Renewable energy has become a potent rallying cry uniting Hollywood and the Beltway. “We can move our economy town by town, state by state to renewable energy and a sustainable future,” Leonardo DiCaprio says in his eight-minute climate movie Carbon, released in August. In his fiscal-showdown speech during his first term, in April 2011, President Obama put Paul Ryan’s proposals for a 70 percent cut in clean energy at the top of his list of reprehensible and unnecessary reductions. “These aren’t the kind of cuts you make when you’re trying to get rid of some waste or find extra savings in the budget,” he said. “These are the kinds of cuts that tell us we can’t afford the America that I believe in and I think you believe in.”

In May of this year, President Obama declared the shift to clean energy a “fight” that was about shaping the sector “that is probably going to have more to do with how well our economy succeeds than just about any other.” At least on that, the president was right. If we get energy wrong, America will throw away the world-leading energy advantages bestowed on it by geology, technology, and capitalism.

Presenting the administration’s Clean Power Plan, EPA administrator Gina McCarthy admitted it was not about pollution control. “It’s about investments inrenewables and clean energy,” she told the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in July. “This is an investment strategy.” The president’s favorite corporate-tax inverter has a different take on the nature of the investment opportunity. “We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms,” Warren Buffett told Berkshire Hathaway’s investors. “That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” While wind investors hoover up the $23 production tax credit per megawatt hour (MWh) of electricity produced, the real costs of intermittent renewables such as wind and solar are many times greater. And they’re not even good at what they’re meant to do — reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Deriving a large proportion of energy from renewables is proving extremely costly for Germany. Last year, Peter Altmaier, then the energy and environment Minister and now one of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s closest advisers, said that Germany’s effort to decarbonize electricity generation could cost one trillion euros by the end of the 2030s. Not that you would necessarily see that from Germany’s carbon dioxide emissions. Despite lower economic growth in Germany than in the U.S., German emissions have been rising seven times faster — up 9.3 percent between 2009 and 2013 compared with 1.3 percent for the United States.

Indeed, renewable energy provides a textbook case of what the French 19th-century economist Frédéric Bastiat meant when he described the difference between a bad economist and a good one: The bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen. The visible effect of renewables is their use of “free” wind, sun, and running water. All that’s needed to transition from a world of dark, satanic power stations to a clean, low-carbon world are temporary subsidies until renewable power becomes competitive. Hailing the closure of nuclear-power plants in the Midwest due to a glut of wind power, Howard Learner of Chicago’s Environmental Law and Policy Center last year declared: “It’s a matter of economic competitiveness.” This is the story told by Bastiat’s bad economists.

The closure of a nuclear-power station shows that something is amiss. Nuclear-power stations emit no carbon dioxide. Their running costs are low and much of the costs are unavoidable whether the stations are kept open or closed — construction and commissioning at the front-end, de-commissioning at the back. Since 2008, the output of America’s nuclear-power stations has fallen by 0.480 billion MWh, a decline of 6 percent. In a properly functioning market, this shouldn’t be happening.

Advocates of renewables are getting excited about falling costs of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels. According to the Department of Energy (DoE), PV costs have fallen by two thirds since 2010 and the cost of solar-generated electricity has fallen from $21.4 per MWh in 2010 to $11.2 per MWh in 2013, leading the DoE toclaim that solar will be “fully cost-competitive” by the end of the decade.” A growing number of Bastiat’s “good” economists have been looking behind the visible costs of renewables. They reveal a very different picture. A 2010 paper by MIT professor Paul Joskow, a leading economist in the field, shows why the DoE’s cost-competitiveness claim is thoroughly misleading. Using levelized costs (life-cycle costs per MWh) to assess the economics of intermittent energy gives the wrong answer because they ignore the changes in the value of electricity throughout the day and the costs of coping with unpredictable renewable energy.

To the life-cycle cost of renewables must be added short-term balancing and longer-term-capacity adequacy to match supply to demand. Because renewables output depends on the weather, an electricity system with a high proportion of renewables needs much more generating capacity. Without renewables, Britain would need 22GW of new capacity to replace aging coal and nuclear-power stations. With renewables, Britain will need 50GW, i.e., 28 GW extra to deal with the intermittency problem. And the more renewables in the system, the worse the problem is. A 2012 analysis by the OECD illustrates the problems caused by the increase in cost due to the increasing scale of wind and solar power. For onshore wind with 10 percent penetration (meaning that wind supplies 10 percent of the energy in that market), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates extra balancing and adequacy costs of $7.61 per MWh rising to $11.14 per MWh at 30 percent penetration.

Levelized costs also ignore extra spending on grid infrastructure. Texas is the leading wind state, accounting for nearly 22 percent of the nation’s wind-generated electricity. Transmitting electricity from wind farms in the rural north and west of the state to cities such as Dallas and Houston caused grid congestion. The state decided to have consumers back the inaptly named Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) grid program to give wind investors a windfall subsidy in the form of access to nearly 3,600 miles of transmission lines. Subsidies via grid infrastructure spending can be more costly than overt plant-level subsidies. Bill Peacock and Josiah Neeley of the Texas Public Policy Foundation reckon that CREZ costs attributable to wind amount to $6.8 billion. This compares to plant-level subsidies of $4.14 billion in the ten years between 2005 and 2015.

Perhaps the dirtiest secret of renewables is how ineffective they are at displacing carbon dioxide emissions. Brookings senior fellow Charles Frank has calculated that replacing coal with modern combined-cycle gas turbines cuts 2.6 times more emissions than using wind does, and cuts four times as many emissions as solar. If anything, these figures are likely to be too generous to renewables. Frank uses conservative assumptions about the energy consumed for balancing and cycling (starting up or shutting down gas-fired plants). Based on recent research, Edinburgh University’s Professor Gordon Hughes found that balancing costs are nearly ten times higher than Frank’s assumptions and that cycling reduces the amount of CO2 up to 50 percent more than wind turbines do (relative to the classic grid-average method of calculation used by most official bodies such as the International Energy Agency).

The most insidious and destructive effect of renewables, however, is on the wholesale electricity markets. Intermittent renewables, particularly wind, can flood the market at random times of day with zero marginal-cost electricity. The production tax credit means that renewable investors make money from negative prices down to minus $23 per MWh. Episodes of negative prices are evidence of an electricity market that isn’t working. They imply that what is being produced is garbage — someone has to be paid to take the electricity away.

Negative prices crush incentives to invest in the conventional capacity needed to keep the power on when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. The OECD report warns that gas, coal, and nuclear-power stations would experience lower electricity prices, reduced load factors, and higher costs because of intermittent renewables. To avoid the risk of “green outs” caused by inadequate investment in conventional and nuclear capacity, governments and regulators have to intervene and construct capacity markets to redress the distortion created by renewables. These don’t come cheap. In the case of Texas, the Brattle Group estimates that a capacity market would cost Texans an extra $3.2 billion a year.

Unseen system costs highlight a critical flaw in the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. With the exception of Texas, electricity systems cross state boundaries. Yet the EPA’s approach, in the words of Gina McCarthy, is to provide states with a flexible path toward compliance. One state’s mandates affect all the other states served by the same system, so the impacts of renewables are on systems, rather than states. Thus the EPA approach risks sparking energy wars between states, illustrating the cluelessness of the EPA and the dangers of allowing an environment agency to craft energy policy. Already North Dakota has refused to co-fund the costs of Minnesota’s renewable energy mandate, which is costing North Dakotans an extra $5.7 million a year. Yet for the EPA to recognize the systems costs of renewables would be to destroy any objective justification for them.

The bad economist, Bastiat wrote, pursues a small present good that will be followed by a great evil to come, while the good economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil. Across the Atlantic, the calamity of renewable energy is becoming more visible each day. It will not be only good economists who see that imitating Europe would be a colossal blunder.

— Rupert Darwall is the author of The Age of Global Warming: A History.

Stop the Outrageous Subsidies, and the Wind Scam Dies!

September 23, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

US Wind Industry Under Siege: Congress Set to Cut Subsidies as Communities Boil Over

September 23, 2014 by stopthesethings

Wind power opponents seek repeal of tax credit
The Seattle Times
Hal Bernton and Erin Heffernan
21 September 2014

FOREST, Wisconsin — When wind-power developers prospected the rolling hills around this small dairy town, they found plenty of gusty sites for turbines. In 2011, they proposed a $250 million project with up to 44 turbines that could produce enough energy to power thousands of homes.

Since then, nothing has come easy for the developer in a state that has emerged as a stronghold of resistance to the spread of wind power.

In Forest, opponents gained enough votes to take over the town government, sued in state court to try to block the project, and added their support to a national movement that seeks to end the federal tax credit for the wind-power industry.

“We are here to protect our property values, our eagles, our health and our town,” said Brenda Salseg, spokeswoman for the Forest Voice, the local opposition group, which posted online a form letter urging the Wisconsin congressional delegation to oppose the tax credit.

The tax credit was passed by Congress in 1992 and has been periodically extended. It is currently set at 2.4 cents per kilowatt hour, and, during times of glutted electricity markets, can be worth more than the wholesale price of power.

This tax credit has helped catapult wind power to the front of the U.S. efforts to launch a renewable-energy industry.

By the end of 2012, wind power represented 43 percent of all new U.S. electric generation installed that year and was hailed by the Obama administration as a key in the global effort to combat climate change.

Wind power also has been bolstered by state mandates that require utilities to acquire a certain percentage of the power from renewable-energy sources.

The turbines operate in more than three dozen states, from Washington’s Columbia River Plateau to the Allegheny Mountains of Maryland, and in 2013 provided more than 4 percent of the nation’s power, according to a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report.

In many areas, wind turbines have been welcomed as an economic boon to landowners who are paid for leasing acreage.

But as wind power has grown, so, too, has the opposition.

In some communities, such as Forest, developers have faced a backlash from residents concerned about the noise and health effects of living near wind-power projects.

The toll on birds and bats killed by turbine blades has drawn scrutiny.

