Anti-windfarm campaigners say that installing turbines at Todd Hill could have a devastating impact on wildlife and tourism. Members of the Put People First (PPF) group have highlighted concerns for birds, bats and other animals if a Novera Energy application for four turbines near Pigdon is approved. They say the area is host to a wide range of species.

Proposals to build Europe's largest onshore windfarm in the Shetland Islands at a cost of £800 million could be scaled back, according to developer Viking Energy, writes Will Nichols. The limited company originally presented plans for the 150 turbine, 540MW project to the Shetland Islands council this summer. However, last week, a spokesman for Viking Energy told NewEnergyFocus.com that the company is to submit an addendum to its plans early in the new year in a response to concerns flagged up during consultation, including over bird life and landscape.

Calumet County supervisors jumped the gun on new wind turbine rules this summer even while asking the state Supreme Court to consider whether its old ordinance met legal muster. A denial from Wisconsin's justices will now require the county to put that early work to action. The state Supreme Court on Friday denied Calumet County's petition for review of an appeals court decision that invalidated the county's wind turbine rules. The ordinance dictated setbacks and maximum heights and sound levels for all turbine construction within its zoning jurisdiction.

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.

The Altamont is the world's oldest wind farm with some 5,000 power-generating turbines covering 50 square miles on the Alameda County border. While generating good green power for the state, it has a bad reputation for killing birds. The wind turbines on the gusty Altamont Pass were installed after the energy crisis in the 1970s. Today, the world's oldest wind farm powers an average of 100,000 homes with clean green energy. But environmentalists say it comes at a steep price.

Opponents to a proposed electricity-generating turbine project in Champaign County questioned Thursday during state hearings whether the wind-turbines would harm an endangered species of bat, but a researcher who studied the issue said the windmills would not. ...UNU attorneys argued the study did not follow specific guidelines for net placement developed by the department of fish and wildlife. A follow-up study by wildlife officials, however, did find evidence of the Indiana bat in the area. Meinke said she had worked closely with officials from the department of fish and wildlife when she conducted the study, which was deemed adequate at the time.

Wisconsin’s endangered species law (s. 29.604, Wis. Stats.) requires the Department of Natural Resources to notify the public when it proposes to authorize the incidental taking of a state endangered or threatened species.

A proposal to build the first wind farm in Western Washington may stall, and may even be doomed, because of concern that turbine blades would kill members of an endangered bird species, a state lawmaker says. "I'm just not feeling real confident that this is going to grab hold and move forward very fast," Rep. Dean Takko, D-Longview, said last week. "There are key players who aren't very supportive, and I think it's going to hold this up. Is it going to kill it? I don't know."

Bill Evans wants to make it clear he's not against wind turbines. "I'm not anti-wind. I'm a consultant who people call from both sides when there's a concern about the impact on migrating birds," he said. Evans, 50, is an Ithaca-based ornithologist who has studied bird migration in North America for more than 25 years. He helped start the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's research into avian night flight calls in the mid-1990s and in 1998 founded the non-profit group Old Bird Inc.

Business has been slow, so dairy farmer Bernie Kozlovsky could use a little extra cash as much as the next guy. But a developer's offer of $6,000 annually for access to his property has Kozlovsky - and many of his neighbors - conflicted about whether to welcome a wind farm into southern Brown County. The proposal by Chicago-based Invenergy LLC would be Brown County's first major commercial wind farm and would be larger than any currently operating in the state.

[Walter] Wiersma, of Friesland, was one of many people at the standing-room-only hearing who said worries about the health effects, safety and noise from wind turbines in a 17,300-acre area of the towns of Scott and Randolph, should lead the commission to reject the We Energies proposal for Glacier Hills Wind Park. "I'm for green energy," he said, "but I don't want it to hurt my family and friends." The afternoon and evening sessions for the hearing were moved from the Randolph Town Hall to the Friesland Village Hall to accommodate more people.

Walter Wiersma considered introducing a photo of his children - 5-year-old Spencer and 3-year-old Rianna - into the written record of Wednesday's Public Service Commission of Wisconsin hearing to illustrate his opposition to electricity-generating wind turbines in northeast Columbia County. Wiersma, of Friesland, was one of many people at the standing-room-only hearings who said worries about the health effects, safety and noise from wind turbines, in a 17,300-acre area in the towns of Scott and Randolph, should lead the commission to reject the We Energies proposal for Glacier Hills Wind Park.

Local governments are beginning to flex their permitting authority to challenge commercial-scale wind farms, a trend some industry observers say could impede broader federal efforts to expand renewable energy production. The latest round in the emerging battle between local governments and wind-energy developers occurred last week in Kansas, where the state Supreme Court upheld a Wabaunsee County zoning ordinance banning industrial-scale wind ...Experts say the Wabaunsee ordinance, unanimously upheld by the Kansas court, is a key test of local governments' power to effectively ban large-scale wind farms, as opposed to blocking a specific project or proposal.

Proponents of small wind systems got a lift this week when the county attorney said a proposed bill designed to streamline the permitting process would not open the county to legal or financial liability should an applicant's windmill kill an endangered seabird. The announcement, delivered by Deputy County Attorney Ian Jung, who specializes in planning issues and advises the Kaua‘i Planning Commission. ...While Jung's statement could go a long way to resolving one issue standing in the way of the bill's passage, there are several other factors that have yet to be addressed.

The US Forest Service is one step closer to issuing a decision on the Deerfield Wind Project. The Manchester Ranger District of the Green Mountain National Forest has reviewed the Public Service Board's approval and the public comments it received regarding last year's Draft Environmental Impact Statement. Now the forest service is ready to release a supplemental report on their latest findings. But despite the new information, some state officials are urging the forest service take extra precautions before they make a final decision.

The dirty little secret about the windmill farm at Altamont Pass is that it slaughters thousands of birds every year while politicians turn a blind eye. Four years ago, environmental groups filed suit after the Alameda County Board of Supervisors effectively allowed the farm's several owners to keep killing birds despite evidence that the deaths could be greatly lessened.

The thousand of birds killed by the wind turbines at Altamont Pass tainted the reputation of the renewable energy source. But according to a recent report by the Ventana Wildlife Society and the Stanford Solar and Wind Energy Project, smaller wind-power projects may be able to harvest energy in some parts of Monterey County without harming the endangered California condor. "The condor is the main thing that's been holding up the development of wind-power projects in Monterey County," said John Roitz.

We Energies has run into some headwinds in its bid to build the biggest wind farm in the state. The Glacier Hills Wind Park project in Columbia County would consist of 90 turbines rising at least 400 feet above corn fields near the village of Friesland, northeast of Madison. The Milwaukee utility proposed the project, its second large wind farm, as part of an expansion of renewable energy to comply with a state law that passed with bipartisan support in 2006. The law calls for wind turbines and other renewable energy systems to power 10% of the state's electricity by 2015.

Attorneys for the developers of a West Virginia wind farm questioned all but their last witness in a trial over whether the project will harm an endangered bat. The defense witnesses said Friday in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt that netting has not captured any Indiana bats and disputed audio recordings that witnesses for the plaintiffs say show the endangered bats are at the site.