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.

The people of the Waitaki region have been left high and dry by the attitudes of officialdom over Meridian's north bank tunnel concept hearings and the Environment Court appeal. The majority of the hearings have been, or will be, held in Timaru and Christchurch. Such matters of local interest and importance - and this includes major court trials that have recently been shifted out of Dunedin - should be considered in the communities of concern.

Wind power is intermittent. It is known to be intermittent across South Australia and Victoria where the performance has been measured. Wind power cannot be relied on to supply peak demand power but it has a potential for replacing base load power with some contribution for peak demand times. The intermittency of wind means that to supply an average of 6,000MW of power requires installing 20,000MW of wind power taking the average output of wind farms to be 30 per cent of installed capacity. For 2MW for a wind turbine, this is a building program of 10,000 wind turbine towers, that is two towers each day for 12 years.

DOC's job is to safeguard the conservation estate. Even after the former administration announced its whole-of-government support for Project Hayes, DOC might still have continued to press its concerns within government ranks. The suspicion is that, instead, it took the chance to extract $175,000 from Meridian. Fuelling this suspicion is the secrecy of the deal. Although Meridian says it was made public in mid-2007, it is curious that some environmentalists, such as Green co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons, have only just learned of it.

Finally, the people spoke and a company rolled over. Well, turned on its side just a little. News that Mighty River Power is to remove nine turbine sites on its proposed Turitea Wind Farm is great news for the opponents who were going to neighbour the project. Five of the turbine sites being removed are close to houses and four are being removed for ecological reasons.

Babcock and Brown Wind is formally cutting its ties with the Babcock and Brown funeral procession but the spirit of the financial engineers still blows hard through the wind farm owner - and perhaps not to the benefit of shareholders. ...BBW's rationale for putting its best wind farms up for sale last year was bemusing from the start. Basically the management would have shareholders believe they were ''selling the farm to prove the farm was worth owning''. BBW phrased it slightly differently, saying it was out to ''demonstrate and capture value''.

Turitea Wind Farm has been a controversial topic since it first became public and this newspaper has challenged and questioned how residents were consulted, why the decision was made, what it means and to share our readers' varied viewpoints. ...Adequate and proper consultation is required even if the decision at the end of the day is to go ahead with plans to turn the area into an abundant wind resource. That's all we are asking for, a voice.

But when quizzed by a shareholder about why they were selling off such good assets - selling the things investors had bought into BBW to own - BBW came up with entirely new reasons. Now BBW says the Spanish wind farm operation is a dog - a low-yielding asset that didn't produce and economic return. That's a little at odds with the glowing picture painted in previous reports. I'm not sure it was the smartest thing to say when the sale hasn't settled yet.