Critics have attacked wind power as a fickle source of electricity that ebbs whenever the wind dies down. They fault the tax credit for encouraging new projects when many utilities have plenty of power.

Over time, the politics of wind power have become more partisan.

Most of the wind-power capacity is within Republican congressional districts, but many politicians in the party have made ending the tax credit part of their agenda. This year, efforts to extend the tax credit have made little headway in the Republican-controlled House.

Some House Republicans such as Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash., still back the tax credit, according to Reichert’s spokeswoman. But some former supporters have turned against it.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader, once advocated the tax credit that helped spur investment in wind farms in his California district. But before his June election to his leadership position, he told the Wall Street Journal he thinks wind companies no longer need the tax credit.

“My feeling is the current situation is as bad as it has ever been,” said Robert Kahn, a Seattle consultant who represents wind-power developers. “Congress is so polarized about so many things that if some people are for it, other people are going to have to be against it.”

The fight against the tax credit also has been championed by Americans for Prosperity. One of the nation’s most prominent conservative advocacy groups, it was co-founded by billionaire David Koch, who has extensive interests in the fossil-fuels industry.

The organization last fall sent an open letter to Congress signed by more than 100 groups, including many smaller groups formed to fight wind power.

Wind-power advocates note that fossil-fuel industries have received federal subsidies for decades, such as a tax provision that allows favorable write-offs of oil-drilling costs. They say the government should put a price on carbon, or continue offering incentives for technologies that produce energy without carbon emissions. “We don’t want to lower or eliminate our tax credit when everyone else gets to keep theirs,” said Jim Reilly, a senior vice president of the American Wind Energy Association.

The wind-power tax credit extends over the first 10 years of a project’s operation. Congress has typically extended the credit a few years at a time, creating financial uncertainties for the wind-power industry.

In 2013, installations of wind farms declined by more than 90 percent from the previous year, reflecting concerns that the credit would not be extended.

Congress did extend the credit that year, eventually prompting many companies to break ground on projects.

Many are going in this year, putting the industry on a record pace for construction, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

The cost of new power has plummeted to record lows. The average price of about $25 per megawatt hour for power-purchase agreements in 2013 was nearly a third less than in 2009, according to a study by the Lawrence Berkeley lab.

What would happen if the tax credit dies?

Ryan Wiser, a co-author of the Berkeley report, said that would push the price of wind power past $40 a megawatt hour, and cool investor interest.

“The number of projects would be much less, but there is no doubt there would be some,” Wiser said.

Even without a tax credit, wind power also would receive a boost from President Barack Obama’s proposed rule to limit emissions from existing power plants. It could prompt the closing of some coal plants and open up more demand for turbine power.

But the proposed rule is opposed by many Republicans, and already is facing court challenges.

Conflict still rages Wisconsin once was swept up in the wind-power boom. But it’s now an example of how a state, even with federal incentives in place, can put the brakes on turbines. Many wind-power projects in Wisconsin are on relatively small properties, increasing the potential for conflicts with neighbors who don’t receive any lease payments but find themselves living next to turbines.

“The first day the turbines came on, I thought it was a jet plane taking off,” said Gerry Meyer, a retired mail carrier who complains of health effects from living near turbines in rural southeast Wisconsin.

Meyer has testified at state legislative hearings and also networked with Forest activists seeking to block the wind-power project proposed there by Emerging Energies.

These opponents have found some powerful allies among state Republican politicians.

“Wind turbines have proved to be an expensive, inefficient source of electricity, and thus any future construction of turbines simply is not a policy goal or object that should be pursued further,” Gov. Scott Walker wrote in a 2010 campaign memo obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Walker, once in office, backed a legislative effort to increase setbacks for turbines by increasing the distance they must be located from a neighbor, and measuring that setback from the neighbor’s house rather than property line. That 2011 effort failed.

But a legislative committee voted to suspend the state’s wind-siting rule to study the health effects of wind turbines.

By the time the rule was reinstated a year later, five Wisconsin wind projects had been suspended or canceled, according to Clean Wisconsin, a wind-power advocacy group. New installations of turbines plummeted in the state.

In the months ahead, developers’ attorneys will argue in court for the right to finally move ahead on the Forest project.

Meanwhile, an emotional battle over the project continues to rage within the community. “It’s been devastating for the town,” said Carol Johnson, a Forest resident who supports the project. “Many family members will never speak again … It’s just torn the town apart.”
The Seattle Times

As it goes in Wisconsin, it goes all around the globe: spear giant fans into closely settled rural communities and the only thing guaranteed to be generated isn’t meaningful power, but a constant source of anger, hostility and community division. What makes these people so wild is that all their suffering has done nothing for the economy or the environment, leaving them feeling like dupes in the greatest fraud of all time (see our post here).

We love the line about how closing coal plants would “open up more demand for turbine power”. We think that’s a form of flattery best reserved for first dates. There is no “demand for turbine power”. In the absence of mandated targets (shortfall charges, penalties and the like) or massive subsidies there is NO demand for an unreliable and intermittent power source that can only ever be delivered at crazy, random intervals (see our post here). Wind power is not an alternative energy source (unless you’re prepared to sit in the dark for hours and days on end?) and will never be a substitute for conventional generation sources available on demand (see our post here).

We note a lot of “brave” talk about the wind industry being able to survive if the US Congress does away with the Production Tax Credit (PTC).

If the tax credit dies, the US wind industry dies – it will not be a case – as Ryan Wiser asserts – that: “The number of projects would be much less, but there is no doubt there would be some”.

What utter piffle. Cut the subsidies and there will never be another wind turbine erected anywhere, ever again.

The massive stream of subsidies – like the REC and PTC – provide the ONLY explanation for the wind industry – as recognised by the “Sage of Omaha”, billionaire Warren Buffett – whose company Berkshire Hathaway has invested $billions in wind power in order to get at federal subsidies – namely the PTC – which is worth US$23 per MW/h for the first 10 years of operation.

A subsidiary of the Buffett-owned MidAmerican Energy Holdings owns 1,267 turbines in the US with a capacity of 2,285 MW – eventually when the company’s Wind VIII expansion is finished, MidAmerican will own 1,715 turbines with a capacity of 3,335 MW. Buffett has piled into giant fans for one reason only: to lower the tax rate paid by Berkshire Hathaway.

As Buffett put it earlier this year at his annual investor jamboree in Omaha, Nebraska:

“I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate. For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”

There, Warren Buffett said it, not us.

At least he had the honesty and integrity to explain the only conceivable basis for the greatest rort of all time. And isn’t it so much better when those that profit from it choose not to speak with “forked tongue”. Maybe Ryan Wiser, the CEC and AWEA can take a leaf out of Warren’s book?

Wind Turbines Monitored by Unbiased Sound Experts Prove Noise Levels are Intolerable!

September 23, 2014 / 1957chev / 2 Comments

Hansen, Zajamsek, Hansen, Noise Monitoring, Waterloo Wind Farm

Noise Monitoring in the Vicinity of the Waterloo Wind Farm

Kristy Hansen, Branko Zajamsek and Colin Hansen, School of Mechanical Engineering
University of Adelaide May 26, 2014

This report by the above authors describes the results of their concurrent full spectrum acoustic monitoring conducted at a number of homes located between 2 km out to nearly 10km from the Waterloo Wind Development. This monitoring was independent of the South Australian Environment Protection Authority (SA EPA) and was requested by Mrs Mary Morris and other concerned residents in the Waterloo district. The monitoring occurred during the period of the South Australian EPA Acoustic Survey, conducted in mid 2013.

The results in this independent survey as well as the conclusions are in marked contrast to the results and conclusions of the SA EPA Acoustic Survey report, and reinforce the Waubra Foundation’s opinion expressed at the time the initial SA EPA report was released that there were serious problems with the methodology used by the SA EPA in its acoustic survey at Waterloo. This report provides further evidence that the current SA EPA Wind Farm Noise Guidelines do not protect the health and sleep of the neighbours to these wind developments, out to nearly 10km from the closest wind turbine, because they do not regulate the acoustic emissions to protect health, and most importantly, the sleep of the neighbours.

Emeritus Professor Colin Hansen has advised that he sent the report to the EPA, requesting their comment. To date, three months later (19th August, 2014) no comment or feedback has been received by the Adelaide University researchers from the SA EPA responsible public officials.

Extract from the Conclusions:

“Therefore, the results show that there is a low frequency noise problem associated with the Waterloo wind farm. Therefore, it is extremely important that further investigation is carried out at this wind farm in order to determine the source of the low frequency noise and to develop mitigation technologies. In addition, further research is necessary to establish the long‐term effects of low frequency noise and infrasound on the residents at Waterloo. This research should include health monitoring and sleep studies with simultaneous noise and vibration measurements.”

Key Extracts from the report are reproduced below, and the report is downloadable from the link beneath.

1 Introduction

This report details independent noise measurements and their analysis taken in the vicinity of the Waterloo Wind Farm during the period 9/4 – 22/6, which is the same period as the study undertaken by the EPA and reported in EPA (2013). Measurements were taken outside of as well as inside a number of residences. Due to the potential for data contamination by background noise during the day, only data measured between midnight and 5am are reported here, as during those hours, the dominant noise source was generally the wind farm. The following sections of this report detail the measurement equipment, measurement procedures, data analysis and data interpretation, followed by a conclusion summarising the results detailed in the rest of the report.

The data analysis and interpretation comprises four sections:

overall levels averaged over 10‐minutes for all night‐time data collected at each residence;
unweighted third‐octave spectra and overall levels for the shutdown periods;
unweighted third‐octave spectra and narrowband spectra for measurement times corresponding to noise diary entries; and
unweighted and A‐weighted third‐octave spectra for measurements which exceeded 40 dB(A).

