Of Course Wind Turbines Affect House Values, It’s Common Sense!

December 20, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Industry criticizes wind turbine reportHomeNews
by Jennifer Paterson18 Dec 2014

Is a $78,000 gingerbread house worth the investment?
The Christmas season is well underway: lights strung up outside the house, stockings hanging over the fireplace and the shopping (almost) done. It’s the time of year to take a break from your real estate investments – unless you are investing in the one house with building materials undoubtedly tastier than bricks and mortar: the gingerbread house.
Daily Market Update
Calgary resales market is ‘balanced’ says Conference Board… TD Economics forecasts slowdown in new Alberta jobs… Police uncover mortgage fraud… Employment insurance stable…
A recent study by the University of Guelph, which found wind turbines do not have an impact on nearby property values, might have earned a big sigh of relief from investors – but the study’s results have been strongly criticized by members of the real estate industry.

“I have had several deals fall apart in this area because, in the appraisal report, it has been mentioned that there are windmills visible or adjacent to the property and, once a lender gets wind of that (forgive the pun), they will not fund a mortgage,” said Angela Jenkins, a mortgage agent at Dominion Lending Centres, who lives and works in the Melancthon region, where the study was conducted.

“If a person cannot get financing due to windmills, then how can this be a positive thing?”

The study, which was published this month in the Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics, analyzed more than 7,000 home and farm sales in the area, and found that at least 1,000 of these were sold more than once, some several times.

John Leonard Goodwin, who has been a real estate broker for more than 10 years in the Grand Bend, Ont. market, asserted that wind turbines absolutely do affect property values. “Turbines complicate your property enjoyment, period,” he said. “That alone spells depreciated value(s).

“Turbines should be in remote, unpopulated locations. To all the folks who have turbines on their property: Enjoy your $18,000 per turbine per year, because you will be giving most of the lease payments back (in much lower property value) when you sell.

“These monsters are very bad for Ontario,” he continued. “We all pay to subsidize the electricity they produce and they will also cause a significant loss of real estate value.”

Lynn Stein, a sales representative at Hartford and Stein Real Estate, lives and sells real estate in Prince Edward County, where a large-scale wind turbine project is slated to begin.

“The turbines that are proposed here are quite large,” she said. “The majority of the population here very clearly doesn’t want them.

“Put simply, if you were to buy your future home, given the choice, would you buy where you would have noise, shadow flicker, an industrial view, potential health issues caused by the turbines, and the possibility of a very difficult resale, or would you spend your money elsewhere?”

Wind Industry is a Cesspool of Corruption, Collusion, and Coercion!

December 18, 2014 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

Crooks & Corruption Rule: What is it with the Wind Industry?

December 18, 2014 by stopthesethings

The wind industry seems to attract a particular class of bloke, in much the same way that the Prohibition era drew lots of heavy-set Italians to the Mob.

Maybe that seemingly endless stream of massive subsidies filched from taxpayers and power consumers generates the same allure as festering dung does for swarms of flies?

Whatever it is, the whiff that surrounds the wind industry has attracted (and continues to attract) a class that has no hesitation lying, cheating, stealing and even bonking their way to the easy loot on offer.

The Italian Mob were in on the wind power fraud from the get-go: applying their considerable (and perfectly applicable) skills – leading the European wind power fraud, with what economists call “first-mover-advantage” (see our post here).

We’ve reported on just how rotten the wind industry is – from top to bottom – and whether it’s bribery and fraud; vote rigging scandals; tax fraud; investor fraud or REC fraud – wind weasels set a uniform standard that would make most businessman blush.

The crooks involved – and the corruption, lies thuggery and deceit that follow them – are uniform across the globe.

Wind power outfits in Taiwan – faced with a pesky community backlash – sent the muscle in and beat the protesters to a bloody pulp (see our posts here and here).

The Thais aren’t much better.

In Australia, Thai outfit RATCH has been lying to, bullying and threatening communities far and wide for years (see our posts here and here andhere).

In previous posts we’ve looked at how the goons that work for RATCH didn’t hesitate to invent a character – Frank Bestic – in a half-cunning attempt to infiltrate their opponents at Collector and elsewhere – see our posts here and here and here.

RATCH also teamed up with one of Queensland’s “white-shoe-brigade“, John Morris – in a joint plan to destroy the Atherton Tablelands by spearing 60 odd turbines into a patch of pristine wilderness on top of Mt Emerald – a move, quite rightly, opposed by 92% of locals (see our post here).

Morris – a five-star resort owner who has generously wined, dined and otherwise accommodated his mate, LNP pollie, David Kempton (who holds a rabid interest in the project getting approved, despite the fact that his own electorate is miles away) – has pulled out all stops to smooth the way to development approval (see our post here).

Faced with the inevitable community backlash to yet another pointless economic, environmental and public health disaster, the Queensland Planning Minister, Jeff Seeney has called “time-out”; declining to approve the project, as demanded by RATCH and Morris.

Morris – facing the uncharacteristic prospect of defeat – has turned to bullying and threatening the Planning Minister to ensure a speedy decision in his and RATCH’s favour: demanding that the Planning Minister make a decision no later than tomorrow (ie 19 December 2014) (see this article).

RATCH and Morris have shown all the care and restraint we’ve come to expect from the wind industry and its parasites: an “industry” that has absolutely no interest in producing meaningful power or “saving” the planet. Take away the promise of $50 billion in subsidies from the REC Tax on power consumers (see our post here) and this lot would will disappear in a heartbeat (see our post here).

RATCH shares its Thai roots with another Thai wind power outfit that owes its existence to the Thai Military Junta – “Wind Energy Holdings”.

Wind Energy Holdings has hit the news recently, as its hitherto-hot-shot head, Nopporn Suppipat has been caught with his fingers in the till. Having been caught – he’s acted with all the honour we’ve come to expect from wind weasels, wherever they ply their trade: he’s bolted!

Here’s The Wall Street Journal laying out an all too familiar wind industry tale.

Co-chief of Thailand’s Wind Energy a fugitive, say police
The Wall Street Journal
Warangkana Chomchuen and James Hookway
18 December 2014

UNTIL a few weeks ago, Nopporn Suppipat was a rising star in Thailand’s corporate scene.

The 43-year-old entrepreneur was profiled in local magazines, touted as a leader in alternative energy, and was firming up plans for a multi-billion-dollar initial public offering of the wind-power company he helped lead, Wind Energy Holding.

Now police say he has left the country to avoid arrest on accusations of extortion and insulting the monarchy, and Wind Energy said he had stepped down as co-chief executive.

The company’s IPO plans are on hold as it reorganises, according to source.

In a telephone interview from an undisclosed location, Mr Nopporn said he had done nothing wrong, yet he feared he might never be able to return to Thailand.

Mr Nopporn said his fall from grace was unexpected. He said his problems dated from the aftermath of Asia’s financial crisis in the late 1990s.

To shore up his personal finances, Mr Nopporn said, he had borrowed 17 million baht, the equivalent of about $630,000 today, from Gryphon International Holding, where he was then the largest shareholder, although had since divested himself of all of his shares.

Mr Nopporn’s business partners, though, filed an embezzlement complaint against him with the police, who forwarded to public prosecutors.

He arranged to pay the money back in instalments, finally settling the outstanding sum in court in 2012, according to a court document.

Most of his partners then agreed to settle the dispute, the document shows. However, Mr Nopporn said, one partner, Bundit Chotewitthayakul, refused to withdraw his lawsuit.

