“What we are seeing in my county right now is that developers are coming in and asking for 50 acres to put up a solar [or] wind farm…. If the developers got their way in all my surrounding townships, we would have 12,000 acres of solar on some of the best farmland in the United States. It’s monstrous.”

It is still possible to get two sides of the story regarding renewable energy. You just need to read the bottom half first. And correct a few things.

I was reminded of this when reading a pro-renewable piece by Stacy Gittleman, “The Role of Wind and Solar in the Future of Power” (August 24, 2021), the cover story of Downtown Newsmagazine.

Backdoor is better than nothing to shake up the puff narrative.…

“I will grant that [Kevon Martis] gave a polished presentation of some very selected ‘facts’ totally trashing wind turbines and the power companies and wind energy companies associated with them. His one hour presentation had all of 5 seconds where he had something positive to say about wind turbines as ‘giving local entities a little bit of tax money’ (Don Smucker, below).

“If there was a substantive criticism in my talk, Smucker never proffered it and resorted instead to base name calling.” (Martis, below)

Industrial wind turbines: Dilute. Intermittent. Unneeded. Duplicative. Taxpayer/government dependent. Ugly. Noisy. Blade shadows. Flicker light. Bird hazard. Infrastructure heavy (steel, concrete, and land). Energy sprawl (service roads, long transmission to markets with line loss). Landfill issues.

Is wind the perfect imperfect energy for the modern electricity grid?…

“Despite his folky style and positioning to the contrary, [Kevin] Martis is a highly polished, fossil fuel operative with aggressive tactics. The taxpayers of Seneca County and all of Ohio deserve a more honest broker than Kevon Martis.”

– Scott Peterson, Checks and Balances Project, October 25, 2018.

“When is an environmentalist not an environmentalist? … When it comes to wind power.

– an eco-joke

In “Coal-Backed Anti-Wind Guru Barrels into Ohio’s Seneca County to Attack Wind Energy,” Scott Peterson, executive director of Checks and Balances Project, “an investigative blog that seeks to hold government officials, lobbyists and corporate management accountable to the public,” goes after one regular citizen, Kevon Martis.

Citizen Martis is very well respected here at MasterResource, as evidenced by these posts:

• Enough! Martis Responds to Sinclair re Industrial Wind (March 5, 2018)
• Wind Siting Rules: Kevon Martis Testimony to the Ohio Power Siting Board (June 9, 2016)
• Citizen Martis to Ohio Lawmakers: Repeal the Renewable-Energy Mandate (January 27, 2014)
• Testimony Against Industrial Wind Power: Martis before the Ohio Senate and House PUCs (January 8, 2014)

And recall his 2013 post “Dear Michigan: Why Wind?…

“Kevon Martis is a ‘senior fellow’ of a Washington-based think tank, E&E Legal, which has a well-known history of support for tobacco, oil, gas, and coal interests. He can hardly be considered an unbiased presenter on energy topics…. Hopefully, in coming months as this discussion evolves, a more balanced picture of the issue can come to light.”

– Peter Sinclair, Yale Climate Connections. “Wind Turbines Could Provide Many Local Advantages.” Midland Daily News, December 17, 2017.

“My recent wind energy zoning presentation at the Bullock Creek High School on the behalf of the Ingersoll Township Concerned Citizens spawned an ill-informed Op-Ed by Peter Sinclair in which he accuses me of misleading and distorted statements and further questions my objectivity and financial motivations…. While Sinclair wishes to paint the Ingersoll meeting as a deck stacked sharply against wind energy development, the truth is that wind interests routinely refuse to share the platform with me anywhere.”