2 Measurement Details

Three B&K 4955 microphones were used for the indoor measurements. These microphones have a low noise floor of 6.5 dB(A) and a flat frequency response down to 6 Hz. While these microphones do not have a flat frequency response below 6 Hz, they are still capable of measuring the blade‐pass frequency and harmonics (Hansen, 2013). The microphones were connected toLAN‐XI hardware and continuous 10‐minute recordings were made using Pulse software. The average sound pressure level of the three microphones was calculated in accordance with the Danish guidelines for indoor low‐ frequency noise measurements (Jakobsen, 2001). This average includes one microphone positioned in the room corner. In this position, the maximum sound pressure level would be measured since this is an anti‐node for all room response modes. A singleGRAS 40AZ / SV 17 microphone was connected to a SVAN 979 sound level meter. This microphone was used as a back‐up and check for the indoor measurements made with the Pulse system.

The outdoor measurements were made using GRAS 40AZ / SV 12L microphones connected to aSVAN 958 sound level meter, which measured continuously over 10‐minute intervals. The microphones have a noise floor of 17 dB(A) and a flat frequency response down to 0.8 Hz. Hemispherical secondary windshields were used to minimise wind‐induced noise experienced by the outdoor microphones, and they were designed to be consistent with the IEC 61400‐11 standard, which specifies the use of these secondary windshields for measurements close to a wind turbine. A spherical secondary windshield and box windshield with specifications described in Hansen (2013) were also used for comparison but these results are only presented in the narrowband analysis in Section 6.2. Wind speed and direction were measured at heights of 1.5 m and 10 m using Davis Vantage Vue and Vantage Pro weather stations, respectively. The weather measurements were collected in 5‐minute intervals and then the 10‐minute average was calculated during post‐ processing.

3 Guidelines

It is well known that wind farm noise is dominated by low‐frequency energy (Moller & Pedersen, 2011), particularly at large distances from the wind farm, where the high‐frequency noise has been more attenuated than the low‐frequency noise. As such, a number of different weighting functions have been applied to the data in Section 4 to highlight different characteristics of the noise. A detailed description of these weightings and their applications is given in the report by the EPA(2013). This section provides a brief analysis of the limitations of some of these weighting functions in the context of wind turbine noise. Additionally, some drawbacks of the current SA EPA guidelines (EPA, 2009) are discussed and recommendations for improvements are suggested.

In South Australia, compliance of a wind farm is determined based on the applicable outdoor limit specified in the SA EPA guidelines (2009). Most of the measurement locations detailed in this report correspond to “rural industrial” zones where the allowable limit is 40 dB(A). One of the township locations is situated in an area which has been zoned “township” according to the Clare and Gilbert Valleys Council regulations. For lack of additional information, it is assumed that this translates to “rural living” in the context of the SA EPA guidelines (2009), which has a corresponding outdoor limit of 35 dB(A). According to the EPA guidelines (2009), a compliance analysis requires collection of over 2,000 data points, with 500 data points recorded for the worst‐case wind direction. For the measurements outlined in this report, such a large amount of data were not collected at any one location, however it was still considered valuable to plot a regression curve to illustrate the degree of compliance over short periods as well. In any case, the use of night‐time data is expected to reduce the degree to which data are contaminated by extraneous sources, thus giving a reasonable estimate of the degree to which the wind farm is compliant.

The SA EPA guidelines also specify use of the LA90 metric, which is the A‐weighted noise level that is exceeded 90% of the time. It should be noted that wind farm noise can be significantly underestimated using LA90 levels due to the unsteady nature of the noise. Hence, the LAeq, which is the energy average of the noise, is considered to be a more realistic representation of the actual noise level attributed to the wind farm, particularly between midnight and 5am when there are very few other noise sources of a similar level to the wind farm noise.

Despite the fact that low‐frequency noise has been identified as a potential issue associated with wind turbine operation, the SA EPA guidelines (2009) do not provide guidance for acceptable levels of low‐frequency noise and infrasound, even though there are several recommendations available in the literature. For example, the C‐weighting can be used to provide an indicator of the presence of low‐frequency noise. According to Broner (2010), a night‐time limit of 60 dB© is recommended, and this limit was included in the NSW draft guidelines (2011). Low‐frequency noise can also be identified by finding the difference between the overall C‐weighted and A‐weighted levels. When LCeq – LAeq > 20, a potential low‐frequency noise problem is indicated, and Broner and Leventhall (1983) and DIN 45680 (1997) would recommend further investigation into the time‐dependent low‐ frequency noise characteristics including noise fluctuations, spectral balance and amplitude modulation.

The G‐weighting is used to indicate the level of infrasound. According to ISO 7196 (1995) and DIN45680 (1997), the audible threshold for the overall G‐weighted noise level is 85 dB(G). On the other hand, this does not preclude the possibility that lower levels of infrasound will have an effect on people (Salt & Lichtenhan, 2014).

The SA EPA guidelines (2009) suggest that the indoor A‐weighted noise level should not exceed 30 dB(A). According to the World Health Organisation night‐time guidelines (WHO, 2009), the no observed effect limit for outdoor noise is 30 dB(A). To quantify the low‐frequency contribution to the indoor noise, it is useful to refer to the Danish guidelines for indoor low‐frequency noise (DanishEPA, 1997) and the UK Department of Food and Rural Affairs criteria (DEFRA, 2005). The Danish limit considers A‐weighted levels in the frequencies from 10 Hz to 160 Hz and the limit is the calculated average of the sound pressure level measured at three different locations in a room. According to the Danish guidelines, the indoor noise level, LpA,lf in the frequency range from 10 Hz to 160 Hz should not exceed 20 dB(A). The DEFRA criteria are frequency dependent and also span the frequency range from 10 Hz – 160 Hz. The allowable limits for each third‐octave frequency bin in this range are specified in the relevant report (DEFRA, 2005). The specified limits can be relaxed for steady noise and for daytime measurements but the measurements in this report did not fall into either of these categories. It is well‐known that wind farm noise is an unsteady noise source due to sudden changes in wind speed/direction, inflow turbulence, wind shear (van den Berg, 2005) and directivity (Oerlemans & Shepers, 2009). It has also been found that wind farm noise is modulated at the blade‐pass frequency (Hansen et al., 2013), which causes a periodic variation in the loudness of the sound.

It is worth noting that wind farm compliance according to the SA EPA guidelines is based on a regression line fitted to 2000 or more data points plotted on a graph of noise level (dBA) (y‐axis) vs hub height wind speed (x‐axis). Each data point is a 10‐minute average, which means that the influence on people of a noise source that is highly variable in nature will be underestimated. In addition, many 10‐minute average data points are above the acceptable 35 or 40 dB(A) requirement and as compliance is based on the regression line only, these times of relatively high noise level are ignored. In other words, compliance with the EPA guidelines does not mean that noise levels will never exceed the recommended limits – in fact, they can exceed the recommended limits many times as can be seen by the graphs shown in this report. Furthermore, the 10‐minute average values are lower than the peak values, which means that the wind farm could generate high levels of intermittent noise and still be compliant.

It is also important to recognise that thresholds of audibility are not dependent on the 10‐minute average of the root mean square (rms) value of the noise signal alone. This type of analysis ignores any difference in character between the measured noise and the noise used in the laboratory to determine threshold levels. The main differences in character that are important include the presence of multiple harmonics of the blade passage frequency and the crest factor of the noise. The crest factor is the ratio of the peak noise level to the average (or rms) noise level. The measured average noise levels for wind farm noise have been shown to contain peaks that are up to 20 dB above the reported average level. Even for “compliant” wind farms, such peaks are well above the levels required to disturb sleep (according the 2009 WHO document, “Night Noise Guidelines for Europe”). It is also worth noting that traffic noise, on which the WHO document on night noise levels is based, is not characterised by such high crest factors and thus has less potential for disturbing sleep. Nevertheless, this is an area of future work for our research group and the purpose of this report is to provide an analysis similar to that carried out in the EPA study so that comparison can be made between the two sets of results.

4 Overall Noise Levels

The following section presents data that were measured at the same residences as the EPA study (EPA, 2013), as well as three additional residences. The North East residence is not included in the analysis as we were unable to measure inside at this location. A number of weighting functions have been applied to the data and where applicable, a linear regression curve has been included. The DEFRA criteria and the Danish guidelines for indoor low‐frequency noise have only been applied to the indoor data, as they are not considered relevant for outdoor noise.

The figures presented in this section show data plotted against the wind speed at a height of 10 m in the left hand column and data plotted against the wind speed at hub height in the right hand column. Data points shown in red correspond to times when the residence was downwind from the proposed wind farm, according to the definition that downwind is ±45from the direction of the residence relative to the wind farm. Data points shown in green indicate times where the wind speed at a height of 1.5 m was greater than 5 m/s. For such wind speeds, noise measurements can be contaminated by wind‐induced noise. The sources of wind‐induced noise are pseudo‐noise and acoustic noise. Pseudo‐noise is caused by turbulent pressure fluctuations and vortex shedding incident on the microphone which lead to false indications of the sound pressure level whereas wind‐induced acoustic noise arises when objects such as tree branches and leaves are put in motion by the wind. Pseudo‐noise is only relevant for outdoor measurements but wind‐induced acoustic noise is relevant to both indoor and outdoor measurements. Both indoor and outdoor measurements taken during periods of rain have been discarded from the analysis.

In this section, all plotted data corresponds to night‐time measurements made between 12 am and 5 am. During the night, people are trying to sleep and this time also represents the greatest contrast between ambient noise and wind turbine noise, due to the absence of other sources such as traffic and farming machinery. These times were also selected to minimise contamination from noise sources other than the wind farm.

