Wind Pricing: Not Cheap but Subsidized

By -- July 23, 2013 5 Comments

“Ignoring how competitive markets operate–and pretending that wind energy is exempt from the basic rules of economics–will not change the fact that windpower is an expensive, unpredictable resource that cannot compete without enormous public hand-outs. If the PTC were permitted to expired today, the wind industry might be forced to increase its efficiencies and lower project costs, but the effect on electricity prices at large would likely go unnoticed.”

Last fall, utility-giant, Exelon Corp., encouraged Congress to let the federal production tax credit (PTC) expire, citing the subsidy’s distortionary effect on competitive wholesale energy markets. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) slapped back by publicly booting Exelon off its board and unleashing an army of surrogates to control the damage and berate the company for putting its interests first.

The latest attack came July 4th when eco-youth Gabe Elsner, a “public interest advocate” of The Checks and Balances Project, accused Exelon of conspiring with Big Oil to squeeze out cheaper competitors like wind in order to drive up consumer electricity prices and increase profits.…

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Windaction News Issue: July 6, 2013

By -- July 6, 2013 1 Comment

Windaction.org’s periodic newsletter keeps readers updated on the latest news in the wind energy industry!

Industrial Wind Alert!

facts, analysis, exposure of wind energy’s real impacts

(To receive this newsletter by email, please click here to subscribe)

News

Deepwater Wind to bury transmission in Narragansett   July 5
by Alex Kuffner
in Providence Journal  —  Rhode Island

Owner withdraws wind turbine after opposition
   July 5
by Caleb M. Soptelean
in Bigfork Eagle —  Montana

Fairhaven Wind suggests shutting one turbine at night
  July 4
by Peggy Aulisio
in South Coast Today —  Massachusetts

Italian mafia wind farm investments launder money’
   July 4
by Jill Reilly
in The Daily Mail —  Europe

These problems are blowing in the wind
  July 4 
by Priyam Bagga
  in Pune Mirror —  Asia

Hanover calls technicians from India to fix troubled turbine  
July 4
by Neal Simpson in The Patriot Ledger —  Massachusetts

Turtle wins the day in wind fight  
July 4
by Bruce Bell in The Intelligencer —  Canada
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The Incompatibility of Wind and Crop ‘Farming’

By -- July 1, 2013 15 Comments

“Absentee landowners may be gaining financially from [wind power] development, but the idea that ‘wind farming’ is a compatible agriculture use is more myth than reality in Illinois…. In fact, those Illinois farmers who have leveraged their operations conservatively tell us that they’re not interested in the ‘windfall’ of wind farming.”

The wind industry continues to claim that wind “farming” and agriculture are compatible land uses. Here it is again in a recent letter in the Wall Street Journal by the American Wind Energy Association defending the economics of wind power.

For years, politicians and urban/suburbanites have been treated to heaping doses of win-win business tales of family farmers leasing sections of their crop land for wind development, while working the soil right up to the towers and earning extra revenue to keep the land open.

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American Lung Association’s Misguided Support for Wind Power

By -- June 19, 2013 2 Comments

“Obviously, nobody wants dirty air, but the American Lung Association’s knee-jerk renewables advocacy is mainly emotional and not grounded in fact.”

Last month, New Hampshire’s Site Evaluation Committee (SEC)[1] disapproved Antrim Wind, a 30-megawatt wind energy facility proposed along a remote and environmentally sensitive ridgeline in rural Antrim, NH. After eleven days of evidentiary hearings and three days of public deliberations, the Committee ruled that the ten monster turbines, each standing 492-feet tall, would pose a significant impact on aesthetics with no satisfactory means of mitigating the effect.

The Committee’s ruling surprised New England wind proponents who wasted no time calling the decision a serious setback for clean energy and urging the SEC to reconsider its decision.

Among those objecting was the American Lung Association. In a letter to the SEC, Edward Miller, Senior Vice President of Public Policy for the American Lung Association in the Northeast, wrote:

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Frac Exaggeration, Wind Blindness: Southern Environmental Law Center’s Double Standard

By Charles Battig -- June 18, 2013 5 Comments Continue Reading

Windaction News

By -- June 15, 2013 1 Comment Continue Reading

Wind Forcing: New England’s Coming Energy War

By -- June 5, 2013 7 Comments Continue Reading

The Ungreening of Windpower: Dina Cappiello (AP) Blows the Whistle on Big Wind (and others are following)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 28, 2013 9 Comments Continue Reading

Wind Performing Badly

By -- May 16, 2013 9 Comments Continue Reading

Ontario’s Green Energy Act: Ill Wind All Around

By Kenneth P. Green -- May 9, 2013 5 Comments Continue Reading