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.

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.

A cold front swept across northern China's Inner Mongolia region in early November, forcing a wind energy farm at Xilin Gol to curtail operations - even as a brisk breeze whistled through idle turbine blades. "When that much wind is moving through, the generators can't make electricity," explained Ma Zhanxiang, vice president of the Inner Mongolia Electric Power Industry Association (EPIA). "Money just blows by." ...Inner Mongolia's situation is a clear example. Its installed capacity - 50 gigawatts -- is the country's largest, but the excess at wind farms has reached a crisis level. EPIA counts some 10 gigawatts in the region, including 3.49 gigawatts of wind power, as excess installed capacity.

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.

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.

News that $450 million in federal stimulus money might go toward installing Chinese-made wind turbines in Texas prompted criticism on Thursday, with Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, calling on the Obama administration to deny federal financing. According to partners in the deal, the proposed 600-megawatt wind farm, announced late last week, would be built on 36,000 acres in West Texas using 240 wind turbines manufactured by A-Power Energy Generation Systems of Shenyang, China.

The total cost of the project, which was brokered in part by the U.S. Renewable Energy Group, an American private equity company, was estimated at $1.5 billion. ...The group's calculations last week put the number of American jobs at a little more than 300 - most of them temporary construction jobs, along with about 30 permanent positions once the wind farm is operating. Mr. McGarr told The Wall Street Journal that more than 2,000 Chinese jobs would be created by the deal. That, along with the fact that the project was hoping to secure 30 percent, or $450 million, of its financing from U.S. stimulus funds, was enough to send tempers flaring.

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.

A Sino-US consortium yesterday announced plans for a US$1.5 billion, 600MW wind farm in Texas, with China supplying all the turbines and most of the funding. The 36,000-acre wind farm ...is a joint venture between state-backed Chinese firm Shenyang Power Group, US wind farm developer Cielo Wind Power and private equity firm US Renewable Energy Group. Most of the funding for the project will come from Chinese banks, with loan guarantees and grants provided by the US federal government's economic stimulus package.

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.

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.

The 39-turbine Roaring Brook wind farm project in the town of Martinsburg received little public comment Wednesday. And the four people who did speak at the town Planning Board public hearing on the project expressed mixed opinions. "There is insufficient evidence to suggest that birds won't be displaced by Roaring Brook Wind Farm," said Chris K. Lajewski, the Northern New York land steward for the Nature Conservancy.