8 Conclusions

Based on the findings in this report, the following conclusions can be drawn:

For the 50 Hz third‐octave band, the sound pressure level difference between shutdown and operational conditions can be higher than 25 dB for both outdoor and indoor measurements.
The noise level in the 50 Hz third‐octave band is often above the audibility threshold (ISO389‐7, 2005) when the wind farm is operating.
The peak in the 50 Hz third‐octave band would be classified as a tone according to some standards (NZS 6808:2010, 2010; ANSI S12.9 ‐ Part 4, 2005).
The allowable limits should be reduced by 5 dB(A) to account for such tonal noise.
The outdoor and indoor noise levels measured during the shutdown cases were consistently lower than those measured when the wind farm was operating.
The most significant differences between shutdown and operational conditions can be observed when the residence is downwind from the nearest wind turbine and the hub height wind speed is greater than 8 m/s.
The shutdown periods should have occurred during 12 am – 5 am when the contribution from extraneous sources would be minimised and the contribution from the wind farm more able to be quantified.
For all shutdowns reported here, the closest wind turbine to the residence did not reach its rated speed of 15 m/s. In most cases, the wind speed at hub height was significantly lower than rated speed for the shutdown and adjacent times.
The peak in the 50 Hz third‐octave band is a consistent feature of the noise diary results and is often above the audibility threshold (ISO 389‐7, 2005).
A narrow‐band analysis with frequency resolution of 0.1 Hz reveals distinct peaks at the blade‐pass frequency and harmonics for many of the results corresponding to noise diary entries.
The narrow‐band analysis also shows the existence of tones, which occur at 23 Hz, 28 Hz, 46 Hz, 56 Hz and 69 Hz.
These tones have several sidebands which are spaced at the blade‐pass frequency and allude to the occurrence of amplitude modulation.
There is a good correlation between low frequency noise events and complaints registered in noise diaries.
At many of the residences, there were many occasions during the hours of 12 am and 5 am where the outdoor noise level exceeded the SA EPA (EPA, 2009) criteria of 40 dB(A).
The indoor limit for wind turbine hosts of 30 dB(A) recommended by the SA EPA (EPA, 2009) was exceeded on many occasions between 12 am and 5 am. This is also the no observed health effect limit for outdoor noise according to the WHO (2009).
The range in the overall A‐weighted levels was noticeably large indoors and could be as low as 5 dB(A) and as high as 38 dB(A). The lower value highlights that the night‐time noise levels in this rural environment are sometimes so low that even low levels of wind turbine noise would be noticeable. It is plausible that the upper value is related to the presence of wind turbine noise.
It has been shown that there can be a large variation in the results obtained by considering the LAeq as opposed to the LA90, between the hours of 12 am and 5 am.
Since the number of extraneous noise sources is expected to be low during these night‐time hours and wind turbine noise can be highly variable with time, it does not seem justified to only consider noise levels which were exceeded 90 % of the time.
The C‐weighted level was often higher for downwind conditions and hub height wind speeds greater than 8 m/s. However, consideration of the overall level with respect to recommended limits did not prove useful in identifying any low frequency noise issues.
The LCeq ‐ LAeq criteria was often exceeded and there was a large scatter in the data.
The overall G‐weighted level of 85 dB(G) was never exceeded however this does not preclude the possibility that infrasound was not detectable.
The Danish low frequency noise guidelines were exceeded on a number of occasions. In general, the exceedences occurred for downwind conditions and hub height wind speeds greater than 8 m/s.
The DEFRA criteria were exceeded on multiple occasions, usually corresponding to downwind conditions and hub height wind speeds greater than 8 m/s.

Therefore, the results show that there is a low frequency noise problem associated with the Waterloo wind farm. Therefore, it is extremely important that further investigation is carried out at this wind farm in order to determine the source of the low frequency noise and to develop mitigation technologies. In addition, further research is necessary to establish the long‐term effects of low frequency noise and infrasound on the residents at Waterloo. This research should include health monitoring and sleep studies with simultaneous noise and vibration measurements.

Download the complete report of the acoustic survey by Hansen, Zajamsek and Hansen →

For access to the SA EPA Waterloo Acoustic Survey 2013, and documents expressing concerns which have been raised about that acoustic survey, please seehttp://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/waterloo-wind-farm-environmental-noise-study-sa-epa/

Careful reading of the UN Convention Against Torture makes it very plain that public officials who know of the damage to human beings and allow it to continue could be facing criminal charges (sleep deprivation is acknowledged as torture by a number of bodies including the Committee Against Torture http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/un-convention-against-torture/ and also the Physicians for Human Rights — see pp 22 — 26 of their report called “Leave no Marks” http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/reports/leave-no-marks-report-2007.html

The Waubra Foundation advised the Clean Energy Regulator (CER) Board members over a year ago about the damage to human health from proximity to wind turbines — and their response was that they preferred the explanation that it was a Nocebo effect:http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/letter-notice-clean-energy-regulator-5-april-2013/

Consequently in 2013 the Waubra Foundation advised both South Australian Premier, Jay Weatherill and the Chair of the CER, Ms Chloe Munro of the Foundation’s concerns about the Waterloo Acoustic Survey — neither of whom responded to the letter:http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/open-letter-premier-south-australia-clean-energy-regulator-concerning-sa-epa-acoustic-survey-2/

We Are Systematically Slaughtering Our Birds, With Useless Wind Turbines!

September 22, 2014 / 1957chev / 2 Comments

Bird Carcass Count proves AGL’s Macarthur Wind Farm is an Avian Slaughterhouse

September 22, 2014 by stopthesethings 2 Comments

Wind farm turbines take toll on birds of prey
The Australian
Graham Lloyd
22 September 2014

EAGLES, falcons and other raptors make up to a third of the estimated 1500 birds killed each year at Australia’s biggest wind farm.

The finding of an independent report for Macarthur Wind Farm operator AGL follows 12 monthly searches of 48 turbines at the 140-turbine operation in Victoria that found 576 bird carcasses.

After adjusting for birds eaten by scavengers between searches and the total 140 turbines, Australian Ecological Research Services estimated each turbine killed about 10 birds a year.

The analysis said this would include 500 raptors a year.

AGL has confirmed that 64 bird fatalities were found during the official searches and an additional 10 carcasses were found near turbines by maintenance personnel, landowners or ecologists when not undertaking scheduled carcass searches.

The total included eight brown falcons, seven nankeen kestrels, six wedge-tailed eagles, one black falcon, two black-shouldered kites and one spotted harrier.

But an AGL spokesman said the report had “shown no significant impact on threatened species”. The company said overall estimates of bird and bat mortality “are subject to several sources of bias which may result in inaccurate estimates”.

The report recommended more frequent searches of a smaller number of turbines to get a more accurate assessment.

Australian Ecological Research Services said there were several reasons for the high percentage of raptors killed. They were at higher risk of collision with turbine blades possibly due to a combination of factors such as the altitude they mostly fly at, the proportion of time spent flying and flying behaviour.

“Raptors tend to glide slowly and are constantly looking downward for potential prey, rather than flying in a single direction and looking where they are heading,” the report said. “This may increase their risk of flying through the rotor-swept area of turbines.

“Other studies have also suggested that raptors are more likely to collide with turbine blades than many other avian species due to their morphology and foraging behaviour.”

Anti-windfarm campaigner Hamish Cumming said: “If someone shot this many birds they’d be fined and jailed and there would be public outrage.

“But, somehow, we’re expected to just accept it if they are killed by a wind farm.

“And before anyone rolls out the tired old mantra of ‘statistics show more birds get killed flying into suburban windows’, just tell me when was the last time a wedge-tailed eagle flew into your lounge room window?”
The Australian

The report referred to above is available here: Macarthur bat and avifauna mortality monitoring report full. For a detailed rundown on what it says see Hamish Cumming’s email below.

The wind industry and its parasites have – from the outset – pitched their fans as a “planet saving, clean, green and environmentally friendly technology”; which doesn’t quite gel with the wholesale slaughter of birds and bats. Let’s call it an “inconvenient truth” (see our post here).

Were anyone caught shooting eagles or other protected raptors they would face prosecution.

Kill a relatively common Wedge-Tailed Eagle in Australia and you’ll face 6 months imprisonment or a $10,000 fine. As the stories in these links show – when lads with a .22 do it – there is media “shock” and “outrage” at a crime worthy of condign punishment.

But the operators of wind farms face no such criminal penalties – and get to slice and dice birds and bats of all shapes and sizes with impunity (see our posts here and here).

The one thing that giant fans can’t be accused of is “prejudice”: they’ll slaughter anything that flies by; from bats to lowly seagulls, pelicans, majestic raptors and everything in between. Here’s just a few of their range of victims:

STT Champion, Hamish Cumming has always been on the front foot when it comes to protecting our feathered friends (see our posts here and hereand here).

Armed with the report detailing the carnage at Macarthur, Hamish sent this pointed email to a couple of monstrous “green” hypocrites: Victorian Green, Greg Barber and Cam Walker who heads up economy wrecking ecofascist outfit, Enemies of the Earth:

Well Greg and Cam,

I know you both hug wind turbines more than you do trees these days, but what are you going to do about the slaughter of raptors at Macarthur.

AGL’s own report, which they state is likely to be conservative due to monitoring methods being poor, estimates a kill of 10.19 birds per turbine, (1426 per years) 30% of which are raptors.

This is 5 times the original estimation of bird kills and nearly 100 times the original raptor kill estimate.

AGL are also not following Planning Panel recommendations and are not shutting down problem turbines which are in some cases killing 80 birds per turbine just in two seasons.

So-called Greens and so-called Friends of the Earth are just standing by and watching it happen just because it is a wind farm.

If this was a forest being cleared, a developer destroying habitat or coal fired power station causing such carnage and devastating species numbers in a region, you would be beating your chests and in every media possible. Yet you both just sit there and do nothing, because it is a wind farm.

Bob Brown stood up to the wind farm companies at Woolnorth in Tasmania when 11 eagles were killed, because they found that as one is killed another comes in to take over the territory. Raptors are attracted to wind farms to feed on the smaller birds killed by turbines. Wind farms become a species sink for raptors and can deplete a whole area out to many kilometres. This is now happening at Macarthur, with hundreds being killed in just one year.

Today I received the Bat and Avifauna Mortality Monitoring report published June 2014.

