Yass Valley Council has reiterated its stance on wind farm projects, including its conviction that a national code should be established for the provision of all wind farms constructed in Australia. ...Councillors reiterated this stance at last Wednesday night's meeting. "There needs to be some clarity. We are not saying no to wind farms, we are just saying that conditions need to be put in place," Councillor David Needham said.

This morning BBW and BNB announced they were selling their 50/50 Portuguese wind farm joint venture to a Portuguese private equiteer Magnum Capital for $2.23 billion. A year after BBW bought its half from parent BNB, BBW is recording a loss of $11.7 million while BNB is claiming a small but undisclosed surplus over book value. But that's not really the point of this transaction. Everyone knows why BNB is selling - it rather desperately needs money to pay down debt.

If Environment Minister Trevor Mallard decides to call- in the consent application, it will be referred directly to a ministerially-appointed board of inquiry, or to the Environment Court. And it seems certain that Mr Mallard will indeed decide to call-in the application. Last month, after an editorial in this newspaper opined that to do so would undermine the democratic process, Mr Mallard quickly fired off a letter to the editor in response. He wanted to "correct the misinformation" and defend the process that would be applied if the decision was called in.

That Manawatu Standard has not taken a stance on whether MRP's wind farm application should be approved, but the outcome is too important to this region for the input of the people to be undermined in any way. The process must not only be fair, it must be seen to be fair. One of biggest battles MRP faced from the outset, whether it knew it or not, was public relations. After doing the dirty on the PNCC and the people it represents, that's one battle it now hasn't a hope of winning.

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.

Wind farm opponents will suggest Mighty River's motives for asking Mr Mallard to take the decision away from the PNCC are a sinister ploy to subvert the democratic process. However, the company is more likely motivated by pragmatism. If the decision is left with the PNCC and the wind farm is approved, it will almost certainly be appealed to the Environment Court anyway. Mighty River would no doubt prefer to cut to the chase. The decision-making process shouldn't be unnecessarily convoluted, but the people of Palmerston North must be given the chance to have their say and, more importantly, they must be listened to.

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.

Comprising 176 turbines, two-thirds the height of Auckland's Sky Tower, and requiring more than 150km of roads to build and service, it would be hundreds of kilometres from where the power is actually used. Instead of building appropriately scaled and sited wind farms further north, Meridian is asking Otago to sacrifice unique upland landscapes in the cause of a Muldoon-era Think Big project.

Wind Power claims "overwhelming" support from residents but won't hold a public meeting claiming it would be "hijacked" by opponents. It prefers "information sessions" saying the fact that no residents responded to advertisements for individual meetings showed local support, not distrust of the company, apathy or ignorance. Pyrenees Shire Mayor Lester Harris has offered to convene a public meeting.

Visually these huge structures have a colossal visual effect on the environment. They may be sleek and have good lines but so many of them pollute the landscape. Unfortunately, these eyesores are located in some of the most picturesque country in Australia because of the availability of suitable wind.

“The fine print on Meridian’s website says it has to purchase power off the grid from thermal generators to supply its customers during dry years, but claims these are offset by the purchase of carbon credits. These notionally avoided incremental emission units are being purchased from projects like Trust Power’s Tararua wind farm. “The idea that Meridian can magically convert thermal electricity into ‘certified carbon-neutral electricity’ by buying these sorts of carbon units is modern day hocus-pocus. ...“My worry with this sort of false advertising is that it creates the impression we don’t need thermal electricity in New Zealand. The reality is that there are times of drought, and when wind does not blow, when thermal power is the only way we can keep the lights on.

But as headlines turn from green profits to big banking losses, questions are being raised about whether an economic slowdown will depress rapid growth in low-carbon business. There was a nervy response to Shell's decision this month to pull out of the giant London Array wind farm, although the company insisted it was a business decision and not down to dwindling interest in renewable energy. The risk that a recession will hold back environmental investment trends seems obvious, as consumers and companies look to save costs and become more risk-averse, especially since many corporate commitments are voluntary.

