Opinions
Category:
USA or Utah
As federal wildlife officials turn a blind eye to the wind industry's slaughter, they exercise strict enforcement when others run afoul of the law.
The Associated Press published a thorough article ...highlighting the Department of Interior's unwillingness to hold the wind industry accountable to laws meant to protect wildlife. With over 573,000 birds killed by wind turbines each year, according to the Wildlife Society Bulletin, as well as a significant number of bats, the Department of Interior can only point to superficial and voluntary guidelines that the wind industry continues to ignore.
Also filed under [
Impact on Wildlife|
USA]
The Latest Wind-Energy Outrage; The Obama administration allows widespread eagle kills
May 16, 2013 in National Review
May 16, 2013 in National Review
Thus, the wind industry wants to use more public land - and of course, more public money - so that it can continue killing the public's wildlife with impunity. But since the wind industry can claim that it is doing something - no matter how insignificant - with regard to carbon dioxide emissions, the Obama administration is willing to go along, and even help the industry hide the extent of its bird kills.
If there is a more obvious example of crony capitalism to be had in our country than the treatment the wind industry now enjoys, I can't think of it.
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Impact on Birds|
USA]
This opinion piece does not directly reference wind turbines, however, the discussion of how sleep deprivation can result in symptoms similar to those experienced by people living near industrial-scale turbines (procrastination, forgetfulness, an inability to pay attention) is noteworthy.
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Impact on People|
USA]
Finally, a breath of fresh air amid all the stale rhetoric over wind-energy tax credits: The CEO of one of the nation's largest wind-energy companies says Washington should hold the subsidies, thereby enabling the industry's innovation and competition.
Also filed under [
Tax Breaks & Subsidies|
USA]
Germany is irrationally shutting its nuclear power plants — which produce lots of steady, reliable electricity and no carbon dioxide emissions — and promising that renewables will somehow pick up the slack. Perversely, that approach has led power companies to ramp up coal burning, the dirtiest fossil fuel, in a country that has also lavished its public money on the solar industry. Spain, too, has over-invested in expensive renewables.
Also filed under [
Energy Policy|
USA]
To produce useable wind-generated electricity, other obstacles must be overcome. Perhaps most importantly, wind power is intermittent ...Therefore, reliable back-up power generating facilities must be on hand and ready to fill in when wind generation is absent.
These realities require duplicate capital investment and, to some extent, duplicate operating expenses.
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Impact on Economy|
USA]
It took an energy insider this past week to expose the dirty little truth about the future of wind energy - it's too costly, too unreliable and only getting more so because of government subsidies.
Take that, you green zealots.
If our communities can't reasonably afford to purchase and rely on the wind power we sell, it is difficult to make the moral case for our businesses, let alone an economic one. Yet as long as these subsidies and tax credits exist, clean-energy executives will likely spend most of their time pursuing advanced legal and accounting methods rather than investing in studies, innovation, new transmission technology and turbine development.
Nowadays, a huge chunk of the action on clean energy in the United States is happening at the state level. Some 29 states and Washington D.C. have renewable energy standards requiring electric utilities to get a portion of their power from sources like wind or solar. ...Yet those state laws are now facing a fierce backlash.
Also filed under [
Energy Policy|
USA]
If another golden eagle is killed a Technical Advisory Committee - comprised of biologists from federal and state agencies - will meet and make recommendations to the BLM about what mitigation to take, which could curtail operation of turbines or even shut down turbines.
The federal government's disparate treatment of various industries whose operations have resulted in the deaths of eagles or migratory birds has become an issue of late.
If only wind energy worked, it would be great. But it does not - at least not that well. What's worse, most people do not know, especially the Green Energy True Believers. Those who do know, however, do not care.
Wind and solar power are too expensive to compete with natural gas, coal, nuclear and hydropower without government help. The wind lobby already won an extension of its $12 billion production tax credit as part of the recent tax increase. More than half the states also have renewable energy standards forcing residents to purchase wind power. And now the greens want another subsidy for transmission lines.
Also filed under [
Transmission|
USA]
"We find it absurd that the Department of Justice, in conjunction with the Fish and Wildlife Service, could reasonably conclude that three oil and gas operators should face prosecution for the incidental killing of seven birds at the same time it considers permits to kill between eight and fifteen bald eagles."
Also filed under [
Impact on Birds|
USA]
The wind-energy lobby has sought such permission for years, insisting that eagle-kill permits ought to last longer than the current limit of five years. Last April the Fish and Wildlife Service agreed, and it published a Federal Register notice saying it planned to extend incidental-take permits to 30 years so as to "facilitate the responsible development of renewable energy."
Also filed under [
Impact on Birds|
USA]
For an industry all puffed up about its supposed environmental virtue, green energy sure is attracting a dirty crowd. Witness its latest entrant, Italy's Mafia. The mob knows a good fraud when it sees one. Mafia soldiers have moved in on the something-for-nothing world of green energy.
Instead of pouring money into subsidies and direct production support of existing, inefficient green energy, President Obama should focus on dramatically ramping up investments into the research and development of green energy.
By using mathematical formulas derived from these studies, the average distance of a large bird carcass found under the 2.3 MW turbines at Wolf Island would be 101 meters from their towers. This average is far outside the search areas used. The Wolf Island mortality studies used search areas of only 60 and 50 meters. These studies clearly missed most of the carcasses. It also does not account for wandering cripples and wind personal interference.
Wind energy lobby ignoring real concerns of families, children
January 17, 2013 in Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter
January 17, 2013 in Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter
The wind energy lobby doesn't care about families and children currently being harmed or about future families that will be harmed by 500- foot industrial wind turbines. They are not listening, they are either uninformed or are deliberately misrepresenting the facts; it appears they don't care.
It may be pleasant still to assume that President Obama's motives are pure; that his green agenda may require corrupt bargains with private interests, but the sparks fly upward. ...The political networks here consist of owners who aren't in business to risk capital on technological advances, but to extract cash from political favoritism.
Also filed under [
Energy Policy|
USA]