Page 22 of the report (attached) shows AGL turbines are reportedly killing 10.19 birds per turbine per year or 1426 birds a year. That is killing birds at approximately 5 times the rate estimated at the time the permit was issued. Page 22 also shows that 30% of these deaths are raptors, even though they are less than 1% of the birds observed at the site during utilisation studies.

On Page 23 the report concludes that the once a month monitoring of 28% of turbines is insufficient, and should be changed to weekly surveys, as data from pages 14 to 17 shows many carcasses are removed within 2 weeks of death by predators

In the Macarthur Panel Hearing, consultant Bret Lane stated that there were very few birds of prey utilising the site and even fewer water birds. The panel commented at the time that this record was unexpectedly low considering the waterways, wetlands and terrain.

It was stated that the risk of collision of raptors was low.

The claim by wind farm consultants at that time was mortality at Australian wind farms was between 2 and 4 birds per turbine a year, but as Macarthur would not be shore based, the mortality would be lower. The consultant compared overseas (European and American) wind farm declared mortalities of .04 to 3.4 deaths per turbine per year, but concluded Macarthur would be half of that.

So the permit was granted with the expectation that mortality would be in the order of a maximum of 2 deaths per turbine per year.

In reality, the first year AGL have declared an average of 10 dead birds per turbine per year, with some individual turbines killing more than 80 each per year.

The panel concluded that:

The BAM Plan must include:

a) A strategy for managing and mitigating any significant bird and bat strike arising from the wind energy facility operations. The strategy must include procedures for the regular removal of carcasses likely to attract raptors to areas near generators and reporting on the species and numbers of carcasses found near generators. Such a strategy must ensure that any bird or bat strikes are detected within a short time frame.

(This has not happened and is likely to be increasing the problem)

The proponent also had to ascertain, the mortality rate for specified species which triggers the requirement for responsive mitigation measures to be undertaken by the proponent either on or off the wind farm site, to the satisfaction of the DSE.

Monitoring timing and frequency must be stated within the plan with intensity of monitoring increasing to coincide with the behaviours and movements of specific species.

A strategy to offset impacts if impacts are detected during monitoring.

(None of this has happened)

6. The panel recommends that the DSE recommended Management Actions required to address potential impacts on Brolga (and other species) be included in the EMP. They are:

Upon approval (including pre-construction), commitment to ongoing observations of Brolgas within a defined radius (eg. 20 km or 30 km) and at specified times of the year – to better understand Brolga behaviour and record species numbers and breeding sites; this could involve local land owners. This information should be provided to DSE for sharing with the wider research community;

(This has not happened)

Commitment to extended monitoring of bird and bat strike (on a specified schedule) with all species recorded. This information should be provided to DSE for sharing with the wider research community;
Link the survey and monitoring to collection of relevant information such as rainfall and climate data and wind farm operations so that patterns over time can be tracked and analysed;

(This has partially been addressed in the report June 2014)

Define the acceptable local population impact threshold. If this threshold is met at interval milestones, then continue the monitoring program but defer other mitigation measures. If the threshold is not met, then mitigation measures should be implemented. These might include measures to enhance habitat in the immediate vicinity of the wind farm or else in more protected locations, wind generator shutdown at critical times, and any other measure identified as the survey and monitoring programs are implemented; and

(None of this has happened)

The management of the wind farm should be flexible enough to account for unanticipated impacts on Brolga (and other species), and include turbine shutdown protocols. The panel recommends that in addition to dead bird searches, bird monitoring include protocols for indirect disturbance impact assessments and avoidance studies as part of the EMP.

(I do not believe this has happened either)

How about both of you do something to stop the raptor deaths? The turbines should be switched off until there is a realistic and workable plan.

Take action now if you really care for the environment at all.

Hamish Cumming

Nice work Hamish! STT doesn’t expect to see any meaningful response from Greg or Cam.

The wind industry kills millions of birds and bats across the world every year. In Spain alone, wind farms are killing between 6,000,000 and 18,000,000 birds every year. The figures come from 136 monitoring studies collected by the Spanish Ornithological Society. Here’s one take on the numbers killed by the Spectator.

A recent study in the US shows that the numbers of bird deaths accredited to turbines underestimates the true figure by more than 30%. (for the full story refer Smallwood, K Shawn. 2013. Comparing bird and bat fatality-rate estimates among North American wind-energy projects.Wildlife Society Bulletin 37: 19-33.)

When challenged about the slaughter, the standard wind industry response is to lie by denying it even happens.

When that fails to wash (mounting piles of carcasses at the bases of turbines don’t help), its spin doctors admit the “problem” but downplay the kill-rate, by asserting that the numbers are “made up” by “mysterious forces” backed by “big coal”.

If an unsatisfied challenger persists, the response is a resort to the ol’ chestnut about “saving the planet from cataclysmic climate change”. And, for dramatic effect, calling the challenger an anti-wind, climate change DENIER.

Of course, giant fans have absolutely NOTHING to do with global warming or climate change (whichever is your poison) – as they require 100% of their capacity to be backed up 100% of the time with fossil fuel generation sources (see our post here). That simple and unassailable fact means wind power cannot and will never reduce CO2 emissions in the electricity sector: the sole justification for the wind industry’s heavily subsidised existence.

After more than 20 years in operation the wind industry has yet to produce a shred of credible evidence to support its claims about wind power abating CO2 – and all the evidence is to the contrary effect (seeour post here and this European paper here; this Irish paper here; this English paper here; and this Dutch study here).

In the result, there is no environmental gain for an awful lot of avian pain.

Once the wind industry’s fallacious (self) justification is stripped away, the deaths of millions of birds and bats can be seen for what it is: nothing more than senseless slaughter.

Ontario Residents Forced to Go To Court, To Challenge Wind Turbine Approval…

September 21, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

WIND TURBINES

Aberarder family challenges Suncor wind turbine approval

By Paul Morden, Sarnia Observer

Thursday, September 18, 2014 7:56:12 EDT AM

Ontario’s Environmental Review Tribunal may just be the first stop for opponents of a 46-turbine wind project Suncor Energy plans to build in Lambton County.

The provincial government’s approval of Suncor’s Cedar Point renewable energy project is being appealed to the tribunal by Lambton County, and Aberarder Line residents Kimberley and Richard Bryce.

The Town of Plympton-Wyoming is also seeking to participate in the hearings.

The tribunal’s hearings are scheduled to begin in early November at the Camlachie Community Hall, with a preliminary hearing set for October.

The Bryce family is being represented by the Toronto-based law firm headed by Julian Falconer.

“They have four young kids and they’re just concerned about the possible health effects associated with having their young children living in close proximity to these wind turbines,” said Asha James, an associate of Falconers LLP.

She added the family’s concern is heightened by the fact Health Canada is currently studying the health impacts of wind turbines, “because there are data gaps, and there just isn’t enough research to show how these will affect families, or residents living in close proximity to these turbines.”

A notice of appeal filed on behalf of the family says it will be surrounded by eight turbines within 2.5 kilometres of the Bryce home, and adds that they have young children with “pre-existing health concerns that will be adversely affected by the project.”

The notice also says the appeal will argue the province’s approval of the Suncor wind project violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Falconer spoke in Camlachie back in May at a meeting held by the group We’re Against Industrial Turbines, Plympton-Wyoming.

Since then, the group has been collecting donations to fund court challenges of Suncor’s wind project.

James said Falconer has described appeals to the provincial tribunal as “a long shot.” The tribunal has rejected nearly all of the wind project approval appeals it has heard.

“But, at this point, we don’t see another option that’s available to them,” James said.

She added the only way to preserve the right to raise issues with the courts is to first go through the tribunal process.

James said the law firm has been involved in three previous appeals to the tribunal, and has appealed its decisions to the divisional court in London. Those appeals are to be heard Nov. 17, 18 and 19.

Lambton County is expected to raise concerns at the tribunal hearings about the wind project’s electricity collection and transmission lines along road allowances creating traffic safety hazards for the travelling public.

Suncor has said the turbines it’s planning to build in Plympton-Wyoming, Lambton Shores and Warwick Township could be up and operating by late 2015.

paul.morden@sunmedia.ca

Residents Back In Court, to Protect Their Families & Homes Against Industrial Wind Projects!

September 21, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

TORONTO – The first court phase of a legal fight aimed at scuttling what would be one of Ontario’s largest wind-energy developments kicks off Monday with a farm family trying to force an immediate stop to its construction.

Documents filed in support of their request show Shawn and Tricia Drennan are concerned about the potential harm the 140-turbine K2 Wind project near Goderich, Ont., could cause them.

The Drennans are asking Divisional Court for an injunction against the ongoing construction of the facility pending resolution of an appeal against the project. They note Health Canada is currently doing a study to understand the impact industrial wind projects have on nearby residents.

“In effect, our government has relegated the appellants to guinea pigs in the name of green energy,” their factum states.

“The fear and anxiety with being a guinea pig is only further heightened by the knowledge that the Ontario Ministry of the Environment has placed a moratorium on off-shore wind turbines because the environmental impact on the fish is not known.”

Joining them in the construction stay application filed in London, Ont., are the Dixon and Ryan families, who are fighting the 15-turbine St. Columban wind project near Seaforth, Ont. The Dixons argue construction noise will hurt their eight-year-old daughter, who suffers from hearing hypersensitivity.

Both K2 Wind Ontario and St. Columban Energy argue their projects are safe, have the required permits, and that stopping construction now would have serious financial consequences. The say the projects underwent an extensive approval process that included two years of planning and various environmental studies.

In its factum, K2 Wind says the appeal will be heard long before the turbines are operational, so there is no immediate health threat warranting a stay.

“In contrast to the lack of harm the appellants will suffer if this motion is not granted,” the company argues, “K2 Wind could suffer serious financial consequences from even a minor delay in construction — consequences that could put the entire K2 project at risk.”

