Concerned residents have relentlessly questioned how far wind turbines should be set back from other structures in rural Goodhue County. Commissioners learned Tuesday that addressing those concerns locally regarding two proposed wind farms could be difficult. ...[County Attorney Stephen] Betcher said state law now allows counties to step in and regulate wind farms between 5 and 25 megawatts as well with PUC's help. In doing so, commissioners could impose stricter standards - including for setbacks - than the state currently does on mid-range and larger projects.

A recommendation that a proposed 333-turbine wind farm should be given a special use permit is on its way to the McLean County Board. The McLean County Zoning Board of Appeals voted unanimously to recommend Horizon Wind Energy LLC's plan for Black Prairie Wind Farm, which would dot 3,500 acres north of Illinois 9 east of Bloomington-Normal. The County Board likely will not take up the issue until its January meeting.

A state energy council on Monday recommended approval of the 95-turbine Desert Claim Wind Power Project but also put conditions on its future construction and operation eight miles northwest of Ellensburg. The approval is a recommendation to Gov. Chris Gregoire who will make the final decision on the project, which has been sought since January 2003 by the French-owned firm of enXco USA Inc. Gregoire is expected to formally receive the recommendation in early December and has until early February to make her decision.

Italian finance police have arrested two prominent businessmen - including one with ties to a former investor in the Cape Wind project in Nantucket - in the wind energy sector on charges of fraud, reports the Financial Times. Arrested were Oreste Vigorito, head of the IVPC energy company and president of Italy's National Association of Wind Energy, and Vito Nicastri, a Sicilian business associate, according to the article. According to the European Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, Oreste Vigorito has ties to Brian Caffyn, a former investor in the Cape Wind project, which has been criticized as a poor investment for taxpayers, reports Dakota Voice.

Where's the best place for a wind turbine in Orland Park? What are the advantages of a geothermal system? Should the village add solar power to some of its buildings? These are some of the questions sustainability consultant Teresa Fourcher will help village officials answer. The village is expected to use up to $10,000 in grant money from its $200,000 Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant to pay Fourcher. Village manager Paul Grimes said most municipal staffs don't know a "hill of beans" about renewable energy so some help is needed.

The Livingston County Board at its meeting Thursday night approved amending the Streator Enterprise Zone Agreement, which had been in effect since the 1980s, so that several school districts in the county can benefit from the property involved in the Iberdrola wind farm project. ...County Board attorney Tom Blakeman explained that the county will abate the portion of property taxes involved with the wind towers. He said this would allow the schools to receive general state aid and then funds from Iberdrola.

Driving through western Kansas, you'll see hundreds of whirling wind turbines. But you won't see lots of people - or high-voltage power lines. And that is the big obstacle to realizing the wind-energy potential of Kansas and the Midwest: You can put up all the towers and turbines you like, but without more transmission lines, the added electricity won't get to the cities that could use it. Those lines will take years to build and cost tens of billions of dollars - if they are built at all.

The High Court has thrown out a legal bid that had the potential of derailing the drive to achieving the UK's ambitious wind energy targets. Mr Justice Cranston rejected a challenge to the authority of South Norfolk Council and their decision to grant planning permission for a wind farm development at Lotus sports car factory. Campaigners had argued that the local authority had acted unlawfully because it had not considered the impact of the scheme on local residents.

The town will look at three locations as possibilities for a large wind turbine. Using $8,800 allocated to Newbury by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, the town's Alternative Energy Committee will retain a Beverly consulting firm to conduct three energy workshops and prepare an application to the Technology Collaborative for a full-scale feasibility study on three possible turbine sites.

The debate over whether to build the country's first offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound is no stranger to challenges. The latest - a bid by the Wampanoag tribes on Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard to have the 560-square-mile Sound declared eligible for the National Register of Historic Places - may top the list. From impacts on fisheries to new requirements for construction along Nantucket Sound, a finding that the Sound is eligible for the register could have wide-ranging effects on development and economic activity, opponents of the move argue.

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.

Prince Edward County councillors and members of the public left the Nov. 10 special meeting over a new proposed windmill bylaw for the municipality at Shire Hall feeling impotent, bemoaning the unanswered questions. "In my opinion, the mark was missed. And in a lot of ways, it feels like we're beating a dead horse because, in the game of politics, the Ontario government trumps municipalities. And if the province doesn't want it, then the province isn't going to care what we have on paper," said Prince Edward County councillor Kevin Gale.

Umatilla County is again asking the Oregon Energy Facility Siting Council to do away with a 400,000 acre box designated as an energy generation area. The box sits along the north border of the county, in about the center. It includes Milton-Freewater, Adams, Athena, Weston and some of Pendleton. In 1999 the siting council designated the EGA in response to a legislative mandate. The Oregon Department of Energy has been unclear on the EGA's original purpose, but some have said it was meant to analyze cumulative effects of many small wind farms in a given area.

Small wind farm developer New Zealand Windfarms intends to install the turbines of Windflow Technology on an extension to its Manawatu wind farm despite their dispute over whether they are "fit for purpose". NZ Windfarms was at a resource consent hearing in Palmerston North last week, seeking to install 56 Windflow 0.5 megawatt two-bladed turbines on an extension to its Te Rere Hau wind farm in Manawatu.

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 wind farm planned for southern Dakota County is getting some blowback from nearby residents. In a barrage of comments submitted to the state's Public Utilities Commission, neighbors and even a few people from other parts of the metro area criticized the proposal for a 10.84 megawatt wind farm in Greenvale Township, northeast of Northfield. The project would be the first to concentrate multiple windmills in the seven-county metro area, and many people objected to that idea.

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.

Witnesses began testimony this week on a proposal that could soon dot Champaign County with large wind turbines. Throughout the week, Everpower Renewables, the New York company proposing the Buckeye wind project, provided witnesses who testified before the Ohio Power Siting Board on everything from the potential effect of the turbines on Grimes and Weller Fields to what effects, if any, shadow flicker has on human health. Testimony is expected to continue into this week.

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.