Economic viability is not a criterion for determining setbacks in siting an energy facility. Setbacks should address only identified public health, safety and individual property rights impacts. The setbacks are inadequate as currently designed. The project is being proposed in the wrong location.

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher used to say that she was happy when her opposition resorted to attacking her or her colleagues’ character. It meant, she said, that they (her opponents) could not win the battle of ideas. If that is true, then the eco-extortionists are definitely on the run.

In order to merely keep up with the growth of global electricity use, the wind industry would have to cover 96 square miles every day with wind turbines. That's an area about the size of four Manhattans. Glib economists might suggest that such a feat could be achieved, but that ignores another key question: Where will we put all those turbines?

CanWEA, as a lobbyist organization for the multi-national wind industry will make every attempt possible to discount or minimize any potential problems in order to keep government subsidies rolling in to the corporations they represent and get their towers erected. CanWEA is not an environmental advocacy group.

Commercial wind turbines are gigantic machines that distort natural light, sound and space. Their impacts are constant, making them oppressive when situated too near to homes and the places where we live.

It's well-documented and accepted - even among developers - that wind projects create very few permanent jobs. Big Wind and its media allies gloss over this fact and make the argument that economic activity "no matter how brief" justifies permanent degradation of our state's most valuable natural assets. There's nothing that sells a bad idea like the promise of economic salvation.

These [wind] companies stand to make huge amounts of money from the "gold rush" of construction of wind turbines and a great deal of that money is coming from your pocket in the form of government subsidies. Whose interests are they looking out for? It sure isn't yours. ...If you live in rural Ontario you need to educate yourself and you need to do it quickly in order to keep your home and community as a safe place to live in.

This whole EFSEC process has only shown how totally corrupted the siting of energy facilities has become in Washington state. If Gov. Gregoire wants to really show that "local sentiment about this project is just as important to her as it was for the Wild Horse Project," then a good first step would be to deny the KVWPP as designed and then appoint a new EFSEC chairperson that will not accept the role of mouthpiece for any special interest business group that may want to make an obscene amount of money on the backs of non-participating land owners. If this project is the precedent for siting renewable energy projects in the future, no one will win. Litigation will become the norm and commercial wind power will become even more economically unviable - if that is even possible.

The EFSEC hearings were a rubber stamp process because to my knowledge none of the EFSEC members other than the presiding officer asked any questions in the hearings. ...I feel a more important issue was that the EFSEC process violated the Washington State Growth Management Act which has local government settling growth issues. The state should stay out of it.

When the country thinks about its energy problems, it often focuses on our dependence on foreign oil and the recent high prices of gasoline. Petroleum provides 40 percent of our energy and is particularly vulnerable to geopolitical swings in unstable regions of the world. But utility executives worry that Americans are failing to appreciate another aspect of the energy picture, namely that the power plants using coal, natural gas and nuclear power to produce electricity may soon not meet our growing needs. "My biggest fear is that we are running out of generation," said Michael G. Morris, chairman and chief executive of American Electric Power, with 5 million customers in 11 states. "That is an issue that the average person doesn't know a thing about. When we tell corporate America, they say, 'What do you mean you're running out of power?"' The executives' concern is echoed by the North American Electric Reliability Council, which last week said in its annual report that in two to three years, the margin between power supply and demand will drop below levels necessary for reliability in Texas, the Northeast and the Midwest. Other parts of the country could reach that point in the next decade.

A government folly is playing out in our state's Capitol over a wind electricity project a group wants to build in Clark County. At the root of this folly is a federal requirement. Believe it or not, a wind farm developer can force a utility company to buy its electricity, even if the company doesn't want it. This gets worse. The wind power might cost more than the company wants its customers to have to pay for electricity.

The framework of subsidies constructed and empowered in order to encourage development of supplementary electricity generation (it is no more than that) by wind power has become the target for every entrepreneur in the field. Wind power is now so wildly oversubsidised that the overall driver has become excessive private profits, not the real needs of the electricity demand pattern.

Wind power is cheap, but especially capricious in California's rugged terrain and varied climate. Wind turbines spinning like mad during a cool summer's night do little for California's electricity needs while motionless turbine blades on a hot day require the firing up of massive natural gas "peaker" plants that make up for the lack of wind power at a huge cost in fuel and CO2 emissions. And for all of wind's supposed "green" advantages, it takes about 10 times the steel and cement for wind to produce the equivalent amount of power as nuclear does 24/7, even on a calm day.

What is the county's position on the use of eminent domain as it relates to siting, permitting, or constructing anything to do with a 440-foot industrial wind turbine?" First of all the board of county commissioners will not "unlawfully" seize property, period. Since the Supreme Court decision several years ago, the traditional limits that have existed on the use of eminent domain have been removed. As a result, local governments can use that power, if they choose, for nontraditional purposes, including economic development.

Agents will try to negotiate a simple lease agreement by initially offering some type of payment for land use that is normally priced under fair market value. If that doesn't work, the company will exercise their right to pursue eminent domain actions through the condemnation of your property as part of the legal process.

If there could ever be a bill custom-tailored to boost Highland New Wind Development’s plans for a wind energy utility in Highland County, this one is it. Sen. Frank Wagner introduced legislation in this session of the General Assembly that not only flies in the face of proper land use procedures, but is designed specifically to help HNWD get its project up and running. His bill would change the law regarding utility plan reviews by local governing bodies. The way HNWD’s project has been handled here is precisely what residents and landowners are challenging in an appeals process now slated for a full hearing before Virginia’s Supreme Court. Wagner may argue his bill would help companies statewide who hope to develop renewable energy, but it’s a thinly veiled attempt to help this particular company industrialize Allegheny Mountain, and it needs to be resoundly defeated by the House this week.

Do you really want to take the chance of ruining the lagoon and destroying our sport-fishing resource for something that we do not have enough wind for? The evidence points to the fact that wind turbines might be a disaster to our environment and proper independent studies have not been conducted by either the county or FPL. County commissioners have a choice to represent either their constituents or FPL. I urge them to stop the procrastination, and unless proper, independent, ecological studies are initiated, please save the county a lot of time and money and ban the turbines immediately.

Who are the global warming deniers, those scientists who downplay the human cause of climate change, who claim that manmade climate change, if it's occurring at all, may have modest costs or even bring benefits, who claim that the science is not settled on climate change? To discover whether these deniers are crackpots from the fringes of academia, as their detractors so often claim, I decided to investigate scientists at odds with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, the official body organizing the great bulk of the climate research that dominates the public airwaves. After writing 10 columns on the subject, one for each "denier" and his theories, one fact is undeniable: The science is not settled. Not on man's role in causing the warming we've seen this century. Not on the consequences of this warming. Certainly not on the extent of warming –or cooling – to come.

RALEIGH - Are you willing to pay higher electricity rates to support renewable energy? If so, you're one of only about 10,000 people in North Carolina who is. That's because the well-publicized N.C. Green Power program has given state residents an ample opportunity to buy power derived from sources such as solar, wind and hog waste. Yet only 10,000 have signed up, or about .01 percent of the population. As a referendum on renewable energy, N.C. Green Power is a pretty clear indication North Carolinians aren't interested. Yet legislators are gearing up to force people to buy energy from renewable sources ($10 per month worth, phased in to as much as $30 per month later). So in what has become business-as-usual, the General Assembly is set to introduce yet another hidden tax that, if passed, will mandate that 8-plus million of us buy what we have elected not to buy -- expensive energy with negligible environmental benefits.