People listening to policymakers debate the nation's energy future might think: Just erect a lot of wind turbines, and problem solved. Or install a bunch of solar panels, and let the sun do the work. But renewable energy alternatives present costs and challenges just like traditional energy sources - coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydropower.

Portland-based Keppel Prince Engineering, which makes about 40% of Australia's wind turbine towers, has indicated it may need to lay off 150 staff because of lack of work. Keppel Prince's chief executive, Steve Garner, told Green Left Weekly a big problem is that the companies it has contracts with can't access Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) to support their projects.

Power producers have installed more than 500 megawatts of wind energy generation in Wyoming in the past year. One driver behind the wind boom presumably is action by other states in the West to require that utilities use certain percentages of renewable energy in their power supplies -- called renewable portfolio standards. ...That has many speculating whether renewable portfolio standards in other states are driving up rates in Wyoming, where there is no such requirement.

The Selinger government is considering a bailout deal to rescue the financially floundering wind farm slated to be built near St. Joseph. Following some pointed questions from Tory MLA Cliff Graydon during a committee hearing late Tuesday night, Finance Minister Rosann Wowchuk acknowledged Pattern Energy has approached the government for funding and that the province is considering it.

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.

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 High Court has thrown out a legal bid that had the potential of derailing the drive to achieving the UK's ambitious wind energy targets. Mr Justice Cranston rejected a challenge to the authority of South Norfolk Council and their decision to grant planning permission for a wind farm development at Lotus sports car factory. Campaigners had argued that the local authority had acted unlawfully because it had not considered the impact of the scheme on local residents.

Umatilla County is again asking the Oregon Energy Facility Siting Council to do away with a 400,000 acre box designated as an energy generation area. The box sits along the north border of the county, in about the center. It includes Milton-Freewater, Adams, Athena, Weston and some of Pendleton. In 1999 the siting council designated the EGA in response to a legislative mandate. The Oregon Department of Energy has been unclear on the EGA's original purpose, but some have said it was meant to analyze cumulative effects of many small wind farms in a given area.

Early work on a unified wind turbine policy was met with many questions at Thursday's Burleigh County Planning Commission meeting. Bismarck City Planner Gregg Greenquist said the policy should be split between "household wind energy systems" and larger wind farms. Greenquist said a large expansion is planned for a wind farm near Wilton into the Burleigh County jurisdiction.

A Patrick administration proposal that critics say would strip local control from the siting of wind turbines is still awaiting action on Beacon Hill. And some West County town officials say revisions in the legislation don't go far enough in addressing their concerns. The Hawley Planning Board wrote this week to Gov. Deval Patrick and area legislators opposing the Wind Energy Siting Reform Act.

Legislators declined this summer to clear the way for North Carolina to tap the power of mountain winds. Next year, they could decide whether to allow a single, experimental ridgetop wind farm. Rep. Phil Frye said at a Wednesday wind-energy forum that he plans to propose allowing the state to issue one permit for building rows of wind turbines on a ridge - which he hopes would happen at a site overlooking his hometown of Spruce Pine.

Wyoming's Wind Energy Task Force has delivered a 78-page report to state lawmakers outlining how the state and counties might regulate the fledgling wind energy industry. One of the toughest policy decisions for lawmakers may be how to offer counties some measure of control over wind development without superseding the authority of the state. "This is a matter of expressed powers.

Township Committee members here hope someone can stop a state green energy bill now awaiting Governor Jon Corzine’s signature before it becomes law. The New Jersey State League of Municipalities (NJSLOM) and officials in towns throughout the state joined them in opposing the bill, whose Senate version was S1303. The bill passed the Senate in late February and the Assembly in late June.

Britain's biggest developer of offshore wind farms has hired Rothschild to sell stakes in its projects because it cannot afford to build them. The move by Dong Energy, the Danish power giant, casts fresh doubt on the government's carbon-reduction plans just six months after it ramped up subsidies to keep the offshore wind sector afloat. ..."The issue is that these projects require enormous amounts of capital and it's getting very difficult to justify," said an industry source. "The enthusiasm there once was has diminished."

Maine's quest to become a leader in developing an alternative energy industry has plenty of support in Augusta and Orono, but along the shoreline people are more wary. While some see the development of offshore wind energy as a powerful engine for economic growth in Maine, many in the state's beleaguered lobster industry fear that wind farms will be just one more item on a growing list of obstacles to fishing in the Gulf of Maine. Last month, the state's Ocean Energy Task Force tentatively identified four sites along the Maine coast as potential locations for testing offshore wind generators.

With more than a third of the major wind-energy projects in Massachusetts stalled by lawsuits or permit appeals, the Patrick administration has proposed a landmark bill that would streamline the state’s appeals process and make it possible to win approval of such projects much more quickly. Massachusetts now generates less than 1 percent of the nation’s wind energy, about 9 megawatts ...Without a change in the permitting process the state will not meet Governor Deval Patrick’s goal of producing 2,000 megawatts of wind power, enough for 800,000 homes, by 2020.

To municipal wind power advocates, net metering is the Holy Grail. ...Net metering provisions virtually double what municipalities are currently paid for the power they generate through renewable energy. It also allowed the towns to get credits at the wholesale rate for their power ...But some Cape municipal and county officials are worried that wind turbines that are still in the planning stages will not get the benefits of net metering because of a cap the state Legislature imposed on the total amount of power that could be generated under the program.

The Ontario government's multi-billion-dollar wind turbine deal with South Korean industrial giant Samsung Group is in jeopardy after a power play in Premier Dalton McGuinty's cabinet, the Toronto Star has learned. Sources say rival ministers opposed to Deputy Premier George Smitherman's pet scheme, which they fear will mean "billions" of dollars in subsidies to Samsung, have convinced McGuinty to stall the landmark deal first reported in the Star on Sept. 27.

Radical changes to the planning system to help build wind farms, nuclear power stations and new roads are likely to cause a storm of protest across Britain, Andrew Gilligan reports. ..."They are going to industrialise the countryside," says Nick Wadham, a local protester against the scheme. Caroline Evans, another resident, says the sound can travel more than six miles. She had an email from a woman in a nearby village who said she had not slept for three nights after the turbines were installed.

Local wind farm opponents vowed yesterday to keep pushing for independent studies into the effects wind turbines have on people. Ontario legislators rejected Bruce- Grey-Owen Sound MPP Bill Murdoch's call to halt industrial wind farm development until the province's top doctor can assure the government turbines don't harm people living nearby.