One of the UK's major wind power operators, EON UK, submitted evidence to a House of Lords select committee in 2008, pointing out that wind power needs backup from conventional fossil-fuelled power stations equal to about 90% of the wind installed capacity. In other words, once we have a lot of wind power, the paradox is that we have to build extra power stations to support it.

Regulations and mandates that force nationwide cuts in carbon dioxide emissions offer only speculative environmental benefits, if any, as a switch to wind and solar power will certainly cause more harm than good to the environment. But command-and-control forces in Congress are headed in that direction, with the House narrowly passing a bill to cap CO2 emissions, and the Senate taking up a companion bill this month.

The state Public Service Commission recently said that before industrial wind projects could be approved that they had to: 1. Prove that their electricity was not just going to replace an existing source of renewable (i.e. low CO2) energy, and, 2. Verify that available transmission capability was sufficient to carry their anticipated new power. Wow. My first reaction was, "You mean to say that these things haven't been being formally checked out all along?" The admission of that is simply astounding.

Wind power is winning in the Northeast Kingdom, and will continue to win, for a couple of reasons. Energy policy is terribly sensitive to fashion, and wind is currently fashionable. Hydro power used to be fashionable, and therefore good, and easy to push through the permit process. Now it is unfashionable, so while Vermont consumes great quantities of power from Hydro Quebec, we can't count it as renewable energy in our utilities' portfolios. That, of course, is an act of deliberate, politically inspired stupidity.

Barbara Ashbee distributed this letter to all media in Ontario Canada. Ms. Ashbee and her family abandoned their home due to wind turbine noise and other impacts which have harmed their health and quality of life.

Too clever for his own good? That might be the case for Energy Minister George Smitherman, who aims to turn Ontario into a renewable-energy superpower and create thousands of green-collar jobs. Both are great ideas. But a deal being made on the sidelines could undo much of what Smitherman and the Liberal government are trying to accomplish.

But if US wind turbine manufacturers want another foreign renewables contingent to worry about, there's always the Europeans. A study by non-profit group the Investigative Reporting Workshop found that 84 per cent of the $1.05bn handed out by the US government since September 1 has gone to foreign companies - mostly European. It's not an overwhelmingly surprising finding given that the US subsidiary of Spain's Iberdrola Renovables - the biggest wind farm operator in the world - was also the biggest recipient of the funds. And big European turbine manufacturers such as Vestas have been quite clear that they see the US as their big growth market.

When industries look for government subsidies for money-losing propositions, a common business model these days, one of the most important strategic elements is to make sure you have a well-oiled public relations machine to keep the facts from getting in the way. Voters don't like to back money-losers, which means keeping them steadily misinformed or at least confused. Renewable energy industries - wind, solar, biomass, human treadmills - have a particularly tough job.

In AWEA's blog post, they describe a national Renewable Electricity Standard as "a free-market" program. That is not accurate. In free markets, people are free to choose. A Renewable Electricity Standard forces people to buy wind, solar, and other government-approved energy sources. It is a mandate. Forcing someone to buy your product is not a free-market program by any definition. Contrary to AWEA's assertion that a Renewable Electricity Standard would lower energy prices, common sense and real-world evidence suggest otherwise.

It's never pretty watching people's rights getting trampled by a government caught up in the latest fad, but it's happening across Ontario. The victims are citizens living mainly in rural communities. Their concerns about the possible adverse health effects of industrial wind turbines are being rolled over by Premier Dalton McGuinty. We should all pay attention because our rights could be next.

Climate change is the greatest new public-spending project in decades. Each year as much as $100 billion is spent by governments and consumers around the world on green subsidies designed to encourage wind, solar, and other -renewable-energy markets. The goals are worthy: reduce emissions, promote new sources of energy, and help create jobs in a growing industry. Yet this epic effort of lawmaking and spending has, naturally, also created an epic scramble for subsidies and regulatory favors. Witness the 1,150 lobbying groups that spent more than $20 million to lobby the U.S. Congress as it was writing the Clean Energy bill (which would create a $60 billion annual market for emission permits by 2012). Government has often had a hand in jump--starting a new -industry-both the computer chip and the Internet got their start in American defense research. But it's hard to think of any non-military industry that has been so completely and utterly driven by regulation and subsidies from the start.