With preparations for an IPO for Wind Energy beginning to get off the ground, Mr Nopporn said, earlier this year he had offered Mr Bundit 20 million baht to withdraw his complaint.

According to Mr Nopporn, Mr Bundit then asked for 100 million baht. Mr Bundit’s lawyer said his client declined to comment.

“I wanted to have a clean slate and I can afford it,” Mr Nopporn said.

Mr Nopporn said he then hired a negotiator to try to reach a lower settlement with Mr Bundit. Police said the negotiator then hired three brothers of the estranged wife of Thailand’s heir to the crown, who has since relinquished her royal title, to increase pressure on Mr Bundit. From that point, Mr Nopporn’s problems took a turn for the worse.

The brothers were arrested and accused of defaming the monarchy by exploiting their royal ties for personal gain, among other offences, as police investigators stepped up an anticorruption campaign that also implicated senior police officials.

The police officials, who have been arrested and accused of similar crimes, and the brothers are now in police custody.

It is unclear whether they entered pleas or whether they have legal representation.

Thailand has some of the world’s most severe lese majeste laws, allowing for prison sentences of up to 15 years.

With the investigation widening, Mr Nopporn said he chose to leave Thailand before an arrest warrant was issued alleging he committed lese majeste by contracting the former princess’s brothers, in addition to the police’s accusation that he attempted to extort Mr Bundit. The company has appointed Emma Collins as its sole chief executive; she was co-chief with Mr Nopporn.

A spokesman for Wind Energy said it was reviewing its options for an IPO, while the company said in a written statement that the criminal allegations against Mr Nopporn had nothing to do with Wind Energy.
The Wall Street Journal

STT loves the way the (unnamed) spokesman for Wind Energy Holdings was quick to cut their “star” boss loose: proving that there really is no honour amongst thieves!

Now – some might think that corporate “standards” could be expected to slip in a country run by a band of “brass-hats” – but things don’t get any better even where the outfit is Denmark’s leading (but woefully struggling) fan maker, Vestas.

Vestas set the benchmark a while back – true to form, it keeps lying and cheating its way into trouble wherever it goes.

While Vestas threw $millions at the Greens and other astro-turfing, eco-fascist outfits in Australia (and elsewhere) – employing them as spruikers for its well-oiled (but nauseating) “Act on Facts” propaganda campaign – it got belted in the US earlier this year for failing to give its own (and potential) investors the very sort of facts, upon which share market punters and free markets depend.

Consistent with Vesta’s “fast-and-loose” with the “truth” style of doing business, it was caught out cooking its books and lying to the markets about its profitability in an effort to take investors for a ride. That little subterfuge cost it a lazy $5 million.

Vestas reaches conditional settlement on US lawsuit for $5 million
Wind Power Monthly
James Quilter
27 June 2014

UNITED STATES: Vestas said it has conditionally settled a lawsuit from a pension fund claiming the company issued false information regarding its revenue and earnings.

The lawsuit originates from 2011 and alleged false reporting was made between October 2009 and October 2010.

Vestas said $5 million will be paid out to the plaintiffs. It denies any wrongdoing and said it was making the payment “in order to end the substantial expenses, burdens and uncertainties associated with a continued litigation in the USA”.

The settlement is still subject to approval by the US courts.

Speaking about the decision, Vestas chairman Bert Nordberg said: “We look forward to putting this case behind us, which will allow us to continue our focus on the operation of the business to the benefit of our customers and our owners.”

The 2009-2010 period represents a troubled time for Vestas. At the end of 2010 company changed its accounting procedures.

Deminor Recovery Services, a company targeting Vestas on behalf of disgruntled investors, has been focusing on this change, suggesting Vestas used it to shift around 1.8GW of orders from the 2009 results into 2010 figures.
Wind Power Monthly

Wind Weasels Determined to Continue Scamming the Ratepayers….

December 15, 2014December 15, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

The Wind Industry’s Need for Massive Subsidies: The Never Ending Story

December 15, 2014 by stopthesethings

Wind Power Is Intermittent, But Subsidies Are Eternal
Wall Street Journal
Tim Phillips
1 December 2014

“Tax credits have been essential to the economic viability of wind farms so far, but will not be needed within a few years.” So said Christopher Flavin, now president emeritus of the Worldwatch Institute – in 1984.

Thirty years and billions of dollars later, the wind industry is still saying it needs taxpayer support. Congress is currently hearing this argument as it debates whether to extend the 22-year-old “production tax credit” in the lame-duck session.

The PTC, which gives wind producers a 2.3-cent tax credit for each kilowatt-hour of electricity produced over 10 years, expired at the end of 2013. Now wind-industry lobbyists are roaming the halls of Congress, asking legislators to renew it as part of a tax-extenders package before adjourning on Dec. 15.

The industry’s arguments are bluster. Wind-power capacity has increased by nearly 5,000% since the PTC was created and the industry now makes billions of dollars in annual revenue. Meanwhile, the credit has devolved into another example of corporate welfare.

Over the past seven years, the PTC has cost taxpayers $7.3 billion, and it is expected to pay out $2.4 billion more in 2015. Combined with other subsidies and programs, wind generators received $56.29 in government subsidies per megawatt-hour in 2010, according to a 2012 report from the Institute for Energy Research. That’s compared with 64 cents in subsidies for natural gas and $3.14 for nuclear power.

The program operates as one of America’s least-known wealth-redistribution schemes, forcing taxpayers to pick up the tab for wind farms beyond their borders. In 2012 more than 30 states paid more in subsidies than wind farms in those states received in tax credits. Citizens in five states paid more than $100 million more in federal taxes than they received from the PTC: California ($196 million), New York ($163 million), Florida ($138 million), New Jersey ($126 million) and Ohio ($104 million). Eleven states paid into the PTC even though they have no qualifying wind production. The unlucky losers included Florida, Virginia and North Carolina.

The credit also encourages abuse — both of the electricity grid and the taxpayer. Instead of paying wind producers based on how much of their electricity is used, the PTC pays them based on how much electricity they generate. Companies that invest in wind power thus receive tax credits to produce something that consumers may not actually want. In fact, producers often pay electricity-grid operators to take their product. This phenomenon is known as “negative pricing.”

Wall Street has figured out that it can use this system to its advantage. The PTC offers major corporations a chance to lower their tax rates by investing in wind energy. But investors also realize that wind farms make little financial sense if the taxpayer isn’t picking up the tab.

Wind power’s fluctuating growth patterns bear this out. In 1992 wind installations produced about 2.8 million megawatt hours of electricity; in 2013 wind installations produced 167.6 million megawatt hours. Yet when the PTC expired temporarily in 2000, wind installations plummeted 92% the next year. The same thing happened in 2002 and 2004, when new installations fell 76% after two temporary expirations.

But the past few years deserve special mention. For most of 2012, wind producers weren’t sure if the PTC would be renewed at the end of the year. As a result, producers didn’t break ground on new projects, with only 1,100 new megawatts brought online the following year – a more than 90% drop.

Yet Congress caved and gave the PTC a one-year extension in January 2013, throwing in a bonus: Wind projects under construction by the end of the year would still be eligible for the PTC, even if they wouldn’t come online until after the credit expired.

Corporations and wind producers promptly rushed to cash in the taxpayer’s generosity. The industry broke ground on 12,000 megawatts of new wind farms before the PTC finally expired on Dec. 31. Thanks to the credit’s 10-year payout guarantee, taxpayers still have another decade of subsidizing wind.

It would be a mistake for Congress to renew the PTC again, and it is time to let the wind industry compete with other energy industries in a fair market. Congress should ignore the hot air surrounding the PTC and let it flutter away forever.

Mr. Phillips is the president of Americans for Prosperity.
Wall Street Journal

More than just a few parallels to be drawn from that great little piece and the wind industry’s current efforts to keep the scam rolling here.

No matter where they ply their trade, the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers will never be accused of running a consistent theme when it comes to wind power’s (supposed) ability to compete with conventional generation sources.

Whenever the political brains trust start challenging the true and hidden costs of wind power to their constituents, these boys start babbling about the wonders of wind being “free”; their costs coming down all the time; and – in their more fantasy-filled moments – making the wildest claim of all: that wind power is already truly competitive with coal and gas fired generation (see our posts here and here).

That drivel lasts for just as long as it takes for the political conversation to turn to chopping the massive stream of subsidies directed by government mandate to wind power outfits. At which point, they sober up really fast – and start whining like spoilt brats about threats to investment and jobs (read their “own investments and their own jobs”).

In this recent post, we threw down the gauntlet – challenging the Australian wind industry’s spruikers to pin their colours to the mast.

Is wind power REALLY competitive with conventional generators?

Or is it just a perpetual infant, that would die a natural death in a heartbeat in the absence of massive subsidies filched from power consumers, under the threat of whopping fines that get levied against retailers that fail or refuse to play ball?

While that story will shift like the desert sands – and continue to be delivered with the all the persuasion of Little Britain’s vacillating Queen of Darkley Noone, Vicky Pollard, whenever she’s put on the spot – the one constant is that the “future” of the wind industry will be just as it always has been: one entirely wedded to corporate welfare on a mammoth scale.

More Professionals Coming Forward to Protect wind Turbine Victims.

December 14, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Wind Syndrome: Public Health Crisis

By H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D — The Heartland Institute — December 12, 2014

Wind farms are a “human health hazard,” or so concludes Wisconsin’s Brown County Health Board (BCHB) with regard to the Shirley Wind Project, owned by Duke Energy (DE).

The board’s action has put Duke Energy on the defensive; the power company now has to prove its turbines are not making people sick or face a shutdown order.

This should also serve as a shot across the bow of other wind power operators, a warning to take health complaints seriously, because other towns and counties across the nation could follow BCHB’s example.
BCHB acted with cause. Its decision was based on a year-long study documenting infrasound in homes within a six-mile radius of the Shirley Wind turbines. In addition, BCHB examined peer-reviewed medical research and the complaints of people living around DE’s Shirley Wind Project, which included dozens of sworn affidavits attesting to chronic health problems they have suffered since the turbines began operation in 2010.

In repeated doctor visits, residents near the wind turbines reported experiencing unexplained chronic pain, inability to sleep, ear and head pressure, anxiety, and depression while at their homes, symptoms that disappear after a time away from the turbines. It’s become so bad some families living close to the wind farm have actually left their homes and are renting elsewhere while still paying their mortgages.

After examining all the evidence, BCHB declared “the Industrial Wind Turbines in the Town of Glenmore, Brown County, WI [are] a Human Health Hazard for all who are exposed to Infrasound/Low Frequency Noise and other emissions potentially harmful to human health.”

I have written extensively debunking various phantom health scares hyped by environmental lobbyists. From fears that chemicals in everyday use are causing unusual rates of cancer to unfounded assertions that biotech foods will cause unspecified catastrophic harms to human health or the environment, I’ve refuted them all.

However, there are big differences between the faux scares noted above and the claims wind farms may be making people sick.

First, biotech foods and medicines, as well as most chemicals in everyday use, have gone through extensive testing, and the evidence shows they are safe. With “wind turbine syndrome,” research is just beginning, and, as BCHB pointed out, studies have found evidence linking wind farms and health problems.

Second, genetically modified foods and medicines and modern synthetic chemicals provide myriad benefits other products can’t match, whereas wind power requires huge subsidies, is still inordinately expensive, and is unreliable, and the public has numerous better options for electric power.

Third, the government does not require consumers to purchase or use any GM products or synthetic chemicals about which any particular customer may have concerns. Thus, with a little research and studious shopping, one can avoid any product containing those foods or chemicals.

That is not true for wind power. Many states, including Wisconsin, mandate the use of wind farms and subsidize them; rate payers are captive purchasers. Worse, many states, such as Wisconsin, preempt localities’ authority to set conditions for turbine siting. Residents who don’t want turbines near their homes, who may indeed be made sick by their operations, have to live with the problems or move. If the health complaints prove true, the state government has put those people at risk.

At this point, we don’t know whether wind farms pose substantial health risks to those residing near them, but evidence is mounting they might, and now a public health authority has said they do. Why are major media outlets silent on the possible link between wind power and chronic health problems? I can’t imagine this kind of silence would exist if coal-fired power plants or oil terminals were linked to chronic health concerns.

Certainly, based on the current research and the numerous public complaints from California to New York, and internationally from Australia, Japan, and the United Kingdom, one might think a good investigative journalist would consider wind-turbine syndrome worth investigating, if only to try to disprove it. Consider the challenge laid down.

H. Sterling Burnett (hburnett@heartland.org) is a research fellow with The Heartland Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research institute based in Chicago, Illinois.

News That is So Wonderful, I must Share It Again! Windweasel Goes Down in Flames!

December 14, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Bye-Bye Barnyard: Mike Barnard’s Boss – IBM – Shuts Down the Wind Industry’s Most Rabid & Nasty Propaganda Parrot

December 14, 2014 by stopthesethings

Mike Barnard – “Barnyard”, as he’s affectionately known – is easily the most vicious, vile and virulent of the wind industry’s beleaguered band of propagandists, spruikers, parasites and media manipulators.

Along with other members of his dwindling pack of marauding-media-manipulators, Barnyard stalks internet sites and Twitter like a starving hyena – venting spleen; denigrating and ridiculing those unfortunates suffering from sleep deprivation caused by incessant low-frequency noise and infrasound – he sneeringly calls them “liars”, without a shred of first-hand evidence to support him, let alone relevant qualifications or experience relating to health or acoustics; slamming highly qualified health and acoustics professionals who’ve been working on the topic of noise and health their whole lives, while simultaneously trying to elevate his best mate – a former tobacco advertising guru – to the status of an acoustics/neuroscience “Einstein” on the health impacts of turbine noise; and otherwise doing his bit to perpetuate every lie, half-truth and myth about the “wonders” of wind.

For a taste of the delusion that grips the man, contrast this complete pile of piffle that Barnyard must have beamed in from the outer reaches of the Cosmos – with the detailed, factually based analysis produced by the Institute for Energy Research that came from good old Mother-ship, Earth (covered in our post here).

Barnyard, runs very close with the other “gold-pass” members of the hyena parasite-pack: “Enemies of the Earth’s”, eco-fascist-in-chief, Leigh Ewbank (aka FOE – a fully paid-up front for Danish fan maker, Vestas); Infigen’s in-house spin-master Ketan Joshi; and “Wind-Lord” Ken McAlpine, the struggling Danish fan maker’s front man in Oz.

But his days of pious pontification, rabid-hate-filled-rants, virulent attacks on highly respected academics, acoustics and health professionals and pedaling myths on the “wonders” of wind power are over.

Barnyard’s self-appointed “expert” status, nastiness and internet ubiquity was speared in a cracking open letter by none-other than STT Champion, Jackie Rovensky who, quite rightly, ripped into his reprehensible ranting with this fine piece of work, that hit pro-community websites back in September.

