Australia

The Beginning of the End, for Australia’s Wind Weasels!

/ 1957chev / 1 Comment

Senate Recommendations Spell ‘DOOM’ for the Australian Wind Industry

August 1, 2015 by

atomic-bomb-e1355417893840

****

The wind industry in Australia, already belted, battered and bruised, has just been delivered what STT considers the fatal blow.

On Friday just gone, the front page of The Australian carried the headline “Call to curb wind subsidies” in an “exclusive” penned by STT Champion, Graham Lloyd – the full report appeared on page 7 – in which Graham provides a sneak preview of the recommendations made in the final report of the Senate Inquiry into the great wind power fraud, due out next week.

Canberra urged to strip billions from windfarm subsidies
The Australian
Graham Lloyd
31 July 2015

A Senate committee says renewable energy subsidies for new wind farms should be limited to five years from more than 20.

The Abbott government is being urged to strip billions more from subsidies to wind farms in the final report of a Senate committee that has already pushed renewable energy investment to favour solar.

In its recommendations, the committee says renewable energy subsidies for new wind farms should be limited to five years from more than 20.

It also wants the issue of renewable energy certificates restricted to projects in states that adopt federal regulations on infrasound and low frequency noise.

The final report of the Senate investigation into wind farms and their possible health effects will be tabled in parliament on Monday.

The report has been circulated and details have been provided to The Australian.

The call for time limits on subsidies and federal noise oversight is likely to provoke a backlash from the wind industry, already reeling from a federal government directive to the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation that it stop lending to wind projects.

The lending freeze was agreed with crossbench senators after the federal government adopted the committee’s interim report recommendations.

The deal included crossbench support to include forest waste in the revised renewable energy target legislation.

In a letter tabled in the Senate, Environment Minister Greg Hunt said the federal government would respond “actively and in good faith” to the Senate committee findings.

The final report says a five-year limit on renewable energy certificates, down from more than 20 years, recognised that wind turbine technology was well developed and a “mature” industry.

A ban on issuing RECS to wind farms in states that do not adopt federal guidelines on infrasound is designed to force the hand of governments that rejected a national approach at the last Council of Australian Governments meeting.

At present, noise guidelines are administered by the states, but renewable energy certificates are issued by the commonwealth.

Renewable energy companies are issued RECS for the amount of power they generate.

The RECS are sold to power authorities, which must secure a set portion of their supply from renewable sources under the RET.

The cost of buying RECS is added to consumer electricity bills as a subsidy for renewable energy over other sources of power.

Crossbench senators are confident the federal government will accept the recommendations and the measures can be passed through both houses. Adoption will require legislative changes to the Clean Energy Act.

Legislation would require the support of six non-government senators in the upper house.

The Senate committee has been particularly concerned by complaints from people living near wind farms who believe low-frequency noise and infrasound is having an impact on their health.

The existence of health impacts from wind turbines has been rejected as unproven by health authorities, but as the number of complaints increases the issue is being investigated worldwide.

The final Senate report recommends the scientific committee have the power to provide “guidance, advice and oversight” to bodies funding and undertaking research into infrasound.
The Australian

Nice work, Graham!

As an aside, it’s the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 that would be amended (not the Clean Energy Act) – s40 of which sets the target.

However, no doubt due to his desire to be seen as objective, Graham slips a little when he suggests that the health impacts of low-frequency noise and infrasound are somehow a matter of “belief”.

When the next-door neighbour’s rooster fires up at 5 o’clock in the morning (every morning) – and wakes up the entire household, the interruption to decent sleep is viewed pretty dimly by those deprived of it: tempers start to fray over bleary-eyed breakfasts; and forced weariness takes its toll on the functional ability of Foghorn Leghorn’s victims as the day rolls on.

foghorn

****

The same goes for those with neighbours who love cranking up AC/DC at two in the morning – or the early rising gardener, who whips his lawn mower into action well before sun-up on Sunday.

The accepted right to unbroken sleep is the reason why there are strict rules to prohibit rowdy roosters residing in cities and towns; the curbs placed on firing up mowers and leaf blowers before breakfast; and shutting down live music venues in built up areas after midnight – sleep is sacrosanct – the consequences of depriving people of routine sleep are so obvious it goes without saying:

Wind Turbine Noise Deprives Farmers and Truckers of Essential Sleep & Creates Unnecessary Danger for All

As a contrast to the merciless, around-the-clock cacophony dished out by wind power outfits on their neighbours – which all levels of government expect them to tolerate without so much as a whimper – STT noticed this story from Western Australia a while back, where an argument between neighbours over late-night festivities resulted in the (alleged) murder of the party complaining about the noise interfering with his family’s right to a decent night’s sleep: Man, 45, dies after disturbance in Perth suburb of Seville Grove

If someone is complaining about losing sleep due to night-time noise – that complaint is taken as an accepted fact – and their “belief” in the cause has got nothing to do with it: prove that the noise was being generated and the rest follows.

For every other kind of noise source, the authorities take those complaints seriously – roosters get the chop; police get the noisy-neighbour to wind down their stereos; pubs allowing rock bands to rock-on past their curfews, face licensing penalties; and eager-beaver gardeners are told by EPAs or Councils to leave the lawn mowers and leaf blowers in the shed, until the neighbourhood has had a chance of a leisurely weekend lie in – or to expect to get whacked with fines if they don’t: for a few of the rules, see the Victorian EPA’s site here.

But, for some strange reason wind power outfits are permitted (or, rather, encouraged) to operate these things around the clock, with noise ‘rules’ so lax as to be risible.

The impact of incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound is well-known to the wind industry – its direct causal impact on sleep deprivation was documented in a decade’s worth of research by NASA – top-tier research that has been ignored by regulators and health authorities – like the disgraced NHMRC – and covered up by the wind industry ever since:

Three Decades of Wind Industry Deception: A Chronology of a Global Conspiracy of Silence and Subterfuge

When farmers being paid $200,000 a year to host these things complain bitterly about sleep deprivation as a regular event, then STT is pretty much satisfied that the noise and vibration generated by turbines is causing what the World Health Organisation has considered to be an adverse health effect in and of itself (for over 60 years):

SA Farmers Paid $1 Million to Host 19 Turbines Tell Senate they “Would Never Do it Again” due to “Unbearable” Sleep-Destroying Noise

Which brings us to the Senate’s recommendation to prevent Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs aka LGCs) being issued to wind power outfits operating in States that refuse to adopt federal regulations on infrasound and low-frequency noise – regulations that will be drawn up as another of the Senate’s recommendations.

The Federal Government has always taken the line that noise regulation is a matter for the States. A position which rudely ignores the fact that the wind industry would not exist in the absence of the massive federally mandated subsidies set up by the Large-Scale Renewable Energy Target (LRET).

It’s a line that’s been spun by PM Tony Abbott who says that the “sites of these things is a matter for the state governments”.

STT has likened that pitch to the ‘defence’ run by the bloke who sells the sawn-off shotgun to an armed robber.

armed robber

****

Sure, the illegal firearm vendor didn’t actually pull the trigger and send a bank teller for an unscheduled trip to the morgue. However, in the absence of the weapon supplied, there may have been no robbery – certainly not an “armed” one – and no harm done to bank tellers, in any event.

In the criminal law, the concept of liability for those who provide the arms to known bandits is picked up in the concepts of accessorial liability – the ol’ chestnuts about aiding and abetting, accessory before the fact and all that.

In this case, though, the Coalition is not only providing the weapon, from now until 2031 it will be supplying the offenders with an endless stream of ammunition – in the form of around 500 million Renewable Energy Certificates; designed to be worth over $90 – as young Gregory Hunt calls them: “a massive $93 per tonne carbon tax” – the $46 billion cost of which will be borne by all Australian power consumers (as we detail below).

The Senators on the Inquiry have worked out that the only way to prevent wind power outfits from stealing any more Australian homes is to disarm the bandits by tying the ‘entitlement’ to wallow in millions of RECs to a meaningful noise standard.

The other “killer” recommendation is that the REC Tax/Subsidy paid to wind power outfits be limited to a period of five years.

There aren’t many people – outside of the parrots profiting from it – who actually understand the fact that the REC is designed as a perpetual subsidy to wind power outfits – recouped through retail power bills as a TAX on all Australian power consumers.

Outside of those engaged in the rort – or keen to aid and abet those involved – hardly anybody understands the quantum of the subsidy; who pays it; and its longevity. And that, until recently, included the Senators involved in the Inquiry.

STT hears that – at the very first hearing in Portland in Victoria on 30 March this year – a number of them were gobsmacked to learn that the REC subsidy is not limited to last for 2 or 3 years, say – but is designed to run for more than a generation – from 2001 to 2031.

STT has set it out before, and for the uninitiated, we’ll set out again.

A REC is issued for every MWh of wind power dispatched to the grid; and a shortfall penalty of $65 per MWh applies to a retailer for every MWh that they fall short of the LRET target – the target is meant to be met by retailers purchasing and surrendering RECs in an effort to avoid the penalty.

Under the latest 33,000 GWh ultimate annual target, assuming that RECs hit $93, as the penalty inevitably begins to apply (RECs are currently trading around $52), the total cost added to power consumers’ bills will top $46 billion (495,600,000 x $93).

The LRET ‘system’ was designed around RECs being worth $93, with the $65 per MWh shortfall charge setting the ‘floor price’ for RECs, and the tax treatment of RECs taking their value to over $90.

Power consumers pay the full cost of the RECs issued to wind power outfits – on top of the wholesale price paid by retailers – in relation to collecting the cost of the REC Subsidy from power consumers in what can only be described as a TAX on retail power bills, Origin Energy’s Grant King correctly puts it:

“[T]he subsidy is the REC, and the REC certificate is acquitted at the retail level and is included in the retail price of electricity”.

It’s power consumers that get lumped with the “retail price of electricity” and, therefore, the cost of the REC Subsidy paid to wind power outfits. To call that arrangement anything other than a TAX is pure political and PR nonsense.

To give some idea of how ludicrously generous the REC Subsidy is, consider a single 3 MW turbine. If it operated 24 hours a day, 365 days a year – its owner would receive 26,280 RECs (24 x 365 x 3). Assuming, generously, a capacity factor of 35% (the cowboys from wind power outfits often wildly claim more than that) that single turbine will receive 9,198 RECs annually. At $93 per REC, that single turbine will, in 12 months, rake in $855,414 in REC Subsidy.

turbine collapse 9

****

But wait, there’s more: that subsidy doesn’t last for a single year. Oh no.

A turbine that started operating this year will continue to receive the REC subsidy for 16 years, until 2031 – such that a single 3 MW turbine spinning today can pocket a total of $13,686,624 over the remaining life of the LRET.

Not a bad little rort – considering the machine and its installation costs less than $3 million; and that being able to spear it into some dimwit’s back paddock under a landholder agreement costs a piddling $10-15,000 per year. State-sponsored theft never looked easier or more lucrative! For a more detailed analysis on the impact of the shortfall penalty and the REC Tax/Subsidy see:

Out to Save their Wind Industry Mates, Macfarlane & Hunt Lock-in $46 billion LRET Retail Power Tax

There has never been a subsidy scam like it in the history of the Commonwealth.

When General Motors Holden found itself in financial trouble a couple of years back, the Coalition – railing about ‘corporate welfare’ – decided to stump up a mere $100 million as a ‘rescue package’ – nowhere near enough to have salvaged the troubled carmaker, its 2,000 workers and the tens of thousands more working for the components manufacturers that supported it: Tony Abbott announces $100 million package for Holden workers

Starved of Federal support, and done in by over-generous Union ‘won’ wages and conditions, the last Holden will dribble off the production line early next year – and 10-20,000 South Australians will end up scrambling for manufacturing or mining jobs that simply do not exist:

SA – Australia’s ‘Wind Power Capital’ – Pays the World’s Highest Power Prices and Wonders Why it’s an Economic Basket Case

Now, consider the contrast with the Coalition’s Croesus-like corporate welfare directed at the wind industry.

The wind industry exists – and ONLY exists – to wallow in a subsidy stream which will hit $3 billion annually in 2019; and which continues at that colossal rate until 2031.

True it is, the PM is keen to R.E.D.U.C.E the LRET subsidy for these things, but plenty of other Coalition lightweights and wind industry shills – like Dan Tehan, Sarah Henderson and young Gregory Hunt (and the wind industry plants that work in his office) believe that the cost of the massive subsidies directed to wind power outfits under the LRET is magically picked up by fairies and pixies; and that the policy is a no-cost, family and business friendly vote winner.

However, the Senators on the Inquiry – including Coalition Members,Chris Back and Matt Canavan – have worked out that the truth is all the other way – which has led to the recommendation of a 5 year limit to the rort. That limit will kill the wind industry stone-dead: no ‘investor’ will stump up a penny from here-on, unless the subsidies are written in stone, to last indefinitely.

The wind industry, its parasites and spruikers didn’t see it coming – and have been reduced to wailing about their imminent demise. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

senate review

Aussies Call to Slash Wind Turbine Subsidies! Can’t be too soon!

/ 1957chev / 1 Comment

Call to slash wind farm subsidies

A Senate committee says renewable energy subsidies for new wind farms should be limited to five years from more than 20.
It also wants the issue of renewable energy certificates restricted to projects in states that adopt federal regulations on infrasound and low frequency noise.

A Senate committee says renewable energy subsidies for new wind farms should be limited to five years from more than 20. Source: Supplied
The AustralianJuly 31, 2015Australia

Canberra urged to strip billions from windfarm subsidies

By Graham Lloyd, Environment Editor, Sydney

The Abbott government is being urged to strip billions more from subsidies to wind farms in the final report of a Senate committee that has already pushed renewable ­energy investment to favour solar.

In its recommendations, the committee says renewable energy subsidies for new wind farms should be limited to five years from more than 20.

It also wants the issue of renewable energy certificates restricted to projects in states that adopt federal regulations on infrasound and low frequency noise.

The final report of the Senate investigation into wind farms and their possible health effects will be tabled in parliament on Monday.

The report has been circulated and details have been provided to The ­Australian.

The call for time limits on sub­sidies and federal noise oversight is likely to provoke a backlash from the wind industry, already reeling from a federal government directive to the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation that it stop lending to wind projects.

The lending freeze was agreed with crossbench senators after the federal government adopted the committee’s interim report recommendations.

The deal included crossbench support to include forest waste in the revised renewable energy ­target legislation.

In a letter tabled in the Senate, Environment Minister Greg Hunt said the federal government would respond “actively and in good faith” to the Senate committee findings.

The final report says a five-year limit on renewable energy certificates, down from more than 20 years, recognised that wind turbine technology was well developed and a “mature” industry.

A ban on issuing RECS to wind farms in states that do not adopt federal guidelines on infrasound is designed to force the hand of governments that rejected a nat­ional approach at the last Council of Australian Governments meeting.

At present, noise guidelines are administered by the states, but ­renewable energy certificates are ­issued by the commonwealth.

Renewable energy companies are issued RECS for the amount of power they generate.

The RECS are sold to power authorities, which must secure a set portion of their supply from ­renewable sources under the RET.

The cost of buying RECS is added to consumer electricity bills as a subsidy for renewable energy over other sources of power.

Crossbench senators are confident the federal government will accept the recommendations and the measures can be passed through both houses. Adoption will require legislative changes to the Clean Energy Act.

Legislation would require the support of six non-government senators in the upper house.

The Senate committee has been particularly concerned by complaints from people living near wind farms who believe low- frequency noise and infrasound is having an impact on their health.

The existence of health impacts from wind turbines has been ­rejected as unproven by health authorities, but as the number of complaints increases the issue is being investigated worldwide.

The final Senate report recommends the scientific committee have the power to provide “guidance, advice and oversight” to ­bodies funding and undertaking research into infrasound.

Exposing Another Wind Weasel Lie….

/ 1957chev / 1 Comment

Wind turbine syndrome is not confined to English-speaking countries!

Lilli-Ann Green gives evidence that wind turbines cause adverse health impacts for some people who live nearby in France, Germany, Holland, Denmark and Sweden.

SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON WIND TURBINES
Monday, 29 June 2015

Extract from Official Committee Hansard (page 1 to 6):

Lilli-Ann Green
Lilli-Ann Green
(Cape Cod Times/Ron Schloerb)

Ms Green: I am CEO of a healthcare consulting firm with a national reach in the United States. My company works in all sectors of the healthcare industry. One of the core competencies of the firm is to develop educational programs to help doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers better communicate with their patients around various disease states. Currently, as a volunteer in my town, I am secretary of our energy committee and a delegate to the Cape Cod National Seashore Advisory Commission as an alternate. Cape Cod National Seashore is part of the United States National Park Service. In the late 1970s, I built a passive solar superinsulated home. I directed an environmental education school for several years. I work seasonally as a naturalist interpretive ranger for the National Park Service. I have been interested and active in the environmental movement since the early seventies. Today, I speak as a private citizen.

CHAIR (Senator Madigan): Thank you. Could you please confirm that information on parliamentary privilege and the protection of witnesses and evidence has been provided to you?

Ms Green: It has.

CHAIR: Thank you. The committee has your submission and we now invite you to make a brief opening statement and at the conclusion of your remarks, I will invite members of the committee to put questions to you.

Ms Green: Thank you. Until the beginning of 2010, I believed wind turbines were good and green. My town was interested in constructing wind turbines and a friend visited my office in early March 2010 to provide my husband and business partner and me with new information. Following the visit, I spent the next 10 hours researching wind turbines. That very day, after concluding my research, I was saddened but I became convinced there was credible evidence that wind turbines cause adverse health impacts for some people who live nearby. In the past, over five years, I have learned it is a global phenomenon that wind turbines make some people who live nearby sick and it is a dose response so these people become more ill over time.

My husband, who is now deceased, and I travelled to Australia and New Zealand in 2010-11 and subsequently created a film called Pandora’s Pinwheels: The Reality of Living with Wind Turbines. We then travelled around the world in 2012 and conducted interviews in 15 different countries. Most of the people we interviewed expressed that they were in favour of wind energy prior to wind turbine construction nearby. There are some common symptoms people the world over report who live and work too close to wind turbines. A good summary is found in the book Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on a Natural Experiment by Nina Pierpont, MD, PhD.

It does not matter whether people live in English-speaking countries or in countries where people do not speak English. People reported to us they are made sick when they live too close to wind turbines, no matter what country they live in. We interviewed people in both English-speaking countries and non-English-speaking countries alike who reported to us they were not ill prior to wind turbine construction nearby and after the wind turbines were operational nearby they were made sick.

We interviewed people in five countries—France, Germany, Holland, Denmark and Sweden—who either needed an interpreter to speak with us or who spoke broken English. Some locations were quite rural with little or no internet connection. Still, the people we interviewed through interpreters expressed the same symptoms, others the world over described to us. These people with no or limited internet connection even used similar phrases, analogies and gestures, as others did globally to describe their symptoms. What we actually found is most people are reluctant to speak about their health problems.

In the United States, there are privacy laws regarding medical information. Culturally, people do not openly discuss their health problems with strangers. We found this to be the case in the countries we visited around the world. It was a brave person who opened up to us about their health problems. Usually, the people we interviewed expressed they wanted to help others. If anything, people tended to minimise their symptoms or try to attribute the symptoms to other circumstances. Even when they acknowledged a common symptom such as sleep deprivation, many people who experienced additional common symptoms were reluctant to attribute these other symptoms to the wind turbines nearby. Furthermore, people the world over reported that they and their healthcare providers puzzled over health problems that appeared after wind turbines were constructed near their homes.

Many endured a huge battery of medical tests to try to determine what the cause of their health problems were. The medical tests, at a huge cost to the healthcare system, only ruled out various diseases. Typically, the cause of their sickness was not diagnosed by their healthcare professional. Frequently, we heard that the patients would be in a social situation with others in their neighbourhood and eventually people they knew well confided they had similar health problems that recently appeared, or after research online about a different topic these people reported stumbling upon the cause of their health problems, which were the wind turbines constructed nearby.

We even interviewed people who lived for 11 years near wind turbines in a non-English speaking country—and that was in 2012. Several people came to an interview to talk about their property devaluation. It was only during the interviews when they heard others speak about health problems that the people realised they had been suffering because they lived too close to wind turbines. One man in his 80s sobbed during his interview. He had been visiting his doctor for 11 years trying to figure out what was wrong with his health.

The woman who invited us to interview her and her neighbours learned about health problems from wind turbines when she saw the film I produced Pandora’s Pinwheels, with interviews conducted in Australia and New Zealand, that was translated into her language. These people needed an interpreter; they did not speak English. She told me that her husband had passed away in the not too distant past due to heart problems. Before he died, he had complained quite frequently of common health symptoms people living near wind turbines experience. Although they visited their doctor frequently, no-one could figure out why he was so sick. She thanked us because, in seeing our film, it helped her to understand what her husband had been going through and why. It gave her closure that she did not have prior to viewing our film.

