Photographs taken at Meridian's West Wind project above the Makara coastline show how sediment has been overflowing from the construction site. The photos were taken by marine environmentalist Jim Mikoz, who wrote an article in the NZ Fishing Coast to Coast magazine with the headline: The dirt behind wind turbines.. your fishing is at serious risk. In response to the article, Meridian wrote a letter to the editor stating that there would be no mud runoff into the sea from its construction site.

A U.N. conference working to fix long-term rules to fight global warming beyond 2012 "as soon as possible" was split on Tuesday over whether that meant an accord should be struck in 2008, 2009 or even 2010. Industrial investors, weighing options ranging from coal-fired power plants to wind energy, are frustrated at the possibility of years of uncertainty about rules for fossil fuel emissions upon which carbon markets depend.

Business will welcome the Government's signals to follow trading partners on climate change policy and delay carbon emissions trading till after 2012. Energy Minister David Parker told a Climate Change Policy Symposium in Wellington yesterday that the Government believed economy-wide price-based measures for carbon emissions were likely to form the mix of post-2012 policies. Types of measures under consideration from 2012 were emissions trading and offset planting of forests. Business New Zealand chief executive Phil O'Reilly said emissions trading would put a price on carbon and the Government was signalling that would not happen till 2012.

WHILE a stick-figure army of windmills is set to invade the landscape thanks to the State Government's new renewable energy policy, there is growing evidence that wind power will have little impact on the greenhouse crisis.

Scientists are becoming uneasy about New Zealand's rising greenhouse gas emissions, and hopes of reaching a 2012 target are fading.