A small but determined group of Tsawwassen residents continued their fight to prevent high-voltage power line construction Thursday by blocking access to their neighbourhood with parked cars. "The trucks came and tried to get in and we wouldn't move our cars," said resident Tina Ryan, who took part in the morning action on 13A Street. A handful of cars were parked along the narrow roadway, apparently not violating parking laws but making access for large trucks impossible.

Alberta farmers who hope to halt construction of a major power transmission line proposed between Great Falls and Lethbridge were granted permission Thursday to appeal the $150 million project to the Alberta Court of Appeals. "The only way we're ever going to stop this line is to win an appeal and get the decision overturned," said Scott Stenbeck, an attorney representing 16 farmers who live in the Lethbridge and Warner areas. Marc Clark, president of the line's developer, Montana Alberta Tie Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Toronto-based Tonbridge Power Inc., said the ruling may delay the project, but it won't stop the proposed line.

Kourtoff wants to build a 750-megawatt offshore wind farm in these waters, about 15 kilometres off the shore of Prince Edward County. That works out to about 150 wind turbines, seen as specks from the shoreline. And there's potential to double that. Earlier this month, he announced the creation of Tai Wind, a consortium of North American offshore wind developers who hope, by combining their collective needs, to attract a turbine manufacturer to Ontario. Already, Germany's Multibrid is seriously considering the invitation and, sources say, has begun high-level discussions between its executives and Ontario government officials. ..."It should be borne in mind that there is currently no experience in Ontario with offshore wind resources, and it may be that additional information may become available over time that would justify further review of this issue," the power authority concluded in a recent amendment to its 20-year plan. Herein lies a classic chicken-and-egg dilemma. How can the province get a true sense of development costs without forging ahead on at least one project?

Building roads, erecting towers and installing transformer stations and transmission lines destroys forest habitat, and the noise and turbulence and vibrations of spinning turbines may alter the behavioural patterns of wildlife, said Mark Nash, the president of the Canadian Peregrine Foundation, a nongovernmental raptor protection group based in Toronto. ...Nash is particularly concerned about the impacts of developing large wind farms in ecologically sensitive bird migration, staging and nesting areas, like much of Lake Superior's north shore. ..."The jury's still out on the environmental effects of these things," said Nash. "Yet there's a rush for development in some of the most critical raptor habitat in Ontario. Everyone's been sold on this technology and nobody cares about a bunch of birds."

Town council should be cautious in approving locations for wind turbine projects until important natural features have been assessed, says Phil Roberts of the municipal environmental advisory committee. ..."You need to exercise caution," said Roberts. "There's a big learning curve in all of this." He said the county's eco-tourism market -- based largely on the bird and hawk migrations -- has to be kept in mind as wind turbines are sited.

A wind energy project encompassing three municipalities could become a reality if TransCanada Energy's current proposal is successful. The company is suggesting approximately 75 turbines in its Romney Wind Power Project for Chatham-Kent -- between Wheatley and Tilbury -- as well as Leamington and Lakeshore. "The prime interest is the resource potential," said Tom Patterson, the Toronto-based project manager.

After a two-year delay, Toronto Hydro hopes to have a device moored on Lake Ontario this fall to test the breeze for a wind farm 2 kilometres off the Scarborough Bluffs. The goal, says Toronto Hydro chief executive Dave O'Brien, is to establish a 60-turbine offshore wind farm capable of generating 100 megawatts. It should take two years of collecting and analyzing wind-speed data to learn whether the project makes economic sense, O'Brien told councillors is a briefing yesterday. The City of Toronto is the utility's sole shareholder.

Maritime Electric has drawn up a new route for a proposed wind energy transmission line in western P.E.I. Some residents expressed concerns with the original plan put forward in March, saying the transmission line would come too close to many homes. Utility spokeswoman Kim Griffin told CBC News Friday the new 66-kilometre route from Howlan to Sherbrooke, just outside of Summerside, will run more across open space. ..."We wanted people to know that we're listening and that we took a look at [that]. So we'll show them this alternate route and see what they think about it."

A German maker of offshore wind turbines is targeting southern Ontario as the location for its first North American manufacturing plant, a venture that would create thousands of local jobs and inject hundreds of millions of dollars into the province's struggling economy. Multibrid, majority owned by French nuclear giant Areva SA, made the announcement this morning alongside officials from Trillium Power Wind Corp., a local renewable-energy developer that plans to build a massive wind farm in Lake Ontario, about 15 kilometres offshore from Prince Edward County.

In a phone interview from Calgary, Canadian Hydro CEO John Keating said all 88 turbines, towers and their equipment have been in storage. The 66 platforms and access roads for the Melancthon portion of Phase 2 were completed prior to Christmas 2007. He said five of the towers are to be at their sites this week. Movement of those out of storage to the site and their erection on the platforms will proceed in a scheduled and orderly fashion such as to minimize whatever disruptions might occur with the movement of heavy equipment. ...Mr. Keating said none of the work on the 22 Amaranth Township sites has begun because of the wet soil conditions.