Ontario has seen several fights over wind farms. Some citizens are implacably opposed to them on the grounds they make area residents and animals ill, are an eyesore, lower property values, and are pushing up the price of electricity. Premier Kathleen Wynne and her Liberal caucus were heckled this past week at the International Plowing Match in the hamlet of Ivy, Ont, in part because of opposition to Liberal pro-wind policies.

Proponents argue wind turbines provide renewable energy, are environmentally friendly, create economic benefits, and are safe provided minimum distances to homes are maintained.

The provincial Environment Ministry approved the $850-million K2 — which would be able to power 100,000 homes — and the smaller St. Columban project, prompting the families to appeal to the Environmental Review Tribunal, which upheld the approvals.

In its decisions, the tribunal found no conclusive proof that wind turbines — a few of which are roughly 500 metres from homes — pose a health hazard to those living near them.

The three families, along with a fourth family opposed to the 92-turbine Armow wind farm near Kincardine, Ont., joined forces to appeal the tribunal decisions. The families argue the approvals process violates their constitutional rights given the potential impact on their physical and emotional health and want the project permits yanked.

The appeal itself is expected before Divisional Court in mid-November.

An unrelated battle involving a nine-turbine wind farm development south of Picton, Ont., is set to go before the province’s top court in December.

This man, Bobby Jindal, Exposes the Truth Behind Skyrocketing Energy Costs….Outrageous

September 21, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal speaking at The Heritage Foundation to a group of reporters about his new energy plan. (Photo: Steven Purcell)

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal yesterday accused the Obama administration of making energy more expensive with the goal of making Americans more dependent on government.

“The Left, they like to tell us they are the ones [who] are following science and we’re the science deniers,” Jindal said to a small group of reporters after delivering a speech at The Heritage Foundation to debut his energy jobs plan. “But I think overall, their approach to energy is telling.”

The Republican governor said the “radical” Left wants energy to be scarce and expensive because it empowers the federal government to be more involved in Americans’ lives.

Doing so, the potential 2016 presidential candidate said, essentially allows the Obama administration to decide what kind of car you drive, what kind of home you live in, what kind of education your children receive, what kind of health care insurance is adequate for you, and what size soda you can drink.

Right now, Jindal said, America “is on the road to failure.” He said:

It’s war on coal today; it’s going to be a war on natural gas tomorrow—it’s a war on any natural energy source. [The Left] wants it to be scarce; they want it to be expensive. You can see it in their actions, you can see it in their policies.

Jindal, elected governor of Lousiana in 2008 after two terms in Congress, has presided over a state hit by the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico while still recovering from Hurricane Katrina.

The Left wants energy to be scarce and expensive. You can see it in their actions, you can see it in their policies. -@BobbyJindal

He cited what he called the Left’s “startling” views on natural gas.

“When [natural gas] was 13 dollars, boy they loved it. As soon as it became affordable, all of the sudden they decided they didn’t like it so much,” Jindal said.

>>> What Contributes to Gas Prices and Solutions to Help

Nicolas Loris, a Heritage economist who specializes in energy policy, agreed that some liberals initially supported natural gas “as a bridge fuel to take us to renewables.” But because the revolution in shale gas provided an abundance of cheap natural gas, he said, “that bridge became a lot longer than they anticipated.”

“While it may be bad news for other sources of energy,” Loris added, “the low-cost energy is great news for American families and businesses.”

>>> Commentary: Obama May Be Bypassing Congress on Climate

Jindal also cited regulations on carbon dioxide as proof of an “ideologically extreme” agenda by President Obama and other liberals. He said:

“For much of the Left, the whole debate about [carbon dioxide] is really a Trojan horse because these are folks that never did want a free market. This was a group that was always looking for an excuse to impose more government regulation, more government oversight. … This is just their latest vehicle to do it.”

Jindal’s energy plan, co-authored by Rep. Bill Flores, R-Texas, is called “Organizing Around Abundance: Making America an Energy Superpower” and promises to usher in an “unprecedented” era of energy development and job growth.

Here are the main points:

1. Promote responsible development of domestic energy resources and construct infrastructure to transport it.

2. Encourage technological innovation of renewables and emerging energy without picking winners and losers. In other words:Stop giving taxpayer-funded handouts to politically preferred energy sources and technologies. Let the market work.

3. Unlock the economic potential of the manufacturing renaissance by putting America’s energy resources to work.

4. Eliminate burdensome regulations such as the Obama administration’s increased carbon dioxide restrictions on power plants.

5. Bolster national security by ending policies that ban the exporting of natural resources.

6. Pursue “no regrets” policies that reduce carbon dioxide emissions without punishing the U.S. economy by putting it at a disadvantage to those of other nations.

Loris gave points to the Jindal-Flores plan for building on “what we see and know to be successful” when it comes to American energy production.

“Free market policies that open access, remove handouts and peel back burdensome regulations will reward risk-taking, stimulate economic growth and provide Americans with affordable energy,” he said.

What the nation shouldn’t pursue, Loris added, is a policy of reducing carbon dioxide.

“That assumes carbon emissions are a problem,” he said. Instead, “we can recognize that free markets that reward technological innovation can fuel the economy and reduce emissions.”

Watch this video for Jindal’s complete public remarks at The Heritage Foundation.

We Know That Windweasels Are Corrupt….. Here’s More Proof!

September 21, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCHER: WIND INDUSTRY RIDDLED WITH ‘ABSOLUTE CORRUPTION’

by JAMES DELINGPOLE 20 Sep 2014, 5:04 AM PDT 322POST A COMMENT

A Mexican ecologist has blown the whistle on the corruption, lies and incompetence of the wind industry – and on the massive environmental damage it causes in the name of saving the planet.

Patricia Mora, a research professor in coastal ecology and fisheries science at the National Institute of Technology in Mexico, has been studying the impact of wind turbines in the Tehuantepec Isthmus in southern Mexico, an environmentally sensitive region which has the highest concentration of wind farms in Latin America.

The turbines, she says in an interview with Truthout, have had a disastrous effect on local flora and fauna.

When a project is installed, the first step is to “dismantle” the area, a process through which all surrounding vegetation is eliminated. This means the destruction of plants and sessilities – organisms that do not have stems or supporting mechanisms – and the slow displacement over time of reptiles, mammals, birds, amphibians, insects, arachnids, fungi, etc. Generally we perceive the macro scale only, that is to say, the large animals, without considering the small and even microscopic organisms…

….After the construction is finalized, the indirect impact continues in the sense that ecosystems are altered and fragmented. As a result, there is a larger probability of their disappearance, due to changes in the climate and the use of soil.

Then there is the damage caused by wind turbine noise:

There is abundant information about the harm caused by the sound waves produced by wind turbines. These sound waves are not perceptible to the human ear, which makes them all the more dangerous. They are also low frequency sound waves and act upon the pineal and nervous systems, causing anxiety, depression (there is a study from the United States that found an elevated suicide rate in regions with wind farms), migraines, dizziness and vomiting, among other symptoms.

But the wind turbine operators are able to get away with it because the system is so corrupt.

What happens is absolute corruption. I have to admit that generally there are “agreements” behind closed doors between the consultants or research centers and the government offices before the studies are conducted. They fill out forms with copied information (and sometimes badly copied), lies or half truths in order to divert attention from the real project while at the same time complying with requirements on paper. Unfortunately, consultants sometimes take advantage of high unemployment and hire inexperienced people or unemployed career professionals without proper titles. Sometimes the consultants even coerce them into modifying the data.

Research centers, pressured by a lack of funding, accept these studies. It is well known that scientists recognized by CONACYT (National Counsel on Science and Technology) accept gifts from these companies, given that they need money to buy equipment for their laboratories and to fill their pocketbooks to maintain their lifestyles. This is the extent of the corruption. Upon reviewing these studies, it is clear that the findings are trash, sometimes even directly copied from other sources online. These studies tend to focus on the “benefits of the project” and do not include rigorous analysis.

The Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) does follow-up to the studies, but everything can be negotiated. The bureaucrats have the last word.

Though Professor Mora is talking specifically about Mexico, what she says applies equally well to supposedly more transparent democracies such as Britain, Australia, the US, Canada and Denmark. The wind industry is necessarily one of the most corrupt enterprises on earth because it depends for its entire existence on government favours, backhanders, dishonest environmental impact assessments and on regulators turning a blind eye to the known health problems caused by wind turbine noise. Without crony capitalism, the wind industry simply would not exist.

Here are some links to a few of Breitbart’s hits on the subject. As I can personally testify from a decade spent covering this scandal, there are few forms of life on the planet lower than those parasites who make their fortune out of bird-chomping, bat-slicing eco-crucifixes.

September 20, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Germany’s Offshore Wind Power Debacle

September 19, 2014 by stopthesethings

The Germans went into wind power harder and faster than anyone else – and the cost of doing so is catching up with a vengeance. The subsidies have been colossal, the impacts on the electricity market chaotic and – contrary to the purpose of the policy – CO2 emissions are rising fast (seeour post here).

Some 800,000 German homes have been disconnected from the grid – casualties of Germany’s out of control renewables policy. A further 7 million households are left struggling to pay their power bills – forced to choose between heating and eating – victims of what is euphemistically called “fuel poverty”. In response, Germans have picked up their axes and have headed to their forests in order to improve their sense of energy security – although foresters apparently take the view that this self-help measure is nothing more than blatant timber theft (see our post here).

One justification put up by the wind industry for the social and economic chaos caused by spiralling power costs was the claim that investment in wind power would create a “new” economy with millions of groovy “green” jobs. Rather than resulting in an employment bonanza, the billions in subsidies needed to support Germany’s “green” dreaming has forced once competitive industry head to the US – where power prices are 1/3 of Germany’s (see our posts here and here and here) – taking thousands of real jobs with them. And – to add insult to injury – the so-called “green” jobs miracle has collapsed in a fiasco of failed ventures and dashed hopes – simply because the jobs “created” were heavily subsidised and, therefore, unsustainable (see our post here).