Another person at the interview told us she had to hold on to the walls of her house some days in order to walk from room to room and felt nauseous frequently. She knew she was unwell in her home and abandoned it. She did not know why until she saw our film. She came back to the area for the interview because she wanted to tell the world that wind turbines made her so ill that she sold her home at a huge loss.

One of the people I have known for the past five years lives in Falmouth, Massachusetts, which is very close to where I live—it is an hour and a half away. In 2010, he had recently retired to his dream home of many years. He was in great physical health, very fit and has over a 20-year record of normal to low to blood pressure. Since the wind turbines have been constructed in Falmouth, Massachusetts, he has reported that his blood pressure skyrockets to heart attack and stroke levels when the wind is coming in the wrong direction for him.

In Falmouth there are three wind turbines that are 1.65 megawatts near this person’s home. This person’s doctor, whom he has seen over the past 20 years, is in the Boston area and his doctor has been quite blunt. The doctor has told the patient that his life is in danger and he must move. Unfortunately, the Falmouth resident is crushed and cannot bear to leave his dream home at this point in time. He goes to other locations when the wind is predicted to be coming from the wrong direction. Others we interviewed in many different countries told us similar stories. Many reported they have abandoned their homes, sold their homes at a huge loss, purchased other homes to live in when the wind is coming from the wrong direction or in order to sleep in, and others spend time away from their homes at a huge and unexpected expense. People considered their homes as sanctuaries prior to the construction of wind turbines nearby. Now their opinion is not the same.

We have interviewed people on three continents who live more than five miles from the nearest wind turbine and are sick since wind turbine construction. I contend that we need honest research to determine how far wind turbines need to be sited from people in order to do no harm. People report to us that over time their symptoms become more severe. Many report not experiencing ill effects for some time following wind turbine construction, meanwhile their spouse became ill the day the wind turbines nearby became operational. They speak of thinking they were one of the lucky ones at first, but after a number of months or years they become as ill as their spouse. Not one person who stayed near wind turbines reported to us that they got used to it or got better; they all became more ill over time.

Since we are dealing with a dose response, we do not know over the projected lifetime of a wind turbine—say, 20 to 25 years—how far from people it is necessary to site wind turbines. To me, it is just wrong to knowingly harm the health and safety of people. There are responsible solutions to environmental issues that do not impact the health and safety of people nearby. Our humanity is in question when we continue to knowingly harm others. I thank you for your time today. I sincerely hope that you do take active steps to help the people in your country who are suffering due to living and working too close to wind turbines, and I am glad to answer questions you may have.

CHAIR: Thank you.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Good morning, Ms Green—I suppose it is not morning there. Thank you for your submission—

Ms Green: No, it is Sunday evening here.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Sunday evening? I am sorry to being interrupting your evening.

Ms Green: I am glad to speak with you.

Senator LEYONHJELM: You have interviewed people in 15 countries, I think you said, under all different circumstances and so on. I appreciate we are not pretending this is a gold-plated, statistical survey, but I am interested in your impressions because I think you have more experience of this than any other witness we have heard from. What do you think, based on your experience, are the common factors in the people you have interviewed in different communities living near wind turbines? What are the common factors to all of them?

Ms Green: I think we seriously do not have enough research to understand this problem fully. We saw the same symptoms. Slide 17 that I submitted has a listing of the common symptoms that Dr Pierpont lists in her book. I really believe that we just do not have enough information yet. But throughout the interviews, country by country, people described the same symptoms. Many times they used the same phrases to describe them and the same gestures—even if they were not speaking English. There is a common thread here.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Do you get the impression that not everybody exposed to wind turbines is affected the same? Have you seen evidence of substantial individual variation?

Ms Green: I have, indeed. Just as some people are more prone to asthma and some people are more prone to lung cancer, let’s say, or any disease, we did see a variation. It appeared that if there were people who were, say, prone to migraine headaches, they were severely affected. But, again, there were people who did not seem to have the symptoms who were living either in the same house or nearby. I do not know whether it is a question of time, if over 20 years people become more sensitised and they will become sick. Very frequently we did hear the same theme running through the stories of the people we interviewed, where, say, the husband thought he was one of the lucky ones and six months later he could not sleep, he was experiencing ear pressure, ear pain and severe headaches or other symptoms.

Senator LEYONHJELM: We are aware of community groups in English-speaking countries who have expressed opposition to wind turbines, but we are not aware of that sort of phenomenon in non-English speaking countries. Have you encountered that?

Ms Green: Yes, indeed. We travelled around the world. It was a 10-year goal. We had it very well planned out and we thought it was for pleasure. But people kept emailing us and asking us to come and interview them. So we met people in a lot of non-English speaking countries, and they were such nice people, I have to say. They had just about any profession you would like to mention. They just wanted to tell their story. Many times these people wanted to talk to us for other reasons such as their house had been devalued because the wind turbines were nearby. As they were listening to other people in the room talking about their health problems, these people realised that they had been struggling with the same illness since the wind turbines were constructed nearby. They had never made that correlation before; in fact, they were quite frustrated. They told us that they would go back and back continually to their healthcare provider and talk about these symptoms, and they could not find a resolution or a reason. As I said, there is one man I recall quite vividly just sobbing—and that was in 2012; he was in his 80s. He had realised that since the wind turbines had been constructed nearby he was experiencing these symptoms that were the common symptoms.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Some witnesses have suggested to us that there is a relationship between not only the distance their residence is from the turbine but also the power of the turbine, the size of the turbine. Have you been able to come to any conclusions on that or is that outside your interest area?

Ms Green: No, it is not outside my interest area. In fact, it is quite alarming to me, because I have interviewed people who live near wind turbines that you in Australia would probably consider to be quite small and solitary—wind turbines that are 100 kilowatts, even—and they are experiencing health problems, even people living near a 10-kilowatt wind turbine. Frankly, it is the nearest wind turbine to where I live, and a number of neighbours are having problems, and not just with the audible noise but with the infrasound and low-frequency noise, based upon the symptoms they are reporting to me. It really is quite alarming. In my state, Massachusetts, there is a woman who has told me she lives more than five miles from the nearest wind turbine and she is quite ill. The onset of her symptoms was when the wind turbine was constructed. When she went on trips she was fine; when she came back she was ill, and it has only become worse over time. That wind turbine is not as powerful as wind turbines in Australia, and it is a solitary wind turbine.

Again, we travelled quite a distance in France—mid-south-eastern France—over a number of days at the invitation of the people in the area and visited several different communities where there were wind turbines. One of the situations is that the wind turbine is 10 kilometres from one of the neighbours who is very ill and 12 kilometres from the other neighbour. The person who lives 12 kilometres away reported to us that she had been very supportive of the wind turbines. She is very well known as an environmentalist in the area, has quite a reputation as an environmentalist and is highly regarded. But she is quite ill, and it was very difficult for her to speak with us.

The other person related a story of trying to detect what the problem was because he could not sleep and was becoming so frustrated that he would go in his car to try to find the source of what was keeping him awake. He talked about going night after night until he went into the wilderness. He could not imagine what was there, and then he found the wind turbines. They were creating a humming noise in his head at that point. He could actually hear this frequency. In our discussions with researchers, medical professionals and scientists, one of the scientists told us that what people hear is mostly a bell curve—that is the way it was described to us. Most people hear audible noise within a certain range, but there are people who are more sensitive to noise, and they hear sounds that most people would consider inaudible.

Senator URQUHART: I have a lot of questions. I am not going to get through them all, so I am wondering whether you are able to take some on notice at the end.

Ms Green: I will try. I am very busy, but I will try.

Senator URQUHART: In your submission you say you run a healthcare consultancy. Do you have any qualifications in health care or medicine?

Ms Green: I have a background in education.

Senator URQUHART: What is the name of your company?

Ms Green: I do not want that on the record.

Senator URQUHART: Can I ask why?

Ms Green: I am speaking today as a private citizen. I would be glad to give you that information if it is held as in-confidence.

Senator URQUHART: Okay. How many employees do you have?

Ms Green: My husband has passed away. He was my business partner, and I have scaled back the business. I am the only employee at this point in time. However, I will tell you that I have created in our company, with teams of people, educational programs that have been implemented throughout the United States. One of the oncology programs that was created by my team, which was quite a large team, interviewed over 100 oncology patients throughout the United States and numerous doctors and nurses and was mandatory for all of the oncology nurses in the Kaiser health system in California.

Senator URQUHART: In your submission you say that 300,000 physicians and healthcare professionals have undertaken training through your company.

Ms Green: That is correct.

Senator URQUHART: What are the products or services? Is it communication? What is it that you actually sell?

Ms Green: There is a number of different core competencies in our company. One is developing educational programs around different disease states, such as oncology, diabetes, heart disease and various other disease states. Another path we have taken is to develop a service quality initiative. My husband was an extraordinary speaker and was often the keynote speaker for national conferences in all sectors of the healthcare industry.

Senator URQUHART: In your opening statement you talked about how you had interviewed many people from various countries. I could not find any of the transcripts, either in your submission or online. I am sorry if I have missed them.

Ms Green: You have not missed them. In the company we are still in the process of editing the films. It was a huge undertaking of many months, at huge expense. There is a lot of information that is still being edited.

Senator URQUHART: Are you able to provide copies of the transcripts and the full names of the people you interviewed?

Ms Green: No. It is on film; it is videotaped interviews, and the film is being edited.

Senator URQUHART: You talked about how you undertook the research after you had new information from people within your area who were concerned about wind farms. Was that the purpose of the interviews?

Ms Green: No. In my town, one month after we learned that our energy committee wanted to put one 1.65 wind turbine in our town—and we had conducted the research and people in our town were quite concerned—our board of selectmen, which is like your town councils, decided to not move forward with the project. I am now on my energy committee, as secretary, and we are devising a plan to become 100 per cent electrical energy efficient without wind energy but using other alternative methods. Are you asking me what propels me to do the interviews?

Senator URQUHART: Yes. I guess my real reasoning was whether the purpose of the interviews was to inform the body of research on international attitudes to wind farms. Is that why—

Ms Green: No. It is not an attitude; it is to understand the realities of living near wind turbines—living, working, attending school, being incarcerated near wind turbines.

What happened was that my stepson was living in Australia and we went to Australia at the end of 2010. I knew there was a location called Waubra and I had seen the Dean report that had been recently published. I put out one little email asking ‘We will be in the Melbourne area and is it possible to meet some of the people that are living near the wind turbines at Waubra? Is it possible to see the Waubra area?’

It was amazing that I was connected with the people in that area of Australia. My husband and I drove to the area and we interviewed over 17 people in one day. They welcomed us into their homes. We did not know what to expect. We turned the camera on and we asked them questions, and they told us their story. We had no idea what we were going to find. We went to New Zealand and people emailed us after they had heard we had been to Waubra. They asked us if we would come and visit them and interview them. We did that in two different locations in New Zealand. When we came home we put together this film called Pandora’s Pinwheels—

Senator URQUHART: You interviewed people—

Ms Green: During our 2012 travels we just thought we would go back to Waubra and talk to the people at Waubra because we had been emailing them over the year. But people around the world kept on emailing us and asking us to come and interview them.

Senator URQUHART: So you conducted interviews in 15 countries, as I understand it from your submission. Is that how you got the contact information on the people you interviewed?

Ms Green: I do not understand your question. Everywhere we were travelling people kept on emailing us and contacting us and asking if we would come and interview them and talk with them. They wanted to go on camera and tell their story. We had no agenda; we had no plan. We work in the healthcare industry; we talk about various illnesses and disease states, and we educate doctors and nurses about disease states. I am sorry; I want to retract that: we find a cross-section where patients are having issues with the communication around their disease state, and the doctors and nurses are having issues around communicating with their patients. We find those intersections and help doctors and nurses better communicate with the patients. So we are trying to improve patient care. That is what we do as one of the core competencies of our business.

When we found the health problems with the wind turbines and when we saw in every country we visited that people were saying the same thing, we wanted to get that word out to people like you who are hearing from your constituents that they are having health problems. That is all I want to do—to provide you with the truth.

Senator DAY: Ms Green, as you might imagine, we have received submissions from hundreds of people who have reported adverse health impacts and yet we are being accused of trying to destroy the wind industry. We are being accused of rigging this inquiry and of being engaged in a political stitch up. What has been your experience with such hostility towards genuine inquiry?

Ms Green: I really do not have a response for you, Senator. I have heard a lot of stories from people and I have experiences myself, but I really do not have a response on that topic.

Senator DAY: Okay. I will follow up then: you say that a number of governments around the world are realising there is a need for more or better regulation surrounding the wind energy industry. Which governments are doing better in this area, in your opinion?

Ms Green: I know that in my state, I have a new governor and my governor has a background in health care, and I am expecting that my governor understands that people do have health problems when they live and work too close to wind turbines in my state.

Senator BACK: Ms Green, I have just one quick question; I know that we are over time. In Australia, we are proceeding to have independent medical research undertaken for the first time. One of the proposals put to us is that they try and simulate this effect of either noise or infrasound, and do so in a one-off exposure in a clinically sterile circumstance for exposure times of somewhere between 10 to 30 minutes and an hour. From what you have learned and heard—and from interviewing people—do you think there would be anything to be learned in exposing somebody for a very limited period of time, and once only, in a sort of laboratory-type circumstance? Do you believe that is likely to lead to any reasonable outcome or result that we might be able to use?

Ms Green: Senator, I am not a researcher or a doctor. But given what I have heard from people and what people have reported to me, I find it highly unlikely that that would have any results that would have any validity.

Senator BACK: Thank you.

CHAIR: Thank you for evidence today to the committee, Ms Green. You will receive questions on notice and if you are able to come back to us with answers to those, that would be appreciated.

Ms Green: Absolutely. I would like to thank the committee; the chair, Senator Madigan, and the members of the committee, and also to thank you, Graham.

CHAIR: Thank you, Ms Green.

Lilli-Ann Green’s evidence

The complete Hansard is available at ParlInfo:
Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines – 29/06/2015

Lilli-Ann Green’s evidence

Lilli-Ann Green’s submission to the Australian Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines:

Presentation by Lilli-Ann Green

“Pandora’s Pinwheels: The Reality of Life with Wind Turbines”
Australia and New Zealand

Introduction and Background of those interviewed – experts, journalist, people who live in three separate areas too close to wind turbines

INDEX:

  • 10:46 – Prior Attitudes
  • 13:14 – People felt lied to
  • 28:03 – Noise, the many facets of wind turbine noise and how it is different from other industrial noise
  • 53:37 – Health impacts and how close is too close; some people live over 2 miles from the nearest turbine
  • 1:18:51 – Shadow, blade flint, flicker, red flashing lights
  • 1:23:00 – Property values
  • 1:31:34 – Community fracture
  • 1:37:48 – Quality of Life; Amenity
  • 1:45:44 – What would you tell others if a wind developer comes to a community
  • 1:49:09 – Conclusion

Dr. Robert McMurtry Tells Australian Senate Inquiry About Adverse Health Effects From Wind Turbines!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

Dr Robert McMurty tells Senate: ‘Annoyance’ caused by Wind Turbine Noise includes ‘Sleep disturbance’ & is Adverse to Health

July 29, 2015 by

senate review

****

The Senate Inquiry has had to wade through a fairly pungent cesspit of ‘material’ dropped on it by the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers. No doubt to their great relief (or, in the case of wind industry stooge, Anne Urquhart, infuriation) the Senators have heard from a raft of genuine and highly qualified people, who are clearly dedicated to protecting their fellow human beings – rather than ridiculing, denigrating or deriding them as “anti-wind farm wing-nuts” or “Dick Brains”.

One voice of common sense and compassion – to the contrary of the nasty nonsense pitched up by the shills that run interference for their wind industry clients – came from Dr Bob McMurty – a highly (and relevantly) qualified Professor from Ontario. Here’s what Bob told the Australian Senate.

Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines – 29 May 2015

CHAIR: I now welcome Dr Bob McMurtry by teleconference. For the Hansard record, will you please state your name and the capacity in which you appear.

Dr McMurtry: My name is Robert Younghusband McMurtry. The capacity in which I appear today is as an independent witness: I am Professor Emeritus of Western University in London, Ontario, and I have been researching and reviewing this topic for the past eight years; I probably have put in over 10,000 hours over those years. In addition, I have been in communication with or—more to the point—people have been in communication with me who are suffering adverse health effects. I have detailed my curriculum vitae and its summary. I will stop there.

CHAIR: Thank you. Could you please confirm that information on parliamentary privilege and the protection of witnesses and evidence has been provided to you?

Dr McMurtry: I can confirm it has.

CHAIR: The committee has your submission. I now invite you to make a brief opening statement. At the conclusion of your remarks, I will invite members of the committee to put questions to you.

Dr McMurtry: Thank you for the privilege of presenting to this committee. I will make 10 points that are in my executive summary on the assumption that the material has been read. First, adverse health effects have been reported globally in the environs of wind turbines for more than 30 years with the old design and the new. Second, the wind energy industry has denied adverse health effects, preferring to call it ‘annoyance’ even though annoyance, however, is an adverse health effect. Certainly it is a non-trivial effect when sustained because it results in ‘sleep disruption’, ‘stress’ and ‘psychological distress’—those are direct quotes from others’ research. Third, annoyance is recognised and was treated by the World Health Organization as an adverse health effect, which is a risk factor for serious chronic disease including cardiovascular and cancer.

Fourth, experts retained by the wind energy industry have preferred the diagnosis of nocebo effect to explain the adverse health effects, but the claim does not withstand critical scrutiny as there is a dose-response effect and nocebo does not have a dose-response effect. And there is a clear correlation between exposure and adverse health effects. Researchers have talked about dose-response. I should also comment that making that diagnosis without a comprehensive evaluation of a person or patient would qualify as non-practice, and I know that has been said in this committee before.

Fifth, the regulations surrounding noise exposure are based upon out-of-date standards ETSU-97, which fail to evaluate infrasound and low-frequency noise, preferring instead to use DBA. The issue of ILFN is a problem and it has been confirmed by numerous acousticians including Paul Schomer, a leading international acoustician. Sixth, the setbacks for wind turbines are highly variable across jurisdictions and here is the key point: there is no evidence base in human health research for the setbacks. The turbines have gone ahead without an evidence base.

Seven, there is an urgent need for human health research to provide evidence based guidelines for noise exposure. Eight, the call for third-party research and evaluation has been made by many including in France by the Academy of Medicine of France in 2006 and many times since. As I detailed to you, I made it before government bodies in Canada. Nine, there is an urgent need to monitor the health effects of people exposed to turbines over time and that has been missing virtually in all jurisdictions. Tenth, third-party evaluations of the economic and social benefits of wind energy are needed as suggested by the findings of the Auditor-General of Ontario—I sent his reports to you including highlights—and more recently by the Northern Ireland Assembly committee, and I understand that is part of the charge of this committee. With that, I would be very happy to answer questions.

CHAIR: Is it correct to say that in your experience there are different streams of opposition to wind turbines in the wider public? For example, one stream opposes the technology outright but another supports the use of technologies as long as they are appropriately regulated to safeguard people and the environment. Which stream are you in, Dr McMurtry?

Dr McMurtry: I am in the stream that says positioned safely and on an evidence base with, as I mentioned, guidelines. I think that is fine. There are clear applications for wind turbines when they are appropriately deployed, which is not happening currently.

CHAIR: There is a growing community of medical experts, doctors and acoustic engineers questioning the adverse health impacts of wind turbines and inadequate regulatory standards. On the basis of your knowledge on an international level, how are the opinions and standing of these professionals treated publicly by the wind energy industry?

Dr McMurtry: I am afraid there is a routine strategy that proponents of wind turbines, including the industry, on websites will name people and pillory them basically, assail their reputations. That is something that has been seen internationally, most specifically towards Dr Nina Pierpont from the United States, and towards Dr Sarah Laurie in Australia. But I have certainly experienced it personally to a lesser extent. It seems to be: if you do stick-up and say something or you have concerns about the wind industry then you can expect to be attacked.

Senator BACK: We know that.

CHAIR: Your submission comments on researchers in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT undertaking research for the Canadian Wind Energy Association and also providing expert testimony to wind farm developers in its planning tribunals. I note you say here, however, they did not declare an interest when the research was published. You describe this behaviour as ‘odd’ in your submission. From a professional perspective, what does ‘odd’ mean? What are the professional requirements or etiquette when publishing research and declaring an interest?

Dr McMurtry: The key is to declare a conflict and that was done in the sense that they described their engagements with the wind turbine industry, especially Dr McCunney the lead author, and Dr David Colby. So that was done. But it is only a first step when you declare a conflict. There are many other things you should do to manage the potential conflict of interest, in particular take special care to control for bias. There are various ways of doing that.

