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.

A year after the collapse of the equity financing market for large wind farms, state leaders and private developers are eyeing community-scale projects as an opportunity to grow the number of turbines in the state. But while communities may be good candidates for wind projects - with a strong, steady demand for electricity and the ability to raise taxes as collateral - just who will ultimately back these developments is still an unknown.

The O'Malley administration's desire to build offshore wind turbines as part of its renewable energy program is running into an unlikely source of resistance: the military. The fear is that turbines placed in the Atlantic Ocean could disrupt flight and weapon test ranges ..."When you start to place turbines out in the Atlantic Ocean, they will create an artificial image on the radar, and we might not be able to see aircraft because we think the aircraft is really the turbine spinning around out there," said Todd Morgan, president of the Southern Maryland Navy Alliance.

Senate Democratic leaders said Tuesday they would put off debate on a big climate-change bill until spring, in a sign of weakening political will to tackle a long-term environmental issue at a time of high unemployment and economic uncertainty. Legislation on health care, overhauling financial markets and job creation will be considered before the Senate takes up a measure to cap emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to climate change, Senate Democratic leaders said Tuesday.

Two companies that encountered political anger for their plans to use Chinese-built turbines on a wind farm in West Texas have announced plans to build a new turbine factory - in the United States. The U.S. Renewable Energy Group, an investment firm, and A-Power Energy Generation Systems, a Chinese turbine maker, said in a statement on Tuesday that they had signed an agreement to build "a new production and assembly plant in the United States that will supply highly advanced wind energy turbines to renewable energy projects throughout North and South America."

A major selling point for the green jobs movement has been the near guarantee that renewable energy and green tech sector jobs will be tied to U.S. soil -- wind farm technicians and solar panel installers in China or India can't service turbines in Iowa and roofs in California. The resulting theology of the green energy movement is that investments in alternative energy will yield millions of new U.S. jobs that cannot be shipped overseas. But Sen. Charles Schumer's, D-N.Y., recent irritation over a proposed Texas wind project eligible to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in stimulus funding has shown just how erroneous this thinking is.

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.

The solicitations have been flooding people's mailboxes lately: pay a bit more on your electricity bill for 100 percent clean wind power. Or, the fliers say, buy "green power certificates" to offset your global warming emissions. Close to a million electricity customers have signed up for such payments voluntarily, and the amount of electricity sold in this way has nearly tripled since 2005, amid rising concern about climate change and energy security. But the participants are in a distinct minority, with a sign-up rate of only about 2 percent in programs run by utilities.

The rush to America of foreign wind-turbine manufacturers shows that the Obama administration's plan for stimulating the creation of green-energy jobs is going in an odd direction.

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.

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 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 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.

While Massachusetts recipients of federal stimulus money collectively report 12,374 jobs saved or created, a Globe review shows that number is wildly exaggerated. Organizations that received stimulus money miscounted jobs, filed erroneous figures, or claimed jobs for work that has not yet started. The Globe's finding is based on the federal government's just-released accounts of stimulus spending at the end of October. ...But in interviews with recipients, the Globe found that several openly acknowledged creating far fewer jobs than they have been credited for.

When the Pilgrims arrived in America, it was the Wampanoag who greeted them peacefully so the newcomers could escape religious persecution. Now the tribe is having to fight for their own religious freedoms. The Wampanoag, also known as "The People of the First Light", have delayed the construction of America's first offshore wind farm, reports Associated Press. The Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoag practice sacred religious rituals which they say require an unblocked view of the horizon, in particular, the sunrise.

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.

From a blustery perch over a Cape Cod beach, Chuckie Green gestures toward a stretch of horizon where he says construction of the nation's first offshore wind farm would destroy his Indian tribe's religion. The Wampanoag - the tribe that welcomed the Pilgrims in the 17th century and known as "The People of the First Light" - practice sacred rituals requiring an unblocked view of the sunrise. That view won't exist once 130 turbines, each over 400 feet tall, are built several miles from shore in Nantucket Sound, visible to Wampanoag in Mashpee and on Martha's Vineyard.