The Wall Street Journal recently noted that increasing wind power to 20 percent in the next two decades alone would require a $2 trillion investment. Energy costs already strain household budgets, especially those of lower-income families and individuals. This year, U.S. households bringing home less than $50,000 a year - that is, half of households - will spend a quarter of their after-tax income on energy, double the percentage they spent in 2001.

A landmark court ruling has ordered that Jane Davis be given a discount on her council tax because her £170,000 home has been rendered worthless by a wind turbine 1,000 yards away. This is effectively an official admission that wind farms, which are accused of 'spoiling countryside views and producing a deafening roar', have a negative effect on house prices. ...One of these impacts is of course safety. In June this year a 16-foot wind turbine blade smashed through a farmhouse roof in Northern Ireland as the farmer and his family slept inside.

Whether the reports of health hazards are true or not is almost irrelevant. Just the fact that many people are truly concerned about the potential health effects of living near a wind farm, or the electromagnetic radiation from high voltage electrical wires, is reason enough to try to avoid buying a property that is close to power lines. It's a simple law of economics: As demand for a product goes down, so does its price. When you have a certain number of people avoiding a certain property, for whatever reason, the price of that property will be negatively affected.

Creating a welfare-dependent industry in the province may benefit the backers of these projects, but the potential cost to taxpayers is huge, and the outlook for an unsubsidized industry is grim. ...The wind power industry in Canada gets a federal government subsidy of $10 per megawatt hour. But B.C. consumers can expect to dig deeper. The cost of electricity from wind power is about $71 per megawatt hour. That compares to about $48 for natural gas and $25 for electricity produced from B.C.'s heritage hydro assets.

When Young County commissioners began discussing details of the abatement with special counsel Alan Carmichael last week, the majority seemed very interested in finding a way to maximize the amount of money Young County stands to bring in if the farm is built. While that makes perfect sense up front, it could prove perilous to the entire project. With several other counties vying for wind farms from BP, it may not take much to sway the company one way or another. In Archer County, rumor has it that commissioners are planning to agree exactly to the proposal made by BP.

Pickens' plan is basically a couple of pie charts showing how he'd like to see the U.S. energy economy work. ...He gives no specifics publicly, but he's made it clear that it's up to Congress, not consumers or investors, to make this vision become reality. Because Pickens has announced his gambit in the name of the environment, the media have dropped the skepticism they usually apply to the claims of businessmen trying to make a buck. Because his plan involves government - meaning you and I pay the costs - that skepticism ought to be even greater.

Iberdrola of Spain, owner of Elk River, realized over $9.9 million in PTC allowances in 2007. Foreign companies are not regulated by the Kansas Corporation Commission. There are no state or federal regulations of any kind on WECS. Few Kansas counties have wind regulations. WECS will force consumers to pay for their electricity three times; to build the WECS, build conventional power as backup, and additional transmission lines to carry power from the WECS to the grid. WECS will not produce large economic benefits to a community as evidenced by records from Gray County (Montezuma), or Butler County (Elk River). Elk River has produced seven jobs. Most employees live outside the community.

The financial boon from the Maple Ridge Wind Farm in Lewis County is undeniable. ...the Maple Ridge Wind Farm fell within an Empire Zone, which allows businesses within the zone to be reimbursed for their property taxes and make the projects more affordable to developers. The reimbursement enabled the several local governments to receive tax benefits and payments higher than might be expected. But wind farm supporters in Jefferson County will be disappointed if they expect to see similar benefits to their municipalities and school districts. The proposed projects are not in any Empire Zone now.

If wind energy were a sensible economic investment, it would not need federal and state subsidies already in place or the additional subsidies inherently needed in the wind power expansion directly and inferentially sought after by Pickens. Similarly, if compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles are really an economically viable alternative to conventional gasoline-powered vehicles, they would have succeeded in the market place and no government subsidy would be necessary. We can wish T. Boone Pickens well in his wind energy business, but there is no reason for taxpayers, ratepayers or consumers to pay him for his investments.

Every wind-generating power company in New York needs to come under closer scrutiny. There is just too much public money at stake. An aggressive watchdog is needed to make sense of the complicated deals they make, to protect taxpayers and to monitor the conduct of public officials whose decisions can yield wind generators millions of dollars. That's why a state attorney general's investigation of two wind-power companies is so important -- and why a critical, independent eye should be kept on the rest of the industry. ...These agreements need to above-board without even the hint of conflict.

Oil man T. Boone Pickens recently announced his own large program to help get America off its oil addictions. His message in his own Texas twang starts off appealing, while he properly and accurately reports on the $700 billion annually we now spend on imported oil, now at 70% of our total oil consumption. ...Regrettably, near the middle of his advertisement T. Boone wandered off into an alternative energy universe, proposing that wind and solar energy replace the current 22% of our electricity produced by natural gas. Neither source is a true alternative, and are merely erratic, unreliable, supplementary energy sources.

In Tazewell we detect something more to the spat between the state's attorney and some County Board members than just a difference of professional opinion. While we're none too keen on one part of local government suing another - attorneys win, taxpayers lose - Umholtz is on the right side of this issue by taking his stand on principle. ...the everybody-does-it defense employed by some Tazewell board members is a cop-out for those who know they're on shaky ground but want to rationalize a "yes" vote. Sorry, but these elected officials can read and comprehend the law.

...to think that wind turbines are going to offer a long-term stimulus for tourism revenue is foolish. These giant wind turbines are a novelty to Michiganders right now. But as time goes by, the novelty will wear off. And as more and more wind turbines are built, there will be more and more people living here and paying the price for this "green" energy. ...and those living in the Thumb with these wind turbines towering over their homes will pay again in loss of property value and quality of life.

The reaction of environmentalists to these developments shows how apparently strong principles can be set aside in favour of certain right-on technologies. Try to sink one 15,000 tonne oil platform in the North Sea (as Shell attempted with the Brent Spar platform in 1995) and Greenpeace will vilify you, but announce a plan to plant 7,000 concrete and steel pylons - each weighing 2,000 tonnes - on the seabed and you will be an eco-hero.

Much has been written about the merits or demerits of wind energy as a viable source of electricity generation for meeting the growing needs of electricity consumption in the United States. No matter which side of the debate one comes down on, one issue is crystal clear. Trillions of taxpayer dollars are being poured into the wind energy corporations' coffers to enhance the return on investment strategies with a guaranteed commitment by federal, state and local governments for a 10-year period. According to a recent report by the National Renewable Technology Laboratory (DOE), wind energy could account for 20 percent of the nation's electricity by 2030. To reach this target, wind turbines would have to produce 300,000 MW of power or 1,000,000 MW installed capacity. The 500,000 plus wind turbines would cost the taxpayers between $5-7 trillion.

As the Senate opens debate on its mammoth carbon regulation program this week, the phrase of the hour is "cap and trade." This sounds innocuous enough. But anyone who looks at the legislative details will quickly see that a better description is cap and spend. This is easily the largest income redistribution scheme since the income tax. ...If Congress is really going to impose this carbon tax in the name of saving mankind, the least it should do is forego all of this political largesse. In return for this new tax, Congress should cut taxes elsewhere to make the bill revenue neutral.

As they [the American Wind Energy Association] well know, "installed capacity" is meaningless, since the output of industrial wind turbines cannot be stored and cannot be predicted or regulated. Their effective or useable capacity is near zero, while the effective capacity of coal, gas and nuclear plants is near 99%. When the public figures this out, I doubt that "85% of Americans" will continue to support wind energy.

At the heart of the credit crunch now afflicting the global economy is the bursting of a great housing bubble throughout much of the developed world. Bubbles are, of course, as old as capitalism itself. Many of us in England recall learning at school of the great South Sea bubble of the early 18th century. But they seem to be coming more frequently nowadays. The housing bubble has burst only a decade or so after the Internet and tech-stock bubble. So we may not need to wait all that long to see the next one. And the most likely candidate is a green bubble, fueled by climate-change alarmism and government subsidies. ...There may well be a green business opportunity. But my advice to would-be investors is this: make sure you get out before the bubble bursts.

Watermelons - people who are "green on the outside and Red on the inside" - refuse to believe renewable-energy technologies may never be capable of replacing oil and natural gas, but it doesn't stop them from sowing their fantasy seeds. ...Even with massive subsidies, renewables can't come close to competing with oil and gas; without them, they'd be dead in the water. Though wind and solar have been on the "subsidy take" for decades, the Journal notes, they produce less than 1 percent of America's electricity; nuclear, meanwhile, generates 20 percent but is subsidized 15 times less. Believing all renewables, let alone just wind, will produce 20 percent of America's power anytime soon requires a leap of faith only fools would attempt.

Olbeter says the House Ways and Means Committee will unveil today a tax package that would extend and expand renewable tax credits and reinstate the R&D tax credit. The bill would pay for itself by closing tax loopholes, "including one that allows fund managers to defer taxes on compensation earned from offshore funds and another that would allow multinational firms flexibility in allocating global interest expense." Olberter contends that the bill "has virtually no chance, in its current form, of becoming law." He says the tax loophole closures "are a nonstarter with Senate Republicans and the White House, which opposes taxes generally and these measures specifically." ...this is likely the last meaningful attempt by the Congress to pass extension of renewable energy tax credits before November; he predicts that the solar and wind credits "will probably lapse on December 31."