The 200- to 300-foot-long blades on industrial windmills look almost whimsical from afar. They appear to turn slowly. People sometimes stop to take pictures. "They look cool," said Eric Burch, director of policy and outreach for the Indiana Office of Energy Development. The tips of those giant blades, however, move at speeds approaching 160 mph, creating forces that send low-frequency vibrations through the ground. People three-quarters of a mile away sometimes say they can feel the vibrations in their chests.

Wind farms and solar power plants may offer free fuel costs and no carbon-dioxide emissions, but don't assume there's universal support from environmentalists, according to industry observers. "The world is changing," said Andrew Spielman, a partner at the Denver office of Hogan & Hartson LLC who works on renewable-energy projects. ..."There are more complexities with renewable projects," he said, "and it's no longer an assumption that the environmental community will approve and support renewable projects."

FPL Group on Tuesday said it is cutting by 28% the amount of wind capacity it plans to build in 2010 because lower electricity demand is making US utilities reluctant to sign long-term power purchase contracts. In a conference call with financial analysts to discuss the Juno Beach, Florida-based company's second-quarter earnings results, CFO Armando Pimentel said the company is now planning to build 1,000 MW of wind projects in 2010 down from 1,400 MW planned earlier.

Politicians are straining to convince people the government is stimulating the economy. In Oregon, where lawmakers are spending $176 million to supplement the federal stimulus, Democrats are taking credit for a remarkable feat: creating 3,236 new jobs in the program's first three months. But those jobs lasted on average only 35 hours, or about one workweek.

Proponents of alternative energy stress the production of alternative sources, such as solar, wind, geothermal and biofuels. Others recognize the importance of coal to Indiana and prefer to explore development of clean coal technology. In any case, one trend is apparent: Despite widespread acknowledgment of a need to alter habits to protect the environment, many youths are apathetic about changing the status quo.

In the space of one hour last month, electricity generated at wind farms in the eastern end of the Columbia River Gorge shot up by 1,000 megawatts -- enough to power some 680,000 homes. Less than an hour later, it plummeted almost as much. In coping with the variations, the BPA has at times adjusted flows through dams at rates that exceeded guidelines established to protect fish. "It is stressful. You have the threat of fish issues on one hand you are trying to prevent, and at the same time you're trying to meet load," she said. The events of June 4 and 5 highlight the challenge facing the agency

British workers occupying a wind turbine factory in an attempt to prevent its closure have become a cause célèbre for environmentalists, Green MEPs and trade unionists, but the wind lobby in both London and Brussels has condemned the actions of the workers and taken the side of the company.

Good news for Newton, Mass.-based wind power developer and operator comes amid a subpoena, projects being put off and IPO plans still on hold. Newton, Mass.-based First Wind is in a crunch for cash and it's forcing the company to get creative since it's indefinitely delayed plans to raise it on the public markets.

Oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens' step back from his plan to build the world's largest wind farm in Texas shows how a brutal recession could change the way the United States invests in renewable energy. The economy has changed drastically since the tycoon called last year for the United States to cut back on its oil imports in the face of record-high prices and said he planned to invest US$10-billion in wind power.

New pressures on the nation's oceans, from wind turbines to fish farms, are increasingly sparking conflicts with more traditional activities such as shipping and recreational boating and show the need for better planning, the head of the agency overseeing federal ocean research services said Monday. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco said the nation should take cues from Massachusetts, the first state to create a comprehensive planning map for its ocean waters.

Based on computer modeling, researchers at Duke and Princeton universities found that wind mill-generated turbulence raised pre-dawn surface temperatures by about four degrees and resulted in drier soil conditions. Presumably, the surface warmth was largely the result of the mixed air preventing the settling of cold air at the surface, while the dryness reflected increased evaporation by the wind of soil moisture.

Officials from two federally recognized Indian tribes say they are frustrated in their attempts to protect what they consider a sacred site from becoming part of an offshore wind farm. The two tribes want federal officials to deny a permit to Cape Wind for Horseshoe Shoal and move the proposed 130 wind turbines to another site. ..."MMS has failed its trust responsibility," said Cedric Cromwell, chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council.

Energy experts generally agree that the electrical grid in the United States needs to be upgraded if the country is to increase its use of renewable-energy sources like wind power and significantly reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. But plans to string new high-voltage lines to bring wind power from the midsection of the country to the coasts, where most of the demand is, could be expensive and unnecessary, and a distraction from more urgent needs, some experts say.

While most lawmakers accept that more renewable energy is needed on the nation's grid, the debate over the giant climate-change and energy bill now before Congress is exposing a fundamental rift. For many players, the energy not only has to be clean and free of carbon-dioxide emissions, it also has to be generated nearby.

"I guess I would say there's a lot of uncertainty out there in the industry," said Matthew Kaplan, a senior wind analyst at Emerging Energy Research. Ed Feo, a partner specializing in renewable energy projects at law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McLoy, said the fact that offshore developers are entering uncharted waters inevitably increases the level of uncertainty.

The revisions require interconnecting customers to bear 100% of the costs of network upgrades of less than 345 kV associated with interconnection projects that meet MISO's regional expansion criteria and benefits standards.

A wind turbine maker based in Charlottetown is under investigation by P.E.I.'s Labour Relations Board after employees complained they were owed up to eight weeks of back pay. Entegrity Wind Systems sent most of their workers home late last month after running into financial trouble. But most of their 50 workers haven't been paid since mid-May.

To get power from wind turbines to customers in the cities will require thousands of miles of new transmission lines. Wind is the easy part. Building the lines is tougher. Bill Bishop explains.

Suzlon lost sales last year after some blades supplied by the company cracked and customers in the U.S. canceled orders. The replacements for customers will be completed in mid-August, two months behind schedule, the company said today.

The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages. ...The EPA official, Al McGartland, said in an e-mail message to a staff researcher on March 17: "The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward... and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision."