How should wind turbine use in Michigan be governed: at the state or local level?

Virginia local governments would lose zoning and land-use authority over designated sites for wind farms, nuclear plants and other low-emission energy facilities under a proposal being studied by a legislative panel.

A new simulation finds serious and previously unrecognized environmental threats from massive wind farms in the American Great Plains. A recent study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research by scientists from Princeton and Duke Universities indicates massive wind farms would significantly increase local surface drying and soil heating, which in turn would impact agricultural or range use on or near the wind farm. The modeling experiment used current wind turbine and rotor technology to assess local climate impacts from a simulated wind farm with 10,000 turbines, arranged in a simple, square array of 100 by 100 turbines, each spaced one kilometer apart.

The streamlined rules establish new procedures for demonstrating wind energy facility compliance with existing noise control standards. These standards are used by the Oregon Energy Facility Siting Council to evaluate the location of new energy facilities.