Building wind farms and "protecting" the environment do not sit comfortably together, as she claims. When remnant native vegetation is in the way of turbine sites and their extensive associated infrastructure, wind power companies simply blast or bulldoze their way through it. (If you remain unconvinced, go and look for yourself at what is happening along the Waterloo Range).

The $400 million Musselroe wind farm would be built under a Hodgman Liberal government - as long as Kevin Rudd comes to the party. The project has been in doubt due to a significant drop in the price of Renewable Energy Certificates, which the business case relied on.

Kevin Rudd is damned and damned utterly by his own Intergenerational Report. It loudly proclaims we have a prime minister who hasn't got a clue. Of course it does so completely unknowingly and self-evidently unintentionally. Most deliciously, in so capturing the report's comprehensive inanity, with the illustration chosen for the cover.

Last month, I wrote about how wind power is not a substitute for base-load power generation. And while there may be fairly wide agreement with that argument, there is another aspect of wind power which has rarely been discussed: the effect of wind farms on people who live close by. ...It turns out that if you live in the vicinity of a wind farms, noise is most certainly a problem - a really big problem!

Wind power - the great green hope to ease fragile electricity supply - is being buffetted from all sides. Wind farm neighbours, courts and economics are hammering away at plans to expand the industry which now provides around 3 per cent of our power but is forecast to grow to 20 per cent within the next 15 years. ...The Makara Guardians was formed 12 years ago to oppose windfarming and past president Jenny Jorgensen said she had no objection to the turbines as long as they were far away from houses.

While the National-led Government stumbles blindly along the crooked path towards emissions trading legislation, dragging a naive Maori Party partner with it, there is one piece of news we can rejoice over. That is the refusal by the Environment Court to allow a whacking great ugly wind farm to be built by Meridian Energy in Central Otago. ...if implemented, the scheme would irredeemably sacrifice an outstanding landscape for questionable and overstated short-term benefits.

Meridian Energy, the state-owned energy company, wants to build a wind farm in front of our vineyard, atop a beautiful range known for centuries as Nga Waka a Kupe - the canoes of Kupe. ...But this won't just affect our front yard. With 45 turbines twice as high as the Auckland Harbour Bridge, and blades twice as large as the Westpac Stadium, sited 8km from the town square, this could be the end of Martinborough as we know and love it. The tourism industry our economy depends on - wine festivals, outdoor concerts, homestays, weddings, cycling - will they continue with noise from these turbines?

Stripped of the political grandstanding, Australia's Renewable Energy Target would fail any reasonable cost-benefit test. However much internal warmth the thought of more windmills and solar panels might generate, the cold hard truth is that renewable energy targets have serious economic implications that warrant close scrutiny. Unfortunately, in handing alternative energy companies a subsidised monopoly to supply 20 per cent of our electricity, the RET scheme is unlikely to reduce emissions cost effectively, if at all.

As the Senate debates carbon policy this week, we have more proposals on the table than anyone knows what to do with and a growing number of questions about their impact on one of the most important facets of modern Australian life: secure, cost-effective power supply.

The Rudd Government's 'green power' strategy has been utterly shredded by detailed analysis which shows the total uselessness of the one form of power on which it is almost entirely based - wind. ...When the wind don't blow, the power don't flow. Even more devastatingly, as this analysis shows, the wind not only don't blow an awful lot of the time. It tends to not blow 'everywhere' at the same time.

Meridian Energy, which claims to support the communities where it generates electricity, is facing attack from the Makara community on the subject of noise from its West Wind windfarm. It's a subject which refuses to go away. Makara residents have been stating their concerns about the windfarm for years, because it's close to their houses. And now that 40 of the 62 turbines have been completed and brought into use, their fears are becoming their reality.

Environmentalists who oppose everything except renewable energy are condemning billions to poverty. ...Such opposition demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of where our electricity comes from, how much it costs, who pays for it and what the future global energy landscape looks like.

The Department of Conservation states as its function the management of the country's natural and historic heritage assets for the greatest benefit and enjoyment of all New Zealanders, "by conserving, advocating and promoting natural and historic heritage so that its values are passed on undiminished to future generations". It also claims that its "vision" is to protect New Zealand's natural and historic heritage.

Denmark's Climate Minister Connie Hedegaards was in Australia last week, spinning fairy tales like her - much more - illustrious forbearer Hans Christian. Her 'happily ever after' punchline was of course the adoption of alternative energy and in particular Denmark's 'speciality' - wind. Just like Hans Christian, it was total fiction. Taking her cue from Al Gore, the occasional journalist omitted to mention two extremely inconvenient truths.

In New Zealand we are told that windpower is economic compared to alternatives, that the unpredictable short term fluctuations can easily be covered by our "abundant hydropower" and it helps conserve hydropower storage. ...The truth is, as I will show, that windpower is expensive compared to alternatives, hydropower schemes have no spare capacity to back up windpower in a critical dry year and wind power output is lowest in the late summer and autumn when we need it most.

There is no doubt that wind farms are in vogue around the world as governments prioritise renewable energy projects in order to comply with the demands of the Kyoto Protocol. Such "green" energy projects have been promoted by environmentalists as the best way to not only save the planet from global warming, but to create thousands of green jobs in the process. On further investigation however, these claims are found to be spurious. Global temperatures are now cooling not warming, and for each green job created, 2.2 other jobs in other parts of the economy are destroyed.

Governments are fond of setting specific targets by specific time frames to be seen to be doing something without properly considering the technical feasibility. Geothermal isn't ready for 2020. Hydro and biomass growth is limited by available resources. Solar, tidal and wave power are considered too expensive today and probably still will be in 2020. Which leaves us with wind and that will probably not deliver as much greenhouse gas reduction as we might have expected unless we are prepared to sacrifice network reliability.

On Friday, last week, the Manawatu Standard said Environment Minister Nick Smith had some explaining to do. Official documents obtained by the newspaper revealed Dr Smith's justification for calling-in the Turitea wind farm application was less than compelling, and at odds with the public explanation he gave in support of his decision. Dr Smith was out of the country last week, but responds to the Standard's coverage in today's edition.

Revelations in today's Manawatu Standard about how Dr Smith came to his decision to "call-in'' Mighty River Power's consent application for its Turitea Wind Farm make for startling reading. Dr Smith's decision last year to take the consent process away from the Palmerston North City Council because it was of "national significance'' angered many Palmerston North residents, not least the council.