People may not want them in their backyard, but some of us would love some closure on the wind turbine debate. This just in: Don't hold your breath. I'm reliably informed not to expect a public meeting about the turbines before the end of January. And that's in spite of pressure late last week from the Governor's Office in Tallahassee, no less.

Much as I like the idea of using these nontraditional methods for power generation, we need a dose of facts when anyone comes forward to propose such changes in power supplies. For example, wind is certainly a non-carbon source, but it's not a non-polluter. ...we also need to keep the "law of unintended consequences" in mind. We need to add these sources to both fossil and nuclear plants and traditional generation systems, which work without wind or sunshine.

Even if we trusted Florida Power & Light, and we would be fools to, how do you think FPL's industrial wind turbines could possibly be "exactly what the doctor ordered"? What exactly are they supposed to do for this county? ...Why are we considering endangering eagles, osprey, other wildlife and our beaches for a net gain of 1/1,000th the current generating capacity in a county that exports 500 percent more than we use? Believing FPL's bought-and-paid-for polls and studies is just begging to be lied to again.

Trust us, they said. Trust us, because we're the largest developer of alternative sources of energy in the world. We really know what we're doing. Trust us to build wind turbines near your coastline. Yes, they'd be very tall, but don't worry. After all, we live here, too. Trust us, we wouldn't do anything to harm the environment, to hurt birds and wildlife. This is our home, too you know. The "we" here is Florida Power & Light Co. I'm sorry, but recent revelations about FPL's "green energy" practices make me trust them even less than I did before.

These days we read and hear more and more about the exponential increases in renewable energy, particularly large wind farms such as those sprouting up on Colorado's front range and eastern plains. Colorado's Amendment 37 requires the state's largest utility companies to produce 10 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2015. A subsequent legislative action doubled that to 20 percent by 2020. ...This is all great news, right? Not if you are an independent grid system operator, and not if you're expecting all of this large scale wind power to help reduce global warming carbon emissions. Wind power is by nature a notoriously intermittent source of power. Wind simply doesn't blow steadily all of the time. Therefore, the power output of all large scale wind farms goes up and down dramatically throughout the day, regardless of the demand for power on the grid. ...Without energy diversity, the more renewable power we mandate, the more unreliable the grid will become. The laws of physics simply can't be amended.

But a new proposal for a deep-water, off-shore wind farm answers all the skeptics' objections and, in addition to its environmental benefits, could be an economic boon to southeastern Massachusetts. Blue H USA LLC has recently installed the world's first deep-water windmill off the coast of Italy and now wants to bring that technology to the South Coast, which has been referred to as the Saudi Arabia of wind energy because of its dependable North Atlantic winds. Rather than fight critics, Blue H has embraced their concerns and worked to satisfy them, maximizing the positives of the technology while minimizing the perceived negatives. The solution? Locate the turbines out to sea on floating - but stabilized - platforms similar to oil rigs, far away from any people or animals.

Wind energy opponents often rattle off a litany of objections: Windmills aren't aesthetically pleasing (a notion many dispute); they pose a danger to migrating birds; they're noisy; they're inefficient and expensive. But a new proposal for a deep-water, off-shore wind farm answers all the skeptics' objections and, in addition to its environmental benefits, could be an economic boon to Fall River. Blue H USA LLC has recently installed the world's first deep-water windmill off the coast of Italy and now wants to bring that technology to the SouthCoast ...It turns out answering the critics is actually a benefit to the technology, as 90 percent of the potential energy from wind is well offshore in deep water.

Royal Dutch Shell took a lot of flak when it pulled out of the huge "London Array" offshore wind farm in the U.K. last week. The prevailing explanation for the withdrawal? Higher oil prices make old-fashioned energy a more attractive investment than still-immature renewable energy. Perhaps there's a less-conspiratorial explanation. Maybe offshore wind power just isn't up to snuff yet. Denmark's Vestas, the world's biggest wind-turbine maker, today said Europe should curb its enthusiasm for massive offshore wind farms, and focus on regular onshore wind power.

Our impressive upper-level winds (average year-round 13.8 mph, no less) will make those jumbo-jet-sized turbine blades churn merrily. That's far faster than the 9 mph the super-efficient Siemens generators need to start turning over - and turning us on. I know the estimated 3,600 lucky Hutchinson Island recipients of this windy bounty are besides themselves with excitement over the news. I'm not so sure how the other hundreds of thousands of FPL customers feel about footing most of the $45 million bill.

The city of Fort Pierce has issued an edict (April 7 City Commission meeting) requiring all residents of condominiums on the beach to pull down shades, turn off lamps and batten down the lights to aid sea turtles in their search for nesting sites and ensuring hatchlings make their destination in the right direction - east. The lights confuse the turtles and cause the hatchlings to move toward land lights rather than toward the ocean. ...Now that we have this bit of information that should surprise no one, we move to giant wind turbines on the beach. What do they do to the sea turtles?