Not only is Germany’s wind rush causing economic and social chaos, its efforts to generate wind power offshore have turned into an insanely costly debacle. Here’s the Canada Free Press on just how ludicrous the German’s love of giant fans has become.

Wind Turbines but no Power
Canada Free Press
Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser
13 September 2014

The first large scale wind-power installation, some 100 km (65 miles) offshore the northwest coast of Germany has finally been connected to the grid. The Offshore-Windpark Deutsche Bucht is a wind farm with a total of 80 wind turbine towers, each with a hub height of 100 m (300 ft.) above the sea and a combined design output of some 400 Megawatts in electric power.

Connection to the Grid

Because of delays in getting the underwater cabling and connection to the power grid on land, the whole power park was standing idle for the last two years. In order to prevent potential damage to gear boxes and turbines, each tower was supplied with energy from small gasoline-powered electricity generators for that time.

Several years behind schedule, the Bard 1 wind farm finally came altogether in March 2014. The wind farm was connected to the electric grid and started to deliver energy. Alas, it did not last very long. In March, the separate AC-to-DC converter station at the facility suffered a “meltdown.” A new converter installed a few days ago was shut down not much later without explanation.

HVDC Converters

The alternating current (AC) coming from the turbines cannot be directly transmitted to the grid. Instead, it needs to be converted to high voltage direct current (HVDC) first. In principle, that is a straight forward task and has been solved for a long time. All the high-tension electric power transmission lines around the world use such HVDC converters. So what’s the problem with the wind farm converter?

In contrast to a steady one-source input, like from a nuclear or coal-fired power plant, a wind farm has many smaller sources with the output of each constantly varying with conditions like wind direction, wind speed and blade angle. Such variations lead to destabilizing energy-oscillations in the whole system that cannot be handled by the current converters. To make matters worse, the engineers have yet to fully understand the nature of the problem and to come up with any solution for it.

Investor Worries

In short, the power that may be in the offshore wind (if and when it blows) cannot easily be controlled and converted into anything useful at this time. With Germany’s plans for another 10,000 offshore turbines some investors are getting a bit worried about the possibility of unsolvable systemic problems with such far-offshore wind power systems.

Of course, one has to ask why wind power installations have enjoyed the attention of investors to begin with. It was all based on the tax write-offs and guaranteed energy feed-in tariffs some governments in Europe and elsewhere bestowed upon them. Both in the U.S. and Canada such government schemes for “alternative energy” are still in full bloom.

In contrast, other countries have seen the light and are going in the opposite direction, building new coal-fired and nuclear power plants as fast as they can.

New Power Plants

While in the U.S. coal mines are closing down and the miners being laid off, the opposite is happening elsewhere on the globe. China, India, France and Hungary, to name a few, are building new power plants based on coal and/or nuclear fuel. Even Japan, which closed down its nuclear power plants after the Fukushima sea quake, is set to restart several reactors next month. On a global scale, however, coal is still the king in terms of stationary electric power generation.

Despite a consumption of 90 million barrels of oil per day, the world needs more coal than ever, about 8,000 million tons per year. Most of that is used for electric power, the rest mainly for heating. Obviously, with estimated reserves many multiples of that annual consumption, the world is not going to run out of coal tomorrow. In the long run though, I think nuclear power is the way to go for electricity generation.

Real “Alternatives”

The world has enough uranium resources to satisfy the demand for several hundred years alone. Then there is the potential for thorium-based reactors, with a potential fuel supply in the U.S. for another 1,000 years. The holy grail of energy independence, however, would be controlled nuclear fusion. If that can be achieved, the earth would have an unlimited power supply. Now that would really be “alternative power.”

The highly touted, government-subsidized, unreliable, intermittent and expensive “alternative power” schemes currently in vogue are nothing but a phenomenal waste of money. As evident from the described wind farm in Germany, the required technology is not in place at this time, perhaps may never be.

I suggest a simple solution for the problem: a truly “alternative government.”
Canada Free Press

Official Report, (Hansard) Committee for the Environment, Wind Energy Inquiry….Ireland

September 18, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Official Report (Hansard)

Session: 2014/2015

Date: Thursday, 11 September 2014

Committee for the Environment

Wind Energy Inquiry: Mrs Ursula Walsh, University of Ulster

The Chairperson: I welcome Mrs Ursula Walsh from the University of Ulster, who has been appointed as our special adviser on acoustics, and invite her to make a five- or 10-minute presentation to the Committee, after which members will have an opportunity to ask questions. Thank you very much for your hard work; you have done a very big piece of work.

Mrs Ursula Walsh (University of Ulster): Good afternoon. I want to give you a brief overview of my paper and, perhaps, explain a couple of terms, after which we can have a discussion.

Noise is quite complex. Sound becomes noise when it becomes unwanted. People’s perceptions of noise are related not just to the volume of the noise but to its pitch or frequency and character. Two noises might be at the same volume, but one might be much more annoying than the other because of its character and fluctuations, which I will talk about. It also depends on the time of day. Obviously, if people’s sleep is disturbed, it is much more annoying than it perhaps would be during the day.

There is a human reaction to the annoyance caused by wind turbine noise. Sometimes, people are more annoyed because they feel a lack of control or they have feelings of injustice that they are not being heard or believed. Therefore, there is a subjective element to it. However, some people’s being more sensitive to noise than others has not been found so much with wind turbine noise.

Some of the general terms that you come across in all the noise guidance are not everyday terms, so the inquiry asked me to explain some of them. Leq is, more or less, the average sound. If you get all the sounds together, it is an average. L90, which is referred to extensively in the wind turbine guidance ETSU, is more or less the background noise remaining when you remove the noisiest elements. It would not be your average noise; it would be the remaining noise. It would be low-level noise, about two decibels lower than Leq.

When you see those terms and there is a small subscript “A”, as in LAeq, that “A” means that it has been adjusted, weighted. The “A” gives more weighting to high-frequency noise and removes decibels in low-frequency noise. In other words, it will give you a reading that makes higher-frequency noise more important. It diminishes low-frequency noise. That “A” weighting means that some pitches are enhanced and lower ones are diminished, if that is clear.

Noise comprises pressure waves and they spread out in the environment. They are affected by weather, so on still nights noise will travel better than on windy days. It also depends on the landscape. With distance, high frequencies and high pitches are absorbed in the atmosphere much more than low frequencies and low pitches.

If an airplane is going past you, for example, you will hear the low-frequency element; you will hear the drone. You will hear not high-pitched noises but low-pitches noises even though the noise, if you were beside the airplane, would have high and low frequencies. At a distance, you tend to hear the lower frequencies.

Wind turbine noise is mainly dominated by aerodynamic noise — the swish of the blades going round in the air — and most of the noise from wind turbines is that swishing. To some extent, it is unavoidable. It is the nature of the machine. You can get mechanical noise if there are faults, but we are mainly talking about aerodynamic noise, the swish. The recent designs of turbines have a better blade angle going into the air. It is like any newer, more modern machine; it would tend to be quieter than older machines. They have a better design. However, larger turbines are louder and have more low-frequency noise. So, the more modern ones are quieter, but the larger ones, of course, are going to be louder.

It is not a steady noise, like your fridge at home, and you may not notice it until it suddenly kicks off. A fridge makes is a steady noise and is not that noticeable. Wind turbine noise has a fluctuation. It goes up and down a little bit. The ETSU guidance, published in 1997, acknowledged there was some fluctuation, but bigger wind turbines have been found to have more fluctuations and more in the lower-frequency range.

The ETSU guidance relies very much on the British Standards Institution’s BS 4142, which says that more emphasis should be put on the fluctuations. If a noise is not steady, you have to account for that. It is likely to be more annoying if it fluctuates. I am talking about amplitude modulation, which is up and down — non-steady because it is not steady. The standard says to take account of that and add in another five decibels for the annoyance as it is not a steady noise. When the ETSU guidance was published in 1997, it did not recognise the degree of fluctuations that we now know the larger machines are capable of. ETSU is the assessment and rating of noise from wind turbines. Our planning and policy statement refers to ETSU.

The evidence base has expanded a lot since the ETSU guidelines were published in 1997. A lot more is known about wind turbine noise and annoyance. Also since 1997, the World Health Organization has reduced its recommended indoor night-time noise from 35 decibels to 30 decibels. They reckon that for people not to have their sleep disturbed, it should be 30 decibels.

The ETSU guidance talks a lot about the L90 measure. As I mentioned, that is not the average sound level, it is the lower sound level. ETSU uses L90, the lower level, for both turbine noise and background noise. That is very unusual. All the other guidance that I have read and all the other standards use LAeq. They all use the average; so this is quite unusual for ETSU. When the ETSU guidance was written, it was recommended that it should be reviewed within two years; however, it has not been reviewed. Some of the people who actually wrote the ETSU guidance have subsequently published a paper saying that it might underestimate the noise. So, the people who wrote the ETSU guidance have reservations and reckon that it needs to be updated in the light of current knowledge.

Basically, the reason I think that the ETSU guidance should be revised — apart from the fact that its authors think so — is that the quieter the environment, the more disturbing the noise is. So, it is not necessarily about the actual noise level; it is about the difference between the background noise — what you are used to — and the source noise. It is the difference between the background noise level and the source, not necessarily the absolute, noise level. So, something in the centre of Belfast may not be very annoying, but if it were in the countryside the exact same noise would be annoying. That is what the British standard says as well: it is the difference between the background noise and the source noise. ETSU refers to that; however, it then says that in low-noise environments you may not use that approach. So, I think that ETSU needs to be clarified: why it is usually the difference between the background noise and the actual wind noise, and why sometimes the background noise is not considered. That needs further explanation. ETSU needs to be updated with regard to the World Health Organization’s changes, and more consideration needs to be given to those fluctuations.