Mike Barnard’s disreputable wind industry propagandist role revealed
JA Rovensky

Vicious, grossly inaccurate and sometimes defamatory attacks on professionals and researchers are relentless from the wind industry and its vocal cheer squad. Their targets include individuals such as Dr Nina Pierpont, Professor Bob McMurtry, Dr Michael Nissenbaum, Dr Sarah Laurie, Mr Steven Cooper, Professor Colin Hansen, Mr Les Huson, Mr Rick James and numerous others, who work to uncover the truth of reported acoustic emission related adverse health impacts linked to Industrial Wind Turbines.

One of the most prolific and virulent is someone called Mike Barnard, an IBM employee. It seems he began his attacks when living in Canada, and is now physically located in Singapore. Whilst Barnard claims to be operating independently of his employer, IBM, the amount of time he spends blogging on wind power and smart grid related issues, and the business connections IBM have with the renewables industry with respect to smart grid technology and renewable energy, make his assertion that IBM are not involved and supporting his activities questionable.

When one of Barnard’s cyber bullying victims informed him what he’d written was libellous, Barnard’s comment in response was to the effect that he was laughing at them because he was untouchable by living in Singapore and utilising free blogging software in a “Cloud”? IBM has a strict policy on cyberbullying, and has been specifically made aware of Barnard’s activities. What action has IBM taken to discipline their vocal employee, who is bringing their organisation into considerable international disrepute with his behaviour?

So who is Mike Barnard, and what are his professional qualifications? On Barnard’s personal blog site he states he became interested in blogging on energy concerns several years ago, and this led:

to significant contacts, research and writing related to wind energy and its myriad societal and commercial interconnections, including the electrical grid, wind energy innovations, social license, health, noise and legal aspects. [1]

In a response to comment on one of his blogs he responded with:

For a little context on my background, I was the Business Architect responsible for delivery of the world’s first full public health surveillance system for communicable diseases, … funded by the Canadian government …

On his blog site introduction he states:

IBM was engaged to build the major technical solution which automated management of communicable disease and public health surveillance.

This related to Canada. He goes on to state he:

joined the program in the late 2000’s as the business architect, responsible for understanding policy, epidemiology and other business drivers and balancing them with what was pragmatically possible …

IBM was contracted in 2006 to design a system to be completed in 2007. They completed the design of the program in 2008, but in June 2013 the Canadian Medical Association Journal : Journal de l’Association medicale canadienne (CMAJ:JAMC) published an article which reported since then progress had been delayed because of numerous technical problems and confusion among provinces and little had been heard of the program since, “The concept has gone almost nowhere” [2].

Barnard continues to inform us how he has read through health studies and reviews related to wind power from around the world and claims:

constant and deep access and conversations related to public health management, epidemiology and the nature of medical evidence … That experience and on-the-job education has been invaluable as I’ve read through health studies and reviews related to wind power from around the world …

This has apparently also led to:

recognition of my expertise … I’m pleased to say that my material is helping to shape legal defences of wind energy, advocacy programs and investments in several countries.

In addition in 2013 he was assigning a blog “debate” relating to bird flight paths through a proposed Wind Turbine site, as being his impetus to start collecting material, and creating his own personal blog saying:

A few years ago I started down a road that has led to an unexpected place.

However, blogs can be found from him on energy from around 2010 [3], his voyage into health issues seems to have begun around 2012 when he attacked Dr Nina Pierpont and Dr Nissenbaum. Barnard has been involved in blogging on wind energy issues for some time, and he considers himself to be an integral part of the wind industry’s product defence strategy, which is certainly consistent with his behaviour. This is also consistent with how he is perceived by others who are also actively engaged in the same dishonest activities of denying the known adverse health impacts of wind turbine acoustic emissions; known to the wind industry and acousticians to cause damage to health via “annoyance” symptoms including sleep disturbance and body vibrations for nearly thirty years, since the work undertaken by Dr Neil Kelley et al in collaboration with NASA and a number of research organisations and wind turbine manufacturers.

The list of “publications” following these claims relate to blog sites and/or websites which are sites supporting Renewable Energy production and blogs which repeat the misinformation. They are not peer reviewed journal articles, nor has Mr Barnard been qualified to give expert evidence in any jurisdiction on wind turbine health and noise issues.

Barnard proudly displays a list of his 50 “Skills and Expertise” which includes “Wind Energy and Health”. None of the others cover any medical or health skill or expertise, and it hasn’t been possible to locate any medical or health related training or degree, or indeed any other relevant technical, professional or academic qualifications he has achieved with direct relevance to wind turbine noise or health, as he does not provide details of them. This suggests that Mr Barnard does not have that relevant professional background, academic training or expertise.

Just what is Mr Barnard’s specific expertise in this area?

Throughout Barnard’s blogging career he has concentrated on castigating, defaming and ridiculing those who do have qualifications, research and/or authorships, and who are demonstrably independent of the wind industry and from those who benefit financially from its operations.

One person in particular he’s taken aim at is Dr Sarah Laurie from South Australia, who is the CEO of the Waubra Foundation. The Waubra Foundation was established to facilitate independent multidisciplinary research into the impacts of infrasound and low frequency noise and vibration on human health. Wind turbine noise is just one source of noise the Foundation is concerned with.

Dr Sarah Laurie is a fully trained and qualified doctor, with clinical experience as a highly regarded rural General Practitioner, but she is not currently registered to practice medicine because of personal and family health issues and caring responsibilities. In Australia, it is a requirement that to practice medicine, you must be currently registered with the Australian Health Practitioners Regulatory Agency (AHPRA). Dr Laurie is not currently practising medicine with her current work as CEO of the Waubra Foundation. She is not seeing patients, she is not diagnosing conditions, and she is not prescribing medicine. She is listening carefully to what people adversely impacted by environmental noise tell her about their health problems, and the diagnoses their treating health practitioners have given them, if they choose to share that information with her.

Claims made by Mr Barnard (and others working with the wind industry such as Infigen Employee Laura Dunphy, and VESTAS employee Ken McAlpine) that she is deregistered are deliberately false. Implying that she has been “struck off” for professional misconduct is just one example of Barnard’s regular defamatory utterances, which are then repeated by others. Further his claims that she was “forced” to stop using the title of Doctor are also false. Mr Barnard continually deliberately misleads his readers with such comments and is clearly disinterested in the truth.

Because of a spurious complaint to the regulatory authority that she was “practising medicine whilst being unregistered” Dr Laurie voluntarily offered to AHPRA not to use the title “Dr” which retired or non-practising doctors are legally entitled to do in Australia, because she did not wish to mislead anyone about her current non registered status in her work with the Waubra Foundation. There had been no complaints to AHPRA from anyone who Sarah had interacted with that she had misled them as she had always been careful to ensure that anyone contacting her directly for information about their own circumstances was well aware of her current unregistered status. Indeed anyone with any awareness of this issue would be well aware of her current unregistered status because of the wide and frequent publicity this issue was given by the wind industry and its vocal supporters, particularly Professor Simon Chapman, the ABC and Fairfax media.

There is no restriction on anyone else referring to her as “Dr”, nor is there a restriction on her using the title if she was not performing her role as the Waubra Foundation CEO. AHPRA staff expressed their gratitude to her for this offer not to use the title “Dr”, which they accepted, with the proviso that when she reregistered to practice she would resume using the title “Dr”.