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.

One litre of solid or liquid fossil fuel contains tens of thousands of times the energy of one litre of wind-turbine air moving at 20 knots, the speed needed for viable large wind turbines. A 2000mw steam station using compacted fossil fuel can be housed in a single building. Large turbines in suitable wind can generate about 10mw per sq km of land, so it needs 200 sq km to replace that coal station if wind blew continuously, but more to compensate for periods when some turbines are becalmed. ...The above large magnitudes should be borne in mind. Solar energy cannot be harvested in small structures, so they will always be highly visible.

Perhaps FPL is right. Perhaps the majority of St. Lucians could care less if the company wants to play at windmills on its own land. But I have to wonder if the survey questions weren't just a little, shall we say, skewed? It's well-known in market research circles that how you ask the questions can be as important as the questions themselves. FPL's survey, for instance, made no distinction as to where phone respondents lived — the island or inland? I suspect few of the "yes" votes came from Hutchinson Island. FPL also didn't seem to want to hear from people who rarely vote in general elections. And they didn't bother to find out exactly what 20 percent of the "yes" voters meant by being only "somewhat" supportive.

While it is correct that wind, wave and other renewable energy can save on CO2 emissions synchronizing demand and output to protect the grid comes at a heavy price. In a report by David White, Reduction in Carbon Dioxide Emissions: Estimating the Potential Contribution from Wind-Power, commissioned by the Renewable Energy Foundation, December 2004, White found that, "Fossil-fuelled capacity operating as reserve and backup is required to accompany wind generation and stabilize supplies to the consumer. That capacity is placed under particular strains when working in this supporting role because it is being used to balance a reasonably predictable but fluctuating demand with a variable and largely unpredictable output from wind turbines. "Consequently, operating fossil capacity in this mode generates more CO2 per kWh generated than if operating normally."

Last week, Florida Power & Light Co. killed plans to build three wind turbines on a publicly owned St. Lucie County beach - just hours before county commissioners had scheduled a vote to oppose the project. Who says the state's biggest utility can't see the light? Now the utility can move forward with plans to build six 40-story windmills on its own oceanfront land near the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant. That should have been the approach all along. Instead, FPL tried to put another three windmills at Blind Creek Park, public land north of the nuclear plant that had been bought for preservation.

But running turbines on public conservation land, which Florida Power & Light was looking to do in St. Lucie County until county commissioners there got wind of it, isn't the way. Florida needs to cut its dependence on fossil fuels. But not -- not -- where a wind farm would irreparably damage publicly preserved land. Better options exist.

With a majority of St. Lucie County commissioners opposing Florida Power & Light Co.'s plans to put three giant wind turbines on conservation land at Blind Creek Park, that part of the nine-windmill project is dead. Three cheers. The project does not belong on land the county and state paid to preserve. ...St. Lucie's rejection would leave intact the principle that land bought for conservation is meant to be preserved. If FPL proceeds with the project on its own land, it should return a portion of the grant. If FPL drops the whole project, the whole grant should go back to the state.

Any approach to determining economic policy for climate change should take into account the possibility that the current understanding of the atmosphere may not be translatable into reliable forecasts with a precision that allows the design of an economic response. Further, any economic forecasts that are used to construct models of future carbon use and carbon dioxide emissions will be unable to deal with technical innovations. Their success cannot be predicted. This impacts on policy in two ways, first the obvious uncertainty in estimating economic development but more immediately the desire of governments to stimulate technical solutions. The need to be seen to be taking action frequently descends to picking winners and creating classes of rent seekers. ...As an example the present subsidies for wind farms are a response to demands for action from Green groups and green politicians. The result is a new rent seeking group. There is little cost benefit analysis to guide policy development. Rather policy is set to subsidise non-competitive technologies that may produce unquantified benefits. A simple comparison with the more conventional alternative of natural gas shows the use of gas to be more cost effective and useful as gas turbine generators produce electricity on demand. General encouragement of innovation should be the limit of government policy. It is hard enough in business to develop innovations and well beyond the reach of general government.

So it's dead - or on life support, at best. The news that three county commissioners went public this week against the Florida Power & Light Co. wind turbine project on Hutchinson Island effectively seems to have killed the idea. All we're lacking now is the official obituary. Paula Lewis was the latest to make up her mind, following Doug Coward, but it was the project's chief proponent - Chris Craft - who turned a few heads Tuesday when he announced his opposition.

Green is the new black--from Washington, D.C., to Silicon Valley. But the lovefest with clean technology still has plenty of detractors who say that it's all just posturing, wishful thinking, or, worse, misguided. Let's pull together a few threads from Friday morning's river of green tech news and see whether it adds up to anything. For those of you in a hurry, here's my bottom line: No, America will not "get off oil" anytime soon as President Bush urged us this week, but yes, green tech matters a lot for the economy and the environment.