Wind energy could supply up to 20 percent of the nation's power supply but the two variables few talk about are reliability and transmission. The places where the wind blows the most -- like western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle -- also have few residents or businesses that need the power. To achieve the kind of wind power percentage that some states are mandating will require between 12,000 and 19,000 miles of new power lines criss-crossing the country. That kind of power line construction will cost up to $6.4 billion.

[D]ue to the threats of global warming and skyrocketing oil and gas prices that have caught everyone's attention, all the parties have jumped on the green bandwagon with many promising a future where our dependence on fossil fuels and their harmful consequences to our environment will be a thing of the past. Such Utopian visions are commendable but the devil will be in the details for whoever forms the next government

I find it amazing that the public is so uninformed on the topic of wind turbines. People think wind is the golden egg of green energy; in fact, turbine companies cannot exist as viable companies without government subsidies. ...Green energy is great, I'm all for it, but not at a cost that will put the average Canadian taxpayer in the poor house.

In Swansea we have the threat of possibly a massive, useless wind farm being built on Mynydd y Gwair Mountain which will visually pollute this area of outstanding natural beauty from the Gower to Brecon Beacons, Powys and Cardigan Bay, in other words, about a quarter of Wales. Why? Because the Welsh Assembly Government wants to build wind farms to provide intermittent, stuttering electricity supplies which we do not need. How daft and subservient can we Welsh get!

Everybody knows we need to get off oil, especially foreign oil. Naturally, as oil and gasoline prices climb, there is that feeling of desperation about wind and gas drilling. Of course, what's lacking is an energy police with authoritative government planning _ just as what was missing on Wall Street were government oversight and regulation of loan practices and packaging. We can't just let some companies put a few windmills on that ridge, a few gas wells in that pasture and a couple of huge solar panels on that hillside. It is too haphazard. We need energy leadership before it is too late.

This week, the state of Rhode Island selected a New Jersey-based company, Deepwater Wind, to finance and construct a 100-turbine windfarm between 15 and 20 miles off shore. The project is estimated to cost $1.5 billion. ...Maine's approach to wind power development - land and offshore - is different. Instead of directing the process, this state has allowed firms to develop their own plans. The process is slow and the results, so far, mixed. Site-by-site proposals from companies have resulted in uneven regulatory reviews and divergent opinions on its gains or drains.

One commonly repeated argument for doing something about climate change sounds compelling, but turns out to be almost fraudulent. It is based on comparing the cost of action with the cost of inaction, and almost every major politician in the world uses it. The president of the European commission, José Manuel Barroso, for example, used this argument when he presented the European Union's proposal to tackle climate change earlier this year. ...The EU's argument is similar to advising a man with a gangrenous leg that paying $50,000 for an aspirin is a good deal because the cost compares favorably to the cost of inaction, which is losing the leg. Of course, the aspirin doesn't prevent that outcome. The inaction argument is really terribly negligent, because it causes us to recommend aspirin and lose sight of smarter actions that might actually save the leg.

Gradually, the message is beginning to sink in. With wind farms already growing in unpopularity, people are now waking up to the gigantic scale of the rip-off being perpetrated. As more and more people begin to understand this, it should only be a matter of time before the whole programme crashes and burns. But, there is one minor problem ... wind energy is an EU-supported obsession. To stop the scam, we have to confront the EU. Is there a politician brave enough to do this?

State Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo is investigating allegations that wind power companies improperly influenced local officials in Franklin County to secure permission to build wind turbines. He is also examining whether certain companies colluded to divvy up land and thus avoid bidding against each other. ...Northern New York should not become a rural wasteland at the mercy of wind development. Siting decisions for both turbines and transmission lines must be made carefully.

The total power generated by all the 2,300 turbines so far built in Britain, is less than that contributed by a single medium-size conventional power station. ...Far from being "free", wind is one of the most expensive ways of generating electricity yet devised. Without an almost 100 per cent subsidy, unwittingly paid by all of us through our electricity bills, no one would dream of building giant wind turbines in Britain, because their cost is not remotely competitive.

