Scientists Daniel Barrie and Daniel Kirk-Davidoff of the University of Maryland have told Discover News that they have conducted experiments on the affects the 300 foot turbines would have on the wind. Considering the conservation of energy, moving the turbines (to create electricity) would result in a drop of wind speed by about 5-7 mph. More importantly, the resulting winds would ripple through the atmosphere downstream and impact weather systems in a way not fully understood yet. Rather than get into the physics of what could happen in may different scenarios, wind sheer of any sort in the central plains is not a good thing. Think tornadoes!

Computer giant Dell Inc. said this summer that it has become "carbon neutral," the latest step in its quest to be "the greenest technology company on the planet." What that means, and what it doesn't, may surprise Dell customers and other consumers who have been bombarded with bold environmental promises from major corporations. ...The amount of emissions Dell has committed to neutralize is known in the environmental industry as the company's "carbon footprint." But there is no universally accepted standard for what a footprint should include, and so every company calculates its differently.

The idea was for the homeowners to be able to send any excess power back to utilities. But the Missouri Public Service Commission, which oversees the utilities, is requiring homeowners to buy insurance before they start feeding electricity to the grid. And it appears that no Missouri insurance companies sell the insurance.

A new state-federal program will pay farmland owners in 11 Missouri counties to set aside land as habitat and nesting grounds for prairie chickens, which once roamed the state's prairies in the hundreds of thousands. Iowa, New Mexico, and Texas are among the states making similar offers to their farmers to reverse the decline in prairie chicken habitat, according to the USDA's Farm Service Agency.

This time of year, wind turbine blades ice up, biodiesel congeals in tanks and solar panels produce less power because there is not as much sun. ...As concern has grown about global warming, many utilities and homeowners have been trying to shrink their emissions of carbon dioxide - their carbon footprints - by installing solar panels, wind turbines and even generators powered by tides or rivers. But for the moment, at least, the planet is still cold enough to deal nasty winter blows to some of this green machinery.

The Coast Guard report, which is not yet released, reportedly considers the 130-turbine project in Nantucket Sound "doable" but some in the audience found the simulated radar scenarios more than a tad confusing as they tried to pick out the boats from the false echoes and turbine blades. ...There are short periods of time when the vessels are subsumed into the turbines," Rugger concluded. "Inside the wind farm there are a lot of secondary reflections, and often times it's hard to pick out the vessels from that."

The financial crisis is causing problems for First Wind, one of the backers of Deepwater Wind, the firm chosen by Gov. Donald L. Carcieri to build Rhode Island's offshore wind farm. ...First Wind declined to comment, but in its public filing the company warned: "If we are unable to obtain additional debt or equity financing, we may have to curtail our development activities or be forced to sell assets."

A legal center in St. Louis has filed suit against a Missouri commission, saying it believes a new insurance rule will discourage people from trying to produce their own solar or wind power. ...This fall, the PSC issued an order that customers who produce 10 kilowatts or less of energy need to carry $100,000 worth of liability insurance, and that those who produce more than 10 to 100 kilowatts of energy need to carry $1 million worth of liability insurance, the lawsuit said.

To make use of this clean [renewable] energy, we'll need more transmission lines that can transport power from one region to another and connect energy-­hungry cities with the remote areas where much of our renewable power is likely to be generated. We'll also need far smarter controls throughout the distribution system--technologies that can store extra electricity from wind farms in the batteries of plug-in hybrid cars, for example, or remotely turn power-hungry appliances on and off as the energy supply rises and falls. If these grid upgrades don't happen, new renewable-power projects could be stalled, because they would place unacceptable stresses on existing electrical systems.

In a letter to U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthome dated Thursday, the congressman [Rahall D-WV] requests that the federal Minerals Management Service delay issuing its final environmental impact statement "until the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) has provided the public 60 days to review and comment on a third-party review of the radar study submitted by the Cape Wind project developers."

Doyle is paid just over $35,000 a month for the seven wind turbines in his soybean and corn fields. Those turbines and thousands others across the Midwest the past few years were part of an unprecedented build-out for the wind-power industry. That expansion is now drastically slowing as financing dries up ...Companies that bankrolled much of the boom -- the insurer AIG, now-bankrupt financial service company Lehman Brothers and Wachovia Corp. -- are among the meltdown's biggest losers.

Waters off the Northeast coast are called by some the Saudi Arabia of wind for their potential in providing massive amounts of energy to the region. Yet even talk of placing huge turbines in shallow waters off scenic shores can raise an enormous public outcry. Behind the scenes in the U.S. and in Europe, the race is on to build the world's first deep-water wind farms ..."I think it's important when we think about this that we keep in mind this is a long-term perspective," Johannessen said. "We're talking about 10 years-plus, or 20 years maybe, before the technology is available on commercial terms."

"The development of renewable energy resources will require a significant expansion of the grid, as well as a significant increase in needed operating reserves given the intermittent nature of wind and other resources." PJM has 90,000 megawatts of new generation waiting for approval to feed into the grid, with nearly half that power coming from wind.

The political winds are right for making wind power in Iowa. The problem is getting that power to the big cities that can use it. ...Proposals to give FERC more say over power transmission lines have foundered in Congress before, and the commission itself isn't united behind Kelliher's idea. Under current law, the commission can promote investment in new transmission lines for wind farms by awarding developers a higher rate of return. That allows utilities to charge more for the power. But it's still up to the states to decide whether to allow the lines to be built.

Behind the scenes in the U.S. and in Europe, the race is on to build the world's first deep-water wind farms, ones that would operate on floating platforms in waters hundreds of feet deep, like oil rigs found in the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. There are gargantuan technical hurdles ...

The American Wind Energy Association claims it is wind power that creates the most jobs per kilowatt hour. One oft-cited statistic is that there are 27% more jobs per kilowatt-hour from wind than from coal, and 66% more from wind than from natural gas. ..."To the extent it's true, it illustrates these technologies aren't that efficient."

The chairman of the U.S. House committee that oversees the Coast Guard has asked that service to delay issuing a recommendation on the proposed Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound. U.S. Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minnesota, further said he is considering holding hearings on the issue, "given that any action taken on this project will set a precedent for all future offshore renewable energy projects."

Royal Dutch Shell has become the second big energy company to abandon the UK wind-energy sector in the last month. ...Shell said: "The focus for new projects will be in North America where we can benefit from the availability of undeveloped wind resources to deliver wind energy at what we expect to be a competitive cost."

The alternative-energy sector has run smack into a credit crisis, probably a recession as well, and almost all industry experts think the fourth quarter is going to be worse. ...The reality today is that it's more expensive to produce renewable energy than it is from traditional resources, and consumers suddenly strapped for cash will start moving away, said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at Cato Institute. Even proponents are slowing the move toward alternative energy, at least for the moment.

The Coast Guard has given conditional approval to the Cape Wind Associates plan to build a wind turbine farm on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound. In a conference call Friday morning, Capt. Raymond Perry, captain of the port for southeastern New England, said his analysis of a study of the impact of the 130-turbine array on navigation shows those effects could be mitigated.