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.

Italian finance police, mounting an operation code named "Gone with the wind", yesterday said they had arrested two of the country's most prominent businessmen in the wind energy sector. Police said the charges related to fraud involved in obtaining public subsidies to construct wind farms. They are also investigating the sale of wind farms to foreign companies.

Wind turbine blades rip loose near Esbjerg and southwestern Sweden, one landing on a hiking path A malfunction on a Vestas wind turbine in the town of Falkenberg on Sweden's southwest coast could have resulted in tragedy, as one of the structure's large blades flew off and landed on a track used by hikers.

The State Government will investigate the health concerns of Victorians who live near wind farms. Last month, the Democratic Labor Party Member for Western Victorian, Peter Kavanagh, asked the Government to investigate whether workers near wind farms faced health hazards. Some landholders near the Waubra wind farm, west of Ballarat, say a low frequency hum from the turbines is making them sick.

Shares in Spain's Gamesa (GAM.MC) drop 5.8 percent on uncertainty after its chairman resigned late on Thursday, with concerns over regulation for the Spanish renewable energy sector also weighing on sentiment.

Today, the WHO Regional Office for Europe launches its Night noise guidelines for Europe. (1) The book provides ground-breaking evidence on how exposure to night noise can damage people's health, and recommends guideline levels to protect health. The new limit is an annual average night exposure not exceeding 40 decibels (dB), corresponding to the sound from a quiet street in a residential area. Sleepers that are exposed to higher levels over the year can suffer mild health effects, such as sleep disturbance and insomnia. Long-term average exposure to levels above 55 dB, similar to the noise from a busy street, can trigger elevated blood pressure and heart attacks. One in five Europeans is regularly exposed to such noise levels.

The European Commission is expected to introduce a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that directs the largest slices of €50 billion available for research and development to solar power and capturing and burying emissions from coal plants. ...Christian Kjaer, the chief executive of the European Wind Energy Association, ...questioned the decision to give nuclear power and carbon-capture technologies significantly more than wind, which would receive €6 billion.

"Given the outrageous manipulation orchestrated by those who, since 2004, are seeking to site eight turbines, I decided to officially launch this hunger strike September 29th at noon in solidarity with citizens." In these terms, Tuesday, Fabienne Chovet publicly explained her decision to begin a hunger strike.

Between 500 and 1,000 protesters gathered last weekend at Mont-Saint-Michel in France to demonstrate against plans to build a wind farm along the Normandy coast. They say it would be a useless eyesore disfiguring the bay area. The European Platform Against Windfarms (EPAW), along with four other environmental groups, organized the event "to denounce the massacre of our national and cultural heritage by the wind farm scourge." Though protestors hailed from France, Britain, Belgium, Holland, and Italy, the event received very little media coverage.

Lobbyist pressure will not weigh on a U.N. panel's decision whether to award carbon finance worth about 100 million euros ($144 million) to Chinese wind power projects, said the chair of the panel on Tuesday. ...The issue has caused long-running tension between the panel and project developers and brokers about the speed of approvals in the $6.5 billion global carbon offset market. Under the U.N.-led Kyoto Protocol's clean development mechanism, rich countries can buy rights to pollute by funding cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in developing nations.

A new study indicates that winds turbines could be contributing to the local extinction of an endangered vulture in southern Spain. ...The results suggest that if the number of wind turbines stays the same as it is today, the population will go extinct 10 years sooner than if there were no wind farms.

Could wind farms hasten the local extinction of an endangered vulture in southern Spain?

The University of Ballarat has begun investigating noise levels near Waubra Wind Farm, with residents claiming low frequency turbine sound is affecting their health. Some say they have experienced headaches, nausea and sleep deprivation since the turbines began operating. The tests will be done at various locations

Residents of rural France are seeking a moratorium on wind-farm construction, jeopardizing government plans to expand wind energy sevenfold over the next decade and hampering projects by EDF Energies Nouvelles SA and GDF Suez SA. Organizers of a national petition that started this week demanded a debate on the economic justification for wind energy and the "visual blight" it creates in villages and at tourist sites such as Mont Saint Michel off the Normandy coast.

A humming noise from a wind farm near Wellington is driving sleep-deprived locals potty. "It's been horrific, it's noise torture," Makara resident Hans Renner said. "We just want some sleep, I don't think that's an unreasonable request." Haydon Miller said Meridian had promised the wind farm would not be noisy. "Either they misled us, or they got it terribly wrong."

Massive wind turbines seem to be killing more and more migratory bats, prompting research into these neglected creatures and efforts to minimize the toll. ...The deaths have led to a flurry of research on migratory bats and their behavior. "The problem with bats and wind energy has pushed a lot of work that wouldn't have occurred otherwise," says Edward Arnett of the Austin, Texas-based nonprofit Bat Conservation International. Indeed, at a January conference in Berlin on migratory bats, wind farms were a dominant theme. Scientists are racing to figure out what brings the bats in contact with wind turbines, and what can be done to save them.

Wind farms in Italy threaten to wipe out the Golden Eagle, farmers` organisation Coldiretti and national environmental organisations said Wednesday. A conference against wind power in Rome heard that huge numbers of birds are already being killed when they collide with the spokes of wind towers in Italy.

The six offshore wind turbines that REpower Systems began erecting near Germany's coast in 2004 make their older cousins look like pinwheels. Each one has three 61.5-meter blades, which in a good breeze make one revolution every 5 seconds, producing 5 megawatts of electric power. Inspired by Germany's bold vision for capturing offshore wind energy, these majestic machines are designed to withstand anything the famously unforgiving North Sea can dish out. And yet, these turbines have never felt the spray of salt water.

Fresh concerns have emerged over the future of BP's alternative energy business after a fire broke out at one of the company's largest solar power installations in Germany. The incident on June 21 destroyed nearly 200 sq m of one of the world's largest roof-mounted solar panel arrays on a warehouse complex in Bürstadt, near Mannheim.

Half-a-billion dollars worth of wind farm projects in south-west Victoria have been shelved because of a delay in the introduction of a renewable energy target. Pacific Hydro says the Federal Government must introduce the target before it can build 100 new turbines near Portland and Ararat.