SAN FRANCISCO - Jill Cody used to feel guilty whenever she drove her car or flew on an airplane. She worried about pumping heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and contributing to global warming. But the San Jose professor found a way to ease her conscience. She paid a San Francisco company called TerraPass to offset emissions from her car and air travel by investing in wind power and reducing farm pollution.

Coal, the nation's favorite fuel in much of the 19th century and early 20th century, could become so again in the 21st. The United States has enough to last at least two centuries at current use rates — reserves far greater than those of oil or natural gas. And for all the public interest in alternatives like wind and solar power, or ethanol from the heartland, coal will play a far bigger role.

The village’s ambition to become a tourist centre was given a boost last month when the French state electricity generator, Eléctricité de France (EDF), withdrew a planning application to place four 459ft (140m) wind turbines half a mile from the battlefield. The plan had been fought by campaigners on both sides of the Channel, including the actor, Robert Hardy, who said that it would desecrate the battlefield.

A recent report published by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has said large wind farms such as proposed here are not the way forward for New Zealand, the significant adverse impacts are avoidable by harnessing wind power using smaller clusters of small turbines servicing remote towns, and this will be better for the country. Unfortunately this report was published just after our hearing was completed.

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."

Shortly after the Financial Town Meeting, where residents voted to approve funding for the construction of a wind turbine in town, Ms. Cuzzone started researching wind turbines and attending meetings for the renewable energy committee. She said the project's initially proposed location - the Barrington High School campus - propelled her to get involved. She lives on Lincoln Avenue, not far from the high school. A new location has since been selected - Legion Way near Brickyard Pond - but Ms. Cuzzone is still interested in the project.

"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.

It's free, it's everywhere and some think it's the answer to our ever-increasing energy needs. ...more and more people are speaking out against the projects. "We need to slow down until things get put into place to regulate these industrial monsters to a safe and healthy level," said Jon Morehouse, the spokesman for Brown County Citizens for Responsible Wind Energy.

The long-awaited release of cost figures for the Long Island Power Authority's wind farm could be released as early as today. Or if not today, certainly this week. And if not this week, then absolutely sometime next month, when LIPA is expected to release a global study of wind-farm costs - one that will put the controversial off-shore project in perspective.

Company airs its vision for a £40m wind farm

Clipper Windpower Plc has announced that under a supply Agreement with UPC Wind, eight of the company’s first commercially-available 2.5MW Liberty wind turbines will be utilized in the Steel Winds Wind Farm, the first wind power project to be built on the US shores of Lake Erie.

For safely ferrying his divided rural community from one threatened by runaway industrial wind-turbine development to one that is planning and in control of its future, and by doing so with patience, courtesy and growing wisdom, Tom Garretson was selected as The Freeman’s Journal “Citizen of 2006,” which will now be an annual designation.

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.

In response to a recent denial by Kittitas County commissioners, Houston-based Horizon Wind Energy announced Tuesday it will go to the state for approval of its Kittitas Valley Wind Power Project.

But I was sitting at my kitchen table in North Buffalo, far from the wind farms of the Southern Tier, and such distance makes for simple, black-and-white comprehension. There are places in Western New York where wind energy isn’t so clear a choice. Places with names like Perry, Sheldon and Arkwright, rural towns perched atop the high glacial ridges to the east and south of the city, whose landscapes might soon be dominated by hundreds of towering, 400-foot windmills. As wind companies eye their windswept fields and make overtures to local town boards, divisions run deeper and deeper between citizens who disagree on the merits of wind farm development in their backyards. In such locales, the gray areas of wind development come into sharp focus.

The goal of making Oregon's utilities more environmentally friendly has got the state's largest electricity buyers saying Gov. Ted Kulongoski, legislators and enviros are selling out all ratepayers in an ill-conceived green-wash. At issue is SB 838, which would require utilities to derive 25 percent of sales from renewable sources by 2025. The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Brad Avakian (D-Beaverton), fulfills a campaign promise Kulongoski made while struggling to regain support of his disaffected base in last year's re-election campaign. The measure now also has become one of the issues the governor hopes to build into his legacy. In addition to traditional enviros, consumer groups such as OSPIRG, the Citizens' Utility Board and even the watchdog Utility Reform Project which usually look askance at anything that might raise rates, are on board with the legislation. Also supporting the measure, still in the Senate Environmental and Natural Resources Committee, are Oregon's largest utilities-Portland General Electric and PacifiCorp. But the Industrial Customers of Northwest Utilities says the bill, while well-intentioned, amounts to a wholesale transfer of wealth from ratepayers to the developers of renewable energy and the utilities.

Parents saving for college, mobile home owners facing eviction, and businesses that generate or use alternative energy are among the beneficiaries of a wide-ranging tax break bill signed by Gov. Ted Kulongoski on Tuesday......The energy initiative, which ranks as the biggest tax break in the bill, will expand the credit for businesses to build wind farms, use solar or otherwise boost the use of clean energy. Now the credit is 35 percent of costs, with a cap of $3.5 million. The new law increases the credit to 50 percent, with a $10 million cap. It's estimated to cost the state at least $6 million a year by 2009-11.

When the turbines go up, it’s not just the scenery that suffers, it's the atmosphere too. Ed Douglas reveals the environmental costs of wind power

A community group has warned local people that the beauty of the Braid Valley could be blighted by the equivalent of up to 40 Statues of Liberty. The Braid Valley Preservation Group has said a new application for 22 wind turbines on Elginny Hill, outside Broughshane, will have a “devastating impact” on the area’s scenery making a mockery of “the Gateway to the Glens”.