Short-term thinking on energy is going to cause some long-term problems Ask Paul Edmonds, vice president of National Semiconductor in South Portland. In August, he wrote in the Portland Press Herald, "An inefficient regulatory system and lack of long-term energy strategy are conspiring against Maine citizens and businesses." I was intrigued. So I called him. He told me, "High electricity costs are a threat to manufacturing competitiveness in Maine."

Mr. Bowles is under fire from Vineyarders who object to the possibility that the state's ocean management plan, whose creation Mr. Bowles supervised, will write Vineyard regulators, the Martha's Vineyard Commission in particular, out of the picture when nearshore energy projects seek development permits. But, in a wide-ranging discussion of energy issues Tuesday, the imperturbable Mr. Bowles offered an unvarnished and concrete sense of his and the state's view of what lies ahead, in the form of renewable energy project siting south of Cape Cod.

Energy Tribune Editor's note: A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hearing William Tucker speak at a conference in Washington, DC. His explanation of E = mc2 was the best I had ever heard. Even better, Tucker explained how Einstein's equation applied to renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydro. His lecture was a revelation. It showed that the limits of renewable energy have nothing to do with politics or research dollars, but rather with simple mathematics. During a later exchange of emails with Tucker, I praised his lecture and suggested he write an article that explained E = mc2 and its corollary, E = mv2. To my delight, he informed me that he'd already written such an essay and he agreed that we could publish it in Energy Tribune. I love this essay. And I'm proud that Tucker has allowed us to run it. -Robert Bryce

Officials from the state Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs are likely to catch an earful from Martha's Vineyard residents tonight over the proposed Massachusetts Oceans Management Plan. The public hearing begins at 6:30 p.m. at the Martha's Vineyard Regional High School cafeteria. The draft plan severely limits the island's regulatory control over the development of renewable energy projects within three miles of shore. ...Madden said the chief architect of the oceans plan is Ian Bowles. "Ian Bowles is very pro-wind and he wants to see these things get done, and done quickly," Madden told the Gazette.

Wind power costs a lot to build and nothing to operate. Could it hammer the profits of power utilities that currently charge a premium to light your home by burning the decayed remains of ancient organisms? Investors shouldn't be too worried, according to Lasan Johong, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets. Johong says that increasing our reliance on wind power could actually raise power prices significantly.

Conservation used to be the coolest thing in energy planning. But now all most people want to talk about is the next great renewable energy source -- wind farms, solar arrays, small-scale nuclear plants, even wave energy. And while all those sources of energy are promising, the Northwest Power Planning Council's new 20-year power plan is right to go back to the future: It proposes doubling down on the Northwest's long history of conservation to meet 85 percent of the region's new demand for electricity. It's a smart and bold plan, even if it disappoints the clean-energy activists who have pressured the council to declare the Northwest a coal-free zone.

The romantic view of wind power is a stand of wind turbines atop a ridge gently spinning in a breeze generating clean electricity in place of an emission-producing power plant. Another view is a natural landscape defaced by huge structures whose operation annoys its neighbors, produces power randomly and does not reduce pollutants because fossil-fueled plants continue to operate as backup. The "pop" culture support and promotion of wind power is all based upon conceptual or theoretical constructs which do not reflect the physical, financial or regulatory realities of operating our electric grid system.

There is considerable data now available to anyone with an open mind and objective perspective that clearly shows industrial wind generation has severe limitations as an efficient alternative-energy source. The experiments in many European nations as well as those in operation in the U.S. and now also including the Wolfe Island project which dramatically impacts this region can only boast at best a 20 percent to 25 percent rate of production.

Let me argue that the first test of an energy policy for the new age is not "alternative energy" at all - but rather conservation first, then energy efficiency and decentralization of the power structure. Renewables should serve these ends rather than be an end in themselves that may, in fact, be mostly useless. Wind power is especially troublesome in that regard. Even if NSP reaches 25 per cent renewables by 2015 based on wind, it will not have cut 25 per cent of greenhouse gases, which, after all, is the main goal. It may not have cut much greenhouse gas at all, in fact.