I do not want to say negative things about Dr McCunney; I am sure he is a very capable person does good work in this field. The wind industry put the money before MIT and it was from that funding that the research was carried out. It was from funding of the wind industry an earlier part he participated in with the Canadian Wind Energy Association. He appears frequently on behalf of the wind industry and he references his work in both the papers I have cited. I view that as stretching things. I think some better management of the conflicts ought to be carried out. Two points, for example, could be: bring it before an ethics committee or at least get that kind of advice.

CHAIR: Finally, later in your submission I note you discuss the origins of nocebo. I presume from that discussion, you are aware of Prof. Simon Chapman and his work?

Dr McMurtry: I am aware of Prof. Simon Chapman, yes.

CHAIR: Prof. Chapman has also provided expert testimony to a wind farm developer in a planning tribunal but does not declare his interest in subsequent publications. Is there some sort of professional amnesty that allows researchers to withhold disclosure of their interest? How do researchers and practitioners like yourself perceive that kind of behaviour amongst your peers? And what impact does this have on the professional standing of researchers more generally and the tenor of the debate and understanding in the industrial wind turbine area?

Dr McMurtry: There are a lot of elements to that question. The key consideration is that you should always declare a conflict of interest and manage it appropriately so that there is no discomfort being experienced by colleagues from whom you want to seek their opinions. As I said, an ethics committee would be included in that consideration. More importantly, the WHO and many other bodies have found that research sponsored by industry does not have the objectivity that characterises independent research. That has been described time and again with industry. I believe Dr Chris Hanning spoke to that in some detail at his presentation, the sorts of difficulties that you get into. As far as peers are concerned, when you are receiving money and it is a substantial amount for each appearance then I think ought to be extremely cautious about declaring and making a statement as he did in this most recent paper, ‘I declare no conflict of interest.’ That was what I found to be particularly odd. That quotation is included in my submission.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Thank you for your submission. I found it extremely illuminating, very thorough and you addressed many questions that I had in my mind so I really do appreciate it. What I am curious about though is you are a very experienced medical doctor. You have come down fairly clearly in support of annoyance as being the source of the adverse complaints that people have about wind turbines. We have heard from other witnesses who have suggested a vestibular effect, an effect on the vestibular mechanism and others who have suggested either the middle ear or perhaps inner ear. Why have you nominated annoyance as the source? Have you discounted the others? Or is there something else?

Dr McMurtry: Not at all. I do not mean to discount the other symptoms. I have referenced the diagnostic criteria for being exposed to wind turbines and suffering adverse effects. It was most recently in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine in the fall of 2014. Those sorts of additional symptoms are listed. What I have made clear, and this was first done by Pederson in her many papers, is that annoyance in the context of wind turbines translates to ‘stress, psychological distress, difficulty initiating sleep and sleep disruption’—I believe those words, although from memory, are a direct quote—so it is a very serious business. The most common problems without question we find are sleep disturbance and stress. Those two are always there. Vestibular disturbance we are also finding. There is no question though when the vestibular gets perturbed, it can make you uneasy, make you feel unwell or nauseated, for example. It may be the mechanism. I am in no way discounting it and it is considered in my diagnostic criteria.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Do you have a feel for what proportion of the community that lives within a nominated distance of wind turbines or a wind farm actually experiences any symptoms?

Dr McMurtry: The lowest number I have ever seen is five per cent. The highest number I have seen is over 30 per cent. There is a range. Firstly, with ongoing exposure, the people I have seen who have been adversely affected become worse. Secondly, increasing numbers of people become adversely affected. What is missing in the research is longitudinal studies. Dr McCunney and I agree on this in terms of his paper that I was talking about earlier. What is needed is something more than cross-sectional epidemiological studies, which are studies at one point in time. They do not follow people longitudinally. Following people longitudinally—that is, over time—is crucial to understand the adverse effects. That has not been done. I agree that we should have cohort studies—that means a group exposed, a group not exposed—and compare them over time, and then you will have some notion of incidence. Anecdotally, when dealing with people, I have found that some do not start experiencing symptoms until a year or two out. I think the incidence might very well go up, and that is a concern.

In relation to the other research, if I may say before stopping again, there has been a missed opportunity. We absolutely should be doing the sort of work that has been done by Steven Cooper, where he looked at six people in three homes. They were adversely affected. You have to study those folks to understand the mechanism better. That is research that is really needed. It is only when that research is done, when we can hone down on the mechanism of the problem, that we can then inform the prospectus for the longitudinal studies of cohorts of people. I hope that is clear. You need research on adversely affected people to understand the mechanism and, secondly, of course, that you confirm that they meet the diagnostic criteria and that their adverse effects are reproducible when they are blinded. You want to do that to be sure. You have that group. Then you want to know exactly what is occurring. Steven Cooper moved things ahead great deal. Then you are well put up for the place to do the cohort studies or the longitudinal studies.

Senator LEYONHJELM: That does raise a question though. These sorts of questions have been asked; there have been complaints about wind turbines. You have been studying this now for six or seven years. Why is it that no definitive, independent research into this has been conducted over those years? It is quite a long time.

Dr McMurtry: I agree with you. I am dismayed by that, especially when it has been asked for nine years. It is coming back to the Academy of Medicine of France. I have pointed out many times in my publications and in my government presentations that there are two opinions and both cannot be right. One is that adverse effects are genuinely occurring and people are being harmed. The other opinion is that that is not the case and that it is in the news, a nocebo effect, or some other manageable problem. Both cannot be right. Always, I have heard calls for research from those concerned about adverse health effects. I have not heard them from those who are proponents—and certainly not from the industry.

To give you a very specific example, Paul Schomer, previously cited, is a leading acoustician internationally known for his standards for noise. He asked Duke Energy—and he has published this—to turn the turbines off and on, and they said they would not. That is pretty much the response you do get. There have been offers to do that. The Steven Cooper work was exceptional because the person who was responsible for that turbine installation in fact did turn off the turbines to enable him to do that research. I believe it was Cape Bridgewater.

CHAIR: Thank you, Senator Leyonhjelm. Senator Urquhart?

Dr McMurtry: By the way, I have debated publicly with proponents, including David Colby. I have always challenged, ‘Why don’t we do the research. Let’s settle this’, and the response has been: ‘There is no need.’ That is the response I have heard in debates, for example.

CHAIR: Thank you, Dr McMurtry. Senator Urquhart?

Senator URQUHART: Thanks, Dr McMurtry. I was just picking up the point that you talked about where the lowest number of people affected by wind farms was five per cent—I think I understood you correctly there—and the highest was 30 per cent. Did I understand you correctly?

Dr McMurtry: Yes you did. That has been the studies to date. As I mentioned, longitudinal studies may reveal a higher number.

Senator URQUHART: Can you just explain to me why the majority of wind farms in Australia do not have any complaints at all.

Dr McMurtry: I think I have heard Simon Chapman make that complaint, if that is who you are quoting. What I noticed about his research is that he was going to the wind farm people themselves and asking them if there were adverse health reports. That does not withstand critical appraisal. You must have an independent determination to determine if in fact there was a problem. That to me undermines this facility, substantially. So I think that claim is dubious. I will stop there.

Senator URQUHART: I did not hear that last point.

Dr McMurtry: The point I made is that when you are trying to glean information from the industry, whose interest is harmed by acknowledging problems, then you are not likely to get as accurate an answer than if you had independent determination of people’s complaints. I am speaking specifically about Simon Chapman’s work, and looking at his methodology.

Senator URQUHART: Do you live or have you lived near an existing or proposed wind farm?

Dr McMurtry: Yes. I do not live near a proposed wind farm. I live near one that is going to be built something in the neighbourhood of 1½ kilometres away. At the moment it is before the courts.

Senator URQUHART: I understand that you are a founder of the Society for Wind Vigilance. Is that right?

Dr McMurtry: Yes, in 2010. I was the founding chair, from 2010 to 2012, at which point I resigned.

Senator URQUHART: The status of the proposal is before the courts, I think you indicated?

Dr McMurtry: That is correct. There is always more than one proposal on the go, but the one that is most proximate to me is still in review legally, through a judicial process.

Senator URQUHART: How is the Society for Wind Vigilance funded?

Dr McMurtry: Just by donations from members.

Senator URQUHART: Who are the major donors?

Dr McMurtry: There is no major donor. The only income the Society for Wind Vigilance ever received was when they held a first conference in adverse health effects, which is described in my submission. We charged people $100 to come, as I recall. We realised some income from that. There was no surplus, I can assure you, because we had to cover the cost of the food and all the usual things you do with a conference. We have received no money whatsoever from any energy-related industry. Not ever.

Senator URQUHART: What about from other companies or organisations?

Dr McMurtry: No private enterprise company, no for-profit company, no agency and no charitable agency. Nothing. That has been suggested before. It is disturbing to me, because we are recurrently having to repeat what to me is obvious: there has simply been no financial support coming from outside. None.

Senator URQUHART: I think it is good to get that on the record. Thank you. Have you ever published any work in a peer-reviewed academic journal about the possible impacts of wind farms.

Dr McMurtry: Yes, probably several times. That is included in my submission. For example, I published two papers on the criteria for diagnosis: one in 2011 in the Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society, and the second one in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, in either October or November of 2014. I have also submitted the peer-reviewed blogs from the Canadian Medical Association Journal, which is the lead journal in Canada, where I comment on the Health Canada study. That was peer-reviewed. We have also had something accepted that I submitted in confidence for the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. In addition, I have presented before the Acoustical Society of America. I have presented before government at three levels: municipal, provincial and federal.

Senator URQUHART: I wanted to pick up on the point about the Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society. I understand that this publication was de-indexed in 1995.

Dr McMurtry: SAGE Publications have since resurrected it. It now is appearing in the Index Medicus. More significantly, the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine has been a recognised journal for over 100 years. The Index Medicus did not come along until later, or the similar indices. It is a progression from towards the diagnostic criteria, which is in the Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society to the second paper on diagnostic criteria, which was in 2014. That is a journal that is well recognised.

Senator BACK: In the PowerPoint presentation you sent us, you comment on biological gradients: that greater exposure should generally lead to greater incidence of the effect. It causes me to ask about the proposal with the independent medical research that has been commissioned now by the Abbott government her in Australia. One witness has proposed to our inquiry that a one-off, laboratory-based test for audible and infrasound could be undertaken with people who participate for periods of somewhere around about 10 to 30 minutes, or maybe up to an hour, once only. From your experience do you believe that the results of a study of that type would be of any value in determining possible adverse health effects?

Dr McMurtry: I think it would have value, but not in and of itself. It is perhaps a necessary but insufficient condition. There are features of industrial wind turbine noise that, when people are in their homes, are very different from in the laboratory setting, and capturing all that in the laboratory setting is virtually impossible. This is basically unwanted noise and unpredictable noise. It occurs at night. It pulses and it also has the quality of resonating within the home. The sound energy comes out—it may be low-frequency or infrasound—and there can be resonance in the home. That cannot be captured in the laboratory. Some people, for example, are being disturbed at night and go outside and they are less disturbed. I would cite in particular Malcolm Swinbanks, a well-known acoustician, who described that very thing and presented it in Glasgow two or there months ago. That has been reported by many people. It has been sound for as long as 30 years ago.

Senator BACK: People have put to us that infrasound can occur from waves crashing on the beach and trucks going along highways, and therefore there is nothing special about infrasound from industrial wind turbines, so why all the fuss. Could you comment on the different sources of infrasound and how they might affect people?

Dr McMurtry: What is very important here is to realise that my background is not as an acoustician. You might be better to direct that question to an acoustician. To answer as best as I am able, the acousticians have pointed out that there is a unique signature to wind turbine noise that has not be found elsewhere. I cite, for example, Steven Cooper, whom you have heard. There is also the recent work of Paul Schomer, as well as the 2012 publication with Walker, Hessler, Hessler, Rand and himself, in which they made clear that there were non-auditory and non-visual queues that disturbed people. The other sources of infrasound that people are talking about do not mimic, are not the same as, the signature that is coming from wind turbines. It is unprecedented, so it is crucial that any research captures exactly what people are experiencing.

Senator BACK: You made a comment a moment ago in response to a question from a colleague that you had commented on the Health Canada study. Briefly, could you point us to what your comments were on the Health Canada study?

Dr McMurtry: Yes. You have a copy of that in my submission. It is the CMAJ submission and, I think, appendix 7. Ms Carmen Krogh and I did it. I recently was on the same panel with David Michaud and I pointed out some of the shortcomings, but the single most important one is that it is a cross-sectional study. There are other important problems. They started out with 2,004 houses and some 400 were ruled out of scope—424, as I recall; I am going by memory—and then, when they sent out the questionnaires, another 322 dropped out, which left 766 out of the original group. I wish there had been an analysis of the abandoned or non-eligible homes. I think an opportunity was lost there. Another opportunity lost is that the people most often affected—and I certainly know this from my own experience—are people who are over 79 and under 18. Children are more vulnerable than, say, young adults or middle-aged adults. The Health Canada study looked at people from 18 to 79 and then excluded the rest. They are leaving out the most vulnerable groups.

Senator BACK: Thank you very much. I appreciate that advice.

CHAIR: Thank you, Dr McMurtry, for your appearance before the committee today.

Dr McMurtry: I thank you very much for this opportunity.

Hansard, 29 May June 2015

Dr McMurtry’s evidence is available from the Parliament’s website here. And his submission is available here in a Zip file: documents

bob mcmurtry

Wind Industry Shills want More Money Wasted on Useless Wind Energy…Aussies say NO!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

Adam Creighton: Labor’s Ludicrous Wind Power Policy to Squander more than $100 Billion

July 27, 2015 by

Money Wasted

****

In Sunday’s post, we detailed Labor’s descent into wind power madness – with its impossible push for a 50% renewable energy target.

One of the immediate responses has come from the press-pack; who have now turned on the great wind power fraud with a vengeance.

Journalists with a modicum of common sense have woken up to the fact that they’ve been lied to and taken for fools by the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers for years now.

The backlash amongst journos to Labor’s lurch to the infantile left, has caused an ‘awakening’, which has been swift and scathing. The Australian’s Adam Creighton – a lad with a solid economics background – is among those who have caught on to the scale and scope of the fraud.

In this thumping little piece, Adam slams “rent-seeking global turbine manufacturers” – which we take to mean struggling Danish fan maker, Vestas – and otherwise clobbers the pointlessness and insane cost of trying to rely on a power generation source that means future power “supply would depend on the weather” – rather than on that silly old economic chestnut: power consumers’ actual ‘demand’. Over to Adam.

Labor’s renewable energy target policy would waste $100bn
The Australian
Adam Creighton
24 July 2015

To make sure we have enough electricity over the next 15 years we can either spend $100 billion on new generating capacity, or we can spend next to nothing.

Both strategies will meet our electricity needs. Labor has decided the former makes a lot more sense, given its new policy to require 50 per cent of electricity to be generated by renewable energy by 2030. In practice this would require tripling the Renewable Energy Target to about 100 terawatt hours by 2030.

This is bizarre policy, not least because Labor agreed with the government to lower the RET to 33 by 2020, only last month. It reflects an almost religious and increasingly pervasive devotion to wind and solar power, whatever the cost.

Hiking the RET so dramatically would divert massive resources into construction of unreliable and costly generating capacity with limited environmental benefits.

ACIL-Allen reckons the cost of new wind, geothermal and solar capacity would come to about $100bn. The extra 11,000 wind turbines alone — 10 times the present number — would cost $65bn.

This is money that could have been used for projects that don’t require government compulsion to make them viable. Or it could have used to research ways to curb carbon emissions rather than enrich rent-seeking global turbine manufacturers.

Australia doesn’t need to invest in any new electricity supply; spending billions to get zero extra output is economic vandalism. In fact, electricity demand has been steadily falling (from 198 TwH in 2009 to 184 in 2014) because of higher network prices, our dwindling industrial base and popular energy-efficiency initiatives.

Current estimates see modest increases to 2030, which could be accommodated by existing capacity. Gas and coal-fired power stations are already being mothballed or closed, Alinta’s Port Augusta plants being recent examples.

Yet an axis of ignorance and self-interest is trying to argue Labor’s 50 per cent mandate will ultimately lower prices for households and create jobs. They seized on initial modelling by Frontier Economics this week that showed typical electricity bills under Labor’s plan would fall by $30 a year from 2016 to 2022 and then rise by $4 a year will 2030.

This occurs because existing fossil-fuel generators are assumed to bear heavy losses. The policy-induced glut of new supply pushes wholesale electricity prices down (especially in a market where demand was falling anyway), in some cases by more than the cost of the renewable energy certificates that the RET compels retailers to buy. The RET, as the government’s 2014 review found, “transfers wealth from electricity consumers and other participants in the electricity market to renewable generators”.

Existing generators might put up with this for a while — shutting a coal power station can cost more than running it at a loss — but in the longer run Alfred Marshal’s basic principle that the prices we pay for goods and services must ultimately cover their costs will begin to kick in.

“We might see a serious backlash from consumers in the medium to long run as fossil fuel generators leave the market, and retail costs start to reflect the cost and fundamentals of renewable energy,” says Tony Wood, an impartial energy expert at the Grattan Institute.

Consider a 100 per cent RET. Without base-load, conventional power sources — be they nuclear, coal or gas — supply would depend on the weather, and prices would reflect the far greater actual costs of production.

Large-scale wind and solar-powered electricity is two to four times more expensive than coal-power electricity, a discrepancy that could grow if the sunniest and windiest sites have been used up already. Whenever in doubt, ask: if renewable energy were so much more efficient and cost-effective than fossil fuels, why do we need to force people to buy it, by law?

Of course, wind and sunshine are free, so the marginal costs of renewable energy can be lower than those for fossil fuels once the turbines and solar grids are built. But it is irrational to ignore their upfront costs and junk perfectly satisfactory power stations unless other benefits were truly massive.

But they aren’t. Yes, the RET will create jobs, but so would deliberately complicating the tax system and hiring 10,000 public servants to enforce it.

Furthermore, the RET, along with the government’s Emissions Reduction Fund, is a terribly inefficient way to reduce greenhouse emissions. Large-scale solar, for instance, does so at about $200 a tonne or 10 times the cost of a simple carbon tax or emissions trading scheme, which both Labor and Coalition now spurn. Wind is about $100 a tonne.

Surely $100bn could be better spent on developing Australia’s rich uranium reserves to create a base-load power industry that can replace fossil fuel generators when they naturally expire.

But when renewable energy is seen as a religion, the case is far stronger. Certain religious observances might appear irrational but if they make people happy they serve a valid purpose. This is the best argument for a $65bn wind turbine building program.
The Australian

adam-creighton

****

A very solid wrap-up from Adam – who, based on that effort, is likely to end up in STT’s Hall of Fame. However, Adam needs to drill a little deeper on the true costs of the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time; and – given his apparent antipathy to the wind power rort – we fully expect him to.

As we detailed in Sunday’s post, contrary to Matt Harris’ musings, the impact of momentary spurts of wind power on power prices is limited to the dispatch price (when the wind is actually blowing).

When the wind is blowing – the impact on retail prices (the price that troubles households and businesses) has retailers paying up to $120 per MWh (AGL pays $112) for every MWh of wind power dispatched to the grid – irrespective of the dispatch or wholesale price – which at night time will often be close to – or less than – zero. The rates retailers pay are set by long-term Power Purchase Agreements.

Wind power outfits steadfastly refuse to disclose their PPAs, for obvious political reasons. Infigen and the like aren’t going to win many hearts and minds if they revealed the fact that – in order to remain profitable over the long-term – they need a guaranteed price of around 4 times the average wholesale price of $35 – which doesn’t quite gel with their PR spruiker’s endless nonsense about the ‘wind being free‘.

The other critical detail that Adam needs to expand on, is the actual operating costs of wind turbines – such as operating and maintenance costs (recurring and increasing over time as these things grind their way to a halt): costs that – at $25 per MWh for every MWh dispatched – compare, not so favourably, with the ability of Victorian coal fired power generators to profitably deliver power to the grid, at less than $25 per MWh.

The operation of PPAs and their effect on retail power prices is covered in detail here – as is the actual operating costs of turbines:

When will the Wind Industry Stop Lying?

Australia’s Most Notorious Wind Power Outfit – Infigen – says “Move Over Pinocchio, Here We Come”

Then there’s the way in which the REC Subsidy paid to wind power outfits operates as an additive tax on all Australian power consumers – under the current LRET – a figure that runs to more than $45 billion:

Out to Save their Wind Industry Mates, Macfarlane & Hunt Lock-in $46 billion LRET Retail Power Tax

The other misconception – arising from guff pitched up by Tony Wood from the Grattan Institute – is that increasing wind power capacity will see “fossil fuel generators leave the market”. In terms of the fossil fuel generating capacity required to meet total consumer demand – no it won’t.

Fossil fuel generators – with a capacity at least equal to 100% of any installed wind power capacity – will be required to be available and online as ‘spinning reserve’ – 100% of the time – to account for total (and totally) unpredictable collapses in wind power output.