Let me turn to some particular issues which you asked me about. Anecdotally, I have heard from several sources, although I do not have evidence, that Northern Ireland is in receipt of older wind turbines, refurbished from other countries. Three academic and professional sources have told me that Northern Ireland is getting refurbished wind turbines. Obviously, those turbines do not benefit from the more recent designs and they may show signs of wear and tear. For example, the blade may have indentations, holes or wear which make it noisier. Apparently, some websites that market reconditioned turbines highlight Northern Ireland as a potential market. I query why such turbines, which are perhaps no longer acceptable in other countries, are acceptable here. Other industries have to show use of best available technology with regard to noise. With refurbished turbines in use, I would query whether we are getting the best technology as defined in the report. Also, with regard to noise, it is a defence to prove use of best practicable means. Again, I think it would be worth looking into the refurbished, reconditioned turbines.

You were asking me in my brief whether the developer should carry out ongoing noise monitoring. My report states that that would identify any increases in noise and any increases beyond what was anticipated. Such noise could be identified and remedied, so I recommend ongoing monitoring by the developer.

You also ask me about setting planning conditions. It is very common for environmental health to advise the Planning Service on planning conditions with regard to noise. There are model planning conditions for noise in guidance provided by the Institute of Acoustics. Use of that would be common.

You also asked me about the environmental health profession’s knowledge of acoustics and noise. My report says that there is a great deal of expertise in acoustics in Northern Ireland’s environmental health profession. Many of them have the postgraduate diploma in acoustics, are members of the Institute of Acoustics and sit on the institute’s advisory committees. However, even though there will be fewer and larger councils shortly in Northern Ireland, there is a considerable and time-consuming administrative and human resources burden due to commenting on planning applications on wind turbines. So, there is a burden on councils.

My report suggests that there should be a more strategic approach to wind turbine planning permission, rather than planning permission being granted on an ad hoc, case-by-case basis. There should be an overview and strategic approach to where we want turbines to be rather than those that pop up intermittently.

I think that we should refer to the Danish policy. In Denmark, there is the subsidy scheme for replacement of wind turbines as they become less efficient and, as I mentioned, noisier. Newer ones are less noisy. They replace wind turbines and have a replacement scheme. They are really going towards offshore, rather than onshore, wind turbines. They do acknowledge that there have been complaints in Denmark. Maybe we might not think that other countries complain about noise. They have a loss-of-value scheme for dwellings, so that, if your dwelling is badly affected by wind-turbine noise, there is a compensation scheme. There is an option to purchase at least 20%. So, if a wind turbine is being erected near your house, you have the option to purchase a portion of that turbine so that you will then have an economic interest in it. One of the reasons why people feel particularly aggrieved is when they feel that they have no control and that there is an injustice. We might benefit from the experiences of the Danish.

I was also asked to compare wind turbine noise to road traffic noise and other industrial noise. Wind turbine noise has been found to be more annoying than industrial and road traffic noise. At significant roads and industrial areas, the noise has to be mapped and action plans put in place. With road traffic noise, if a road is being significantly upgraded and your house is nearby, you can get money towards insulation and there is a compensation scheme in place. However, I would say that comparing wind turbine noise with industrial or road traffic noise is like apples and oranges because they are different characters. Road traffic noise tends to go down at night. Roads would not be as noisy at night. So, it is different.

In summary, the ETSU guidance actually permits louder noise at night than it does during the day. Again, anecdotally, I have been told that some operators actually increase their production of electricity at night when they are allowed to emit louder noise levels than during the day. That seems like another reason why the guidance could do with being reviewed and revised.

The Chairperson: Thank you, Ursula. There is certainly a lot of food for thought. That was very informative. You mentioned issues like ETSU-R-97’s being quite out of date, needing to be reviewed and all of that, but this is the first time that I have heard about us using reconditioned turbines. Maybe that is something that we need to write to the Department about. What you are saying is anecdotal. To what extent do we know that we buy reconditioned turbines from others?

Mrs Walsh: I do not know.

The Chairperson: So, when developers make planning applications, do they have to tell the planners that they are for reconditioned turbines?

Mrs Walsh: As far as I know, they identify the make and model of the turbines.

The Chairperson: OK. So, the Department should know and be able to tell us how many what you would call “new turbines” are being installed here that are actually old turbines?

Mrs Walsh: Yes.

The Chairperson: That is something quite significant.

Mr Milne: You mentioned Denmark. Is it possible for us to get a more detailed report on how Denmark operates the system of renewable energies through wind?

Mrs Walsh: How Denmark operates what?

Mr Milne: You said that Denmark has moved away from turbines and more to offshore. Can we get a more detailed report on what you said regarding Denmark?

Mrs Walsh: I have a document here about wind turbines in Denmark. It is produced by the Danish Government and is on my references list. That document is available. It is quite a straightforward document. It is quite easy reading. It does not give the minute detail about how, for example, compensation schemes operate in practice. It does not go into great detail about Denmark’s move towards offshore. I was in Denmark in the summer, and several people told me, “We’re going offshore”. However, when I looked it up, it did not exactly say that they were definitely and conclusively going offshore, but they were saying that this committee is committed more to a policy of offshore turbines.

Mr Milne: Here, we talk about community benefits, and I like the idea you mentioned that, in Denmark, if a wind turbine is put up beside you, you get maybe up to 20% of buy-in to that building. Here, communities are given a few pounds or pennies to buy them off. That is why I would like to see a more detailed document on what is happening in Denmark.

Mrs Walsh: As I said, there is that document. It is called ‘Wind Turbines in Denmark’, and it gives the main information about that but does not give the detail on exactly how those schemes work.

The Chairperson: We can ask Suzie in research to look into it. Suzie has produced a couple of research papers for us.

Mr Boylan: Ursula, thank you for your presentation. I was only signalling that I wanted to ask a question. Sorry about that.

The Chairperson: It was my fault. Ian puts his hand up higher.

Mr Boylan: There is a main point here that you have exposed. You brought up some good points on open space and how sound travels. Clearly, most of these are in the open countryside. Your main point is about the ETSU-R-97, which sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie. The point is that, when people have been making presentations to this Committee, they have been saying to us that there have been issues. Clearly, you have exposed those people who have been through that process and said that there are problems with it. That leads me on to say that I know that we have good acoustic professionals here, but, if they are judging all of this, or refusing that, on that policy, which, clearly, does not seem to be fit for purpose, there is a challenge for us to ask more questions. Is it your view now that most of the information is leading us to be judging something on a policy or recommendations that are not fit for purpose and that Planning Service and whoever else is using ETSU-R-97 to gauge all of these decisions?

Mrs Walsh: I think ETSU needs to be reviewed and revised in view of the fact that the knowledge has changed a lot. There has been a lot more knowledge on wind turbine noise since then, and the World Health Organization has asked for particular consideration to be given to low-frequency noise. I think that there is more low-frequency noise in the larger turbines than in 1997, when turbines were not generally as large as they are now. They are getting bigger. I think that the guidance needs to be revised. As I said, ETSU refers to the British Standards Institution’s BS4142, and it is being revised currently. Currently, it is being said that maybe more weight needs to be given to these fluctuations and tones, so ETSU would benefit from the upcoming revision of the British Standard.

Mr Boylan: Where is that element of it — the review? Is it soon? The reason I ask you that is because there are going to be a number of decisions over the next twelve months or the next two approvals. There could be a retrospective challenge to whatever system people want to use. I would safely say now that, at this moment in time, given the evidence that you have brought to us in relation to ETSU-R-97, there could be challenges to those approvals that have already taken place because the guidance was not actually fit for purpose. Is that a fair assumption? Where are we in terms of the new review? There are going to be new decisions made or new approvals given over the next 12 months, or maybe more than that, before the new figures are actually in place.

Mrs Walsh: It does not give enough weighting to the fluctuations and the amplitude modulation. It does not give enough significance to the annoyance level of that.

Mr Boylan: So, basically, we as a Committee need to ask questions about approvals. It is not really fit for purpose, given what we have heard today.

The Chairperson: Do you know why? As you said, it was meant to be reviewed after two years. Why is it still not being reviewed 17 years on? What is the reason for not reviewing it?

Mrs Walsh: I do not know. The Institute of Acoustics did bring out a guide to ETSU but it was outside the remit of the institute to look at noise levels and noise limits. Further guidance on it has been produced, but certain core issues were not addressed because it was outside the remit of the review committee.

The Chairperson: Thank you very much. That was a lot of information. Your issue about taking a strategic approach has been given to us over and over by planning personnel. There are just too many ad hoc applications, with single turbines everywhere. Thank you very much indeed.

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Official Report, (Hansard) Committee for the Environment, Wind Energy Inquiry….Ireland

Official Report (Hansard)

Committee for the Environment

Wind Energy Inquiry: Mrs Ursula Walsh, University of Ulster

US Wind Industry Under Siege: Congress Set to Cut Subsidies as Communities Boil Over

Hansen, Zajamsek, Hansen, Noise Monitoring, Waterloo Wind Farm

Noise Monitoring in the Vicinity of the Waterloo Wind Farm

Kristy Hansen, Branko Zajamsek and Colin Hansen, School of Mechanical Engineering University of Adelaide May 26, 2014

Extract from the Conclusions:

Key Extracts from the report are reproduced below, and the report is downloadable from the link beneath.

1 Introduction

2 Measurement Details

3 Guidelines

4 Overall Noise Levels

8 Conclusions

Bird Carcass Count proves AGL’s Macarthur Wind Farm is an Avian Slaughterhouse

Aberarder family challenges Suncor wind turbine approval

Bobby Jindal: How the ‘Radical Left’ Uses Energy Costs to Control Americans

ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCHER: WIND INDUSTRY RIDDLED WITH ‘ABSOLUTE CORRUPTION’

A Mexican ecologist has blown the whistle on the corruption, lies and incompetence of the wind industry – and on the massive environmental damage it causes in the name of saving the planet.

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Official Report (Hansard)

Committee for the Environment

Wind Energy Inquiry: Mrs Ursula Walsh, University of Ulster

Kristy Hansen, Branko Zajamsek and Colin Hansen, School of Mechanical Engineering
University of Adelaide May 26, 2014