The Wall Street Journal recently noted that increasing wind power to 20 percent in the next two decades alone would require a $2 trillion investment. Energy costs already strain household budgets, especially those of lower-income families and individuals. This year, U.S. households bringing home less than $50,000 a year - that is, half of households - will spend a quarter of their after-tax income on energy, double the percentage they spent in 2001.

The destruction of lush forests full of life will only encourage global warming. The state's new Carbon Management Advisory Group (CMAG) Report notes that loss of forests to development causes a one-time surge of greenhouse gas emissions and eliminates the forests' future ability to sequester carbon. ...The wind industries target small rural areas ...Maybe it would be more beneficial to install them in every mall parking lot and big cities where there are no trees, plenty of noise to drown them out, and where the people that really want them can see them and enjoy them as much as they think they do.

Now, there are people who think it may be a good idea to build wind turbines on the Kittatinny Ridge (Blue Mountain). On Monday, a letter to the editor from Donald Heintzelman of Zionsville talked about the first such proposal. Lower Towamensing Township, he noted, is considering a request to put windmills around the Blue Mountain Ski Area. Heintzelman said that would place them in the path of America's most spectacular migratory route for eagles, hawks and other raptors. "As an ornithologist involved in raptor migrations ... I am unconditionally opposed to the installation of all wind turbines on this internationally famous ... migration corridor," he wrote. I am unconditionally opposed to it for other reasons, as well.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first proposal by any company to site wind turbines on the Kittatinny Ridge or Blue Mountain ...As an ornithologist involved in raptor migrations and hawk watching along the Kittatinny Ridge or Blue Mountain, and author of several books, I am unconditionally opposed to the installation of all wind turbines on this internationally famous, and vitally important, raptor migration corridor.

But before you go all wacky for wind power, certain opposition groups like the Industrial Wind Action Group and National Wind Watch want you to hear their side of the story. Their claims are more than just not-in-my-backyard, wet-blanket-complaints. They believe the wind energy industry is spinning lies along with the turbines, luring large public subsidies for a system that is, at best, secondary to fossil fuels.

"Symbolism aside, Potter and Tioga County mountain ridges may not be as impressive as Yosemite's El Capitan, or the Grand Tetons, but something very real would be sacrificed on the questionable altar of Renewable Energy for Profit. Potter and Tioga county mountain ridges are not just a backyard. They are a heritage and a legacy. And they are as good a place as any to make a stand." Preserve the beauty of our region, say no to industrial wind.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

"We are living in a situation where the sounds penetrate our house. I'm losing sleep. They frequently let these turbines go at high speeds in the middle of the night. It's not uncommon for me to be woken up at 3 a.m. and not be able to get back to bed. I'm a physician, and I have to be at my best. I'm doing procedures on patients and it is not a fair situation for myself, for my patients, and not fair for the other residents who are affected by this. We're not the only ones affected; we have a petition with 40 names on it. ..."I'm not against putting in green energy. I'm not against wind turbines. What I am against is the irresponsible placement of these turbines in places that are not appropriate.

What's good for communications towers should be good for wind turbines, which can be 200 feet tall. ...Already the largest wind producer east of the Mississippi River, and with an ambitious goal of increasing wind power in the state 20-fold, Pennsylvania has a special obligation to ensure that each proposed wind farm is subject to environmental review. Such analysis must reject sites that are likely to lead to significant fatalities for birds and bats. The sooner such a scientifically based process is in place, the sooner the state will have a set of rules by which wind developers can proceed on projects with greater predictability.

A 1 GW coal or nuclear base load plant needs less than 500 acres. An equivalent 1 GW base load wind power at U.S. average capacity of about 22 percent would require 45,000 acres, plus another 5,000 acres for transmission corridors. Wind turbines the size of the LDS Church Office Building would be required every 240 feet along I-15 and I-80, spanning the entire state. Unfortunately at this spacing, the 250-foot-diameter blades of each turbine would intersect each other.

The initial wave of windmill farms in Pennsylvania has focused on the state's famed ridge tops, where blowing winds are strongest and most frequent. This is an attempt to maximize the ability of individual windmills and farms to produce energy, which doubtless translates into the best ecnomic model. That is unitl you start counting the cost of litigation to deal with the growing opposition to clearing Pennsylvania's signature landscape and creating a "scenery" laced with windmills. And it likely doesn't hold up if you add up the lost forests and vegetation that is sacrificed in the process of clearing acres of trees for the turbines and the roads necessary to build and service them. Add in the carbon emissions associated with manufacturing, transporting and servicing windmills, and there is a carbon cost of some magnitude. We just don't know what that is and there is no evidence to indicate that the Rendell administration has done its homework to establish what that contribution is, or if it even wants to know.

After seeing the full page ad in your paper on Jan. 29 entitled Wind Opponent Myth No. 4 - "Wind Turbines are Very Noisy," I knew I had to respond. Basically, the Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Coalition is saying you do not have to worry about noise from industrial wind turbines if they are coming to a ridge near you. Well, I am not sure how they conduct their decibel studies, but for all practical purposes, they mean absolutely nothing. You see, our home is over a half mile from one of those ridge-top industrial wind plants, and I am here to tell you the noise from those turbines has had a dramatic impact on the sanctity of our country home.