"The Government is moving from a grant-based system, where they will pay out money to new renewable businesses, to relying on the market to drive the industry. There are companies that have started up based on a policy that is changed overnight. They are left standard with stock and staff they can't use."

Tontine Associates, the once gilt-edged hedge fund that collapsed rapidly over the past two months in the wake of the market's carnage, was renowned for its massive and highly contrarian bets in industries like home-building and steel manufacturing. ...Last week, however, the combination of big bets gone south and prime brokers demanding repayment for loans forced Gendell to announce to investors that he was shutting two of his main portfolios ...But at the center of the Tontine maelstrom is a less well-known series of trades in alternative energy stocks, especially those related to wind turbines, that played a key role in the both the fund's recent success and its collapse.

The Highland Wind Farm plan, which seeks to bring 41 500-foot-tall wind turbines to the rural landscape of northeast St. Croix County, is ripping the social fabric of the community apart. But besides agreeing on that point, the chasm between the backers of the idea and those opposed to it is huge.

Energy experts generally agree that the electrical grid in the United States needs to be upgraded if the country is to increase its use of renewable-energy sources like wind power and significantly reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. But plans to string new high-voltage lines to bring wind power from the midsection of the country to the coasts, where most of the demand is, could be expensive and unnecessary, and a distraction from more urgent needs, some experts say.

The fate of a proposed wind tower project for Roxbury will be at stake at a special town meeting this June. Several citizens pressed the selectmen to have the special town meeting as soon as possible at a selectmen's meeting on May 8. On March 27, the Concerned Citizens to Save Roxbury submitted a petition asking for a 180-day moratorium on the wind towers. The selectmen approved the petition on April 11. ...The town meeting will take place on June 17 at 6:30 p.m. at a site to be determined.

Workers are inspecting and repairing 75 wind turbine blades at a wind farm some 60 miles east of San Diego after a storm a month ago caused catastrophic damage to some of them. ..."The turbines were actually stopped," he said. "There were extremely high winds on the site - that contributed to the blade cracking."

The Teresian Carmelites, a tiny religious community in Worcester, have won their lawsuit against American Tower Corp., which the monks had accused of breaching its agreement to sell them a 99-acre site in Central Massachusetts where they want to build a monastery and wind farm.

It was the first joint meeting between the two 15-member groups, both of which include ranchers, scientists and others who advise the BLM on policy decisions. The two groups, accompanied by tribal and environmental representatives, sat through a presentation on the project and then drove onto the site to see a meteorological tower currently measuring wind speeds in the area. "A day in the field is worth 1,000 issue papers," Jenifer Arnold, associate district manager for the BLM Twin Falls District, told the crowd. ...Though RES states it does not believe any endangered species will be affected, it's up to a BLM-led environmental study to determine just what impact the project would have on the area. Species such as the sage grouse are being examined for listing by the federal government, and BLM officials said they weren't sure how a possible listing would affect the wind project. ...the most pointed questioning by far came from Katie Fite, biodiversity director for the Western Watersheds Project. Quizzing speakers on the proper way to study wildlife effects and the need for the tower in the first place, Fite said "This is the most inappropriate place on Earth to put a wind farm."

Lawmakers who want stricter regulations - including both leaders of the legislature's energy and technology committee - on Wednesday offered a compromise that would allow the developer to skirt the regulations as long as it adhered to a new set of overall guidelines.

The Obama administration signaled a sudden urgency yesterday to resolve the nine-year dispute over building a wind farm off Cape Cod, as US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced he would summon key parties to a meeting next week in hope of concluding the decision process within two months. The announcement was made minutes after the Cape Wind project appeared to suffer an unexpected setback.

PROTESTERS fighting plans for five wind turbines in a village overlooking the Lake District have lobbied county councillors to ignore guidance and object to the development.

Sitting at his kitchen table, Staton unfolded a recent column from The Wall Street Journal. It was about how T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire energy investor, had backed away from wind investments in favor of natural gas. "Common sense tells me that this country is subsidizing anything that says ‘green,' and if it wasn't for the subsidy, wind wouldn't work," he said.

For ardent advocates and fiercely passionate opponents of a potential project at the westward-facing Lenox Mountain ridge line 1,800 feet in elevation, the prospect of a 262-foot high turbine, or two, has already stirred a hornet's nest of strong feelings not only in Lenox but among Richmond residents who live near the site.

Campaigners reacted with anger yesterday after a study concluded that a swathe of moorland in Northumberland is capable of accommodating two controversial wind farm projects. npower renewables wants permission for 18 massive turbines at Middlemoor, north of Alnwick, and RidgeWind Ltd is seeking the green light for 10 at nearby Wandylaw. Each would tower 125m from base to rotor blade tip. Both applications have been strongly opposed by local campaigners who fear the North Northumberland landscape is at risk of being invaded by scores of turbines at a number of different locations. Now a landscape capacity study commissioned by the North-East Assembly has concluded that the moorland around North and South Charlton is capable of accommodating both.

Although sound studies conducted by the developer First Wind show the noise level from the Sheffield Wind project is below acceptable levels set by state regulators, Therrien says it still wakes him up some nights. ...

Between now and the third week in July, state police will occasionally escort a series of oversized tractor-trailers carrying giant wind turbine parts from Searsport to Eustis. "They'll run from Searsport to Kibby Mountain, which is in Eustis." The Kibby Mountain wind power project is being built by TransCanada in remote Franklin County.

Acciona Energy confirmed Friday the 30-megawatt wind farm that was supposed to go into service in November near Exit 3 of the Trans-Canada Highway will not be constructed this year. "The project is suffering from the economic downtown. Liquidity for capital projects is scarce right now and this project is extremely capital intensive," Schneider said.

A faulty sensor on a giant wind turbine is being blamed for huge shards of ice flying off its blades and crashing into nearby homes and gardens. As The Evening Telegraph reported in November, residents in King's Dyke, Whittlesey, had to take cover for more than four hours when huge lumps of ice, some measuring 2ft, were flung from the giant machine's blades.

Local councils in the country's 28 windiest towns are digging in their heels against a national plan that would cluster the next generation of high-efficiency wind turbines within their borders, Politiken newspaper reports. ...Facing the prospect of asking their residents to accept an average of 35 giant wind turbines, local councillors are already warning national politicians that they are preparing to put up a fight.