This issue was specifically clarified in the Environmental Review Tribunal Decision: Bovaird v. Director, Ministry of the Environment where the judgment stated the following:

The Tribunal finds that this evidence supports Ms. Laurie’s assertion that the AHPRA did not make any finding in respect of the complaint made against her.

Why did Mike Barnard ignore this finding of the Tribunal?

It is clear that he did not mention it because his intent was to deliberately smear Dr Laurie’s professional and personal reputation. It is also clear that the original widely publicised complaint to the NHMRC and AHPRA alleging professional and research misconduct, was done for precisely the same reasons by those within public health and wind industry circles in Australia who were unhappy with the attention the issue of health damage from wind turbine noise was attracting.

Those involved in this sordid episode include senior people in the ranks of public health bodies in Australia, including the Public Health Association of Australia, whose CEO, Michael Moore made the complaint, and whose computer created the defamatory “anonymous” allegation document. Mr Moore has since apologised to Dr Laurie, and the NHMRC CEO Professor Warwick Anderson has also apologised for the NHMRC’s behaviour towards Dr Laurie in a letter to the Chair of the Waubra Foundation, Peter Mitchell. The NHMRC unnamed “spokesperson” had leaked information about the allegations to crikey journalist Amber Jamieson, specifically naming Dr Laurie. Others such as Professor Simon Chapman have admitted they “saw a draft” of the defamatory allegations document, and Infigen Energy’s propagandist Ketan Joshi is uncharacteristically silent when challenged by others on various blog sites about his knowledge and involvement in the production and distribution of this defamatory document. The format of the document was remarkably similar to the way Infigen energy prepares their responses to issues raised by objectors to their environmental assessments.

Among Dr Laurie’s credentials are her positions as a former Examiner for the Australian College of General Practitioners, a former Mid-North Division of General Practice representative and former member of the regional Mental Health Advisory Committee. She was a provider of pro bono services to the local Aboriginal community and a cofounder of the regional Rape and Sexual Assault service. She also undertook emergency care work at the local rural hospital as a visiting medical officer, in addition to her role as an employee, associate and then partner in a local medical practice.

These credentials are not confidential, and are available to Mr Barnard and anyone else who wishes to ascertain her qualifications, just by looking at the Waubra Foundation website [4], and reading the speech given in the Australian Federal Parliament about this matter, by the former Member for Hume, Alby Schultz [5].

Dr Laurie states clearly she has no expertise in acoustics, but does consult regularly and collaborates closely with those who are acousticians, to help ensure she understands what she needs to in relation to exposure levels of infrasound, audible noise and vibration and correlations with reported health symptoms. She also repeats constantly she does not undertake and is not trained to do research in an academic manner, but is actively facilitating the research being conducted by others. What she goes to great pains to explain is that she listens very carefully to the symptoms people living near environmental noise experience themselves and then try and describe. This is a core skill required by rural general practitioners, something she was specifically trained to do and was particularly skilled at. Rural doctors need excellent diagnostic skills, most of which is dependent on taking a very careful clinical history, as they do not have the luxury of specialists “next door” and easy and rapid access to a range of diagnostic facilities which city counterparts take for granted.

Dr Laurie then collects and collates pieces of information given to her by people reporting changes to their health after wind turbines and other industrial noise sources begin operating in their vicinity, looking for similarities and patterns which give important clues as to direct causation. Occasionally people provide her with some of their medical records and other health data, which is kept confidential unless the person concerned gives their permission for the information to be out in the public domain, or the information has already been reported publicly in the media or in oral or written testimony to courts, tribunals, and parliamentary inquiries.

Dr Laurie always maintains confidentiality, even when under significant and very public pressure from others demanding she release information to them for their research. One example is the repeated private and public harassment from Professor Simon Chapman, Professor of Public Health at Sydney University, and Expert Adviser to the Climate and Health Alliance, to release the names of residents forced to leave their homes and other details such as locations of their abandoned homes [6]. Much of that information had been provided to her in confidence, and some of the information could have caused significant harm to the people concerned – for example because of non-disclosure clauses in legal documents signed by people providing the information, or by their close relations. Others requested privacy because of concerns about property damage, burglary or arson to unoccupied homes. It has subsequently emerged from inquiries made by Senator Madigan’s staff, that at the time Professor Chapman conducted his inquiries, he did not have in place prior ethics committee approvals from the Sydney University Ethics Committee. Requests for information were made directly to wind turbine noise affected residents, causing them considerable distress. [update:The Sydney University Ethics Committee has clarified that no approval was required, as the ‘research’ entailed only asking people to corroborate already public statements.]

Whatever the Bovaird ERT Tribunal said in Ontario, Dr Laurie cannot be objectively considered as having been “diagnosing” patients since she ceased practicing.

Examination of information consisting of health issues diagnosed by treating physicians and discussing this information with the informants does not constitute “making a diagnosis”, which is a process requiring a thorough clinical evaluation by a treating health practitioner. What Dr Laurie did in the Boviard case is no different to what she has done elsewhere, and can only be considered as evaluating the combination of specific individual clinical circumstances with respect to the available research evidence and clinical knowledge. That was precisely what Dr Laurie had been asked to do. She was not asked to diagnose patients, nor would she have done so, as she is well aware of the appropriate constraints on such activities for those who are not currently registered to practice medicine.

Irrespective of the Environment Review Tribunal’s questionable determination in the Boviard case, which is consistent with other questionable decisions made by the same Tribunal resulting in many rural Ontarians being harmed by wind turbine noise because of unsafe and continuing wind turbine development approvals, it is logically impossible for anyone to diagnose someone “before” they have symptoms.

Identifying that some people who have one or more acknowledged risk factors prior to Industrial Wind Turbines beginning to operate provides information about predictable health problems which may ensue with exposure to infrasound and low frequency noise. You don’t have to be a trained doctor or research academic to come to that conclusion, but clearly the knowledge attained from years of study and subsequent clinical practice does put a formerly registered practising medical practitioner in a position where her expertise can be utilised, as an expert witness in this field, without her currently “practising” medicine.

The complete lack of critical thinking used by members of the Ontario Environment Review Tribunal who used such irrational logic to determine whether someone has the ability to offer a hypothesis, is mind boggling at best and disturbingly suggestive of bias at worst.

There are constant references to Dr Laurie not being able to stipulate what distance she determines is a safe distance these turbines should be from people. Dr Laurie consistently states she cannot provide a fixed distance, as there are many variables to be considered and the multi-disciplinary research needs to be undertaken first. After all, not only are turbines becoming larger, and installed in greater numbers in individual projects or through extending existing project many other variables have to be taken into account, such as the geology, wind directions and speed, seasonal changes, temperatures to name some.

Professor Colin Hansen’s research group’s latest acoustic survey at Waterloo Wind Development in South Australia [7] is a good example of the sort of research Dr Laurie has been stating is required for the last four years. That acoustic survey demonstrated that there is indeed a low frequency noise problem for neighbours to Waterloo wind development, and that it can extend out even beyond 8km under certain circumstances.

This is precisely what Dr Laurie stated three years ago; when the Waubra Foundation’s explicit Cautionary Notice was issued on 29th June, 2011. The information which led to the distance of 10km being specified in that document came from adversely impacted residents at Waterloo. Professor Hansen’s team’s research findings have now supported Dr Laurie’s statement in 2011 about the distance of impact and are consistent with the residents’ consistent reports for nearly four years of a low frequency noise problem from the wind turbines at Waterloo, which severely disrupts their sleep.

Much is made by Mr Barnard and others of the “nocebo” effect, whilst they dismiss the existence of “wind turbine syndrome”. However Mr Barnard fails to disclose that British Acoustician Dr Geoff Leventhall specifically acknowledges the existence of the symptoms of wind turbine syndrome, indeed Leventhall stated in June 2011 in a presentation to the National Health and Medical Research Council [8] that he had been familiar with the identical symptoms to WTS which he calls “noise annoyance” for “years”. Leventhall further noted that Dr Nina Pierpont’s contribution to the field of environmental noise was to identify certain risk factors for developing “noise annoyance” symptoms.

For those interested, the presentation and the slide show are available on the NHMRC website, and also on www.wind-watch.org. The relevant slides are slides 42–44, and the footage is between 49 and 52 minutes of the video.

Mr Barnard has also failed to disclose that leading otologist, and Harvard Professor Steven Rauch has recently confirmed that he is seeing patients with the characteristic symptoms of “wind turbine syndrome”. Journalist Alex Halperin had this to say in a recent article [9]:

Dr Steven Rauch, an otologist at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and a professor at Harvard Medical School, believes WTS is real. Patients who have come to him to discuss WTS suffer from a “very consistent” collection of symptoms, he says. Rauch compares WTS to migraines, adding that people who suffer from migraines are among the most susceptible to turbines. There’s no existing test for either condition but “Nobody questions whether or not migraine is real.”

“The patients deserve the benefit of the doubt,” Rauch says. “It’s clear from the documents that come out of the industry that they’re trying very hard to suppress the notion of WTS and they’ve done it in a way that [involves] a lot of blaming the victim.”

Mr Barnard also fails to mention the opinions of rural family physicians such as Dr Sandy Reider, from Vermont, who is at the front line of clinical care for those affected by wind turbine noise, that “wind turbine syndrome” is a euphemistic description which does not sufficiently depict the clinical severity of the clinical cases he is seeing [10].

Mr Barnard fails to mention the opinion of Irish Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr Colette Bonner, who has also publicly acknowledged the existence of “wind turbine syndrome” and said that those affected need to be treated with understanding. A recent media report from Ireland stated the following [11]:

“The Department of Health’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr Colette Bonner, has said that older people, people who suffer from migraine, and others with a sensitivity to low-frequency vibration, are some of those who can be at risk of “wind turbine syndrome”.

“These people must be treated appropriately and sensitively as these symptoms can be very debilitating,” she commented in a report to the Department of the Environment last year.”

Mr Barnard, and those whose commercial interests he is working so hard to protect, is involved in a grubby, dishonest, misinformation and vilification campaign, as part of a global defence strategy for the global wind industry. This industry has been well aware of the problems directly caused by wind turbine noise since 1987, when Dr Neil Kelley’s research [12] establishing direct causation of annoyance symptoms from infrasound and low frequency noise was presented at the American Wind Energy Association conference.

Mr Barnard and his associates’ behaviour is further eroding the personal and professional reputations of all those involved, and eroding the reputations of the companies and organisations they work for, including in this instance IBM.

However, perhaps more importantly Mr Barnard’s behaviour is further eroding the public’s confidence in the global wind industry and its social licence to operate. Such tactics in Australia will only result in the lessening of political and public support for the large subsidies from electrical consumers which are required to keep the wind industry operating.

As Professor Ross McKitrick from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, recently pointed out, the wind industry runs on subsidies [13]. Without the support of the public who are funding the wind industry via their mounting electricity bills, and the politicians responsible for the legislation which forces the subsidies to be collected directly from the public, the wind industry in Australia and elsewhere around the world is doomed – a fitting consequence for such a dishonest and health damaging industry which has shattered the lives of too many rural residents and their families for too long.

It’s time, as a growing number of professionals and researchers are openly saying, for the wind industry to accept the problem, and work to eliminate it. “Shooting the professional messengers” as the Energy and Policy Institute publication by Barnard [14] has tried to do, will not stop the litigation for noise nuisance, negligence against complicit acousticians, or applications for injunctions to cease the operation of turbines, and will only further reduce the diminishing social licence for the wind industry to operate.

JA Rovensky

Nice work, Jackie!

To see the original, along with Jackie’s numerous footnotes and references – click here.

That link also contains a detailed comment from the documentary film maker, Andrew Greg – who put together the brilliant wind power fraud expose, Wind Rush for CBC.

For his fine, well-researched and documented efforts, Andrew was rewarded with one of wind-lunatic, Barnyard’s typically vehement, unhinged tirades: demanding that CBC never employ him ever again; personally attacking Andrew and his family; and anyone else that Barnyard could think of, that poses a threat to his maniacal world-view.

Barnyard’s “motive” for all that untamed malice?

Why, the mighty dollar, of course.

Barnyard works for American IT giant, IBM, developing the computer software that’s used in “smart” grid management systems and “smart” power meters – that are part and parcel of the chaos associated with Barnyard’s pet power generation “system”: a “system” centred on a wholly weather dependent power source, that will only ever deliver power at crazy, random intervals (if at all).

It’s that inherent chaos which provides the “market” for Barnyard’s “smart” grid software, among wind power outfits and grid managers.

And it’s the chaos inherent in the wind power “system” that sets up an increase in the opportunities for rampant gaming and rorting of the market for sparks – which is where Barnyard’s “smart” meter software comes into its own.

“Smart” meters are perfectly designed to allow power companies to make out like Mexican bandits on the hundreds of occasions each year when wind power collapses for hours each day, and for days on end. These inevitable and unpredictable wind power output collapses see the usual dispatch price for power, of around $40 per MWh, quickly rocket towards the regulated cap of $12,500 per MWh and, on plenty of occasions, hit it (see our posts here and here and here and here).

The only trouble for power companies is, that – in the absence of “smart” meters – they can’t hit power punters directly for the full costs of these wind power “outage” driven price spikes. With Barnyard’s smart meter systems in place, they can.

Clever stuff!

The inevitable result will be that – when demand for power to run fans and air-conditioners spikes on a hot, still summer’s day (or for heating during still, frosty weather) – coinciding with a (natural) total wind power output collapse – power punters will face being walloped with the full cost of the rort – being charged at the price prevailing at that very moment by peaking-power piranhas – ie not based on the average cost of power to the grid, but on the actual dispatch price, as it rockets its way from around $40 to $12,500 per MWh.

But – with 10s of thousands of Australians already struggling to afford power and 10s of thousands more being disconnected at unprecedented rates for failure to pay their bills now – adding “smart” meters simply means that more power-starved grannies will end up perishing in hot weather (or shivering to death in winter).

Now, that explains Barnyard’s mercenary motives, but trying to find some kind of explanation for his inherent nastiness requires an investigation to find out whether it’s because mummy didn’t love him, or if he was the fat kid that his schoolmates habitually and gleefully rolled down the hill just for fun?

And – returning to Jackie’s letter – don’t you just love it when self-appointed “experts”, like Barnyard – without a shred of qualification or experience relevant to the task at hand – launch vitriolic attacks on those who do? Barnyard’s style is an insidious phenomenon that’s pervasive among the wind industry’s parasites and spruikers: the less qualified they are, the nastier they are, the louder they shout, and the more lies they tell.

Jackie’s open letter was greeted with cheers among communities battling the great wind power fraud around the Globe; and the thrust of it was drawn to the attention of his boss, IBM, by the North American Platform Against Wind Power (NA-PAW) in a delightful and insightful letter (for a copy of NA-PAW’s thumping letter to IBM – click here).

