The Akron Township Planning Commission and also the Fairgrove Planning Commission each held a hearing this week on NextEra Energy Resources' proposed "Tuscola Wind II" development in those two townships.

"The lack of data is particularly troubling because it is just this sort of data from permit holders that permits the U.S. Fish and WIldlife Service to monitor the health of the eagle populations within the United States, the release notes. Despite lacking a permit, Bittner continued to capture and band 144 migratory birds in the region, including at least one female Golden Eagle.

An F-15E Strike Eagle drops through the sky on a low-level training mission and encounters - a wind turbine. With turbine blades reaching within 8 feet of F-15s on missions out of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, the proposed Pantego Wind Energy project resulted in a serious risk.

The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) this week released a new proposal to share the "oversupply costs" that pile up when there is not enough demand for all the electricity produced by hydroelectric dams and wind-power producers. During these oversupply periods, when wind-power producers may be asked to shut down, the plan would compensate them for lost revenue, according to Doug Johnson, a BPA spokesman.

Dave Bittner, Golden Eagle expert with Wildlife Research Institute, pled guilty to federal charges of unlawful taking of Golden Eagles --working without valid permit and failure to file reports. Bittner conducted studies for Iberdrola's Tule Wind project approved by BLM and San Diego County for public and private land in the McCain Valley National Cooperative Land & Wildlife Management & Recreation Area. Tule Wind decisions by the Bureau of Indian Affairs for turbines on Ewiiaapaayp tribal lands, with a reported 6-8 Golden Eagle nests, and on State Lands Commission lands in Golden Eagle habitat are still pending. Can those agencies rely on Bitner's Golden Eagle work for Tule Wind that was apparently unpermitted and unlawful? What other breaches of law or professional ethics might be involved?

Under the IRS notice for PTCs, Burton explains, the tax-equity investor will need to consider not only whether 5% of a project's costs have been incurred, but also whether continuous construction was undertaken starting Jan. 1, 2014. "Continuous construction introduces an additional subjective element that requires an incremental layer of analysis for tax-equity investors and their counsel to grapple with," he says.

The Internal Revenue Service explained today what developers must do this year to be considered to have started construction of new renewable energy projects. The IRS adopted roughly the same definition for start of construction as under the Treasury cash grant program.

The Internal Revenue Service completed rules today that define how wind-farm developers can qualify for tax breaks. Under a law signed by President Barack Obama in January, wind projects must begin construction by Dec. 31 to qualify for the production tax credit. That's looser than the standard from previous years, which required energy production to qualify.

"We've now moved our beds to the basement in a storage room," Shineldecker said. "After living in my house for 18 years, [we're sleeping] in a storage room on an air mattress so I can try to sleep . . . so my lovely wife can get up and go and try to teach second graders and be awake in the morning. "We have been up multiple, multiple nights and cannot sleep."

The modern environmental movement has rolled over to become an outlet for loggers, energy firms and car companies to plug into. It is now primarily a social media platform for consumerism, growth and energy production - an institutionalized philanderer of green illusions. If you need evidence, just go to any climate rally and you'll see a strip mall of stands for green products, green jobs and green energy. These will do nothing to solve the crisis we face, which is not an energy crisis but rather a crisis of consumption.

In January, the company cleared one regulatory hurdle when it received a land-use permit from Clinton County. But in the months prior, each of the three townships passed ordinances that could hinder Forest Hill's efforts to begin construction before the end of the year.

Congress is slowly but steadily drilling into energy policy tax issues, but anyone hoping to see detailed plans soon may be disappointed. "Like any good play, you have to set the scenes, and we'll see what happens in the final act," said Steve Nadel, executive director for the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

The PTC's fate could be decided within the broader negotiations in Congress over how to overhaul the tax code for the first time since 1986. Lawmakers on the House Ways and Means Committee and Senate Finance Committee have been meeting privately for months on the topic, and additional details are expected to be rolled out over the course of this year. But it remains an open question whether tax reform will become a reality.

Republicans who control the House of Representatives have criticized Obama's clean-energy initiatives as wasteful boondoggles, pointing to the high-profile bankruptcies of companies like solar-panel maker Solyndra that benefited from federal backing. But the budget proposal signals that clean energy will remain a priority for Obama in his second term in office.

Consumers Energy Co. officials say the company is working to address some of the concerns of neighbors of the Lake Winds Energy Park wind farm - in particular, "shadow flicker" -- although the company says the wind farm already meets all permit requirements.

The developer of a proposed 39-tower, $120 million wind energy project is suing to prevent three Clinton County townships from enforcing special ordinances that restrict turbines' height, noise, setbacks and shadow flicker beyond the terms specified in the county's zoning ordinance.

County officials have been looking at what revisions might be needed to its 2009 wind energy systems ordinance -- capping wind turbine sound at 35 decibels -- to be defendable in court. Turbine developers have called the limit "exclusionary zoning" that essentially eliminates energy systems, compared to the 55-decibel state of Michigan guideline.

"This labyrinth of overlapping programs has spawned a system in which a single wind project could have siphoned public funds from numerous federal and state programs," Daniel Simmons, director of state affairs at the Institute for Energy Research, wrote in U.S. News & World Report. "These include a Section 1603 grant, accelerated depreciation, a DOE loan guarantee, state tax incentives, and indirect subsidies from a state Renewable Portfolio Standard. Adding to the waste, GAO reports that states often design their initiatives to skirt double-dipping laws."

The lawsuit claims the plaintiffs will continue to suffer harm, including physical injury, emotional distress and loss of property value if they continue to be exposed to the wind farm's operation. The $250 million Lake Winds Energy Park development generates 100.8 megawatts of electricity. Its Vestas turbines are 312 feet high at the hub, with rotor blades having a 328-foot diameter.