Executive Summary of a document prepared by the Kansas Corporation Commission (KCC) which discusses the cost/benefit of deploying wind turbines to meet the Kansas Governor's challenge “to have 1,000 megawatts of renewable energy capacity installed in Kansas by 2015.” Included below are sections 0.80 and 0.90 of the executive summary. The full document can be accessed by clicking on one of the below links.

This letter was sent to the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation in response to a wind energy development proposal slated for the Hal and Fern Cooper Wildlife Management Area (WMA).

Neighbor agreement(s) sent to property owners with land and/or a residence near the project area.

A candid assessment of wind energy's limited capacity credit (a.k.a. effective capacity), i.e. the utility industry’s standard for measuring a generating source's contribution to system reliability and peak demand

This paper:
• Lists key reasons why political leaders and regulators are facing problems when attempting to deal with wind energy.
• Provides more information on the effort in Kansas to evaluate wind energy.
• Identifies facts about wind energy that are often not taken into account by political leaders and regulators.
• Comments on the efforts in Kansas to promote greater use of wind energy.
• Outlines lessons for all government officials that can be learned from the efforts in Kansas.

Glenn Schleede views a recent report by the "Kansas Energy Council" as illustrative of how state as well as federal officials create bad policy by failing to examine the true costs and benefits of their proposed policies. Examining the Kansas situation in great detail, this report focuses on the real costs of wind in a manner that has broad applicability to any government body considering wind energy.

Given its location, Gray County would have displaced mostly NGCC and some oil fired generation. Using the average 2003 NGCC heatrate for the sub-powerpool (7,478 Btu/kWh) and the average CO2 content of natural gas (116 #CO2/MMBtu), the project may have displaced only 158,000 tons of CO2 in 2003 (0.00207% of 2003 US estimated emissions according to the USDOE report entitled Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States, 2003 (issued December 13, 2004). (Note in 2002, the output was less and it would have displaced only 140,000 tons).

Wind energy development will not impact the land.

Don't be misled. Utility-scale wind energy is industrial development, plain and simple. Remember, these 21st-century wind machines aren't like grandpa's windmill. Fact is, the turbines being proposed in the Flint Hills stand taller than the Statue of Liberty (350 feet and taller)! Industrial-strength wind projects will entail miles of roads and trenched powerlines, and quarrying down 30 feet to make room for about 50 truck loads of concrete to anchor each turbine...and more....