Now that Ms. Symington says she wants 20 percent of Vermont's electricity in 10 years from windmills, here's how to bring that dream to fruition.

New Yorkers are now under siege in many communities across the land by renewable wind energy. We do need to generate electric power, and we just cannot wish away fossil fuels as some would like you to believe, namely Al Gore. From the governor and legislators, to the Public Service Commission, they have sold out the citizens of this state. Our elected officials were sworn into office to protect the people of the state. Selling out to foreign wind companies like BP and Iberdrola and trying to make it look like what they are doing is for the people, is hogwash, to put it mildly.

Next week Grand Mananers will be invited to a public meeting to hear about a wind farm planned for the "back of the island-" the high western cliffs facing the Grand Manan Channel and the State of Maine. The proponent, First Wind of Newton, Massachusetts, acquired the rights to the site on property owned by the off-island Crabbe forestry company, from a fledgling New Brunswick company that has since disappeared from the scene. The First Wind plan is for 13 wind turbines (over 200 feet or 60 metres high), with the potential for another 50 if all goes well.

Since the 1970s, Washington has tried to pick winners and losers among emerging alternatives and then throw billions in taxpayer dollars at what it hopes to be the winners. The results, not surprisingly, have been disappointing. The very fact that these chosen alternatives need big government handouts in order to move forward should be a red flag that they don't hold the potential their proponents claim. In the end, federal interference probably won't help in making progress toward diversifying away from petroleum in the transportation sector, and it may actually hurt.

Horns Reef [wind farm in Denmark] is emblematic of enormous subsidies to industries that would not exist in a free market. In the U.S., such industries are being supported by massive government subsidies and tax write-offs that shift the cost of resulting electricity to unsuspecting Americans' tax bills and monthly electricity bills.

In the next decade, we are due to lose 40 per cent of the generating capacity that keeps our lights on and our economy running. Within a few years, eight of the nine nuclear plants that supply 20 per cent of our power will come to the end of their life. ... To address our looming energy crisis with the urgency it calls for, we would not only have to ignore the fantasies of Mr Hansen and the green lobby, but also directly confront our government in Brussels, which stands in the way of almost every measure we need to take. In this sense, in terms of what it will cost us, energy looks to become the defining issue of our EU membership.

The Government has a policy to develop only renewable sources of energy. This seems noble from a "climate change" point of view. These renewable sources of energy include wind farms, hydro plants and geothermal generation. ...Wind farms do not provide constant reliable energy so can only make up a small amount of the total generation. One of my concerns is that this will mean more pressure to build hydroelectric dams. These hydro projects are extremely destructive for the local environment. ...If it is okay for China to build 50 more coal-fired stations a year then why can't we build one or two more? This will not make a shred of difference to global warming since we produce only 0.2 per cent of the world's CO2. It will provide reliable energy.

What Meridian, TrustPower, Contact and others are proposing as essential development will in numerous instances look like rushed, irreversible destruction to future generations, who will regret our recklessness just as we regret the clear-felling of the giant kauri forests or the slaughter of whale populations for oil. Protecting future generations from these blind spots means carefully thought-out integration of renewable energy, with the intention of minimising irreversible impact.

Early in their development, long-bladed wind turbines were seen as threats to birds, especially migrating varieties used to crossing certain mountain passes. Now, in spite of technological improvements and efforts to keep their propellers off at critical times, lawsuits are descending on wind farms - working ones and some on the drawing boards - to turn them off or to stop development in the path of some birds' migration and in bat habitat. But behind some environmentalist arguments against the increasing clusters of wind turbines is a more basic, if less compelling objection: They're ugly. They can be noisy. Besides that, opponents wonder, how do we know they're not sending surges of electricity into the atmosphere, doing who-knows-what damage to animals, two- and four-legged alike?

Ontario, which has developed and implemented some progressive policies for getting more renewable energy on the grid, hasn't found a way to tie these programs into a larger, economic-boosting industrial strategy. None of its request for proposals for new wind power has required any level of local content, nor does the province's standard offer program, which pays a premium for the electricity that comes from small-scale solar, wind, hydro and biogas projects.