It does not matter whether there are 2,000, 5,000 or 10,000 turbines spread out across the Eastern Grid, as a natural, meteorological phenomenon the wind will stop blowing across that entire area, such that wind power output will drop to a doughnut hundreds of times every year. And that’s a FACT:

The Wind Power Fraud (in pictures): Part 2 – The Whole Eastern Grid Debacle

June 2015 National

The cost of building and maintaining – what is now referred to as ‘redundant’ capacity – essential to provide back-up ‘cover’ for a further 11,000 3MW turbines – would be astronomical:

Lessons from Germany’s Wind Power Disaster

Not to mention the need to pay fossil fuel generators millions upon millions of dollars in ‘capacity payments’ to ensure sufficient ‘spinning reserve’ and/or fast start up peaking power plants such as Open Cycle Gas Turbines and diesel generators to cover wind power output collapses, almost every day:

Power Punters to Pay Double for Wind Power “FAILS” – REAL Power Generators Paid to Cover Wind Power Fraud

Labor’s latest move has simply magnified the costs of the current LRET debacle by a factor of two or more. However, with journalists like Adam Creighton on the trail it won’t be long before Australians work out just why their power bills are going through the roof, now. And when they do, it will be a matter of when, not if, the LRET policy meets its political doom.

CPI and electricity

As the Green Scam Implodes, the Wind Weasels Scream Louder!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

‘Greens’ Gamble on Your Future; while PM Stops CEFC from Laying Wind Power Bets

July 22, 2015 by

kenny-rogers-420x0

****

A little while back, that great philosopher, Kenny Rogers spelt out the rules for Gamblers in clear and simple terms:

You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em,

Know when to walk away and know when to run.

You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table.

There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.

That sound and sage advice is ignored in the breach by the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers.

Every time there’s a ‘little blow’ – and wind power output registers more than the usual piddling fraction of its ‘installed capacity’, there’s a flurry of Tweets and blog posts about the ‘monumental’ (but always ‘momentary’) energy effort. All laced with the kind of tear-filled joy that accompanies cheers for a disabled athlete, who’s just won Olympic Gold.

But, when it comes to cheering on the ‘disabled’ energy runner, wind power fans are always in breach of the Gambler’s 3rd rule, about counting their money while sittin’ at the table – they always count too loud and too soon.

And, just like the Gambler, the greentard is always quick and ready to tell you about their “wins”, but never about their “losses”.  When he’s down on his luck, the Gambler will happily lie to himself, friends and family about his failing fortunes – the greentard Gambler is no different.

In the last two posts (here and here) we popped up the some of the “track results” for wind power and, as laid out in dozens of pictures, its shameful ‘form’ would have had it “scratched” from the book, long ago – but for the gullible and naive (not to mention corrupt) among our political betters that control the field.

We’ll start with another example of how the “Gambling Bug” has displaced common sense, with greentards cock-a-hoop about “a single windy NIGHT in Denmark” – said to herald a ‘new dawn’ in our wind powered ‘future’.

GetUp! striving for an Australia where wind power meets 3am demand
Freedom Watch
Brett Hogan
14 July 2015

The hearts of climate change lobbyists were aflutter recently with news that wind farms had generated 140 per cent of Denmark’s electricity demand, and local advocates contrasting this with the Abbott Government’s supposed ‘war on wind’.

What this story is really saying is that in a country with a population the size of Victoria (around 5.6 million) and less than half the geographical area of Tasmania (at 43,000 square kilometres), wind power is able at 3am in the morning, when very few people are using electricity, to generate electricity in excess of demand.

Great work!

To get a sense of what 3am demand for electricity looks like, here it is this morning in Victoria:

400Energy_demand

****

Denmark is of course famous for having the most expensive electricity prices in the world and enjoys the luxury of being close enough to Germany, Sweden and Norway to buy their excess electricity (in part supplied by significant nuclear and hydroelectric facilities) when the wind isn’t blowing.

Wind farms turn the economics of energy markets upside down. Traditional power plants, like any other commodity, generate a product (power) that is sold in a market competing with other providers, and charging a price that is set balancing demand and supply.

However, wind farms, which are typically only economical in the first place due to significant government subsidies, which often include fixed tariffs (so much for the free market) actually rob the market of price signals when the wind blows. It can destroy the economics of electricity providers that need to stay in the market as backup for the 70 per cent of the time that the wind doesn’t blow.

Every country needs cheap and affordable electricity to build and sustain a modern economy and for its people to enjoy quality of life.

Australia has a population of almost 24 million people spread over 7 million square kilometres with an electricity demand more than 6 times that of Denmark, and no neighbouring country’s electricity to fall back on. Denmark offers no lessons for Australia other than “Don’t do this.”

Chris Berg in The Drum today wrote about the history of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and its political genesis. The Abbott government was right to follow the lead of the United Kingdom and instruction to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to no longer invest in wind or small-scale solar facilities.
Freedom Watch

roulette-table-2

****

Now, while the wind industry and its greentard-gamblers are ready to keep rolling the dice with our energy future, thankfully, the PM, Tony Abbott and his Vice-Squad, Treasurer “Smokin’” Joe Hockey and Mathias “The Terminator” Cormann have tipped the gaming tables and prevented the Clean Energy Finance Corporation from laying anymore high-risk bets, with taxpayers’ money. Here’s a little piece on the Vice-Squad’s raid.

There’s no ‘war on wind’, just MPs doing their job
Chris Berg
14 July 2015
The Drum

There are a lot of objectionable things in Australian politics, but Government ministers directing the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to stop funding new wind farm projects doesn’t rate, writes Chris Berg.

There was a lot of heat in the debate about the Clean Energy Finance Corporation over the weekend, but not much light.

On Sunday, Fairfax papers reported the Abbott Government had directed the CEFC to stop funding new wind farm projects.

Social media was livid. Tony Abbott was waging a “war on wind power”. How dare the Abbott Government presume to interfere with such a virtuous independent market program to tackle climate change?

That reaction was, to put it mildly, a load of nonsense. The Government’s direction to the CEFC is not unprecedented interference in an independent body. Nor is the CEFC a “market” mechanism. The CEFC is a government program whose funding policies are set by the executive.

Yes, the Coalition wants to abolish the CEFC outright. But it can’t. So the Government says it would rather the CEFC focus on funding innovation rather than established technology. There are a lot of objectionable things in Australian politics. This doesn’t rate.

The CEFC’s enabling legislation – which was written and introduced by the Gillard government and passed without Coalition support – allows the sitting government to do exactly what the Coalition is doing now. Asnoted in an explanatory memorandum authored by the Gillard government:

It is appropriate that the Government, as manager of the economy and owner of the Corporation, have a mechanism for articulating its broad expectations for how the Corporation’s funds will be invested and managed by the Board.

So each year the government is required to provide the CEFC with an investment mandate direction.

The memorandum specifically nominated “allocation of investments between different types of clean energy technologies” as one of the areas in which ministers might issue a direction.

What independence is provided by the CEFC Act is a requirement that ministerial directions not be contrary to the CEFC’s statutory obligations, and that ministers must not direct or prevent CEFC investments in specific companies. All fair enough.

With these provisions, the Gillard government gave itself the statutory leeway to direct the CEFC’s investment direction. If it didn’t want an Abbott Government to have the same leeway, it should have written the legislation differently. It knew the Coalition was opposed to the CEFC.

Anyway, that discretion is entirely proper. The CEFC is not an ethereal, non-political part of the Australian social fabric. It is the result of a four-year-old political compromise, designed to funnel money into one particular sector of the economy as part of the quid pro quo for theGreens’ carbon tax support.

So it’s a little bit silly to hear (as we did over the weekend) that by changing the CEFC’s mandate the Abbott Government is “picking winners”. That’s exactly what the CEFC was designed to do. The CEFC was designed to pick winners. It was designed to choose investments that it felt were not being adequately funded by open capital markets.

And the CEFC legislation already favours specific technologies. The body is not allowed to invest in carbon capture and storage or nuclear power. Nor can it invest in non-Australian projects. This last constraint seems a little peculiar if you think the CEFC’s ultimate goal is to reduce carbon emissions – a global, not a national, problem. But foreigners can’t vote.

Because it is not driven by the profit motive in a competitive market, the CEFC has to rely on non-market criteria on which to evaluate alternative investments. Right now that is done by these folk – the board of the CEFC. All the Abbott Government’s no-wind mandate does is constrain their criteria some more.

The idea that the CEFC is a “commercial” operation is nonsense. If it makes a profit consistently then it is a good candidate for privatisation. Why should the government own a profit-making financier? Why would it need to?

The CEFC got upset earlier this year when the Abbott Government asked it to lift its investment returns, asking it to “consistently outperform the market by a large margin”. But if the CEFC can’t beat the market with its government support, then the case for its continued existence is pretty weak.

Australia has a long history of government-owned banks like the CEFC – banks designed to push money into politically favoured sectors.

Who now remembers the Commonwealth Development Bank or the Australian Industry Development Corporation? Or the Commonwealth Bank’s Mortgage Bank Department and Industrial Finance Department? Or the joint public-private ventures of the Australian Resources Development Bank, the Primary Industry Bank of Australia, or the Australian Banks’ Export Refinance Corporation?

These banks were abolished or privatised because Australia came to recognise that markets allocate capital better than bureaucrats.

Right now there is a majority in the Senate preventing the abolition of the CEFC.

But it is almost inevitable that one day parliament will end the CEFC. Just as it ended all its other special development banks.
The Drum

abbott, hockey, cormann

More Evidence, that Wind Power is a FRAUD!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

The Wind Power Fraud (in pictures): Part 1 – the South Australian Wind Farm Fiasco

July 20, 2015 by

Definition of fraud

****

In today’s post we lay out the wind power fraud in pictures, as it’s perpetrated in, what’s referred to as, ‘Australia’s wind power capital’, South Australia (tomorrow we expand the net to capture the debacle on the entire Eastern Grid).

To call the ‘performance’ of SA’s 17 wind farms (spread over a vast area of the State – with an installed capacity of 1,477MW) over the last few months “diabolical” is to flatter them.

SA’s Labor government has been talking up a wind powered future for months now – it’s presiding over the worst unemployment in the Nation, at 8.2% and rising fast – and seems to thinks the answer is out there somewhere – ‘blowin’ in the wind’. The fact that its wind power debacle has led to South Australians paying the highest power costs in the Nation – if not (on a purchasing power parity basis) the highest in the world – and, yet, the dimwits that run it wonder why it’s an economic train wreck (see our posts here and here).

Well, today, STT – always ready to rain on the wind industry’s parade – as well as the gullible and corrupt that cheer it on – spells it out in pictures – that even the most intellectually interrupted should be able to grasp.

The derisory data that follows comes courtesy of Aneroid Energy. We’ll start with a quick look at SA’s monthly performance (oh, and if the graphs appear fuzzy, click on them and they’ll pop up crystal clear in a new window).

May 2015 SA

Looking a bit like the meanderings of a drunken spider that had dipped one leg in the ink-well and staggered over the page, that’s the nonsense that wind farms can deliver power as an “alternative” to on-demand power generation sources such as hydro, gas and coal belted, yet again.

With 31 ‘chances’ to make a meaningful contribution to lighting up the230,000 homes said by wind power outfits to be ‘powered’ by their wind farms in SA – output collapses 13 times to less than 100MW – or less than 6.8% of the total installed capacity of 1,477MW.

Here’s the total output from all wind farms in SA for June 2015.

June 2015 SA

Having hardly lit up the screen for much of May, you’d think that June would see a better effort – but, oh no. Total output spends more time below 200MW (or 13% of installed capacity) than above. And hits the bottom of the pool more than 7 times – with ‘output’ failing to power a single kettle – let alone the hundreds of thousands of SA homes we’re constantly told are ‘powered’ by the wind.

Here’s the total output from all wind farms in SA for the start of July 2015.

July 2015 SA

Looking more like the fat bloke bouncing around in the deep-end of the local pool, after a long lunch, July’s effort (so far) isn’t much better than the months before.

A couple of short-lived ‘spurts aside, and the rest is largely a ‘joke’: crashing by around 1,000 MW over 24 hours; and almost repeating the ‘performance’ a few days later with a precipitous plummet of over 500 MW in a couple of hours – makes it pretty clear that the words ‘reliable’ and ‘wind power’ don’t belong on the same page, let alone in a sensible sentence.

Spending days struggling to produce 200MW; hours and hours producing less than half that (or less than 6.7% of capacity); and 50MW (3.38%) or less for hours at a stretch, tends to take the gloss off the glory heaped on SA’s wind power dream; and suggests its future will be more of an energy nightmare.

Having taken a ‘helicopter view’, we’ll zoom in now – for a closer look at some of the more outlandish results on: May 3, 16, 25 and 26; June 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 20, 29 and 30; July 2, 3 and 7.

3 May 2015 SA

Entire SA Grid – 3 May 2015 – from midnight to 9pm (21hrs):

Total wind farm output: midnight to 9pm – never more than 100MW; from 3am to 8pm (17hrs) – never much more than 50MW; and during the same period collapsing to ZERO around 6am, and 5pm to 6pm.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: midnight to 2 am – 3.4%; 7am to 2pm – 1.7%; 2am to 9pm – 3.38%; 6am and 5pm to 6pm – ZERO%.

16 May SA

Entire SA Grid – 16 May 2015 – from 1am to 12.30pm – a total collapse of 720MW to ZERO:

Total wind farm output: 11.30am to 5pm (5.5hrs) – never more than 100MW; collapsing to ZERO from 12.30pm to 2pm (1.5hrs).

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: 11.30am to 5pm (5.5hrs) – never more than 6.8%; collapsing to ZERO% – from 12.30pm to 2pm (1.5hrs).

25 May SA

Entire SA Grid – 25 May 2015 – from 8am to noon – a collapse of 325MW to ZERO – a 100% drop in output, in around 4hrs.

Total output: from 11am to 9pm (10hrs) – never more than 50MW; from noon to 4pm (4hrs) – ZERO.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: 11am to 9pm – less than 3.85%; from noon to 4pm – ZERO%.

26 May SA

Entire SA Grid – 26 May 2015 – from midnight to 6pm (18hrs):

Total wind farm output: from midnight to 6pm – never much more than 350MW; from midnight to 2am 150MW; from 8am to 4pm – never more than 200MW; and falling to 90MW at 11am.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: from midnight to 2am – 10%; 8am to 4pm – never more than 13.5%; and dropping to 6.1% – at 11am.

Now for a closer look at June 2015.

12 June SA

Entire SA Grid – 12 June 2015 – from midnight to 4pm a collapse of over 600MW:

Total wind farm output: 10am to 6pm – less than 150MW; 3pm to 5pm – dropping to 50MW.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: 10am to 6pm – 10%; and 3pm to 5pm  – dropping to 3.85%.

13 June SA

Entire SA Grid – 13 June 2015 – from 9am to 3pm – a collapse of 750MW – 800MW to 50MW – or an output drop of 94% – at a rate of 125MW/hour:

Total wind farm output: from 2pm to 8pm – never much more than 100 MW; from 3pm to 5pm – around 50MW.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: 2pm to 8pm – between 6.8% and 10%; 3pm to 5pm – around 3.85%.

14 June SA

Entire SA Grid – 14 June 2015 – from 8am to 3pm – a collapse of over 650MW – from 700MW to 30MW – or a 96% drop in output:

Total wind farm output: from 1pm to 4pm (3hrs) – less than 100MW – dropping to 30MW.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: 1pm to 4pm – less than 6.8% – dropping to 2.03%.

16 June SA

Entire SA Grid – 16 June 2015 – 24 hours – never more than 140MW:

Total wind farm output: from midnight to 5pm (17hrs) – less than 30 MW; from 3am to 7am (4hrs) – ZERO; falling to ZERO between 9am and 11am.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: never more than 10% for the entire 24 hour period; midnight to 5pm – less than 2%; with ZERO% produced for around 5hrs.

17 June SA

Entire SA Grid – 17 June 2015 – 24 hours – never more than 260MW – or 17.6% of capacity:

Total wind farm output: from 5am to 8am – less than 140MW; dropping to 100MW at 8.30am.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: never more than 17.6%; 5am to 8am less than 9.4%; falling to 6.8%.

20 June SA

Entire SA Grid – 20 June 2015 – from midnight to 6pm (18hrs) – never more than 70MW:

Total wind farm output: from midnight to 6pm – less than 70MW; 3am to 6am (3hrs) – around 25MW; from 1pm to 6pm (5hrs) – 25MW; falling to 10MW – around 4pm.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: midnight to 5pm – less than 4.7%; 3am to 6am – 1.7%; 1pm – 6pm – 1.7%, falling to 0.7% – at 4pm.

29 June SA

Entire SA Grid – 29 June 2015 – from 3am to 1pm – an almost total collapse of 550MW to 10MW – or a 98% drop in output:

Total wind farm output: from 1pm to 5pm (4hrs) – never more than 10MW; from 6pm to midnight (6hrs) – 50MW – briefly rising to 170MW and dropping to 90MW.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: from 1pm to 5pm – 0.7%; 6pm to midnight – 3.3% – briefly rising to 11% – dropping back 6.1%.

30 June SA

Entire SA Grid – 30 June 2015 – for the 24 hour period – never more than 200MW:

Total wind farm output: from 1am to 7pm (18hrs) – never more than 80MW; from around 3am to around noon – less than than 40MW and closer to 20MW for that period; falling to less than 20MW around 4pm.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: 1am to 7pm (6hrs) – never more than 5.4%; from around 3am to around noon (9hrs) – less than than 2.7% and closer to 1.3% for that period; falling to less than 1.3% around 4pm.

Now a look at the scoreboard for July, so far.

2 July SA

Entire SA Grid – 2 July 2015 – a total collapse of output over the period – 700MW to around 10MW:

Total wind farm output: from noon to midnight (12hrs) – never more than 150MW; generally around 100MW – falling to 10MW around 10pm to midnight.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: from noon to midnight (12hrs) – never more than 10%MW; generally around 6.8% – falling to 0.7% around 10pm to midnight.

3 July SA

Entire SA Grid – 3 July 2015 – for the 24 hour period – never more than 150MW:

Total wind farm output: from midnight to 3am (3hrs) – never more than 20MW; twice falling to around 10MW; short burst to reach 80MW by 6am; dropping back to 40MW by 8am; with peaks and troughs later in the day – before dropping back to less than 100MW – 7pm to midnight.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: never more than 11% for the 24 hour period; much of it producing less than 6% – and often less than 2%.

7 July SA

Entire SA Grid – 7 July 2015 – from 2am to 1pm – a collapse (almost total) of 450MW – from 470MW to 20MW – or a 97% drop in output:

Total wind farm output: from 10am to midnight (14hrs) – never more than 60MW; twice falling to less than 20MW; and to ZERO around 10pm to midnight.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: from 10am to midnight (14hrs) – never more than 4.1%; twice falling to less than 1.3%; and to ZERO% – around 10pm to midnight.

We’re bored now – we’ve made our point: the idea that SA (or anywhere else for that matter) can ditch fossil fuel power generation sources and – by relying on wind power – go ‘100% renewable’ is pure fantasy.

Anyone who – after perusing the pitiful pictorial above – tries to tell you otherwise is probably not playing with the full deck. Either that, or they’ve got their trotters firmly planted in the wind power fraud trough.

At STT we love scorching wind power myths – and all the more so when it can be done with pictures.

In the last few months the lunatics from the fringes of the Labor party – and other hard-green-left nutjobs – have ramped up their rhetoric – pressing all and sundry join in their ultimate mission to go “fossil free” – they mean abstaining from the use of “fossil fuel”, rather than ceasing to rely on T-Rex and his – now stony/boney – kin. Although they have no apparent hesitation when it comes to burning up millions of litres of kerosene, flying to groovy backpacker must-sees, and “climate change” jamborees, all over the globe (see our post here).

Contrary to the anti-fossil fuel squad’s ranting, there isn’t a ‘choice’ between wind power and fossil fuel power generation: there’s a ‘choice’ between wind power (with fossil fuel powered back-up equal to 100% of its capacity) and relying on wind power alone. If you’re ready to ‘pick’ the latter, expect to be sitting freezing (or boiling) in the dark more than 60% of the time.

Wind power isn’t a ‘system’, it’s ‘chaos’ – the pictures tell the story.

One thing that amuses the STT gang, is seeing links to our posts appearing on the comments pages of online news sites, blog forums and the like: often they’re dropped into a ‘debate’ about the ‘wonders of wind’, with an apparently gleeful ‘splat’ – in a ‘get around that, and play fair’ kind of moment – that usually pulls the ‘debate’ to a shuddering halt.

STT predicts that this is going to be one such post.

So, next time you find yourself dealing with the intellectual pygmies, that are still clinging to their wind power myths and fantasies, why not flick them a link to this post – or have a little fun with an STT ‘splat moment’, on their favourite blogs and news sites?

