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.

In search of a buck, at the expense of the public, Bachler arbitrarily replaced the board's recommendation with one based on the developers' wishes. The new law is based not on public health, welfare and safety, but instead caves in to wind industry specifications, designed to maximize developers' profits.

What the department’s new approach fails to recognize is that UPC’s wind towers — at 420 feet tall on top of ridgelines in Sheffield — will be the most prominent feature on the ridgelines for miles around for residents and visitors of numerous locations, not just Sheffield and Sutton. The compromise might show respect for the decision-making process, but it fails to respect the real impact of these industrial giants on Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. We need leadership and clarity on this divisive issue. Before we’re at the stage where wind companies are seeking approval from the Public Service Board to build their individual projects, the state needs an overall energy plan, a vision. The state should follow up on its promise of a public engagement process on energy to educate and inform Vermonters about energy choices and tradeoffs.

It is not enough to simply talk in symbolism. You must state facts. May I suggest you start with these crucial questions. ....

Acting now, at a time when Stephenson County is being sued by two property owner groups opposed to proposed wind farm developments, subverts the public process. Adopting this proposal would create an opportunity for the developers to withdraw plans for the two wind farms now being considered, thereby negating the lawsuits. These same developers, if the revision is adopted by the county, would then resubmit plans for the wind farms and public input on the process would be limited to hearings, hosted by the developers and attended by county officials who are not answerable to the ballot box.

Development should certainly be regulated on mountain slopes and ridges, as governments in Northwest North Carolina have finally started to do in the last few years....Few people want huge, sprawling farms of towering windmills. Regulations, including countywide zoning, are needed to make sure that doesn't happen. Neighboring Ashe County faces serious challenges in dealing with a proposed industrial-scale windmill farm in large part because it lacks a comprehensive land-use plan. Ashe did approve an ordinance a few months ago that would govern wind-energy systems such as windmill farms, but that may have been too late.

New Scientist's report on the large number of bats succumbing to wind turbines reinforces a common misperception - that the blades move slowly (12 May, p4). It is true that the blades of older, small wind turbines rotated rapidly and so would appear to a bird or bat as a semi-solid disc to be avoided. Modern 2-megawatt wind turbines make an apparently lazy 10 to 20 revolutions per minute, but the blades are around 40 metres long. Simple geometry shows that the blade tips travel at between 150 and 300 kilometres per hour. For a bird or bat in misty weather, these aircraft-sized blades appear from nowhere at intervals of between 2 and 4 seconds, a scenario that even a fighter pilot would find alarming.

Protesters share our concern that the case for wind power is unproven - and that alone should stop the march of turbines across Cumbria - but the overriding issue, which has caused objectors to write in from all over the country, is that these windmills will be an eyesore in a lovely spot. Allerdale council must block this plan, just as it has already sensibly halted a test mast proposal at Tallentire Hill. There is development, and there is development. We can take new building if it adds to our tourism strategy, but we mustn’t take it if it threatens to drive customers away.

SO 52% of the people in the BBC survey preferred renewables to other sources of energy. This is not much of a surprise if renewables were offered on an "either-or" basis.

When the BBC runs one of its propaganda campaigns in favour of windfarms, as Farming Today was again doing recently, the only point of interest is how many of the basic facts they leave out. One thing they invariably try to conceal is how derisory is the amount of electricity these windmills produce.

Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell recently had a tête-à-tête to discuss how B.C. could assist California in dealing with its energy crisis. At the same time, the California Utilities Commission gave Pacific Gas and Electric US$14 million to explore renewable energy sources in B.C. and the feasibility of a new transmission corridor stretching from B.C. to the Golden State. Conspicuously absent from the self-congratulatory press releases about co-operation between the jurisdictions in pursuing a "green" agenda was the most important issue: Who will own - and benefit from - the development of B.C.'s renewable energy? A closer look at the B.C. government's wind energy policies reveals an enormous giveaway of literally billions of dollars in wind farm assets and future public revenues to private power developers. Yet there has been virtually no public discussion of the scope and cost of the government's wind energy policies.

The problem with the green revolution argument is that it doesn't trouble itself about efficiency. It is most often lauded for supplying new jobs, but billions of dollars in tax subsidies would create plenty of new jobs in almost any sector. The point is that many less-capital-intensive sectors would create many more jobs for a given investment of taxpayers' money. Similarly, green initiatives will open new markets only if other nations subsidize inefficient technologies bought abroad. Thus, the real game becomes which nations get to suck up other nations' tax-financed subsidies. Apart from the resulting global inefficiency, this also creates a whole new raft of industry players that will keep pushing inefficient legislation simply because it fills their coffers.

Our quality of place is being attacked one mountain at a time. Our natural resources are our future and our economy, way beyond the 20 years the turbines will be there. I want our state agencies to represent OUR best interest, not the developer's. ...Is the Department of Environmental Protection in existence to pave the way for corporate industrial development or to protect the State of Maine through sound science and good judgment? Be scientists, not politicians!

Apparently the wind's gone out of the sails of the push to place wind turbines off the shores of Lake Ontario. But there's no official word, and who can be surprised, given the secrecy with which the New York Power Authority has operated this project all along.

Good intentions alone cannot assure the success of these projects. Before communities spend millions demonstrating their concern for the environment by erecting huge wind turbines or investing in other forms of energy production, they should be certain there will be a reasonable return on and proper management of those facilities.

It now seems that, having disrupted and destroyed some of our local countryside with heavy negative industry, our Fenland Council has "accommodated" enough of these "awesome beasts", and may not wish to play ball with its political masters any longer. The wind industry has not been slow in reacting to the public's withering support of this industrialisation of our countryside and has placed its marketing machine into top gear. I agree with the council that it is time to withdraw from this rural carnage inflicted by these industrialists. I even more strongly object to my beloved English countryside being concreted over by international giants, that may have very little regard or no concern for our national heritage, the British countryside.

Industrial wind farms, like the Cape Wind project, are on the rise and along with them public protest and opposition. Is it anti-environnmental to even question much less object? Not at all. In fact, questioning wind power does not mean anti-environment and in fact the opposite is most often the case. Those that question are those that care or they wouldn't be involved in the debate at all. In fact, being Green means you should question not only the viability of wind power but its potential negative impacts on the Earth, its communities and the living beings and ecosystems on which it depends. Making responsible and informed choices are the keys to living Green.

That is what Beekmantown has done. The board has set a moratorium on any construction until next April. In the meantime, the necessary research and discussion will ensue. This is as it should be..........But it is only attractive if it can be harvested in a manner that is not intrusive to neighbors or the landscape. The Town of Beekmantown seems poised to find out once and for all whether the proposal is compatible with residents' interests.

Obviously, there are other ways in which the Lewis wind farm electricity can be managed so as to effect some small reductions in carbon emissions, but a figure of 600,000 tonnes per annum (your report, 6 February) is clearly absurd. The only long-term benefit of the Lewis wind farm will come at the end of it's 20-year lifetime, when, with the Beauly to Denny pylon line in place, the newly industrialised area of Barvas Moor will be the ideal site to place a 1000MW "clean energy" nuclear plant.

Recently, Gov. Pawlenty signed a renewable energy standard in Minnesota. While proponents claim this standard will protect Minnesota’s environment and resources and help reduce global warming is only rhetoric and not fact. This initiative will cost you the taxpayer millions and produce no positive impact in Minnesota.