs here in the Northwest. When asked if he thought California was carrying its weight as far as managing those type of issues, he said "I would like to see California pay a little bit more attention to our issues, quite frankly."

.29774 2010-11-03T15:29:40Z 2010-11-03T15:29:40Z

Big Republican wins in the House of Representatives make it unlikely that a bill to curb emissions from fossil fuels or establish renewable-energy goals will make it through Congress. But in California, clean-energy policies apparently struck a chord with voters, who handed the governorship to Democrat Jerry Brown, a strong proponent of cutting emissions and boosting alternative-energy industries.

.29270 2010-09-26T11:11:58Z 2010-09-26T11:11:58Z

The new California regulation requires that a third of the state's power supply, or an estimated 15,000 to 25,000 megawatts, must come from a renewable source, said Stanley Young, a spokesman for the air board. ..."What that will do is finance wind farms in Montana, whether those electrons make it to California or someplace else," said Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer.

.28628 2010-08-05T12:45:35Z 2010-08-05T12:45:35Z

A federal ruling has cast doubt on a Vermont program designed to promote renewable energy. The ruling says utilities should not pay more than market rates for electricity from the clean-energy projects. The state agency that represents consumers wants to know how the decision affects projects in Vermont, so it's asked the state attorney general's office for legal advice.