Plans to notify the Turitea wind farm have stalled again following news a call-in decision is imminent. After announcing last month that Mighty River Power's application for the 131-turbine wind farm would be publicly notified, despite still waiting on a ministerial call-in decision, Palmerston North City Council has back-pedalled after news Environment Minister Nick Smith plans to announce his decision in the next week.

The application for the 131-turbine wind farm was lodged on August 14, and the council had expected to publicly notify the application last month. But, the process stalled after MRP applied to the Environment Minister for a ministerial call-in. That would have fast-tracked the application, because the resource consent process would be taken out of council's hands, and instead referred directly to either a board of inquiry or the Environment Court.

The State Government's green credentials are being queried after MPs were told a mini wind turbine rollout has "collapsed". The $331,000 project followed Premier Mike Rann's announcement in 2006 to install turbines on his and four other prominent Adelaide office buildings, as part of a commitment to renewable energy. At the time, Mr Rann said the turbines would be monitored for 12 months, but the Government has told The Advertiser that it does not know how much electricity is being generated from the project.

The plug is set to be pulled on a multimillion-dollar Wellington wind farm proposal because of visual pollution concerns, despite a winter of power cut fears. A report by Greater Wellington regional council recommends a five-year moratorium on wind farm development at Belmont Regional Park, five years after the council called the site a "world-class wind farm opportunity".

The state-owned generation and retailing company is preparing for battle with the Government's Electricity Commission over who pays for a modern inter-island power link, saying the existing arrangement would cost it about $1 billion. A leaked document also shows Meridian would, for purely commercial reasons, prefer not to have the high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) link which includes the Cook Strait cables at all. Meridian is angered by a commission decision that South Island generators alone should pay for the HVDC because it allows them to profit from selling electricity to the North Island.

Analyst Bryan Leyland said New Zealand needed more power generation as "soon as possible" after drought caused this winter's hydro power shortage. The place to build a plant quickest was at Contact's Otahuhu site in Auckland, which already had consent for its existing power station, Mr Leyland said. It could be built within two years. If it chose that option, Contact could buy a 400-megawatt combined cycle power station for about $600 million - much cheaper than a wind farm.

A National-led Cabinet would decide which crucial projects to fast-track under its plans to shake up the Resource Management Act (RMA), party environment spokesman Nick Smith says. National says fixing the act would be one of its priorities if it wins this year's general election. It wants to introduce a two-phase system in which priority consents would have to be processed within nine months. The proposal, announced by party leader John Key and Smith at the weekend, has generated cautious interest.

Four out of five power stations in Victoria's Latrobe Valley, both coal-fired power stations in South Australia and several generators in NSW and Queensland could close down under an emissions trading regime designed to meet even a modest greenhouse reduction target. New modelling for the electricity industry finds that Australia could achieve cuts of 10 or 20 per cent in its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared with 2000 levels - but only after a massive upheaval in the energy sector. Even the lower target of a 10 per cent cut would push the price of carbon emissions to levels that would close down 15 per cent of the nation's electricity generating capacity on the east coast and require $33billion in new investment in replacement clean energy generation, such as wind, solar, combined cycle gas turbine and geothermal power.

Greenpower users will be double billed if changes to the new greenhouse gas reporting system are not made, says University of Adelaide climate change Professor Barry Brook. This could cause the GreenPower national accreditation scheme to "implode" when an emissions trading scheme is introduced in 2010. Professor Brook said the almost 750,000 households and businesses using GreenPower nationally would be penalised once an emissions trading scheme was introduced as they would be paying extra to buy power from renewable sources.

The decision by a panel of commissioners released today by Waikato District Council to approve resource consent for the project comes after five years of Wel investigations into wind power generation, and two years of feasibility studies on the Wharauroa Plateau in Te Uku. The decision also comes in a week where the Government's energy policies have been creaking at the joints, with blackout fears escalating and a decision made to reopen a mothballed thermal station in Taranaki but in climatic conditions not conducive to a wind farm. Wel's project team is now engaged in fully understanding the 148-page ruling and 26 pages of conditions, but chief executive Julian Elder welcomed the decision.

During Mr Rudd's visit to Traralgon on Saturday, he raised the issue of alternative energies and its impact on the region's future, while confirming his support for the Latrobe Valley's brown coal industry. "Obviously wind has a strong place... and that's why you will find in the budget we have significant funding allocations not just for research but the deployment of alternative energies as well,'' Mr Rudd said. "Windfarms are important in terms of an alternative energy resource for Australia but it's the location of windfarms which is a local developmental approval challenge. ...The wind turbine debate flared up recently when speculation surfaced that a windfarm could soon be built in the rural district of Carrajung. Rumours about a windfarm gathered momentum when representatives from energy company Synergy Wind were seen conducting wind measurements in the area.

