But when quizzed by a shareholder about why they were selling off such good assets - selling the things investors had bought into BBW to own - BBW came up with entirely new reasons. Now BBW says the Spanish wind farm operation is a dog - a low-yielding asset that didn't produce and economic return. That's a little at odds with the glowing picture painted in previous reports. I'm not sure it was the smartest thing to say when the sale hasn't settled yet.

This morning BBW and BNB announced they were selling their 50/50 Portuguese wind farm joint venture to a Portuguese private equiteer Magnum Capital for $2.23 billion. A year after BBW bought its half from parent BNB, BBW is recording a loss of $11.7 million while BNB is claiming a small but undisclosed surplus over book value. But that's not really the point of this transaction. Everyone knows why BNB is selling - it rather desperately needs money to pay down debt.

If Environment Minister Trevor Mallard decides to call- in the consent application, it will be referred directly to a ministerially-appointed board of inquiry, or to the Environment Court. And it seems certain that Mr Mallard will indeed decide to call-in the application. Last month, after an editorial in this newspaper opined that to do so would undermine the democratic process, Mr Mallard quickly fired off a letter to the editor in response. He wanted to "correct the misinformation" and defend the process that would be applied if the decision was called in.

That Manawatu Standard has not taken a stance on whether MRP's wind farm application should be approved, but the outcome is too important to this region for the input of the people to be undermined in any way. The process must not only be fair, it must be seen to be fair. One of biggest battles MRP faced from the outset, whether it knew it or not, was public relations. After doing the dirty on the PNCC and the people it represents, that's one battle it now hasn't a hope of winning.

Wind farm opponents will suggest Mighty River's motives for asking Mr Mallard to take the decision away from the PNCC are a sinister ploy to subvert the democratic process. However, the company is more likely motivated by pragmatism. If the decision is left with the PNCC and the wind farm is approved, it will almost certainly be appealed to the Environment Court anyway. Mighty River would no doubt prefer to cut to the chase. The decision-making process shouldn't be unnecessarily convoluted, but the people of Palmerston North must be given the chance to have their say and, more importantly, they must be listened to.

Wind Power claims "overwhelming" support from residents but won't hold a public meeting claiming it would be "hijacked" by opponents. It prefers "information sessions" saying the fact that no residents responded to advertisements for individual meetings showed local support, not distrust of the company, apathy or ignorance. Pyrenees Shire Mayor Lester Harris has offered to convene a public meeting.

Visually these huge structures have a colossal visual effect on the environment. They may be sleek and have good lines but so many of them pollute the landscape. Unfortunately, these eyesores are located in some of the most picturesque country in Australia because of the availability of suitable wind.

“The fine print on Meridian’s website says it has to purchase power off the grid from thermal generators to supply its customers during dry years, but claims these are offset by the purchase of carbon credits. These notionally avoided incremental emission units are being purchased from projects like Trust Power’s Tararua wind farm. “The idea that Meridian can magically convert thermal electricity into ‘certified carbon-neutral electricity’ by buying these sorts of carbon units is modern day hocus-pocus. ...“My worry with this sort of false advertising is that it creates the impression we don’t need thermal electricity in New Zealand. The reality is that there are times of drought, and when wind does not blow, when thermal power is the only way we can keep the lights on.

Last month, a group of 25 environmental activists staged an impromptu demonstration outside the Sydney offices of yet another global organisation. But this time it wasn't a multinational mining or oil company that was the target, but the environment group WWF. They were protesting against WWF's decision to partner with the coal industry, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union and the environment think tank the Climate Institute in working to accelerate the development of carbon capture and storage technology, otherwise known as clean coal. This was just the latest exchange in the simmering brand war between Australia's two biggest green groups, WWF and Greenpeace, revealing the widening ideological divide between conservationists and activists of the founding denominations in the broad church of the environment movement.

New Zealand relies on agricultural production for its sustenance, and that has not changed in centuries. And now as ever, there is friction where the edge of pastoral and agricultural production meets residential. As the Marlborough vineyards grow, increasingly the use of wind machines to keep frost at bay is annoying residents. Actually, it's angering them. They are hopping mad.

No matter how many billions you spend on a wind farm, no matter how much landscape you sacrifice in the name of this particular renewable energy source, you have to build something else to cut in when it cuts out - and it has to be constantly at the ready to go. Not switched off, but warmed up and spinning - consuming, in other words, fuelled by something else more dependable. Don't be fooled by the "dry year" threat, either: we're in a La Nina summer now, and there's no evidence yet presented to indicate that a dry year is a windy year, as the Meridian theory requires: the theory is that in a dry year for southern lakes, the wind turbines will allow the dams to be rested and water to be stored for later use. ...So, in essence, wind farms cost you double, at least: the $2 billion for Hayes, (though it's odds on it'll be more) will be necessarily followed by a blank cheque for whatever dependable base-load generation is going to back it up, unspecified hundreds of millions for Transpower's necessary upgrade of the grid, and God knows how much for the replacement Cook Strait cable. This is what happens when the south is plundered to power the north, as it has been for decades.