Now IBM have responded in the only way a major corporation trying to protect an International reputation for ethical and socially responsible dealing could: it’s pulled Barnyard into gear – forcing him to: shut down his wind industry backed propaganda website, Barnardonwind; drop his self-appointed “role” as “Senior Fellow” for wind industry propaganda front, the Energy and Policy Institute; and to “no longer publish on wind energy”.

OUCH!

Here’s a rundown on IBM’s embarrassed response to Barnyard’s unauthorized, vitriolic and deranged extracurricular activities from NA-PAW.

Mike Barnard’s wind wings clipped by employer IBM
NA-PAW (North American Platform Against Wind Power)
12 December 2014

Barnard told to stop writing on wind power, resign fellowship from Energy and Policy Institute, and delete his blog: Barnard on Wind

Mike Barnard last month was taken to task by researcher Jackie Rovensky of AU and NA-PAW (North American Platform Against Wind Power) for a long-standing series of malicious attacks on trusted and respected professionals worldwide, who have variously documented and researched the now widely recognized devastating effects of industrial wind on human health.

This action by IBM is easily understood.

Barnard is best known for his self-proclaimed stance as a pro wind “expert”, who critiques others for their “lack of expertise.” He has zero qualifications for his writings on wind, yet “calls himself the lead researcher” in a study that calls wind victims “liars.”

Barnard has also falsely asserted that his “power reading” and “constant and deep access and conversations related to public health management, epidemiology and the nature of medical evidence … That experience and on-the-job education has been invaluable as I’ve read through health studies and reviews related to wind power from around the world” … which led to “recognition of my expertise … I’m pleased to say that my material is helping to shape legal defences of wind energy, advocacy programs and investments in several countries.”

This bravado has found its “religious” base with wind power developers and promoters, but Barnard now can only boast of a protracted vacation from writing on wind.

Others use his cyber bullying and “manufactured facts” to recreate their own smears.

IBM Corporate Officer (Brand Manager, Communications) Carrie Bendzsa, after numerous discussions with Lange of NA-PAW, wrote to NA-PAW, thanking the organization for bringing this matter to their attention, asserting that none of “these postings or comments (libel by Barnard) were IBM endorsed actions.”

The communique continues:

“We don’t have an advocacy position on energy and we have a number of social computing guidelines and policies in place that our employees are instructed and expected to follow. Furthermore, the individuals who are upset by the postings should be assured that IBM does not have any negative views about them personally or professionally.

“IBM has spent considerable time reviewing this matter internally and has taken several actions that our employee has agreed to comply with to resolve this matter. These include having the employee delete the Barnardonwind blog, terminate the Energy and Policy Institute Senior Fellow role and agree to no longer publish on wind energy.”

“We truly appreciate you stepping forward to bring this matter to our attention.”

Lange notes that the kind of serial cyber bullying that has occurred with Barnard on Wind, some of which has been subsumed into other pro wind sites, is of a serious nature: “It is regarded as irrational, unprovoked criticism,” based on the apparent, some would say obvious, intent to harm careers and cast doubt on the professional integrity of individuals. It has no basis in fact, and can be compared in a way to “hate” speech.

Notes Lange: “Cyber Bullying and defamation falls under the Criminal Code, and is punishable by up to 10 years in prison in Canada.” “Defamatory libel is likewise a crime under the Criminal Code, if the libelous statement is directed against a person in authority and could seriously harm his or her reputation.” (The persons affected by the Barnard libel are indeed persons in authority.) “This is punishable by up to five years in prison.” (While the US defamation laws are less plaintiff friendly, there are legal markers since 1964 for those knowingly harming by the power of innuendo and falsehoods.)

NA-PAW expresses thanks to IBM for its ethical leadership, and reserves the right to observe and facilitate the removal of all related and corollary defamation from satellite websites, if need be with the assistance of web expert libel/defamation lawyers.

One of several bullying notes to Dr. Sarah Laurie of the Waubra Foundation:

Ms. Laurie: You have not responded as of yet to my letter below. I await your confirmation that you will stop actively promoting health fears which cause illness near wind farms in light of the recent and historical research showing this to be the case.

Yours,
Mike Barnard
Singapore

CONTACT:
Sherri Lange
CEO NA-PAW (North American Platform Against Wind Power)
www.na-paw.org
kodaisl@rogers.com
416 567 5115

For the original with references – click here.

From NA-PAW’s piece above, it seems that those Barnyard’s attacked in Canada are keen to see him spend a little time in a Canadian “cooler”; although we’re not sure what the extradition rules are between Canada and Singapore?

In any event, Barnyard – who taunts his growing band of detractors from his bunker in Singapore – might like to hole up for a while with boys like Julian Assange, in the Ecuadorian Consulate in London; or Edward Snowden in Russia? That way he would get to compare notes with some other computer programmers, who turned opportunistic, self-righteous, narcissistic, media manipulators. We’re sure that he’d be amongst friends.

But, Barnyard’s clear and present danger isn’t a Canadian Clink, it’s his future tenure with IBM.

IBM’s edict that: Barnyard “no longer publish on wind energy” is going to have an utterly crippling effect on the rogue blogger and website-stalker.

What will he do with the thousands of hours that he would have otherwise spent vilifying and attacking those who don’t share his infantile love of giant fans? Take up golf? More time at Pilates?

Following his bosses’ orders will, no doubt, be a big challenge.

But STT’s sure that our followers will be only too glad to help him stay on the “straight-and-narrow” with his employer. Think of it in the same vein as steering that struggling AA member away from the pub and otherwise keeping them off the booze.

To that end, we suggest that from here on in, wherever and whenever you see Mike Barnard (or Mike using any known or suspected nom de plume) “publish on wind energy” – whether posting or commenting on a blog or website, writing papers, journals, etc; or otherwise spreading his version of the “wonders” of wind energy – let Sherri Lange of NA-PAW know with an email to: kodaisl@rogers.com – so she can pass on the links to Barnard’s posts, comments, etc to IBM.

STT’s has no doubt that Sherri will be delighted to help Barnyard keep his future employment with IBM safe and secure.

Or, if you catch Barnyard breaching IBM’s edict about not publishing on wind energy, why not send his posts, comments and rants DIRECT to IBM?

Here’s the link to send an email to IBM:http://www.ibm.com/scripts/contact/contact/us/en

And here’s the postal addresses, if you think snail-mail would work better:

Chairman, President and CEO, Ginni Rometty
IBM Corporation
New Orchard Road
Armonk, New York 10504
C.c. Board of Directors

And

IBM Non-Management Directors
c/o Chair, IBM Directors and Corporate Governance Committee
International Business Machines Corporation
Mail Drop 390
New Orchard Road
Armonk, NY 10504

Think of it as noble work – you’ll be helping some-one who can’t help himself keep his well-paid job with IBM, while ridding the internet of one of its most rabid pests.

Oh, and if you see Barnyard commenting and/or blogging in relation to this post, be sure to let Sherri Lang and IBM know.

Wynne & the Liberals, Determined to Destroy Ontario’s Future!

December 13, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Underfunded Pension Liabilities. More Wynne Incompetence.

[ 0 ] December 12, 2014 | Lydia

When the Huff Post takes swipes at Wynne and her Liberals, you know things are bad.