Last month, a group of 25 environmental activists staged an impromptu demonstration outside the Sydney offices of yet another global organisation. But this time it wasn't a multinational mining or oil company that was the target, but the environment group WWF. They were protesting against WWF's decision to partner with the coal industry, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union and the environment think tank the Climate Institute in working to accelerate the development of carbon capture and storage technology, otherwise known as clean coal. This was just the latest exchange in the simmering brand war between Australia's two biggest green groups, WWF and Greenpeace, revealing the widening ideological divide between conservationists and activists of the founding denominations in the broad church of the environment movement.

New Zealand relies on agricultural production for its sustenance, and that has not changed in centuries. And now as ever, there is friction where the edge of pastoral and agricultural production meets residential. As the Marlborough vineyards grow, increasingly the use of wind machines to keep frost at bay is annoying residents. Actually, it's angering them. They are hopping mad.

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.

No matter how many billions you spend on a wind farm, no matter how much landscape you sacrifice in the name of this particular renewable energy source, you have to build something else to cut in when it cuts out - and it has to be constantly at the ready to go. Not switched off, but warmed up and spinning - consuming, in other words, fuelled by something else more dependable. Don't be fooled by the "dry year" threat, either: we're in a La Nina summer now, and there's no evidence yet presented to indicate that a dry year is a windy year, as the Meridian theory requires: the theory is that in a dry year for southern lakes, the wind turbines will allow the dams to be rested and water to be stored for later use. ...So, in essence, wind farms cost you double, at least: the $2 billion for Hayes, (though it's odds on it'll be more) will be necessarily followed by a blank cheque for whatever dependable base-load generation is going to back it up, unspecified hundreds of millions for Transpower's necessary upgrade of the grid, and God knows how much for the replacement Cook Strait cable. This is what happens when the south is plundered to power the north, as it has been for decades.

There is no doubt that the wind farm industry has a zealous pecuniary interest in covering as much of Australia and the world with their huge wind turbines as possible. They are not altruistic enough to warn prospective hosts and neighbours of the known downsides, but worldwide, have included secrecy clauses in their hosts' contracts. They deny wind farms are noisy. Sales are priority. Those registering their legitimate complaints concerning noise, do not consider their experiences "myths". ...Beware the spin doctors for snake oil cures to climate change.

The wind rush is on. Plans to erect sweeping wind farms are being unfurled at a rate of knots. But is this really clean green energy, or just another case of greedy corporates trashing our landscapes for profit? Anton Oliver argues it's about time New Zealanders woke up to the dark side of wind power.

... to my bewilderment, then subsequently dismay and disillusionment, I have been angered by the way we continue to squander our environmental inheritance. One of the priceless things that makes Central Otago unique and so captivating and gives it the world of difference that the brand-assigners and the Central Otago District Council use to proudly advertise and promote the area is that most of its hills and block mountain ranges aren't badly polluted visually. It gives them an extraordinary and memorable aura, one that's often grand. But is building what would so far be, in the case of Meridian's Project Hayes, the biggest wind farm/factory in the Southern Hemisphere, thus opening the door to still more of them, the world of difference we want? Is that what the district council has, or had, in mind? Is that what thinking people want? Meridian's Project Hayes and TrustPower's Mahinerangi Wind Farm proposals between them covering more than 120sq km of countryside - would have a major rather than a minor detrimental effect in all respects. ...Our oft-warbled claims to be ahead of the game and clean and green are no more than self-congratulatory chitter. Sort out what you think our legacy ought to be, people, and stand up for it before it's too late.

The starting point is the broad brush statement in the paper that no power supplies are perfectly reliable. This is correct provided you don't ask about the details. If you did, the devil would point out that there is a difference between a naturally intermittent supply and a supply which trips or goes off line unexpectedly. There is a difference in scale and time. Contemporary distributed electricity systems have devised ways of insuring continuity of supply for the latter events but are struggling to deal with the former. This is not comparing like with like. ...Intermittent supply adds an extra stretch for the control of a network. Wind farms illustrate the problem. A standard measure of the performance of a generator is the capacity factor. This is the annual averaged power achieved as a percentage of the installed (or maximum) capacity. ...But this factor gives no indication of the detailed performance. A measure that helps give an indication of this is a reliability figure. This is the minimum percentage of power that may be relied upon for 90 per cent of the time. For wind farms it is about 5 to 10 per cent