TrustPower's hearing for the 200MW Mahinerangi windfarm concluded in Dunedin last week and now another division of the court is considering the Project Hayes application. Counsel for Meridian Andrew Beatson asked Judge Jon Jackson and commissioners Dr Alex Sutherland, Heather McConarchy and Ken Fletcher that they consider Project Hayes "as if the Mahinerangi proposal doesn't exist''. Several appellants are concerned about the cumulative effects of Project Hayes when combined with effects from other windfarms in the area.

Snowflakes tumbling along the Old Dunstan Road hint at a long winter to come. Here, 700m up on the northern fringes of Central Otago's Lammermoor Ranges, is giant state-owned power company Meridian Energy's latest bid to produce enough electricity to allow South Islanders to enjoy a more secure power supply. Flurrying snow marks out small eddies but there's little real wind up here today on the 200sq km site where Meridian plans to spend $1.5 billion and install as many as 176 wind turbines with the potential to generate up to 630 megawatts (MW) of electricity ...The true extent of Project Hayes, which spreads across five private properties, is difficult to gauge as the windfarm site disappears into the snowy mists. It has been controversial, as all proposals to generate more electricity are these days, attracting the ire of high-profile Central Otago landscape-lovers ...

Contact Energy had asked the national grid operator as far back as 2003 to investigate a power bottleneck, the Environment Court was told yesterday. ...But it was advised by the national grid operator the existing transformer was in reasonable operating condition and there was no need for a new transformer. The power company wants a condition imposed on the resource consents for the Mahinerangi wind farm, with capacity increased at transmission lines at the Roxburgh substation and between Roxburgh and Naseby. Mr Brinsdon said the company was forced to reduce generation at Roxburgh because of line constraints.

Electricity industry commentators say Kiwis are just starting to pay for the cost of big wind farm developments and the lack of generation when the wind stops blowing. ..."First electricity companies need to get a return on their investment in wind, which is going to push prices up. Second, they will claim the risk of wind energy, because it is so intermittent, is so high they will have to raise prices to build back-up generation." Mr. Leyland said wind farms were vulnerable to sitting idle in light winds. "They call wind ‘intermittent', but the best word is unpredictable. There's a blind faith that wind power would provide the electricity that we need," he said.

Of the country's 9900 megawatt capacity, the capacity of installed turbines, including small installations at Gebbies Pass and Southbridge, is 321.8MW. ...With Government encouragement, wind's role is growing. Projects being built in Manawatu and Wellington will add 188MW. A further five consented wind farms could add 312MW. Applications are being considered for nine more projects which will lift the total by 1700MW. ...One of the Upland Landscape Protection Society's most prominent members, Central Otago artist Grahame Sydney, says the possibility the landscape will not be appreciated in the same way by later generations is upsetting and depressing. "The pervasive cloud of threat that hangs over this landscape that I love so much, that so many of us love and think is important ... is very real and it's awfully troubling," he says.

A researcher is looking at outflanking the mounting tide of "nimby" protests over the siting of windfarms by making it possible to moor the turbines out at sea. "Wind turbine progress has been hindered in New Zealand mainly by complaints from residents about noise and the visual impact on outstanding landscapes," said Auckland University engineering researcher Hazim Namik. But offshore windfarms could resolve all of these issues. "The further they can be placed offshore, the better the winds and the less visual and noise impact they have on communities," he said.

Energy Minister David Parker says he does not want the proposed Waverley windfarm being blocked by red tape. Allco Wind Energy's bid for consent to build a 45-turbine farm on the Waverley coast will be heard by the South Taranaki District Council on May 5. Most of 127 submissions made oppose the consent being granted. ...National grid operator Transpower's system operations manager Kieran Devine told the Taranaki Daily News this week that the monitoring project has already disclosed some interesting data: ..."One of the major issues we face is that over the three years 2005-07, we were getting less than 1% of wind farm capacity at peak times in winter.

Moorabool Council will write to the Federal Government supporting a national wind-farm code. The decision came after WestWind Energy submitted a planning application for 40 wind turbines at Yendon and 24 at Elaine. The letter, to Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett, will aim to prevent wind farms being "constructed against the wishes of the community". The council could have little influence over approval for the Yendon/Elaine wind farm.

Romantic notions about wind energy have taken a severe buffeting at the Ngaruawahia hearing into Wel Networks' proposal to build a $200 million wind farm near Te Uku. Over the next few weeks commissioners Michael Savage, John Hudson, David Hill and Graham Ridley will rule on Wel's application for resource consent for 28-turbine wind farm on the Wharauroa Plateau. But regardless of the outcome of their deliberations and perhaps those of the Environment Court further down the track strident opposition to the Te Uku project has already done much to undermine wind power's image as our favoured squeaky clean alternative to fossil fuels.