Why not pitch a few sitters along with it, such as: on 3 May; after lunch on 25 May; after lunch on 13 June; on 16 June; on 20 June; and after lunch on 7 July:

How many South Australian homes (not kettles) were actually being powered by ‘wonderful wind’?

Where did all the power come from that kept the lights on and got the kettles boiling?

Was it coal? Was it gas? Or a bit of both?

In the light of your last answer, how much ‘dreaded’ CO2 gas was saved by SA’s 17 wind farms?

And what effect did wind power have on power prices in SA’s wholesale market for electricity?

We don’t expect them to enjoy it; but wind power worshippers have never been that keen on the facts.

Facts

Dr. Sarah Laurie sticks up for Victims of Bad Gov’t Policies, re: Wind Turbines!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

Senate Wind Farm Inquiry – Dr Sarah Laurie says: “Kill the Noise & give Neighbours a Fair Go”

July 17, 2015 by

senate review

****

The Senate Inquiry has had to wade through a fairly pungent cesspit of ‘material’ dropped on it by the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers. No doubt to their great relief (or, in the case of wind industry stooge, Anne Urquhart, infuriation) the Senators have heard from a raft of genuine and highly qualified people, who are clearly dedicated to protecting their fellow human beings – rather than ridiculing, denigrating or deriding them as “anti-wind farm wing-nuts” or “Dick Brains“.

One of those rare breaths of empathetic fresh air arrived before the Committee in the form of Dr Sarah Laurie (one of STT’s ‘Australians of the Year); and a Champion for human health and human rights.

Sarah has been out to protect people from all manner of excessive industrial noise since she pitched up with the Waubra Foundation in 2010.

In the finest tradition of what made (and STT would like to think still makes) Australia a decent place for all comers, Sarah has thrown everything she’s got at getting a solid set of truly relevant noise regulations – that will actually be enforced – with one thing in mind: a “fair go” for all.

STT’s covered the concept of a National Noise Regulator, with the sort of teeth needed to prevent industries of all descriptions – not just wind power outfits –  from destroying peoples’ rights to sleep, live in and otherwise enjoy their homes, a couple of times:

Top Acoustics Professor Calls for Full Compensation for Wind Farm Victims, as Council Calls for “National Noise Cops”

Alan Moran: on the Insane & Pointless Cost of Wind Power

Here’s Dr Laurie detailing to the Inquiry the common-sense-concept of having one noise rule for all.

Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines – 29 May 2015

LAURIE, Ms Sarah, Chief Executive Officer, Waubra Foundation

CHAIR: Welcome. Could you please confirm that information on parliamentary privilege and the protection of witnesses in evidence has been provided to you?

Ms Laurie: Yes, it has.

CHAIR: Thank you. I now invite you to make a brief opening statement. At the conclusion of your remarks I will invite members of the committee to put questions to you.

Ms Laurie: Thank you, Senators, for the invitation to attend this Senate inquiry into regulatory issues relating to industrial wind turbines.

The systemic regulatory failure with respect to the way industrial and environmental noise pollution is regulated in Australia is not confined to wind turbine noise. As you would have seen from the submissions of the Wollar Progress Association; and residents living near the coalmines in the Upper Hunter region and residents of Lithgow impacted by coal fired power stations and extractor fan noise and vibration. Their stories, both with respect to the range and severity of symptoms and the way they are treated by the noise polluters and the government regulatory authorities, are all too familiar to the growing numbers of rural residents living near industrial wind power generators.

Once sensitised, residents affected by infrasound and low-frequency noise from coal fired power stations find they also react to wind turbines in the same way. The body and the brain do not care about the source of the sound and vibration. The reactions are involuntary and hardwired, and part of our physiological fight/flight response.

At the heart of this systemic regulatory failure of environmental noise pollution is the failure of the planning and noise pollution regulations, because they all fail to varying degrees to predict, measure and regulate the excessive noise and vibration in the lower frequencies—in the infrasound and low-frequency noise regions, specifically between 0.1 and 200 hertz. These regulations also permit levels of audible noise which are guaranteed to cause adverse impacts because they are so much higher than the very quiet background noise environments in rural areas. These rules are not fit for purpose, and guarantee that some residents will be seriously harmed.

There has been pretence that there is no evidence of harm at the levels of infrasound and low-frequency noise being emitted. This is untrue. There is an extensive body of research conducted by NASA and the US Department of Energy 30 years ago, which: established direct causation of sleep disturbance and a range of physiological effects euphemistically called ‘annoyance’; acknowledged that people became sensitised or conditioned to the noise with ongoing exposure; and recommended exposure thresholds in order to ensure residents were protected from harm directly caused by this pulsing infrasound and low-frequency noise.

This research was conducted in residents living with sound and vibration from military aircraft, from gas and from wind turbines. Small rooms facing onto the noise source were described as being the worst. Residents described feeling unpleasant sensations at levels where the sound could not be heard but could still be perceived. These recommended exposure limits and the evidence of direct causation were widely known at the time but appeared to be ignored by noise pollution regulatory authorities and acousticians ever since and have never been adopted. This is a serious failure of the professional and ethical responsibilities of the acoustics profession.

Many medical practitioners remain completely ignorant of the effects of excessive noise in the lower frequencies, other than acknowledging that excessive night time noise could cause sleep disturbance which, if prolonged, could cause serious harm to physical and mental health. They do not realise that the neurophysiological stress, the cardiovascular pathology, the mental health pathology, and the cancers and chronic infections resulting from immunosuppression are all related to chronic sleep deprivation and chronic stress. Both these are designated as indirect effects from noise pollution by some, including the NHMRC in their 2010 rapid review.

However, the effects of chronic sleep deprivation are anything but indirect, as the UN committee against torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment has specifically acknowledged. In addition, there is a substantial body of research which has established a disease complex called vibroacoustic disease, also caused by excessive infrasound and low-frequency noise. Most of that research has been done in an occupational setting. This disease causes permanent damage to a variety of organs and tissues including, for example, damage to cardiac valves from thickened collagen, which is now being reported in residents living near industrial wind turbines in Germany and in Australia. It is concerning that in Portugal this pathology has been identified in a child exposed to excessive infrasound and low-frequency noise in utero and in his early years. People living near coalmines in the Upper Hunter have also started to report pathology consistent with vibroacoustic disease.

Also of concern are the unexplained and life-threatening adrenaline surge pathologies being reported by residents living near coalmines and industrial-scale wind turbines in Canada and Australia: takotsubo heart attacks and acute adrenal crises with reported blood pressures well over 200 millimetres of mercury systolic. There is a concern among some cardiologists with an interest in takotsubo cardiomyopathies that excessive lower frequency sound energy could be causing some of these cases. At the moment we have minimal information about the exposure doses when these events occur but it is hoped that portable dosimeters which can accurately measure these exposures to infrasound will expand our knowledge.

In summary, there has been a fundamental failure of the health, planning and noise pollution regulatory authorities to listen, investigate and act decisively to stop the predictable and serious damage to the health of vulnerable rural community members. The systemic regulatory failure is not confined to rural areas, however. The culture of silence—the use of gag agreements to silence both sick people and independent acoustic consultants—has meant that important scientific knowledge is kept out of the public domain. This problem is increasing in scale because of the increasing industrialisation of our quiet rural areas and because machines are getting bigger, so there is a shift in frequencies generated down to the lower part of the spectrum. This problem is not going to go away. Planning and noise pollution regulatory authorities are invariably physically located hundreds of kilometres away from where the adverse impacts are experienced and are not held accountable to anyone for the public health disasters in rural communities which their decisions are creating.

The National Health and Medical Research Council has gravely failed the Australian public and the governments it advises by failing to ensure that serious conflicts of interest were not prevented with their choice of experts for their literature reviews. These have had a material impact on the quality of the advice from the NHMRC and have led to dangerously optimistic predictions about the safe distance of impact from wind turbine noise, for example. This has been achieved by cherry-picking data, ensuring the goalposts for the inclusion of studies were extremely narrow, and even resorting to misclassification of studies. The only possible reason for it was to ensure these studies were never included because they would damage the commercial interests of the wind industry. Incompetence is another, perhaps less likely, explanation.

The human cost of the failure to protect people from excessive noise pollution, especially at night, is terrible. I have personally helped to prevent a number of suicides of people who were utterly desperate because of the consequences of excessive noise pollution and who reached out for help. It was just lucky that I was available by phone or email and could help them find the help that they needed at the time. However, I am aware of others who did not receive such help and who did take their own lives. Sadly I have good reason to suspect that they are the tip of the iceberg and there will be more.

We need systemic regulatory reform and we need it now across all noise and vibration sources. The current system, where the noise polluters pay the acousticians handsomely to investigate, is not working to protect public health. He who pays the piper calls the tune. We also need tightly targeted research to accurately measure the exposure doses of people reporting adverse impacts inside their homes and to measure objectively their reactions to that noise as well as their reports of their symptoms. We need a commitment from the federal and state ministers of health and the chief medical officers in each state that this health-damaging excessive industrial noise pollution will be dealt with to protect people from further harm. A national noise pollution regulatory authority with strong powers to investigate, regulate, conduct targeted research and set standards free from commercial conflicts of interest, which are then actively and transparently enforced, is required right now.

Finally, there is the matter of which ministers are the most appropriate to have responsibility for this issue. It is the World Health Organization, not the world environment organisation, that has issued major reports over the last 10 or 15 years, such as the 2009 Night noise guidelines for Europe. It is our strong view that this is a public health issue and therefore should be under the direct and regulatory control of ministers for health, not ministers for the environment. Ministers for health have a stronger direct incentive to help prevent disease.

Senator DAY: Thank you, Ms Laurie. You have been here all day today and have heard evidence from a number of witnesses. For me, being on this inquiry has been a bit like living in a parallel universe. We have had people citing evidence from all over the world about the adverse health effects of wind turbines and then we have had evidence from people completely dismissing any connection whatsoever. He who pays the piper calls the tune. I accept that that could explain some, but it would not explain all of it. Can you shed any light on the rest? Why are so many people—public servants and others—so dismissive of there being any health impacts at all?

Ms Laurie: I think there are a variety of motivations. I am quite shocked that even now not one health authority has gone and directly investigated for themselves—not one. I think that says it all, really, in terms of the responsibility of health departments. I think there is enormous ignorance, as I have said, amongst the medical profession. There is a bias against believing that there is a problem with wind turbine noise.

I think people come at it from a variety of different standpoints. I know I myself was very reluctant to accept that there could be anything wrong. I used to take my children to go and watch wind turbines being built locally near our home. I had no idea about any adverse health impacts from wind turbines. I have a lot of friends who are Green-voting environmentalists, very concerned about the planet, very concerned about their children’s futures. I wonder if that has something to do with it.

But, when you listen to the stories of people affected by noise when they are trying to sleep in their beds at night, it does not matter what the source of the noise is if they cannot sleep and they are having these other very distressing symptoms and deteriorating health. The people I speak to do not mind what the source of the noise is; they just want it to stop.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Ms Laurie, I have read your submission and I have heard your comments at various times. I am interested in your thoughts on this because you have spent a lot of time working on this. You are a medical doctor, aren’t you?

Ms Laurie: That is correct.

Senator LEYONHJELM: It seems to me that it is a well-established scientific fact that infrasound can cause human harm.

Ms Laurie: That is correct.

Senator LEYONHJELM: I do not think anybody disputes that, do they?

Ms Laurie: Some do. It depends on the dose and it depends on the exposure time.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Yes. That is where I am going. So infrasound can cause harm. It is also not disputed by anybody that wind turbines emit infrasound. Have you heard anybody deny that, apart from the South Australian government?

Ms Laurie: No. Increasingly now I think the comments are that there is evidence proving that it is in fact emitted.

Senator LEYONHJELM: It seems to me the issue is whether enough infrasound is emitted from wind farms, under some circumstances if not all circumstances, to cause human harm. Would that be the proposition?

Ms Laurie: I think that is right. It is certainly a dose response relationship. However, people living near sources of industrial noise talk at various times about audible noise that is clearly disturbing to them if it is above the level of their television. I think Clive and Petrina Gare talked about that in their evidence. For some it is the pulsating, radiating quality of the sound that penetrates into their home and for some it is the sensations that they feel, which might be correlated to vibrations. Steven Cooper’s work down at Cape Bridgewater went into that in the most considerable detail of anyone in the world.

There is still a lot we do not know, but it is the combination of the frequency that people are exposed to and the features of the house, the acoustic resonance that might happen in certain rooms. Even the position in the a room can have an impact, together with the individual’s susceptibility. But until we measure what people are actually exposed to inside their homes—the sound and the pressure pulsations together with the vibration coming up through the ground—we will not know what their exposures are.

Senator LEYONHJELM: You mentioned chronic sleep deprivation and chronic stress as being key elements in this.

Ms Laurie: Yes.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Is there any particular reason for that? The reason for my question is that we have had other witnesses mention the Canadian health study, which focused on annoyance, which may not include those things. We have also had people suggest it involves the middle ear. I think somebody suggested it relates to the inner ear. We are hearing from a witness this afternoon who thinks it has a relationship to the vestibular mechanism. So why do you think chronic sleep deprivation is the key to it?

Ms Laurie: I think there are four key areas. Chronic sleep deprivation is the most widely reported symptom, and that seems to be the thing that really undoes people. Chronic stress can be associated with that. If you are chronically sleep deprived, that in itself can cause a chronic stress response. However, the chronic physiological stress is also part of what we are hearing from people.

The Japanese study, the Inagaki study, which measured the brain responses of Japanese wind turbine workers when exposed to reproduced wind turbine sound, showed clearly and objectively that the brain could not attain a relaxed state. Those EEG studies are precisely the sorts of studies I believe we need to do inside people’s homes to measure what their brains are responding to, because the clinical stories that they are giving are very consistent—that they are getting a physiological response.

Sometimes it can be that they are waking up in a very anxious, frightened, panicked state, and that can happen repeatedly. One of my colleagues from America, Dr Sandy Reider, has talked about a patient of his who woke up repeatedly in that state 30 to 40 times a night. It did not take long for that combination of sleep deprivation and repeated stress to wear this person down. He left and came back repeatedly. He was fine when he was away. He came back and got the same symptoms. He eventually moved away and his health is now improving. So the two are linked but separate.

However, I believe the vestibular system is actually the mechanism by which the brain is being affected by the sound energy. So it is via the vestibular system. Professor Salt’s work has shown that, if you stimulate the outer hair cells in the inner ear, some of the afferent fibres will take that sound energy and translate it into pulses into the brain that stimulate the alerting response in the brain. I think that is really the crux of the physiological response in what we are seeing.

Senator LEYONHJELM: But we have heard evidence that obviously not everybody—in fact, not even a majority—of people exposed to wind turbine noise or sound are adversely affected. Dr McMurtry suggested it was somewhere between five and 30 per cent of people. If that were the case, it would tend to suggest that there is a source of individual variation and that something like the motion sickness mechanism, a middle ear or vestibular mechanism, might explain it. If chronic sleep deprivation was the explanation, I think you would expect—and I am interested in your thoughts on this—people to be broadly affected the same way, wouldn’t you?

Ms Laurie: No, because everybody is impacted to different levels by the sound. Perhaps some examples will help. There are some couples where one partner was affected immediately when the turbines started operating and for the other partner it was months or years before they noticed an impact. I believe David Mortimer has given evidence to the inquiry. David and Alida are a good example. David was impacted very early on, within days to weeks of being exposed. Alida was fine for four years, and now she is quite badly impacted. Everybody is different, and everybody has different susceptibilities. Malcolm Swinbanks has shared with me some research from the 1970s related to the size of the helicotrema, which is a little hole in the inner ear. The smaller the hole, the greater the sensitivity to low-frequency sound. Alec Salt’s work with guinea pig models has provided some confirmatory evidence of that. Apparently when that hole is blocked the sensitivity to infrasound and low-frequency noise increases markedly. I also have heard from pharmacologists, pharmacists, that if people are on narcotic medication for pain relief then that can increase their sensitivity to sound.

So, a wide variety of individual factors can influence that. From my experience there is a subset of people who are terribly impacted very early on. Those people are the ones who tend to present with acute vestibular disorder type of symptoms—dizziness and motion sickness, which can be accompanied by extreme anxiety. Those people often just cannot last very long, and they move if they can. Trish Godfrey is one who has given evidence; Mrs Stepnell is another. They would fit in that category. However, for people in the same house, exposed to the same levels, like Carl Stepnell, it took a lot longer. Eventually he was impacted but in a different way.

In understanding the public health consequences, when you look at the population surveys that have been done, just looking at the sleep issue, a number have been done in Australia, one by an Adelaide University master’s student called Frank Wang. It was a population survey out to five kilometres, and 50 per cent of the people reported moderate to severe impacts from the turbine noise at Waterloo. From that, Mary Morris repeated his survey out to 10 kilometres—a smaller percentage, because it is a bigger area, so you get the dilution effect, but nevertheless she found that people were adversely impacted in terms of their sleep. Some of those people have subsequently had acoustic measurements done inside their house, which has confirmed that they are being subjected to excessive levels of low-frequency noise and that infrasound from the turbines is present. These people cannot see the turbines. Sometimes they can hear them. But they are being reliably and predictably disturbed—for example, when the wind is blowing towards them or when there is a cold, frosty night, because that cold air acts as a blanket to keep the sound energy down and stop the refraction up. That was something that Kelley and the NASA research showed 30 years ago. So, we have a lot of knowledge about what the impacts are and the distance of impacts.

Senator LEYONHJELM: But I have one final question: you mentioned this distance out to 10 kilometres; I have asked Steven Cooper what he thinks is an appropriate distance for wind turbines currently being constructed, and he says that 10 kilometres is probably about right. What is your view on that?

Ms Laurie: It depends on the size of the turbines and the power-generating capacity.

Senator LEYONHJELM: I mean the ones currently being constructed—three megawatts—

Ms Laurie: Yes, for three megawatts, 10, just based on the reports from the residents.

Senator LEYONHJELM: So, 10 kilometres for three megawatts?

Ms Laurie: Yes.

Senator URQUHART: There has been some controversy over your qualifications and professional standing so, for the record, could you let us know what your standing and professional qualifications are now?

Ms Laurie: Certainly. I am a medical graduate. I graduated from Flinders University with a bachelor of medicine, a bachelor of surgery, in 1995. I subsequently did postgraduate training in rural general practice. I attained my fellowship of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners in 1998, I think it was, and subsequently was invited to become a clinical examiner for that college, which I did for a couple of years, until I became unwell. I attained my fellowship for the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine just after that, and I was one of the councillors on the South Australian Medical Association branch for a period of time, but that was prematurely cut short when I was diagnosed with an illness. I took time off and then subsequently had children, and I had intended to go back to work professionally as a country GP. A few other things got in the way, including finding out about what low-frequency noise is doing to people.

Senator URQUHART: So, currently you are not registered as a—

Ms Laurie: I am not currently registered to practise; that is correct. However, I am very keen to return. I really want to see some progress on this issue, because I do not want to abandon people who have invested a fair amount of trust and hope that things will change.

CHAIR: Just for the record: you have never been deregistered, have you?

Ms Laurie: I have never been deregistered, and apart from the defamatory complaint that was publicised and circulated from the Public Health Association of Australia, in which I believe the wind industry had a fair hand, I have never had any disciplinary complaints against me whatsoever.

Senator URQUHART: Thank you.

Senator BACK: Dr David Iser appeared before the committee in Melbourne. When did Dr Iser first report on what he believed to be the impacts and their causing of adverse health effects to people in the vicinity of industrial wind turbines?

Ms Laurie: May 2004 was when he wrote to Premier Bracks, Minister Brumby, Minister Delahunty and Minister Thwaites about the results of his population survey at Toora in Victoria. That was a world first. To my knowledge nobody else had ever done a population survey which demonstrated that not everybody was impacted but, of the people who were impacted, three were severely impacted, and I think five were moderately impacted.

Senator BACK: Did he report the actual clinical signs he was observing and did he validate medically the symptoms people were reporting to him?

Ms Laurie: He did in the sense that for some of them he was their treating doctor. In fact, that was why he became concerned about what was going on, because these people were presenting. People he had treated and known for a long time were presenting with these new problems, and some of them were very unwell, and that was why he did his research.

Senator BACK: That was the original work done. Can you tell me when the Waubra Foundation formed?

Ms Laurie: The foundation was established by Peter Mitchell in March or April 2010. I was invited to join in July or August 2010. I can give you the exact date, but I cannot remember it off the top of my head.

Senator BACK: We are actually talking about a six-year time gap between when Dr Iser first presented the population survey to the ministers of the Victorian government and when the Waubra Foundation was formed.

Ms Laurie: That is correct.

Senator BACK: Can you explain to me then why it is the Waubra Foundation that has been the butt of so many allegations and accusations of the spreading of fear if indeed Iser’s work was out in the public arena for six years?

