Usually an Ontario Municipal Board referral is made either by a proponent objecting to a delay in rezoning, or by groups of residents objecting to a municipal council's approval of a project. But there's a different kind of twist at Grand Valley. There, in East Luther Grand Valley Township, a small wind farm proponent has referred its objection to an Amaranth Township approval of two severances on the Amaranth side of the town line dividing the two municipalities. ...zoning for the wind farm was approved in ELGV two years ago. Now, late in the game, the nature of the severance indicates that the intention would be to turn them into residential lots. If so, residential structures could be too close to the turbines, There are agreed-to setbacks.

ST. CROIX - The territory's Water and Power Authority announced Monday that contract talks with wind-power producer Innoventor Technologies had failed, ending a process that WAPA and Innoventor had promised would bring affordable, renewable energy to the Virgin Islands.

New York Power Authority President and Chief Executive Officer Richard Kessel met recently with the Press-Republican Editorial Board to outline his agency's plan to "do the biggest energy project in the state since the St. Lawrence/Robert Moses power project 50 year ago." The authority would import up to 2,000 megawatts of power from multiple sources, including hydropower from Canada and renewable resources both here and in Canada.

Lisa Michaud, whose family has launched a $1.5-million lawsuit, claiming negative health impacts have been caused by a wind farm near their Thamesville hobby farm, would welcome studies at her property. She said the health impacts spread to their small goat herd, noting the animals would stand out in all kinds of inclement weather, refusing to go into their shelter.

Toronto Hydro's wind farm may still be in the research stage, but it's already drawing fire. For now, the city-owned utility wants to set up a small device to measure wind speeds on the lake 2 kilometres off the bluffs. If winds are adequate, 60 turbines could eventually sprout 2 to 4 kilometres offshore, over an area stretching from Ajax almost to the Leslie St. Spit.

The Northwest Territories government plans to pick a community later this year where it would like to begin work on its ambitious wind strategy by 2009. "Wind is a great opportunity for us. We have lots of it," Premier Floyd Roland said. ...Mr. Edworthy was with a private company that helped set up a wind turbine in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, in 1987. "Doing anything in the Arctic is more expensive and challenging," he said, adding that trained staff is hard to find and equipment wears out a lot quicker because of the cold and harsh climate. "The Arctic is incredibly hard on machines. If something has a design life of 20 years, in the Arctic that would be two or three," he explained. He said when those costs and challenges, such as maintenance and atmospheric issues, began to pile up, the industry and federal government lost interest in the North and concentrated its efforts in provinces such as Alberta and Ontario.

Despite the flaccid demand, wind generators were getting an average of 12 cents a kilowatt hour for their power, while conventional power producers subject to the wholesale market were getting 7.4 cents. Not only does wind sometimes produce when it's least needed - in hot summer weather it often fails to produce when it is needed.

Energy Minister Jack Keir's wind-energy strategy could be a boon for New Brunswick, but the economic benefits of a wind industry simply depend on good wind forecasting, says an expert from the University of New Brunswick. As a generator of electricity, you need to be able to predict 24 hours in advance (what the wind will do) - so the system operator can schedule where they will buy the energy to satisfy the demand by consumers," says Yves Gagnon, the K.C. Irving Chair in sustainable development. "With wind energy, because of (its) intermittency, the organization that owns a wind farm must be able to forecast "¦ There are financial penalties if they don't provide that power at the time they said they would provide it."

"The problem is, is that we actually have surplus electricity. We're giving away our electricity to our neighbours and at the same time we are going to be charging individual Ontarians for their own power at a higher rate than they had before." The turbo-charged subsidization of one sector can come at a cost to others, Miljan said, tying some of Europe's recent financial problems in part to "heavy" subsidization of green technology in certain countries.

Tench says with 5-thousand megawatts of potential, if every wind farm that could be built, actually is built, Ontario wind power could equal the output of all the nuclear reactors at Bruce Power. But Tench says the study does not break down where in the province the most wind potential is, adding some possible wind farms are not practical, being too far from existing power transmission lines.

To those whose homes and businesses would lie in the shadow of 11-story electric transmission pylons, the $1.6 billion New York Regional Interconnection is a project of unimaginable size and complexity. But the proposed 190-mile-long power line is simply the latest and greatest endeavor of one of Toronto’s premier energy-project financiers. He is Robert McLeese, and in his home country’s clubby energy circles, his surname conjures images of competency and success.

A decision has been made. After months of debate, the Ontario Municipal Board has decided to allow the CAW to erect a wind turbine. The property set aside for the development is at Bruce Road 25 and Highway 21 in Port Elgin.

GREEN ENERGY: Don't be fooled by the names of many of the massive wind farms sprouting up across Southwestern Ontario. There's a local ring to them, but they're actually owned by multinationals as far-flung as Calgary, Florida and China, to name a few. John Miner reports.Wilson said the multinationals have adopted local names for their wind farms because they want to put a local face on them when they're nothing of the kind. By setting each wind farm up as a separate company, they limit their liability if something goes wrong, she said. "If there is some kind of a problem, it is limited to just that particular project and not the whole company."

In the legislature Wednesday, Mr. Brown assured Opposition energy critic Michael Currie that the province intends to charge royalties for private companies harnessing Island wind. The minister said "we have to recognize the wind is a resource and it is a resource that is owned by Islanders." Mr. Brown said the province wants "a portion of the green credits that are sold out of the United States." "Wind is going to be a major plank of our initiative and Islanders are going to benefit from it. We are not going to sell that resource for nothing."

The acceptance of Ministry of Environment (MOE) noise regulations by an Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) panel in Kincardine will not deter Amaranth resident Paul Thompson in his fight against a second transformer at the Canadian Hydro Developers substation. Mr. Thompson, one of a handful of residents living near the substation, is a party to the scheduled Sept. 11 Amaranth OMB hearing.

Municipal politician in three Eastern Townships communities have thrown their support behind a proposal to erect giant wind turbines in local farmers' fields to generate electricity for markets south of the border. In separate meetings Monday, the town councils of Pike River, Stanbridge Station and Bedford Canton - the three communities directly affected by the project - voted in favour of the Stanbridge Station Wind Plan.

A brief power outage around midnight Sunday, along with a shutdown of the Melancthon Wind Plant and predictions of record-setting storms on the horizon, might lend credence to sales pitches for high-quality surge protectors. The wind plant went offline at about the same time as Sunday night's lightning storm apparently caused a brief outage of the electrical supply at Orangeville and elsewhere.

The motion, which passed on a 4-2 vote, contained a couple of provisos. The provincial government must first insure that concerns about distance of turbines from residences and the location of transmission corridors are adequately addressed.

MPP Leona Dombrowsky already knew opposition was growing to industrial wind turbines in Prince Edward County. But as she gazed upon the packed, standing-room-only community centre in Picton last week, the scene likely reinforced how difficult wind energy will be to sell in this community- particularly to those who earn their livelihood from the natural beauty of the rural, island landscape. Certainly since Wolfe Island has been transformed by 86 40-storey turbines, there has been a spike of concern in this community about the impact a similar alteration of the landscape might have on the health and prosperity of County residents.

A greener energy source could be blowing in the wind, regional council agreed Tuesday night. Almost every councillor wanted to speak about wind turbine farms and all were congratulating staff on bringing the topic forward. The city needs to amend its planning strategy to prepare policies to allow the turbines to be located in the municipality. However, investigating the possibility of the renewable energy source will take about 15 months, council learned.