There is no doubt that the wind farm industry has a zealous pecuniary interest in covering as much of Australia and the world with their huge wind turbines as possible. They are not altruistic enough to warn prospective hosts and neighbours of the known downsides, but worldwide, have included secrecy clauses in their hosts' contracts. They deny wind farms are noisy. Sales are priority. Those registering their legitimate complaints concerning noise, do not consider their experiences "myths". ...Beware the spin doctors for snake oil cures to climate change.

The starting point is the broad brush statement in the paper that no power supplies are perfectly reliable. This is correct provided you don't ask about the details. If you did, the devil would point out that there is a difference between a naturally intermittent supply and a supply which trips or goes off line unexpectedly. There is a difference in scale and time. Contemporary distributed electricity systems have devised ways of insuring continuity of supply for the latter events but are struggling to deal with the former. This is not comparing like with like. ...Intermittent supply adds an extra stretch for the control of a network. Wind farms illustrate the problem. A standard measure of the performance of a generator is the capacity factor. This is the annual averaged power achieved as a percentage of the installed (or maximum) capacity. ...But this factor gives no indication of the detailed performance. A measure that helps give an indication of this is a reliability figure. This is the minimum percentage of power that may be relied upon for 90 per cent of the time. For wind farms it is about 5 to 10 per cent

Fraser also thundered how the Macarthur wind farm could have a generating capacity of up to 450MW -- enough "clean energy capacity to power approximately 250,000 average Australian households". When of course, he somehow failed to add, the wind blows. When it doesn't, those 250,000 households will be getting their electricity from dirty old coal. The 450MW sounds impressive. About a quarter the size of a Loy Yang, for perhaps half the cost. But AGL -- and the rest of us paying for it -- would be lucky to average 150MW over a year. So about half the upfront cost of a Loy Yang for about 8 per cent as much power.

A dozen wind power projects generating close to 2700MW at full capacity are on the drawing board or have planning approval. The first of the big ones is not due for completion until early next decade, if it is not held up by objectors concerned about the visual impact and noise pollution. ...But just as there are high costs and climate constraints with hydro power, so there are with wind. The worldwide shortage of wind turbines is driving up price and generators are looking outside traditional suppliers in Denmark and Germany to other manufacturers in China and India.

Much of what is passing for debate about climate change in the election is just too silly for words. ...In 2003 an independent inquiry chaired by a former Coalition Senator, Grant Tambling, found that "by 2007 sufficient capacity is expected to have been installed to meet the target. As a consequence, investment is expected to fall away rapidly." It recommended doubling the target and extending the scheme to 2020 in order to stop the renewables industry collapsing. Last week a newspaper reported that that warning was backed up by then Environment Minister Ian Campbell, who wrote a secret memo to the Prime Minister in December 2005 expressing concern that investment in renewable energy would "come to a halt"' within 12 to 18 months. "Since wind energy has been the main beneficiary of MRET, this industry is likely to be the most affected, though there will also be important impacts for solar hot water heaters, energy generation from sugar by-products and other producers," he wrote.

I HAVE a dream. To see the first of -- almost -- all the wind towers torn down. Like the bits of the Berlin Wall, we'll keep a few as reminders of an embarrassing past; a time around the turn of the century when society collectively took leave of reason. Going from the 20th century not into a more enlightened 21st century, but back to a 14th century future of weird religious cults and wandering prophets warning of the coming end of the world. ...In very simple terms, if wind farms are the answer, the question must be: how can we waste the most money in an utterly useless exercise?

Let's call it "greensumerism". Forget the simple mantra of "less is more"; with the help of the green movement you can now indulge in a frenzy of consumerism, with each luxury purchase excused by the idea that you are helping the development of the "green" sector. ...The latest convert to this idea is the NSW Water Minister, Nathan Rees, who now claims his dreaded desalination plant is actually terrific news for the environment. The ebullient new minister ran through the logic this week: since the power used by the plant will come from wind farms, the plant will give much-needed certainty to the industry, and thus assist in the development of the whole sustainability sector. Thus the planet is better off with the Sydney desalination plant than it would have been without it.

THE great wind-scam keeps soaking up taxpayer and consumer dollars and blowing smoke. All much more reliably than the electricity flowing from those lazily turning windmills.

An energy company's greedy quest for politically correct power is putting a world celebrity heritage site at risk of being lost forever. A subsidiary of Conergy (XE:604002: news, chart, profile) , a German renewable energy firm, has announced plans to construct an enormous wind farm in the Australian outback.