Ms Laurie: I think there are a whole lot of reasons for that. I think it is a case of shooting the messenger—clinical whistleblowers—particularly if there are significant sums of money involved, as well as some ideology and concern about the environment. I think there are a whole lot of reasons that the message of the foundation has not been well received. And I should say that from the inception Peter Mitchell, as an engineer, was well aware that large rotating fans could generate noise, some of which was subaudible, so could therefore potentially have an impact on human health. So, from the beginning the foundation has been concerned about a variety of noise sources. We are concerned about the interface of the sound energy on people and promoting research that will help protect people. The source of the noise is a secondary consideration. We have been targeted particularly by the wind industry. If the coal industry and the gas industry were more aware of what we do, helping people directly impacted in communities like Tara in Queensland, up in the Hunter, in Lithgow, in Wellington and at some other sites, perhaps we would generate the same heat from them.

There is clearly a problem. The industry itself has admitted there is a problem. It is time that the facts were faced and we got some hard, objective evidence of what people are exposed to inside their homes, worked out exactly what thresholds are triggering this response and made sure that the noise pollution levels and vibration levels inside homes, no matter the noise source, do not exceed those thresholds.

Senator BACK: As a person with medical degrees and having been a fellow, as you have explained, of the college of rural practice and related areas, can you explain to me the circumstance of why you believe the Australian Medical Association has come out with its statement to the effect that there are no adverse health effects from industrial wind turbines in the face of evidence presented by peers within the medical profession refuting that.

Ms Laurie: I really cannot explain—I really do not understand—why they have come out and said that in the face of the clinical evidence that we know already about what sleep deprivation and chronic stress do to people. That position is not based on scientific evidence. The AMA have been repeatedly asked by people impacted by wind turbine noise to come and visit them, listen to their stories and listen to their own doctors. There are a number of doctors who have been prepared to stick their heads up above the parapet and say, ‘I believe my patient is impacted by wind turbine noise.’ Many of the people I speak to say that their doctors are not prepared to put that opinion in writing because they have seen what has happened to me and they are very concerned that they will be attacked, denigrated and publicly vilified and have their reputations smashed in the media. I can understand why the treating doctors are reluctant to put some of this in writing. For the Australian Medical Association to have come out with that position statement, in the face of the evidence that it was subsequently presented with, and refuse to either change it or investigate it, I think it reflects very poorly on the organisation.

Senator BACK: I have been nonplussed about it, but I just thought you might have had a more recent explanation, particularly given the history of some in the medical profession over time. Thank you very much and thank you for the work you do.

Ms Laurie: It is a pleasure. I should add that I have written on a number of occasions to the AMA and I am yet to receive any response whatsoever from them.

CHAIR: Ms Laurie, could you tell us when it was first known that people exposed to chronic excessive infrasound and low-frequency noise did not get used to that sound?

Ms Laurie: The first reference I can find is in Dr Kelley’s work, the extensive acoustic survey that was conducted in Boone County in America with NASA and, I think, 15 or so American research institutions—General Electric were part of it; there were quite a number of aero-acoustics and mechanical engineering university faculties involved. I was very interested to read that because on, I think, page 199 of that 1985 acoustic survey they specifically say that there are residents who have become conditioned to the sound—the later terminology is ‘sensitised’ to it. What that means is that they do not become used to it and they get progressively more sensitive as time goes on. The reason this is important is that, if you do not have sufficiently low thresholds set to protect people, over time they are going to get worse and we are going to have more and more people in our communities who are chronically sensitised to the sound. That really is a terrible thing for the people concerned because then they can pick up very low-frequency sound energy from other sources. They end up in a situation where they find it often very hard to sleep—they are perpetually sleep deprived—and they have a physiological stress response. They do not do well. They can become profoundly depressed and acutely suicidal.

One of the interesting pieces of research which a marine biologist and acoustician sent to me the other day—and I believe Geoff McPherson gave evidence to the inquiring in Cairns on this—was done into wild seal populations in Scotland. The researchers subjected the seals to different sorts of sound energy but at the same levels. There was sound energy that had a rapid acceleration, so it was very impulsive. And there was sound energy which was at the same level but had a much slower rise of the impulse. They found that the seals that were exposed to the rapidly impulsive sound did really badly. They showed signs of being conditioned and sensitised to the sound. But the seals that were exposed to the slower rising sound energy at the same peak level became used to the noise. They were habituated to it; it just did not worry them. I think there is something very profoundly important about the rate of acceleration.

There is actually one paper—although, I have not managed to track it down—that was cited by Dr Norm Broner, who you will be hearing from this afternoon, and also Dr Leventhall. It was in Dr Broner’s fairly major review from 1978 of infrasound and low-frequency noise. This was a paper by a man called Bryan. It specifically talked about the rate of rise in acceleration of the sound impulse being important with annoyance for this particular case that he was reporting on. I do think there are scientific clues from a long time ago that help us to understand that, perhaps, it is not just the level but the rate of acceleration as well.

CHAIR: Going back to the AMA’s position statement, why does the AMA’s position statement not address audible noise concerns? Do you know?

Ms Laurie: Again, I do not know. You would have to ask the AMA. I think audible noise is reported by the residents to be a major problem. As I said in my opening address, if you have loud levels of audible noise pollution way above the background level, acoustic experts say that anything that is background plus five you are going to start to notice it. Background plus 10 is excessive and is going to cause an impact. Background noise levels in Australia might be 18, 20 dB—maybe 25. You have allowable levels in South Australia of 40 or 35. That is going to cause an impact, a significant adverse impact, particularly because this sound energy is being transmitted especially at night when people are trying to sleep. Quite apart from low-frequency noise or infrasound, if you have excessive audible noise then you have regulations that are not protecting people.

Senator LEYONHJELM: I would be interested in your thoughts again. You have spent so much time on this. In light of the fact there is a paucity of research, I think your investigations are as good as we are likely to get on some of these areas, so I appreciate your thoughts. You can get used to loud noises without becoming sensitised when they are not infrasound. I am a living example. I live under the flight path of Sydney airport. I have done so for 30 odd years. Unless it blocks out the TV, I sort of tune it out. Yet we are not hearing that people, or some people at least, are capable of doing that with very low-frequency sound. Do you have any thoughts on whether anyone can do it? And if they cannot, why not?

Ms Laurie: Professor Salt has done some interesting work looking at this. He uses an analogy which, I think, is a useful one. If you think of the cochlea as being a little bit like the pupil in the eye that regulates the amount of light that gets into your eye, then, in an environment with a lot of light, your pupil constricts, and so less light gets in. And the converse happens. In quiet country environments at night, when people are asleep, because there is not a lot of loud background noise in their environment, the cochlea opens wide open. What happens, according to Professor Salt, is that a higher proportion of the low-frequency sound gets through to the afferent fibres, which are stimulated and send a message to the brain, and that, we believe, is the basis for this waking at night in a panic state, or the disturbed sleep. As to the evidence that supports this, you might remember Mrs Gare talking about how she sleeps with a radio on and ear plugs in her ears. Having some additional noise helps to close the cochlea down, if you like, in terms of the amount of the very-low-frequency sound and infrasound energy that gets transmitted through the brain.

That is where I think EEG studies inside people’s homes would help. We cannot do to the people what Professor Salt did to the guinea pigs, but I think if you have the EEGs you have objective evidence of what is going on. If you have concurrent full-spectrum acoustic monitoring at the same time, then you can see what people are exposed to and see what the brain response is.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Full spectrum, and do you have any thoughts on this argument amongst the acousticians that every 10 minutes is all right—and averages and so forth?

Ms Laurie: It is rubbish. We are talking millisecond responses. We are talking of a stimulus response. So, no, 10-minute averages will not cover it. It hides the peaks. The ear and the brain respond to the peaks.

Senator LEYONHJELM: I have no better idea than you, but I wonder whether it is the peaks we are talking about, rather than anything else, that are responsible for these adverse reactions?

Ms Laurie: My hypothesis is that it is these sudden peaks. That is why I am so interested in this idea that where you have more than one wind turbine generator and you have the synergy of the different frequencies from a number of towers, and the pressure bolt effects that people are describing, I actually think that that is a very, very important point. People are reporting being dropped to their knees suddenly with pressure waves—big, burly farmers being dropped to their knees. That is not happening at developments where there is only one wind turbine, in my experience. This is happening where there are multiple wind turbines. I suspect there is a cumulative impact from the forces.

CHAIR: Thank you for attending and for your evidence.

Hansard, 29 May June 2015

Dr Laurie’s evidence is available from the Parliament’s website here.

sarah laurie

Wind Turbine Host, “Tells All” at Australian Government Inquiry! Brilliant!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

Farmer Knocks Back ‘Offers’ of $100,000 a Year to Host Turbines & Tells Senate: “These Things Shouldn’t Be In Anyone’s Backyard”

July 15, 2015 by

senate review

****

Remember all those glowing stories about wind power outfits being welcomed into rural communities with open arms? You know, tales about how farmers are dying to have turbines lined up all over their properties? How locals can’t wait to pick up some of the thousands of permanent,high paying jobs on offer? How developers are viewed with the kind of reverence reserved for Royalty?

No?

We’ve forgotten them too.

The wind industry routinely trots out 4 or 5 year old community surveys (where the respondents don’t and will never live within driving distance from these things) that purport to show the ‘love’. But, when the question is put fair and square to people that know they’ll end up as wind industry “road-kill”, the results tend to come out a little differently:

1,000 Sign Petition Against Mt Emerald Wind Farm: Survey says 92% Opposed

After years of being lied to, bullied, berated and treated like fools (at best) and “road-kill” (at worst), for most, the ‘gloss’ comprising wind industry PR efforts to ‘win hearts and minds’ has well and truly worn off.

These days, the communities aren’t so gullible; they aren’t so welcoming; and they aren’t willing to take it lying down. Despite having the skills of the best spin doctors in the business at its disposal, it’s “outrage” that’s become the word synonymous with the wind industry, wherever it goes. In short, rural communities have had enough – and they’re fighting back, by fair means and foul:

Angry Wind Farm Victims Pull the Trigger: Turbines Shot-Up in Montana and Victoria

These days, the PR outfits that are paid a packet to ‘shape the debate’ – like the Clean Energy Council and the Australian Wind Alliance – are probably just stealing from their wind industry clients.

Most of their recent efforts are just plain silly, and plenty seem to backfire. The case of Hamish and Anna Officer from Macarthur is only just the latest example. The industry’s case on wind turbine noise sleep and health; corporate social responsibility and relations with its contracted hosts has taken a hammering in the last few months:

SA Farmers Paid $1 Million to Host 19 Turbines Tell Senate they “Would Never Do it Again” due to “Unbearable” Sleep-Destroying Noise

Unwilling Turbine Hosts Tell Senate: Australia’s Most Notorious Wind Power Outfit – Infigen – a Team of Bullies, Liars & Thugs

In an effort to hose down the utterly damning evidence given to the Senate Inquiry by Clive and Trina Gare, and the group of unwilling turbine hosts from Flyers Creek in NSW, who have been repeatedly bullied and threatened by near-bankrupt Infigen, the wind industry’s spruikers trotted out the Officers to parrot from a well-oiled script about how much they love living cheek-by-jowl with the 48 Vestas V112s they host on their property at Macarthur in western Victoria. The Officers telling the SMH that they “live a good deal closer to wind turbines than most people” and simply love the look of the things; and that the noise is as soothing as a well-written symphony (the wind industry’s cooked-up propaganda piece about the Officers is available here).

There’s only one minor problem with the Officer’s story. And that’s the fact that the Officers are spending something in the order of $2million on a dream home 30km away from the public health disaster they helped create. The apparent aim of the Officer’s pricey building program is to leave their current home, and the sweet “music” created by their fleet of “beautiful, majestic, landscape improvers” – it must pain them so, to have to leave them so far behind:

Macarthur Turbine Hosts Destroy Community & Bolt as Hammering the Wind Industry becomes the “New Black”

When people with real honour and integrity – like the Gares – tell the story of their self-inflected misery, there’s a ring of honesty that gels with country people. Not so, with hypocrites that run in lockstep with the wind industry; and who seem happy to pocket the loot and leave their neighbours for dead. Which brings to mind the ol’ chestnut that you can fool some of the people, some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people, all the time.

Now, back to the evidence before the Senate Inquiry. David Brooks, Dr Michael Crawford and Mark Tomlinson gave a very solid wrap up on the institutional corruption that pervades State Planning departments and the Clean Energy Regulator. But we think the stand-out testimony was that given by Michael Lyons – a farmer from Bodangora in NSW – who was repeatedly offered a deal to host 10 turbines on his property in exchange for over $100,000 a year.  STT thinks Michael’s response as to why he knocked back that kind of money says it all really:

Mr Lyons: The first time I knocked it back, I did not know anything about them, to be quite honest. The proponent was quite insistent that I host turbines, but I said no. I said, ‘I am going to find out a little bit more about them first before I say yes or no.’ At that stage I was pretty open minded. Another contact of mine had done a lot more research into them and through that person I then formed the opinion that these things were not something that should be inflicted on anybody. Call me a nimby if you like but I do not think that these things should be in anyone’s backyard, let alone mine.

Here’s the rest of their evidence.

Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines – 29 May 2015

BROOKS, Mr David, Chairman, Parkesbourne/Mummel Landscape Guardians Inc.

CRAWFORD, Dr Michael Arthur, Private capacity

LYONS, Mr Michael David, Coordinator, Bodangora Wind Turbine Awareness Group

TOMLINSON, Mr Mark, Member, Residents against Jupiter Wind Turbines Noise Committee

CHAIR: Welcome. Could you please confirm that information on parliamentary privilege and the protection of witnesses and evidence has been provided to you?

Dr Crawford: Yes, it has.

Mr Brooks: Yes.

Mr Tomlinson: Yes.

Mr Lyons: Yes.

CHAIR: Thank you. The committee has your submissions and I now invite you to make a brief opening statement and at the conclusion of your remarks, I will invite members of the committee to put questions to you.

Dr Crawford: Thank you for the invitation to appear here today. I am speaking as a private individual, though I am also a board member of the Waubra Foundation and a member of the local group, Residents against Jupiter Wind Turbines. Members of that group have had extensive dealings with the New South Wales planning department as well as other New South Wales agencies in relation to Jupiter and other wind farms. While I am critical of the way the system currently operates, I acknowledge that the current New South Wales Minister for Planning, Rob Stokes, and his predecessor Pru Goward, as well as the secretary of the department, appear to be trying to improve the process. But institutional inertia is powerful and the changes are slow, meanwhile innocent people are being badly harmed and that will continue under current arrangements.

I have worked for more than 30 years as a management consultant to private and public sector organisations, normally advising the CEO and other senior executives on matters of corporate strategy and organisation design. While my first degree was in physics and maths, my PhD relates specifically to organisation design and my subsequent research was in corporate change. I also taught on executive programs at the Australian Graduate School of Management. That is by way of background.

It is clear to me that the current processes for approving and regulating wind farms in New South Wales are excessively complex and neither economically efficient nor socially just. They are essentially a tick-the-box planning exercise with little integrity, conducted at large public and private expense, to produce an outcome favourable to developers. As you have already discovered, conditions imposed by wind farm approvals are quite deficient and, unlike some industries such as coalmining in New South Wales, compliance testing and enforcement is virtually non-existent. Without effective compliance and enforcement in any field, conditions will be regularly breached.

It is possible to add some integrity to the current approvals system in various ways such as relying only on data provided by parties with no association with the proponent, not accepting judgements made by consultants hired by the developer to support their case and imposing decommissioning funding conditions guaranteed to not leave the taxpayer or the local community on the hook.

Alternatively, it is possible to remove most of the inefficiency, subjectivity and injustice by replacing the current regulatory process by a standards-based one that forces developers to absorb externalities through fair commercial transactions and imposes genuinely rigorous ongoing noise monitoring with material costs for breaches. Such an approach would be far more transparent and much less exposed to the risks of corruption than the current process. Our local group provided the previous New South Wales planning minister with advice on how that could be done but have heard nothing further. Hopefully this committee will have more success. Thank you.

Mr Tomlinson: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak here today. Residents against Jupiter Wind Turbines is a community group established in the Tarago area of New South Wales opposing the proposed Jupiter wind farm. A subcommittee was formed, now known as the noise committee, and members of this committee are tasked with investigating various aspects of wind turbine noise. Some of these areas are noise propagation and the effects of topography and geographical spread, the relationship between multiple turbines and wind shear relating to international standards—just to mention a few.

My role as a member of the noise committee is to investigate the background noise monitoring process as outlined in the various wind farm guidelines used in New South Wales. This role involves monitoring equipment set-up, data collection, data analysis and preliminary findings reports. This has also led into the investigation into wind turbine infrasound. The committee purchased industry standard class 1 noise monitoring equipment and use the current New South Wales draft wind farm guidelines and the 2003 South Australia wind farm guidelines as guiding documents, as used by the Department of Planning and Infrastructure.

In January 2015, we commenced a monitoring program to ascertain the ambient environmental background noise at six properties around the proposed wind farm. We have currently completed five and, as a result, have discovered numerous deficiencies within the guidelines used for wind farm approvals. The major deficiencies include removal of extraneous noise; wind over microphone; position of monitoring equipment; checks and balances as to the accuracy of noise monitoring reports submitted by developer-paid acousticians; ongoing compliance monitoring; and others listed in our submission.

In our monitoring program, we employed a Svantek 977 class 1 noise data logger, a wind data logger positioned at microphone height, a wind data logger on a portable 10-metre tower and a TASCAM DR-40 digital sound recorder to achieve full 24/7 sound recordings for the purpose of extraneous noise removal. We have also purchased three microbarometers, which are capable of recording infrasound levels from 0.05 hertz to 20 hertz, with which we have recorded wind turbine infrasound out to 14 kilometres.

I must stress at this point that we are not acousticians and we do not purport to be such; we are simply a community group putting forward our views and observations after conducting background noise monitoring, according to the relevant wind farm guidelines used in New South Wales. We believe the current wind farm guidelines are in no way adequate and must be amended as a matter of urgency. Thank you.

Mr Lyons: In the interests of time, I think you will find you already have a copy of my opening address. I am quite happy to pass on making opening remarks, so that we can get on with more questions.

Mr Brooks: Before I begin my presentation, I would like to thank you for all the work that you have done on the issues of this inquiry, especially for your interim report. If all its recommendations are implemented then there will be some hope that wind farm neighbours will find some relief at last. Today, I will limit myself to three topics that concern planning and regulation. I will deal with each topic briefly and then draw some conclusions from them, taken together. For evidence in detail for what I shall say, I must refer you to my submissions.

Topic No. 1: first, I wish to summarise the situation relating to the unauthorised turbine relocations of the Gullen Range wind farm because this matter illustrates the unreliability, incompetence, negligence and impropriety of the planning and assessment of wind farms in New South Wales. I realise that you cannot directly affect state planning issues, but it is important that you should be aware of them if you are to make recommendations for the federal government’s negotiations with the states through COAG, and for new measures regarding federal agencies. It is not an exaggeration to say that the suffering of wind farm neighbours is almost entirely due to inadequate planning and assessment at state level.

The project approval for the Gullen Range wind farm prohibits the proponent from moving turbines up to 250 metres from their approved positions without seeking permission from the Minister for Planning—that is condition 1.5. Moreover, section 75W(2) of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 of New South Wales insists that modifications that are not ‘consistent with the existing approval require the permission of the Minister for Planning’. The proponent ignored these conditions and built the infrastructure of the wind farm with 69 of the 73 turbine footings in the wrong place without seeking the permission of the minister. This was a clear violation of both the project approval and the EPA Act. Nonetheless the department of planning has allowed the proponent to submit a modification application in order to get retrospective approval for all these violations, and the department has consistently recommended that such retrospective approval be granted by the Planning Assessment Commission.

I cannot go into all the twists and turns by which the department has justified its response to this violation. You may wish to ask questions about that presently. Here, I only wish to point out that a project approval and a clause in a law, which have perfectly clear and intelligible meanings, are being deliberately disregarded by the department and that the department’s only justification for this is sophistry. This makes a mockery of the idea of regulation. That is topic one.

Topic 2, much more briefly: the Gullen Range has been approved under the completely inadequate South Australian noise guidelines 2003. When neighbours have asked for the approval to be reviewed because of the deficiencies of the noise guidelines, they have been told that this cannot happen because the EPA Act allows a developer to sue the minister for compensation if the minister revokes or modifies an approval. The planning law in this way gives certainty to the developer but excludes any possibility of relief to neighbours.

Topic 3: under the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act, the federal act, the Clean Energy Regulator can consider suspending the accreditation of a wind farm if the regulator ‘believes on reasonable grounds that the power station is being operated in contravention of a law of the Commonwealth, a state or a territory’—that is subsection 30E(3). However, the regulator seems to have unlimited discretion to avoid forming a reasonable belief. There is abundant evidence in the public domain that the Gullen Range wind farm is in breach of New South Wales law, but the New South Wales department of planning refuses to say so and the Clean Energy Regulator refuses to consider all the evidence. Moreover, the Clean Energy Regulator has adopted the preposterous position that it can only test whether a wind farm is in breach of law in the present. It cannot, so it thinks, test whether a wind farm has been in breach in the past.

