The debate was put into a proper perspective by the Times-Tribune newspaper in Scranton., which wrote: “America’s future as a world power and leading economy will be determined largely by its ability to meet the increasing demand for energy, while weaning itself from foreign oil and protecting the environment.

If we are to spurn the nuclear option, or indeed if we are to embrace it, we must do so only once we have taken all aspects into account. Rigour and honesty is required, too. We must accept the relevance of the subsidies that wind power receives, and the low carbon nature of nuclear energy.

Our state leaders are promulgating a false choice between wind and coal. While wind is renewable and cleaner than coal, wind will never replace coal — wind is too unreliable.

But before anyone starts building windmills and sun collectors across the country, the coal mines should be given a second chance, while Germany's nuclear powers stations should run for as long as they're still safe. It's all a question of getting the balance right.

Legislation just introduced and slated to move quickly in the U.S. House of Representatives would bring new wind energy development in the U.S. to a grinding halt, AWEA Executive Director Randall Swisher warned on May 18. Introduced this week by Congressman Nick Rahall (D. WV), and scheduled for action in early June at the House Resources Committee which he chairs, H.R. 2337 would burden wind power with sweeping new requirements that have never applied to other energy sectors, Swisher said,

Environmental issues for windpower developers get the most press. But equally persistent is the question of intermittency-the fact that wind is the least predictable energy fuel for electricity production. The question is challenging on many levels for both generation and delivery.

IT is time for UK governments to take a serious look at how we manage the seas. The current position is shambolic.......The sea is particularly important to Wales because she has a disproportionately long and beautiful coastline and also has a disproportionately high dependency on the tourism industry.

A staffer at the Helena-based Montana Environmental Information Center recently professed mystification over state energy policy. “I don't know why we're not putting as much energy behind wind development as we are to coal development,” he said. The answer is simple. Most people want the lights to come on when they flip the switch, and they don't want to go broke when they do.

Control room operators (and, by extension, system operators) have issues with both supply-side and demand-side dispatchability of resources. Derek's comment points to the supply-side issue with wind; the physical challenge of incorporating wind into the grid is that you have to produce power when the wind is blowing, and you can't control that. It's not like powering a gas turbine up or down, which is much more amenable to the centralized control paradigm in which the control room operators have traditionally functioned in the regulated environment.

Like anybody who understands electricity, McCracken is both slightly provoked and slightly alarmed by the headlong rush into wind power in Europe and America. "Wind power has its critics and they feel that their reservation have been overridden by policy makers whose imagination have been captured by a green agenda that downplays wind's limitations," says McCracken judiciously. The major limitation, of course, is wind's intermittency -- its lack of "dispatchability." Quite simply, you can never count on it.

Controller General Russ Larson's vote is supposed to represent the wishes of the legislators. The final vote to accept the offshore wind proposal was scheduled for 12/18/07. ...the initial recommendation of the PSC was misrepresented and the idea was put forth to spread the cost over all of the energy users in Delaware. That is not acceptable to those legislators who primarily represent Delaware Electric Co-Op customers and I agree with them. Part of my district uses the Co-Op but the majority are Delmarva customers. It would not be fair to impose what could be considered a tax on a company to help pay the costs of another company when the first company receives no benefit for the increased cost. With that proposal, some of the legislative support collapsed and Russ was left dangling in the wind on the day of the vote. He did the best thing he could have possibly done by asking to postpone the vote. Forcing a vote at that time with such uncertainty on the part of the legislature would have surely doomed the proposal.

And although the government talks bravely about having 5 per cent of the generating capacity coming from new wind plants and other forms of renewable energy, one need look no further than the current situation in Amaranth Township to realize that little of the needed new capacity will be ready by 2009. And even if it were, the wind plants are hardly a reliable source of power during the hottest summer weather, when all too often there's little wind apart from that generated by thunderstorms, which also routinely shut down the wind plants through lightning strikes.

In my original post about the Obama administration's awarding of $503 million in "stimulus" funds for alternative energy projects, I wrote that the recipient of $294 million, Iberdrola SA, had executives who had donated more than $21,000 to the Obama campaign and related funds. Another $115 million in funds for windmills went to a company called First Wind, which, I noted, had owners that included D.E. Shaw and Madison Dearborn Partners. Shaw is the firm at which President Obama's chief of the National Economic Council, Lawrence Summers, held a $5.2 million a year, one-day-a-week job, and Madison Dearborn is the firm of which Rahm Emanuel, now the White House chief of staff, said, "They've been not only supporters of mine, they're friends of mine."

Energy minister Malcolm Wicks says that the latest review will uphold the diversity of supply sources and help households become more fuel-efficient

With oil prices still flirting with $100 a barrel, everyone is talking about the need for "energy independence." Late last year, President Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007; Sen. John McCain declared, "We need energy independence"; and Sen. Barack Obama called for "serious leadership to get us started down the path of energy independence." This may all be good politics. But the idea that the United States, the world's single largest energy consumer, can be independent of the $5 trillion-per-year energy business - the world's single biggest industry - is ludicrous. The push for energy independence is based on false premises. Here are a few of the most pernicious.

"We are on the cusp of a global boom that will make the Internet explosion seem like a mild speed bump." This comment is guest columnist Peter Sinclair's. And no he is not referring to China, which is building one energy plant per week while eating our lunch. Sinclair is talking about how Michigan's energy needs and economy will be saved ... by the windmill. However, no energy policy, if implemented, is more expensive, unreliable and (ironically) environmentally unfriendly.

Too often the energy companies have allowed claims about renewable energy to go unchallenged. Experience shows that once the public learns about the effects, those expectations fall back to Earth. Just look at wind power in North Carolina, if you can. Wind farms haven't gotten off the ground here because, thus far, North Carolinians have objected to looking at a wind turbine larger than a hamster wheel. On Monday, Carteret County decreed a nine-month moratorium on wind turbines, after residents complained about potential noise, vibration, harm to wildlife, visual blight and a host of other concerns. Who knew wind turbines were as dangerous as a Navy outlying landing field?

If wind energy was the one practical and affordable answer to global warming then I would grit my teeth at the loss of the countryside and accept it. But I know that they are no answer to global warming in northern Europe. The Germans who have invested more than anyone in this form of energy are finding, according to newspaper Der Spiegel, that despite more than 17,000 wind turbines across Germany the nation is now emitting more CO2 than before it built them.

Democratic congressional leaders say the new president, working with increased Democratic majorities in Congress, has an opportunity to finally get something done on climate change and alternative energy after eight years of stalemate between liberal lawmakers and the Bush administration. But their euphoria is tempered by the knowledge that the sad state of the U.S. economy and the still powerful Republican minority in the Senate could slow their momentum. Republicans and the business community argue that any major new environmental regulations will drive up energy costs and put more people out of work.

A renewable portfolio standard is said to be needed for creating and improving renewable energy technologies. In practice, however, it does little to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and makes energy production excessively expensive. Coal-fired power plants produce more than 83 percent of the electricity sector’s carbon dioxide emissions. But because coal is cheaper than natural gas or oil, it is the least likely to be displaced by solar or wind power. Natural gas has a relatively low carbon content. But it is likely to be the first to be displaced by renewable sources of energy because it is more expensive than coal. That means that even a renewable portfolio standard as high as 20 percent would reduce emissions by only a small fraction of what is needed to lower the risk of catastrophic climate change.