Round 2 has begun on attempts to build a new 500,000-volt transmission line between Edmonton and Calgary and it's already looking like the approval process could be as tumultuous as the last one, which ended up being declared a "mistrial." ...So far, after eight hearings, there hasn't exactly been an avalanche of public support for any of the options, according to Dick Way, AESO's senior director of strategic projects. "I can tell you, nobody we've run into yet seems to like any of them," he said. "There's a general desire that, if at all possible, we shouldn't do it. Nobody seems to like these towers. They are not very popular."

On a treeless landscape on the southern tip of Newfoundland's Burin Peninsula, construction crews and heavy-lift equipment have begun growing Newfoundland's first commercial wind farm. Nine Vestas V90 wind turbines that will generate 27 megawatts for the island's power grid were brought in by ship from Europe and trucked to this remote location, which some say might have the best wind in North America. ..."The potential is for hundreds of megawatts, but we are limited to about 80 megawatts from wind generation that we can absorb on the system," said Mr. Jones. "This is an economic limit. More than 80, and we risk having to spill water at our hydro sites."

Producing enough energy for power-hungry Ontario is one challenge the province will face in coming years. Making sure this power actually gets to where it's going is a whole other matter. "You can well imagine that at some point the wires that carry all this electricity are not going to be sufficient," said Tim Taylor, Ontario Power Authority (OPA) spokesman. "There are technical reality constraints."

Whenever there is an overflow crowd at a municipal planning session -- with some watching the debate on closed-circuit television -- the issue has to be of considerable importance. Wind energy surely struck a nerve in Chatham-Kent and has been responsible for numerous letters to the editor, public forums and even T-shirts. ...Tom Storey, of Storey Samways Planning, admitted that turbines have had a polarizing effect in Chatham-Kent. "This has been divisive," he said. "A lot of people who are opposed to this, many of them are very good friends of mine and some are former clients. "It's been hard on everyone."

With 66 turbines and plans for another 18, Ontario's $200 million Erie Shores Wind Farm could be a sign of things to come for the Great Lakes region. To the layman, they all look the same: towering, commercial-scale turbines jutting into the sky, each about the height of a 25-story building. Nobody knows how alternative energy will alter Canada or the U.S.'s landscape during the next 20 years.

Environmental groups and Wolfe Island residents concerned about a proposed wind plant have had another appeal rejected for more government scrutiny on the contentious project. This time, the denial came from the minister of tourism, who was appointed to make the decision late last week. In a letter to the proponent of the project, Canadian Hydro Developers Inc., Tourism Minister Peter Fonseca briefly outlined his decision. "I do not consider it in the public interest to require mediation or any further assessment of this project through an individual environmental assessment," he said.

Canadian Hydro Developers Inc., a Calgary-based wind power company, says it is raising the estimated cost of its Wolfe Island wind power project in Ontario to $450 million from $410 million. The company revised its estimate Wednesday after revealing that it has received environmental approval from the Ontario government and can go ahead with construction. The project is being built by wholly owned subsidiary, Canadian Renewable Energy Corp., and is slated for operation next spring.

SkyPower is owned by Lehman Brothers, a global investment bank, and was able to come up with the multimillion-dollar cost of turbines in advance. "This doesn't pose us as much of a problem as some other developers do," Mr. Rao-Aourpally said. "It does pose a problem for us because we have to go into negotiations and secure 300 megawatts of wind turbines at a time, which is not the most practical thing to do." But he said it is "alarming" that manufacturers are favouring big orders.

"This is war," is the way Amherstburg resident Mick MacCorquodale describes the looming legal fight against 120-metre-high industrial wind turbines popping up near his home and across the county. Essex County council hasn't even approved its alternative energy planning policies yet, but MacCorquodale is already gathering support to appeal them to the Ontario Municipal Board. Any appeal would further delay the more than a dozen wind farm projects being proposed at locations throughout the county. ...County council is expected to pass the third draft of its official plan amendments on alternative energy projects Wednesday after a year of study.

TransAlta will be expanding its Summerview Wind Farm near Pincher Creek next spring. ...A lack of capacity on existing transmission lines has held up expansion of wind power in many parts of southern Alberta. Jennifer Pierce, the vice-president of communications and investor relations with TransAlta, said there needs to be some action taken to facilitate the increase in transmission lines. ...If the utilities commission approves the system operator's proposal, then a transmission facility owner, such as AltaLink, must apply to the utilities commission to build the transmission line. Ratepayers cover the cost of new transmission lines through a transmission line charge on their power bills. Pierce said without the transmission line capacity increasing it means companies such as TransAlta are unable to move the power where it needs to go.