If the New South Wales Planning Assessment Commission gives retrospective approval to all the violations of the project approval of the Gullen Range wind farm, the Clean Energy Regulator will refuse to consider whether the wind farm has been in breach of New South Wales law and the wind farm will keep over a year’s worth of renewable energy certificates, worth somewhere in the region of several million dollars to which, arguably, it is not entitled. Those are the three topics; two quick conclusions.

Firstly, a law or a project approval can be quite clear and unambiguous, yet a government agency will arrogate to itself the discretionary power to disregard the clear meaning of that law or that approval, and to render it meaningless. There is no check or balance to prevent such an abuse of power by that government agency. Both the New South Wales department of planning and the Clean Energy Regulator are guilty of this abuse of power. Secondly, when the law protects the rights and capital of a developer then the law is hard and firm and solid, and will be respected by government agencies. But when a law is likely to make difficulties for a developer, a regulatory agency will use sophistry to disregard the law and to avoid enforcing the law against the developer. This gives the developers a privileged position in the face of the law, offends against the principle of equality before the law and subverts any possibility of serious regulation.

Finally, in view of these facts, there needs to be a royal commission into wind farm development in Australia. Such a commission is necessary if the corrupt nature of planning, assessment and regulation is to be addressed and overcome. Thank you.

Senator DAY: Dr Crawford, I am drawing on your experience with organisation and corporate culture. Can you explain why, in the face of such overwhelming evidence regarding the adverse health effects of wind turbines, there is such a denial, which seems to defy all logic, by so many operators, regulators, commentators and others? It is a phenomenon which really intrigues me. You have got a PhD in this, so please enlighten me.

Dr Crawford: Without actually going to the PhD, I believe that it was Upton Sinclair who said something like, ‘It’s extremely difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on not understanding that.’ Basically, if you look at not just the wind industry but regulatory agencies in this area, and given the commitment of government to introduce renewable energy in this country, everyone’s incentives are actually aligned with pretending there is no problem. To recognise a problem would put people in the situation where they then have to overtly recognise to themselves that they are behaving in a way which certainly some people would describe as evil—they are inflicting harm on others simply for their personal benefit in terms of ongoing salary and other acceptances.

Senator DAY: Thank you.

Senator LEYONHJELM: I have a question for Mr Lyons. You are part of the group opposed to the Bodangora wind energy facility in central New South Wales. I understand it will have 33 turbines. Can you tell us what is the level of opposition locally to that facility?

Mr Lyons: The community opposition was overwhelming—and still is. I think it has probably grown because people have got themselves a lot more educated as to the negative impacts of wind farms. When we did the submissions to the department of planning and infrastructure, it worked out, I think, that it was 94, 96 per cent opposed within the community. Of those that were not opposed, there were 163 total submissions. I think it was 152 opposed and, of the remainder, I think there were a mixture of government agencies, of which most of them had issues—still unresolved to this day. Of the individual ones, they were from host farms, host families. There were two anonymous and, of those two anonymous, one came from a distance of 50 kilometres outside the project area.

Senator LEYONHJELM: The facility has not been built yet—is that right?

Mr Lyons: That is correct.

Senator LEYONHJELM: When will it be built?

Mr Lyons: As soon as they get finance, and they cannot get finance until they get a power purchase agreement.

Senator LEYONHJELM: They have been waiting for the RET agreement, presumably.

Mr Lyons: That is correct.

Senator LEYONHJELM: How many host properties are there?

Mr Lyons: I am going on memory. This submission went into the department of planning a couple of years ago. I may be a couple out, but I think there were eight host families.

Senator LEYONHJELM: What is their view of it? Have you had any contact with them?

Mr Lyons: I have had very limited contact because a lot of them are my neighbours. I am the largest single non-host neighbour on the southern side of the project area.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Were you offered the opportunity to become a host?

Mr Lyons: Several times.

Senator LEYONHJELM: And you knocked it back?

Mr Lyons: Correct, yes.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Why was that?

Mr Lyons: The first time I knocked it back, I did not know anything about them, to be quite honest. The proponent was quite insistent that I host turbines, but I said no. I said, ‘I am going to find out a little bit more about them first before I say yes or no.’ At that stage I was pretty open minded. Another contact of mine had done a lot more research into them and through that person I then formed the opinion that these things were not something that should be inflicted on anybody. Call me a nimby if you like but I do not think that these things should be in anyone’s backyard, let alone mine.

Senator LEYONHJELM: How much money do you think you turned down?

Mr Lyons: We are talking tens of thousands here. The situation is that Mount Bodangora, which is the name of the property, is the highest point across Australia on the latitude that it sits so it is reasonably high up, it is fairly well exposed to wind and there are quite a few ridges around. I think I could probably put up 10 turbines at least without any worries.

Senator LEYONHJELM: On the basis of $10,000 a year?

Mr Lyons: The contract, which you would have a copy of, is an original contract that I have. It is not something that we made up; it was actually handed to me by a potential host farmer, who eventually knocked the whole project back as well. I understand, from memory, that it was $11,000 for the first turbine and $10,000 per turbine per year after that.

Senator LEYONHJELM: So you are not the only local who knocked back hosting turbines?

Mr Lyons: That is a good question. I would have to get back you on to that.

Senator LEYONHJELM: I thought you said you got a copy of the contract from somebody who knocked it back?

Mr Lyons: Yes, you are quite right. There were several others. I was just trying to think how many, not whether I was the only one.

Senator LEYONHJELM: So was there more than one?

Mr Lyons: There was certainly more than one.

Senator LEYONHJELM: The department of planning and infrastructure, I gather, has told you that they do not have the resources to adequately check on this facility. Is that correct? Can you explain what they said?

Mr Lyons: Yes, they verbally told me that over the phone. They certainly were not prepared to put it in writing.

Senator LEYONHJELM: What exactly did they say?

Mr Lyons: Essentially they said that the department did not have either the financial resources or the manpower resources to check on whether or not the proponent had actually completed what they were supposed to do. As long as the proponent had made what looked like a an attempt to fulfil the director-general’s requirements, that was good enough for the department.

Senator LEYONHJELM: We have been unable so far to get the relevant New South Wales authorities to come along and tell us how the process for approving wind farms in New South Wales operates. We do not know whether that is deliberate or not but we hope that we can resolve that before too much longer. In the absence of that information, can you tell us who approves them and then who checks compliance with the planning approvals subsequently?

Mr Brooks: One fact that may be of interest to you in relation to this is my association went to the Land and Environment Court back in 2009. For that purpose, we subpoenaed all the correspondence between the department and the developer—the original developer. We got two volumes of correspondence. It was quite obvious from that correspondence that the department was indeed helping the developer to put the proposal in a form where it could get approval.

For my world—I used to be an academic—it was rather like a supervisor helping a postgraduate to write a thesis; so the supervisor will say you need more of an argument here, you need more evidence for this bit, this bit of you argument needs clarification and so on. The officials in the department of planning were doing that for the developer for months and months. Whether or not the people who then go on to recommend the proposal for approval are the same officials, I cannot tell you—you would have to ask the department of planning. But certainly the department of planning itself would seem to have a conflict of interest because if a supervisor helps a postgraduate to write a thesis, they do not then examine the thesis.

Senator LEYONHJELM: What contribution does the local council have to that process?

Mr Brooks: They can make a submission just like anybody else but they do not have any authoritative power of decision.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Once it is built and operating, what is your understanding of checking compliance with planning conditions?

Mr Brooks: This goes back to the developer, who will use the same noise consultant who did the original noise projections. That noise consultant will put in a report and then that, presumably, will be accepted by the department of planning. I do not think there is any compulsory obligation on the department of planning to do any independent checking.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Does the council have any role at all in verifying compliance?

Mr Brooks: No, because all of this is done at the level of the state government.

Senator URQUHART: Mr Tomlinson, can you tell me about your organisation, the Residents Against Jupiter Wind Turbines Noise Committee. How many members do you have?

Mr Tomlinson: On the noise committee, we have three members. The Residents Against Jupiter community group has in the vicinity of about 140-odd members.

Senator URQUHART: Is this like a subcommittee of that committee?

Mr Tomlinson: This is a subcommittee, yes.

Senator URQUHART: Are you funded at all?

Mr Tomlinson: No, we are not funded. We have had members donate some money to purchase equipment.

Senator URQUHART: Is this the equipment that you talked about earlier?

Mr Tomlinson: That is correct.

Senator URQUHART: What was the cost of all that equipment?

Mr Tomlinson: The cost was around $8,000 for the equipment we have.

Senator URQUHART: You said in your opening statement that you are not acousticians. Is there anybody in there that is qualified to actually run that equipment?

Mr Tomlinson: No, there is not although we have been in contact with some acousticians who have given us some guidance, one of those being Steven Cooper.

Senator URQUHART: Mr Lyons, can I ask you how many members you have in your awareness group?

Mr Lyons: We are a fairly loose-knit organisation, comprising every neighbour surrounding the turbines area. It is probably around about 30.

Senator URQUHART: What would be the area that you are looking at? What would be the radius of it?

Mr Lyons: Of the project area, I think it would be about 28,000 hectares.

Senator URQUHART: Are the 30 people within that area?

Mr Lyons: No, outside of that area. I may stand corrected on the 28,000 but I think that is what hectare area is of the project itself. We are outside that area.

Senator URQUHART: You said you called for submissions and I did not quite understand your numbers there so if I could just go back through them. I think you said you received 163 submissions. What was the process that you went through?

Mr Lyons: The project was put on public display for 60 days.

Senator URQUHART: Whereabouts?

Mr Lyons: It was at the local council. I think it was also online on the department of planning website, I believe, although I got my copy from the council, a digital copy.

Senator URQUHART: Was this the planning project?

Mr Lyons: This was for the Bodangora wind farm. It was on display for 60 days. I think the general public had about six weeks to put submissions in. We put in a submission of over 900 pages detailing what was wrong with the project. Basically, I think, we were totally ignored.

Senator URQUHART: So those 163 submissions went in to the local council?

Mr Lyons: No, this was a state significant development so it went into the department of planning.

Senator URQUHART: That was what I wanted to clear up. As the wind turbine awareness group for the area that you talk about, have you undertaken any research to determine the community attitudes to wind farms?

Mr Lyons: Very much so.

Senator URQUHART: Has it been formal or informal? How have you done that?

Mr Lyons: We held a community meeting which we funded ourselves within Wellington. I think we had about 200 or 250 people show up. We invited different speakers including Ms Sarah Laurie, who spoke here earlier today. We also invited the proponent and several other wind farm companies who were proposing to put wind farms in the Wellington area. Infigen were the only ones that actually showed up, which was the proponent for the Bodangora wind farm.

Senator URQUHART: Was that a question-and-answer type community meeting?

Mr Lyons: Yes, pretty much. Guest speakers would speak for a while and then it was open to questions and answers, a bit like this is today. It was very much overwhelmingly against the proposal. The research that we did as part of our response to the department of planning for our response to the EA was very much against the project. The community just does not want this project.

Senator URQUHART: The 200 to 250 people that came along, how big a radius do those people live in? Are they part of this group of 30 that are part of your awareness group or how was that made up? Do you know?

Mr Lyons: I do not quite get where your group of 30 fits in. Are you talking about that the Bodangora Wind Turbine Awareness Group? Probably about half of us were able to come that particular day.

Senator URQUHART: So the rest of the 200 to 250 people were from within that community?

Mr Lyons: They were from as far away as South Australia really. Dr Laurie came from South Australia. We had a couple of speakers from South Australia because that was where most of the wind farms that we knew of at the time were located, so we wanted to get some information from there. By far the vast majority of people were locals. By local I mean I would say within 30 kilometres probably.

Senator URQUHART: Mr Brooks, your organisation, the landscape guardians, how many members do you have?

Mr Brooks: Back in 2009 when we went to court, we had a maximum membership I think of 173. Since then, and especially since the wind farm has been built, people have got demoralised and so on so our official paid-up membership now is actually somewhere around 20. We are not the only organisation. There is also Crookwell District Landscape Guardians. I believe they have a membership of about 100, which is quite strong. The other thing which is relevant is that even though people do not pay their subscriptions and continue their membership, they still object to the wind farm. The whole community still knows each other. We still see each other.

Senator URQUHART: As part of your group, do you undertake research to determine community attitudes? How do you get your information?

Mr Brooks: We have not done that. We have had meetings. I might cite the Planning Assessment Commission meeting that took place in September last year, which was held in Crookwell in the RSL. About 200 people turned up to that. It was obvious just being in the room that the overwhelming majority were against the wind farm. I have never had any doubt from all our meetings over the years that certainly the overwhelming majority of people who are going to be affected by the wind farm are solidly opposed to it.

Senator URQUHART: Dr Crawford, you indicated at the start that you were also a director—I think that was the right terminology—of the Waubra Foundation and you are also part of the Residents Against Jupiter Wind Turbines Noise. Are you just on the committee or are you part of the larger group?

Dr Crawford: I am certainly part of the larger group. When we had a community meeting, I was elected as chairman. We had a community meeting in February last year with 200 people and that group elected me as chairman to chair that and pass the motions which went to the New South Wales government. I also happen to be a member of the noise committee.

Senator URQUHART: So you wear a few hats?

Dr Crawford: Yes.

Senator URQUHART: Mr Tomlinson, are you a member of other organisations or just the Residents Against Jupiter?

Mr Tomlinson: No, just Residents Against Jupiter.

Senator URQUHART: Mr Lyons, is your only membership of Bodangora Wind Turbine Awareness Group? Are you a member of other groups?

Mr Lyons: No.

Senator URQUHART: And Mr Brooks?

Mr Brooks: I am vice-president of New South Wales Landscape Guardians, which is a sort of umbrella organisation for—I will have to check the number. I cannot remember whether the number of our affiliated associations is eight or whether it has gone down to five, because again you have the problem of people not always renewing their subscriptions. But it is somewhere in that region.

Mr Lyons: I would just like to correct the record with you, Senator. Dr Laurie did not attend the Wellington public meeting; she attended the Planning Assessment Commission meeting in Wellington. She only did a teleconference presentation at the public meeting.

Senator URQUHART: Okay. Thank you.

CHAIR: Mr Brooks, in your previous evidence you mentioned that, in the planning process, the acousticians who were engaged by the proponents were the same acousticians who then later corrected, shall we say, their own work. Have you seen this in any other field in your professional career?

Mr Brooks: I used to teach English literature, so this sort of issue would not have come up except, as I said, in the case of examiners. Usually, you have to have quite a separation of powers between people who are helping the student and people who are doing the examination. In the case of a PhD, for example, the examiners cannot even belong to the same university; they have to be from a different university.

To come back to the noise compliance monitoring business, it is the same company that does the compliance monitoring. For example, in the case of Gullen Range, it was Marshall Day Acoustics. Whether they literally used the same individuals, I have no idea; but it was certainly the same company.

The other thing that is a bit dubious about the compliance monitoring is that it is to be done only at the same residences where the original background noise monitoring was done. In the case of Gullen Range, at the time there were 63 noninvolved residences within two kilometres, and Marshall Day Acoustics chose, I think, 17 at which to do the original background noise monitoring. So the compliance noise monitoring, now that the wind farm is built, is going to be done at those same 17 residences. It will not be done at all 63. It certainly will not be done anywhere outside two kilometres.

The other thing—and I think this is really the crucial point—is that both the original background noise monitoring and the compliance noise monitoring, and any additional noise audits that the Minister for Planning might order, are all going to be done in terms of the noise limits and the conditions of consent which are based on the South Australian noise guidelines. I had the asset manager from the wind farm come to my house. He sat down in my lounge room. He was going through this spiel about how concerned they were, how they wanted to help people and so on, and I said to him quite plainly, ‘Look, you’re not going to do anything you’re not legally obliged to do, are you,’ and he said no. I said, ‘You’re not going to test for infrasound, are you,’ and he said no. I said, ‘You’re not going to test for low-frequency noise, are you,’ and he said no. So we know, even before the compliance noise monitoring happens, that it is going to be inadequate.

CHAIR: Thank you, Mr Brooks.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Dr Crawford, I have a question similar to what Senator Day asked you before. You have done a lot of consulting to business. It occurs to me that if this were any other industry about which accusations were being made, assuming that it felt that those accusations were unfounded, it would want to do everything it could to put them to bed, disprove them—say, ‘We don’t think there’s any credibility to these accusations but let’s do something to stamp them out.’ I cannot think of any other industry that would not take that approach. The wind industry does not take that approach. Have you seen anything similar in any other sector?

Dr Crawford: Sure. All industries want ultimately to be seen to be good citizens. Sometimes they do it by actually being good citizens and sometimes they do it by suppressing any contrary evidence. I think we have seen at least two other examples: the tobacco industry, whose history is essentially the same as this; and the asbestos industry in Australia, where the companies involved tried first to hide the involvement of asbestos in the harm it was causing and then to arrange their assets in such a way that they protected shareholders against those who might have claims on them. We are in a society where directors of companies typically believe that their responsibility is primarily to maximise value for their shareholders. They do that within the bounds of the law. If the law allows them to behave in ways, as it does in this case, that harm other people, then they typically believe that it is their obligation to do so. We have seen that certainly in the tobacco industry and in the asbestos industry in Australia.

Senator LEYONHJELM: I have speculated that one day there may be a class action similar to those that have occurred in the tobacco industry and the asbestos industry in which the wind industry is found liable in tort. Do you anticipate that possibility as well?

Dr Crawford: I certainly think it is likely that a number of parties will eventually go that route. Obviously as the industry grows it brings more people into harm and grows the number of people who will do so. One of the issues, of course, is which of those companies will still be alive when that occurs. Whilst there are some major companies that have probably a long life ahead of them, there are also a number of other companies in the industry that will have passed off their responsibilities to someone else. If there is a claim down the track, they will not be the ones who have to field it.

CHAIR: Thank you all for appearing here to today and for your evidence.

Hansard, 29 May June 2015

Mr Brooks, Dr Crawford, Mr Lyons and Mr Tominson’s evidence is available from the Parliament’s website here.

Lyons

Windweasels Take a Much-Deserved Beating, At The Hands of the Wonderful Aussies!!

/ 1957chev / Leave a comment

ARREA Spears Wind Industry’s Parasites During Thumping Senate Appearance

July 13, 2015 by

senate review

****

The mandatory RET has seen the cost of around $9 billion worth of Renewable Energy Certificates added to retail power prices and recovered from all Australian power consumers.

Under the Large-Scale Renewable Energy Target, a further $45 billion is designed to be transferred from power consumers to wind power outfits via the REC Tax/Subsidy over the next 17 years:

Wind Power Fraud Finally Exposed: Senator John Madigan Details LRET’s Astronomical 45 Billion Dollar Cost to Power Consumers

The latest LRET deal was struck by the Coalition’s wind industry front men, Ian “Macca” Macfarlane and his youthful ward, Gregory Hunt for no other purpose than saving their mates at Infigen, Vestas & Co – and is doomed to fail, in any event (see our posts here and here).

With that phenomenal cost being added to already spiralling power bills – there will be many more households who will be unable to afford power; adding to the tens of thousands of homes already deprived of what was once a basic necessity of (a decent) life. And thousands more destined to suffer “energy poverty” as they find themselves forced to choose between heating (or cooling) and eating:

Victoria’s Wind Rush sees 34,000 Households Chopped from the Power Grid

Casualties of South Australia’s Wind Power Debacle Mount: Thousands Can’t Afford Power

If our political betters in Canberra don’t get a grip and line up to kill the LRET very soon – in less than a decade – Australia will have created an entrenched energy underclass, dividing Australian society into energy “haves” and “have-nots”.

For a taste of an escalating social welfare disaster, here are articles from Queensland (click here); Victoria (click here); South Australia (click here); and New South Wales (click here).

There’s something deeply troubling about thousands of Australian households descending into gloom after dark – unable to afford the power needed for electric lighting; or troubling, at least, for those with a social conscience.

The ONLY justification for the massive stream of subsidies filched from power consumers and directed to wind power outfits is the claim that wind power reduces CO2 emissions in the electricity sector and, therefore, provides a solution to climate change (or what used to be called “global warming”). The former proposition is a proven fallacy (seeour post here). And, because the planet hasn’t reached boiling point (in bitter defiance of the IPCC’s models), the once concrete relationship between CO2 emissions and increasing global temperature now seems murky, at best.

Claiming the “global warming” moral high ground, wind power proponents continue to blindly chant the mantra that wind power reduces CO2 emissions – although they rarely, if ever, talk about the actual cost of the claimed reductions.  Probably because there are, in fact, no reductions.

