“LEEDCo/Icebreaker would do well to abandon its hoped-for permit from the OPSB. The obstacles and problems have been pointed out repeatedly by experts, individuals, birding organizations, ecologists, in consultations, letters, formal legal presentations; enough to fill volumes. Its ten-year-long attempts to capture subsidies while overlooking viable and responsible care for the environment are unsustainable.”

“This proposal has so many indisputable strikes against it,” says Bryan Ralston, president of the Lake Erie Marine Trades Association. “We’re calling for the OPSB to reject it outright. It cannot be justified economically. It will raise, not lower, consumer’s electrical rates. It cannot survive without taxpayer subsidies. It’s an environmental disaster and it will become an industrial size turbine graveyard in the future.”

Over the years, I have followed the aspirations of Lorry Wagner’s LEEDCo wind project—now the Icebreaker Wind project of Fred Olsen Renewables, Inc.…

The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy and environmental policies. Our premise is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science (please consult WiseEnergy.org for more information).

A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every three weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and the environment. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.

Some of the more important articles in this issue are:

The Greens’ Goal has Always Been to Make Renewable Energy Expensive

Combined-Cycle Natural Gas Power Beats Everything Else

The Levelized Cost of Electricity from Existing Generation Resources

Observations on the Alliance for Market Solutions’ ‘conservative’ case for a carbon tax

Economists Have Been “Useful Idiots” for the Green Socialists

Infrasound — a Growing Liability for Wind Energy

Study: Wind turbines kill 75% of nearby buzzards, hawks and kites

Energy solution hinges on better technology

Reforming State Utility Regulations

Farmland Owner (& MD) Encourages People NOT to Lease Wind Turbines

Solar intermittency: upbeat carbon reduction estimates miss the reality

Editorial: Governor Cuomo’s ‘renewable’ fiasco

The CO2 Hockey Stick

Why we do nothing to prepare for climate change

Study: Human CO2 Emissions Have Little Effect on Atmospheric CO2

Calling Climate Change ‘Catastrophic’ Isn’t Backed By Science

The Plan is No Plan: Why the GOP Shouldn’t Do Anything on Climate

Climate change has started to influence our language.…

By making federal certification more politicized, interstate natural-gas pipelines have had to spend additional money to defend their position, courts have become more burdened, and environmentalists have spent large sums of money…. These costs would seem to overwhelm any benefits: Demanding that FERC considers climate change is destined for failure.

The U.S. natural gas industry has enjoyed a great run over the past decades, continuing its stellar history upon the end of wellhead price controls several decades ago. The transition of interstate gas transmission to mandatory open access was also successful, freeing the commodity from public-utility regulation to introduce real-time scarcity pricing.

The natural gas sector has contributed greatly to the U.S. economy by creating quality jobs and reducing household and business energy bills on the order of hundreds of billions of dollars.…

“Ms. Griswold will have to forgive readers if they choose not to believe that she is objectively calling balls and strikes, given how the narrative she concocts in her book is dramatically different from what regulators, independent laboratories, and medical professionals have determined – all of which have been affirmed in multiple courtrooms.”

“Five separate courts, including Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court, have upheld the DEP’s findings, yet Ms. Griswold continues to spread these unsubstantiated claims in her new book.”

A recent book by Eliza Griswold – the same author who gave an infamously inaccurate portrayal of shale development in Amwell Township, Pa., in a 2011 New York Times article – takes readers back to Southwestern Pennsylvania over claims of water contamination that have long-since been resolved by multiple regulatory agencies, courtrooms, and expert analyses.…