Chinese wind power provider A-Power Energy Generation Systems(SPWR) and its U.S.-based partners announced on Thursday plans to build a wind turbine production and assembly plant in Nevada that will create up to 1,000 permanent jobs for the state and more jobs during the construction phase. The announcement about the Nevada plant was notable for two reasons: the selection of Nevada as home state for the wind energy plant, and the political power broker who is associated with the state.

Thank you to the Agency of Natural Resources for standing up for 23,600 acres of unspoiled wilderness. The ANR came out with something we have known for a long time. Herrick Mountain, Spruce Knob, Ames Hollow, Train Brook Ridgeline to the south and Bird Mountain to the north combine to form a very special piece of habitat that they call a "rare and irreplaceable natural area."

A large and quickly increasing number of residents in our county and township, as well as in neighbouring Wellington, are deeply concerned about the proposed Belwood Wind Energy Centre Project that Invenergy is seeking approval for. Seeing that there seems to be little awareness of how close to Orangeville this massive proposal will be, we would like to draw your attention why we, and many more residents in this area, do not deem the proposed site appropriate.

On Jan. 27, county staff gave the Rockingham County Board of Supervisors a draft of a new zoning ordinance, which, if approved, would give a special use permit to two wind companies. The companies, Solaya Inc. out of Massachusetts and Dominion Utility out of Richmond, want to put large wind turbines on a private mountaintop near Criders. There are a number of problems with wind farms.

I encourage the taxpaying citizens of Union County to continue to question your Union County commissioners about the benefits of the proposed wind farm(s). Maybe they'll be wonderful, with all the benefits promised. And maybe they won't. Take it from us in your sister county of Wallowa: two of your commissioners have been very effective in decisions ruining our rural beauty.

Industrial wind is perhaps the silliest modern energy idea imaginable. In the final analysis, it's a faith-based proposition, requiring people to close their minds and clap their hands to revive it from a life-and-death struggle against unbelief, bringing the technology back from the oblivion that the steam engine consigned it to hundreds of years ago. Throwing vast amounts of the public's treasure down the rathole of wind is to deny investment in infinitely more effective technologies -- such as nuclear -- that will preserve the energy requirements of modernity. It is incredibly irresponsible.

We're open to Chicago-based Invenergy's latest proposal to come into the Roanoke Valley with a plan to put 15 windmills on top of Poor Mountain. Yes, along a ridgeline in prominent view as traffic along Interstate 81 comes and goes through the Roanoke Valley. ...That doesn't mean we're ready to endorse Invenergy's project, though.

Yet public officials from the president and vice president to Cabinet and congressional leaders insult our intelligence by delivering scripted messages that the future of the new energy system in this country is clean renewable energy that will be delivered by countless so-called green jobs. The fake chimes of energy independence echo up and down Pennsylvania Avenue. Do headlines make truth, regardless of content? What is it about organizations like Repower America and the Center for American Progress, which provide ideology, not substance, to the administration and congressional leadership on the so-called new energy system? Why are their conclusions unchallenged?

Thanks to Colorado's renewable portfolio standard, wind power is a "must take" resource for Public Service, meaning the utility must incorporate wind power into the grid even if it means ramping down a coal-fired plant. Now, Gov. Ritter and Democrats in Denver want to increase the renewable portfolio standard by 50 percent through House Bill 1001, without considering the consequences for Denver's air quality. Despite the $2 billion worth of new wind turbines installed since 2004, Denver's air quality has not improved.

Supporters of the wind farm need to honestly ask themselves whether they would like to have 130 huge turbines planted on their favorite public space, whether it be a mountain ridge in Vermont, a canyon in the Southwest, or an ocean vista off Key West. With a footprint larger than Manhattan, with turbines each the size of the Statue of Liberty, this industrial project is out of place in an area that borders marine sanctuaries on all sides. Nantucket Sound is a national treasure and it must be protected at all costs.

The Feb. 22 Your Turn "We need lasting energy plan" offers more smoke than wind when it suggests we can harness the erratic "wind that is literally passing us by to create the true clean energy economy." It is delusional to think wind can replace base load coal and nuclear power.

Money spent on wind turbines from China will not jump-start an industry in America. The whole point of the federal government's stimulus program is to create jobs. In America. Unfortunately, that's not how it's working out, according to four U.S. senators who raise concerns that should not be ignored.

I cannot believe that it took four Democratic senators to hit the White House mule with a 2 by 4 on such an obvious matter of good politics and policy yesterday, but kudos to Bob Casey, Jon Tester, Sherrod Brown, and Chuck Schumer for insisting that funds from the 2009 stimulus bill be used to create American jobs, not foreign ones.

Now that most of twelve California wind turbines retrofitted for Minnesota winters are finally operational, several cities have acknowledged to the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota that the $5 million project may be more suited for generating PR-both good and bad-than producing significant quantities of power.

Since the power generated by modern wind turbines is so unpredictable, conventional power plants have to serve as back-ups. These run at less than half power most of the time. That is terribly uneconomical -- only at full power do they have good thermal efficiency and minimal CO2 emissions per kWh delivered. Think also a moment of the cable networks needed: not only a fine-maze distribution network at the consumer end, but also one at the generator end.

Here in upstate New York it would be difficult not to notice the forests of steel, concrete and whirling blades that are materializing over vast stretches of land, often replacing forests of wood, leaves and wildlife. And so the war continues between "green" technology and the green earth. Numerous pro and con articles have appeared debating the many aspects of power produced by windmills, but even those who object to windmills concur that the power produced by them is truly "clean" energy. As a biologist and an environmentalist, I disagree.

According to the Jan. 4 edition of "Engineering News Record," a most respected publication, the cable and wind farms could eventually cost up to $6 billion and take 10 years to complete. The cable would strengthen Hawaiian Electric's monopoly grids and cost the tax- and ratepayers billions to fund this project. Millions have already been spent on studying the ocean floor, the grid, marketing and more. It seems that none of the parties involved have done the basic math.

Many people seem enthralled about the “clean green” wind farm proposed for Lake Michigan four miles out from Pentwater. But if you’ve ever sailed the lake and if you ever worked in a big power plant — and I have done both — you see several dirty little devils in the details. Plus that, an Internet search shows wind power may not be all that clean. But it certainly looks very, very green — at least to the developers, people eager to rake in the boodle of big federal grants and subsidies and then get out of Dodge — or Pentwater.

In conclusion, if the WTG doesn't pay for itself, real costs to taxpayers are hidden and simultaneously, the town still buys the same amount of carbon electricity that allegedly poisoned children in its making at a higher price, how is this good for Jamestown? Doing something, no matter what the cost, based upon good intentions is not the model for best practices even in good economic times.

Horizon's Elkhorn Wind Farm in 2007 and 2008 received $11 million each year in tax credits from the state of Oregon. In addition, Union County gave Horizon a property tax deduction of $331,680 each year for 2008 and 2009 which will continue for the next 10 years. The federal government also allowed in 2008 and 2009, a Production Tax Credit of $5,518,500 each year wherein it will continue for 10 years which will amount to $55,188,000. If you add up these numbers, it amounts to in excess of $81 million over 10 years, which are political giveaways at taxpayers' expense.