STT has focused on the fact that industrial scale wind power does not – and will never – reduce CO2 emissions simply because it is intermittent; being delivered at crazy, random intervals, such that 100% of its capacity must be backed up 100% of the time by fossil fuel generation sources (see our post here).  Accordingly, we call it an environmental fraud.

Because wind power fails to deliver on its primary claim (and the wind industry’s only reason for existence) the $billions in subsidies purloined from taxpayers and power consumers have been received on an utterly false premise. Accordingly, we call it an economic fraud. Wind power, whichever way you slice it, is not, and will never be, a meaningful power generation source.

May 2015 National

With that in mind, power consumers and taxpayers are clearly entitled to ask whether the subsidies received by wind power generators represent a cost-effective means of reducing CO2 emissions; if, indeed, there is any such reduction at all.

One such group is the Association for Research of Renewable Energy in Australia (ARREA): a band of hard-hitting, pro-farming and pro-community advocates, with a mission to ensure Australia gets the sensible energy policy it needs. Rather than the present policy fiasco, foisted on power consumers and rural communities by eco-fascist nutjobs – that wouldn’t know the first thing about markets and/or power generation – and the rent-seekers from the wind industry and its parasites that profit from the useful idiots they pay handsomely to run cover on their behalf: like yes2-ruining-us, GetUp!, the Climate Speculator and ruin-economy.

On that score, ARREA went hell-for-leather in an effort to put some of the real facts before the Senate Inquiry into the great wind power fraud.

ARREA lobbed a cracking submission before the Committee – available here: sub372_ARREA

In its submission ARREA has a very solid crack at the most colossal industry subsidy scheme in the history of the Commonwealth; and the fact that, despite the ridiculous cost of the LRET (originally set up as a $3.8 billion a year subsidy for wind power – but – under the latest 33,000 GWh target – a mere ‘snip’ at $3 billion annually), there has never been any cost/benefit analysis of the policy in its 15 years of operation.

ARREA also takes a well-aimed swipe at the ludicrous claims by the wind industry that each and every MWh of wind power dispatched to the grid results in the abatement (or reduction) of 1 tonne of CO2 gas in the electricity generation sector.

It’s that relationship that is said to justify – what Greg Hunt calls – the “massive $93 per tonne carbon tax” imposed on all Australian power consumers under the LRET (see our post here).

Under the LRET, a REC is issued for each MWh of wind power dispatched to the grid, on the assumption that it in fact reduces or abates 1 tonne of CO2, that would otherwise be emitted by a conventional generator. The figure of $93 talked about by Hunt as a 1 “tonne carbon tax” is the full cost of a REC, that will be reached when the shortfall penalty starts to apply: the full cost of the REC is added to retail power bills.

STT hears that young Greg has taken to arguing that there is no such assumption: his argument appears to be that a REC is issued for a MWh of wind power, irrespective of whether any CO2 is abated elsewhere in the electricity sector; which simply begs the question as to what Australians are getting for their $93 per MWh electricity tax? Hmmm …

ARREA’s submission also picks up on the work done by Dr Joseph Wheatley, a graduate of Trinity College Dublin with a PhD in condensed matter physics from Princeton University:

Wind Industry’s CO2 Abatement Claims Smashed by Top Physics Professor – Dr Joseph Wheatley

ARREA’s top operatives, Doug Bucknell, Mark Glover and Sam McGuiness fronted up to the Inquiry to continue their attack on the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time.

Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines – 29 May 2015

BUCKNELL, Mr Lionel Douglas Wentworth (Douglas), Member, Association for Research of Renewable Energy in Australia Ltd

GLOVER, Mr Mark Berry, Member, Association for Research of Renewable Energy in Australia Ltd

McGUINESS, Mr Sam, Member, Association for Research of Renewable Energy in Australia Ltd

CHAIR: Welcome. Could you please confirm that the information on parliamentary privilege and the protection of witnesses and evidence has been provided to you?

Mr Bucknell: Yes.

Mr Glover: Yes.

Mr McGuiness: Yes.

CHAIR: The committee has your submission. I invite you to make a brief opening statement. At the conclusion of your remarks, I will invite members of the committee to put questions to you.

Mr Bucknell: Thank you. First I congratulate you on the conduct of this inquiry. We have been engaged observers at public hearings and have intently followed your progress, including the interim report and the wind turbine commissioner proposal. Your work here will last on the public record and be proven over time to have added a great deal to the public understanding around wind turbines and their relative value or otherwise. In our view, you have covered the detail and the terms of reference items with one major exception, and that is why we are here today.

The ARREA submission directly addresses that missing point, which is the economic impact of wind turbines, including the associated matters on how effective the Clean Energy Regulator has been, the adequacy of monitoring, the energy and emission input and output equations and related matters. This issue is fundamental. It goes to the very heart of what the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000, the act, is supposed to be doing. Specifically, if the second object of the act, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and the third object being ecologically sustainable are to be met, the encouragement of additional generation, which is the first object, must be achieved by displacing thermal production. In order to assess the economic impact, historical performance data is crucial and a fundamental benchmark. Under the current regime adopted by the CER, it appears that no real effort has been made to verify the claims by the wind industry as to the actual performance of wind turbines as they relate to the fundamental task of reducing greenhouse gases in the electricity sector.

This is why we, ARREA, commissioned the Wheatley study to independently investigate the effectiveness of wind power in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation in Australia during 2014, using actual empirical five-minute data from each of the grid-connected generators. We were at the Joe Wheatley teleconference you held in Canberra. We are not here to revisit the technical detail. That is why we and you got the expert in. However, we are here to focus on the outcome, to connect the dots, to explain why this is important to the terms of reference and your final report recommendations.

As a headline reminder, analysis of the actual data in the NEM in 2014 shows that wind power production has overstated the emission reductions by 22 per cent—that is, 100 per cent minus 78. It is 22 per cent overstated. This percentage will continue to increase as the percentage of wind power entering the NEM increases. The current lack of performance measurement is just not acceptable. It would not be tolerated in any other industry, let alone one reliant on mandated subsidies. It should not be up to entities like ARREA to commission this independent research. Performance measurement should be a fundamental and first step in any oversight regime, particularly where taxpayers’ funds and electricity consumers are involved. The CER should have independently commissioned this research, or the Senate, or perhaps in the future the wind turbine commissioner. The CER should be admonished for this failure to properly monitor the true impact of an industry which comes at a high cost to the nation’s economy and electricity consumers in particular.

Many are asking: is this regulator asleep at the wheel? Do we have another HIH royal commission occurring here? Or do they already have the information but are not releasing it? Senators should be concerned about the impact that this lack of measurement has on the CER fulfilling its responsibilities under the act and regulation. There are financial flow-on impacts to electricity consumers and in respect of public moneys received by inappropriately issued RECs. The issue of CER’s effectiveness exists regardless of your political views, regardless of whether you like or dislike wind turbines and regardless of the environmental and social impact issues. This is a public accountability issue. We are urging all to make a joint recommendation on this matter, and that involves an audit of the CER.

In 2014 electricity consumers effectively paid wind farms $100 for emissions reduction and they got only $78 worth of value. The dollar value of these certificates that did not lead to a reduction in emissions was estimated at $70 million in 2014 alone. What is more, it will get worse year by year as more turbines are installed. This 22 per cent or $70 million in ineffective wind production is not ecologically sustainable as defined by the act. The act’s definition of ‘ecologically sustainable’ includes ‘promoting improved valuation, pricing and incentive mechanisms’. That is the act’s definition. Including the 22 per cent ineffective wind production is clearly not consistent with this principle. In particular, it clearly distorts valuation and pricing and creates unjustified incentives. Under regulation 15A(a) electricity omitted from this calculation includes ‘electricity that was generated by using an eligible renewable energy source that is not ecologically sustainable’. Let me restate that: electricity produced by a wind turbine that is not ecologically sustainable cannot be counted. They cannot issue RECs for it.

The approach taken above is what parliament intended for regulation 15A(a). The issue was also the core of the amending act—the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Amendment Act 2006—with the explanatory statement saying that it would:

… enhance market transparency and improve business certainty, provide increased opportunities for solar and bioenergy technologies, and improve the operational effectiveness and efficiency of the Act.

The Wheatley research has now clearly established using the actual empirical 2014 data that 22 per cent of the electricity generated by wind as the eligible renewable energy source in 2014 was not ecologically sustainable and should not have received RECs.

No-one likes being ripped off, but what is worse is when the gatekeeper, the regulator, the CER, is complicit or is turning a blind eye. Please do not add insult to injury to your electors by ignoring this problem, which is only set to get worse. Senator Back has repeatedly asked the CER for details on regulation 15A(a). The CER has responded to those questions, including on notice, with answers relating to other regulations, including regulation 15A and 15A(b). They have tried to answer using ineligible energy sources, which is regulation 15 and not relevant to the question asked. It appears as though the CER is avoiding answering the question or making up its own legislative rules.

ARREA believes renewable energy is very important for the sustainability of Australia’s future. However, the current policy settings in regard to wind turbines are flawed. Their implementation has led to systemic failure. The simple production of electricity from wind, subsidised or otherwise, to the extent that it does not effectively offset thermal production does not serve any material economic purpose. It duplicates electricity production, distorts market signals, especially compared to other renewable energy sources such as solar, and leads to inappropriate public perceptions about the value of wind power, to the detriment of the long-term sustainability of our nation.

Our recommendations as per our report stand, and those recommendations are that this committee:

  1. Receive the full Phase 1 report—CO2 Emissions Savings from Wind Power in the National Electricity Market (NEM), by Dr Joseph Wheatley, Biospherica Risk Ltd, Ireland.
  2. Obtain an assurance from the CER that nominated persons—the wind energy companies—will be advised of the need to apply, consistent with the Act and its regulations, a 0.78:1 relationship when issuing certificates.
  3. Confirm that the Regulator will use its powers under the Act, including Part 15A Civil Penalty Orders and/or Enforceable Undertaking under S15B, to uphold the purposes of the Act.
  4. Seek that the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO), conduct a performance audit on the CER’s compliance with its role under the legislation. In particular:
    1. What information did the CER hold on wind effectiveness in offsetting CO2 emissions at both 30 June 2014 (end of financial year) and 3 May 2015?
    2. What Risk Management and Fraud Mitigation practices and processes are in place, have they been appropriate? If not, who should be held responsible and what rectification actions is required.
    3. If all public monies collected in respect of the Act are appropriate.
    4. If there are financial or other incentives, including but not limited to, the collection of public monies under the Act that are distorting the CER’s role in achieving the Objects of the Act.
    5. If the expenditure of public monies by the CER has been appropriately focused on achieving the Acts objects.

CHAIR: Thank you, Mr Bucknell.

Senator LEYONHJELM: I read your report yesterday, at the end of 550 other pages.

Mr Bucknell: Thank you, Senator.

Senator LEYONHJELM: If my questions were answered in your submission, that is the reason: it has gone in one eye and out the other. I assume the 0.78 ratio which I think you mentioned is attributable to spinning reserve. Is it?

Mr Glover: Can I just answer that one. The Wheatley report basically showed that wind power supplied 4½ per cent of system demand in 2014 but only reduced CO2 emissions by 3½ per cent. Wind power generation is intermittent; in fact, in Australia it fails completely over 100 times a year. The grid must supply sufficient power at all times, and therefore, when the wind is blowing, backup power must be available at all times. In practice, a significant fraction of South Australia’s wind power displaces low-emissions gas generation within South Australia, and in fact in New South Wales we are importing power from South Australia and it is displacing black coal. The dirtiest power of all is brown coal. That is not being displaced at all by wind power generation.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Yes, but the explanation for the 0.78 is this backup that you are referring to?

Mr Glover: He did not measure spinning reserves or cycling. That is not even included in that. In fact, if we go forward, if we can get more data—in the back of Wheatley’s report he lists his requirements—I think that 22 per cent inefficiency will actually become greater, because that was not measured.

Mr Bucknell: If your direct question is in relation to 0.78, 0.45 production by wind only offsets 0.35 in emissions. If you divide one by the other, you get 0.78.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Have you compared that to solar, geothermal and hydro?

Mr Glover: We have not done the studies there. To an extent, what solar is actually doing is reducing demand on the grid. Households that are running on solar reduce the total demand on the grid, so it is a lot harder to measure, because we do not know how much solar is being produced at any one point in time.

Senator LEYONHJELM: I was talking about large-scale solar.

Mr Glover: No, we have not scoped that.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Are you confident that the ANAO is the appropriate organisation to investigate the performance of the Clean Energy Regulator? My impression is that it is primarily concerned with accuracy of financial accounts.

Mr Bucknell: That is correct. There are two types of audits: there are financial accounts audits and there are performance audits. The audit that we are asking for is an audit of the correspondence that is held within the CER, particularly in relation to regulation 15A(a). Why have we got to the point we have got to? Why is this 22 per cent currently being counted? Why is it currently a one to one relationship? When RECs are issued, there are public moneys that are received by the CER, so it is a financial and a performance issue. We think the ANAO is set up to do those types of audits. This is not an unusual request; it is simply a request for an audit.

Senator URQUHART: Thanks very much, Mr Bucknell. How many members does ARREA have?

Mr Bucknell: Seven.

Senator URQUHART: How do you go about becoming a member? I have looked for you on the internet. I cannot find a street address, a website or a Facebook page, so how do you—

Mr Bucknell: We are a public company that has been registered for a number of years. In fact, I can give you some details on that. You are offered membership by the organisation, and we are on the public record.

Senator URQUHART: Okay, but you do not have a website, a street address or a Facebook page? I have not been able to find any.

Mr Bucknell: No.

Senator URQUHART: Can you describe the structure of your organisation. Who are the key personnel?

Mr Bucknell: The three directors are on the public record. We have seven members, as we have described. We are an organisation who are most concerned about ensuring that renewable energy in Australia and the decarbonisation of the Australian economy are done in the most efficient and effective way. That is why we have raised funds to have the Wheatley research done.

Senator URQUHART: I understand that spokespeople for your organisation are Tony Hodgson and Rod Pahl—is that correct? And they were also spokespeople for an opponent wind group called Friends of Collector—is that right?

Mr Bucknell: I understand that to be correct.

Senator URQUHART: You said that you have not received any research grants and that you raised that money yourselves through your organisation.

Mr Bucknell: That is correct. These are privately raised funds. As I said in my opening statement, we think this is research that should have been done independently by the CER or by the Senate. Public moneys should have been used and, in our view, they should be admonished for the fact that they have not done that research, because it is required in order for them to be able to know how many certificates should be issued underneath the act.

Senator URQUHART: Do any of the key office holders within your association have any research qualifications?

Mr Glover: No, I do not think so. We have a number of people in the organisation with a number of different skills. I am actually a qualified geologist, so I have a scientific background. Mr Bucknell used to work for APRA, so he knows how the regulators work. I was also the Australian country treasurer for the Bank of America Merrill Lynch for over 10 years, so I have a strong background in banking. We have backgrounds in PR, economists and stuff like that who are all members. It is a broad background.

Mr McGuiness: I have been a farmer for 29 years and I have dealt with parasites most of that time, so I am pretty well qualified in this area too.

Senator URQUHART: I presume you mean parasites on the backs of sheep or cattle.

Mr McGuiness: Just all parasites. There are an awful lot.

Senator URQUHART: Aside from the work that you commissioned Joseph Wheatley to do, what other research have ARREA undertaken? Have you undertaken any other research or is it just the work that you commissioned Joe Wheatley to do?

Mr McGuiness: That is the only commissioned work that we have done so far. There are other works to do with waste to energy. Part of our group is looking into stand-alone solar as well, especially in regional areas.

Senator URQUHART: You are looking at doing some research into that?

Mr McGuiness: Absolutely.

Mr Bucknell: And we made a submission in relation to the review of the renewable energy target.

Senator URQUHART: Thank you very much.

CHAIR: Gentlemen, in order to accurately measure CO2 abatement going forward and the concerns that you have raised, what additional data and resources are required, do you believe?

Mr Glover: The Wheatley report, as I said earlier, omitted start-up and power plant cycling. CO2 emissions were not calculated for power stations not despatching electricity to the grid. Most coal fired power stations are at their most efficient when running at 100 per cent capacity. As this capacity is reduced, CO2 emissions per megawatt hour rise. If this reduction in capacity is due to wind power generation entering the grid, this increase in CO2 inefficiency needs to be measured. The input data needs to be improved with actual fuel use data by individual generators at short time intervals, preferably five-minute time intervals. An emissions parameter for individual generators is required to include zero load energy consumption data, that is when they are not producing, incremental heat rate slopes—this is starting to get into the engineering side—start-up energy costs and thermal relaxation times. Obviously, if you shut a power station down because wind power comes on, the coal is still burning, the heat has to dissipate out of that power station and CO2 is still being produced.

This data will help measure efficiency of generators at different capacity points, as well as measure CO2 emissions when these generators are not supplying electricity. In many cases these coal fired power stations are on standby, where they are burning coal but not supplying electricity—in essence, waiting for the wind to drop. As we have stated, there have been other reports done that I think show the whole wind power fleet in Australia switches off 130 times a year. The other thing required is: both ‘sent out’ data and ‘as generated’ data are needed for each generator. ‘As generated’ data basically includes the power used in the generation process, whereas ‘sent out’ is the actual power delivered to the grid. Obviously, there is a certain amount of electricity used within the plant; that needs to be picked up as well.

We are proposing that a detailed multi-year CO2 abatement study is needed to reduce the statistical uncertainty and provide clear information about the variability of wind power effectiveness. I suppose really what we are suggesting is that the Clean Energy Regulator would probably need to create a full-time position to properly calculate these CO2 emissions. The computing power is there to do it on a five-minute basis, if we can get the real fuel feed in data and all the other engineering data for each generator. I think it is probably a full-time job for one person.

Mr McGuiness: What happens is: to start a coal fired power station, they might use up to 35,000 or 40,000 litres of diesel to get it up to an operating temperature. This is a small one—say, a 150 megawatt one. When you get it up to temperature—and I will use an example of one that I know a little bit about in the Hunter—that consumes 80 tonnes per hour of coal to keep it ticking along. It might not be generating any electricity, but you cannot stop feeding it coal. They have to have a thermal efficiency where they do not crack and heat and cool down; otherwise they break. Then it gets a bit complicated. You have thermal reserve, where it is hot and generating a small amount of steam. It uses a thermal generator. Then you have spinning reserve, where it is spinning, and then you have spinning reserve that is synchronised to the grid. Basically you just dump the clutch and she is jamming sparks into the grid. All of those have to stay warm the whole time. You only shut a big thermal generator down if you have a breakdown or a maintenance schedule. These people are scheduled generators. They schedule into the grid to supply electricity 12 to 18 months ahead of when they actually generate. When wind comes into the system, they pull down—but only for a very short period of time. They have to be sitting there so, if something happens, that spinning reserve is ready to drop into the grid.

So there are thermal reserves and spinning reserves. The emissions on those, because they are not generating into the grid at the time, are not necessarily calculated. If we got the correct data and the government did the correct job and got their legislation so it worked, rather than nice and fluffy at the moment, you would get some real evidence of what is going on—and then you would be fair dinkum about getting results.

Mr Glover: Interestingly, under the last carbon tax regime, you only paid a carbon tax when you were supplying electricity to the grid. There was no carbon tax charged if you just happened to be burning coal and not supplying electricity.

Senator DAY: Could you just elaborate further, Mr Bucknell, on the difference between ecologically sustainable wind turbines and non-ecologically sustainable ones?

Mr Bucknell: Absolutely. I think this does go to the heart of a number of questions asked in relation to regulation 15 and regulation 15A. Regulation 15, which is how the CER answered the question on 15AA, relates to eligible and not eligible energy sources. For the record, wind farms do only use eligible renewable energy sources under the act, by definition, but it is not relevant to the question. They do not use any ineligible energy sources, but it is not relevant to the question of reg 15AA. Reg 15AA excludes electricity produced by a wind farm that is not ecologically sustainable. That is why the 22 per cent in 2014, and an increasing percentage in future years to probably 30-plus per cent, is not ecologically sustainable.

Perhaps I could just run through that a bit more clearly for you, if I can. ‘Ecologically sustainable’ is defined in the act. It means an action that is consistent with the following principles of ecologically sustainable development:

Decision-making processes should effectively integrate both long-term and short-term economic, environmental, social and equitable considerations.

That is point a). And then it goes on to b), which is irreversible environmental damage—not relevant. It goes on to intergenerational equity, which is not particularly relevant, and the conservation of biological diversity, which is not particularly relevant. But point e) is:

improved valuation, pricing and incentive mechanisms should be promoted.

Actions that improve valuation, pricing and incentive mechanisms are ecologically sustainable. Excluding the 22 per cent is ecologically sustainable. It is defined in the act. We just want them to do it.

CHAIR: There being no further questions, we thank you for your appearance here today before the committee.

Hansard, 29 May June 2015

Mr Bucknell’s, Mr Glover’s and Mr McGuiness’ evidence is available from the Parliament’s website here.

mosquito-7192_lores