In a piece by the Huffington Post which is reporting on the Auditor General’s findings, it is clear that the Ontario Pension Liability coffers are insufficient by some 75 billion dollars. That means that you and I, Joe and Jane Nobody are on the hook for it. Why? Well because much of those plans are promised to contracted union employees of the Ontario government. So as long as there is one tax payer available from which to draw a “revenue stream”, it means that their pensions MUST be paid, even if the province doesn’t have a red penny left in the coffer pot to pay them.

Since the government doesn’t actually generate its own money, where do you suppose Wynne is looking to find that 75 Billion bucks? Might that 75 Billion get diverted from the cash that will be coming in from her new “Pension Plan”?

So keep in mind that public employees get free dental, eye glasses, eye laser surgery, chiropractor and physio services, added health care benefits for short and long term disability, gold plated pension benefits and even life insurance benefits, whereas – we the people who have to continue to pay for it all and are on the hook for it, more often than not, usually do without any and all of those same benefits. Not because we don’t think dental plans and life insurance plans for our loved ones aren’t important – on the contrary, they are. The fact is, that there just simply isn’t enough money left in our jeans to provide that for ourselves once the various levels of government extract their cut and we busy ourselves with simply trying to stay afloat on what’s left.

I’ll spare you the math, and instead I urge you to read the whole Huff article, which shows how this whole new boondoggle in waiting, – equates to essentially a $200,000 to $350,000 lifetime cash grab from each Ontario employee. Of course all benefitting the revenue starved Liberal Government. They are asking you to pay into a fund, where they hold the purse strings and they will keep ALL the money paid in, to spend as they see fit. As the Huff points out, if you put that money in your own savings plan, you’d be ahead of the game by some $350,000. You would be getting paid interest per month on your own money PLUS you would still own the 350K, not the government.

What many also still do not understand is that anyone who runs a small business, or is self employed, stands to get hit with not only the employee contribution, but you must pay your employer portion as well. For many, this cap of 1600 per year, will actually equate to DOUBLE the stated premium to a total maximum of 3400 bucks per year to Windmill Katie’s Government!

While it is still unclear how some of this Plan will be administered something about this whole idea simply stinks. The fine points are not forthcoming as of yet, as I suspect it is in part because there hasn’t been enough fiddling with needed loopholes in order to send endless streams of that newly incoming cash into general revenues, other barren budgetary areas and other Liberal pet projects.

Unless Wynne and her gang can figure out all the ways to get their hands on that new revenue stream, and spend it as they wish, (instead of locking it in legally to be maintained for its sole purpose which is: a FUND that could not be drawn against or pillaged for other government spending sprees.) – Unless Wynne and her gang can solidify their ability to divert that new cash to other areas whenever they please, HOWEVER they please, there really isn’t much of a reason to implement the plan at all.

In any case, the amount of times we hear about missing billions with this bunch is simply staggering. I do think there is a direct correlation between the fact that there is a 75 billion dollar Union Sector Pension liability short fall and this latest tactic to generate new money. They are going to have to find a way to drum up this 75 Billion bucks from somewhere, or more accurately, from someone. That someone is you and me.

This of course is where Liberals truly excel – they are pros at selling a shiny “Pension Fund” bait and switch shell game. Let’s face it, is far more palatable to sell something shiny and pretty to the unsuspecting Ontarian, than to simply tell them the truth – which is: Hey, our Pension funding is 75 Billion in the hole, with no way to make up that money and with no way to divert that money from other general coffers either…. and so we need gobs of money from each and every one of you so that we can make sure we have enough cash to pay our union employees their pensions.

I wouldn’t count on Joe Average ever seeing a red cent of this new pension money getting back into his jeans. I’m betting that Wynne and her Government will have long since spent it on other things.

Ohio Citizens Band Together to Fight The Industrial Wind Scourge!

December 13, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Ohio Joins Global Effort to Slam the Door on Big Wind

December 13, 2014 by stopthesethings

Around the world, rural communities are fighting back hard against the great wind power fraud.

Wherever wind farms have appeared – or have been threatened – big numbers of locals take a set against the monsters being speared into their previously peaceful – and often idyllic – rural communities. Their anger extends to the goons that lied their way to development approval – and the bent officials that rubber-stamped their applications and who, thereafter, help the operators ride roughshod over locals’ rights to live in and enjoy the peace and comfort of their own homes and properties.

Australians are in there fighting hard – with the numbers solidly against wind power outfits that cause nothing more than community division and open hostility where ever they go (see our posts here and here and here)

The Irish have already hit the streets to bring an end to the fraud: some 10,000 stormed Dublin back in April. The sense of anger in Ireland – as elsewhere – is palpable (see our post here).

Rural Ontario is seething, with locals taking the law into their own hands – sabotaging turbines and construction equipment in order to defend their (once) peaceful and prosperous communities (see our post here).

And the Scots have joined in – tearing down MET masts in order to prevent wind power outfits from gaining a foothold and, thereafter, violating their right to live free from turbine terror (see our post here).

The back-lash against wind power outfits has been mirrored in the US – with communities rallying to shut down projects before they begin; and a raft of litigation launched by neighbours (see our post here).

In the US, even turbine hosts – who we’re repeatedly told by the wind industry’s pseudo-scientist advocates NEVER complain about turbine noise impacts on their homes and health – have issued civil actions against the companies that pay them handsomely to let them plant their giant fans in the top paddock. In Texas, 23 of them are suing 2 wind power outfits for damages caused by excessive noise – which has led to health problems and homes being abandoned – true to form, the companies involved had lied to the farmers concerned about the noise their turbines would generate from the very beginning (see our post here).

Now, farmers in Ohio have taken up the battle to defend their homes, properties and families from turbine tyranny.

Fighting Big Wind
Telegraph-Forum
Todd Hill
7 November 2014

“Stop the wind turbines!” “Say no to wind turbines!” “Wind turbines, go away!”

Drive around rural Ohio long enough, particularly the parts of the state that are flat and dominated by large, agricultural fields, and you’re bound to see signs voicing these sentiments in the front yards of property owners.

Fifteen miles north of Mansfield, just north of the Richland County line near the Huron County village of Greenwich, red and white anti-wind farm signs have sprouted like weeds. A subsidiary of Windlab Developments USA Ltd. wants to build a 25-turbine wind farm on 4,600 acres of leased land just south and east of the village.

The Greenwich Wind Park was approved by the Ohio Power Siting Board in late August.

“We first identified the site and approached landowners to discuss the project concept in 2010. Since that time, the project has benefited from significant community support throughout an extensive development and OPSB process,” Monica Jensen, vice president of Windlab Developments USA, said.

“Now that the project has been approved, Windlab looks forward to completing this project for the benefit of both involved landowners and the neighboring community.”

Well, not so fast.

Kevin and Marcia Ledet live on Omega Road, square in the middle of where the Greenwich Wind Park is supposed to go. They, along with about 27 other local residents, have formed Greenwich Neighbors United, and they’re not taking this wind park lying down. They have their reasons.

“My parents aren’t in their home anymore and we were going to sell their home,” Marcia Ledet said. “The guy called up and said, ‘Well, what about the wind situation?’ He’s backed out, he doesn’t want to buy it now because he doesn’t think it will be a good selling thing to have turbines in the neighborhood.”

The Ledets’ home sits less than a mile north of a busy CSX railroad track, with two even busier CSX tracks a couple miles south of that, typical for northern Ohio. And a variety of pungent smells waft on the breeze.

“They’ll say the railroads make noise and you have all these chicken and hog farms. Hey, this is agriculture,” Kevin Ledet said.

Dennis Alvert and Marcia and Kevin Ledet of Greenwich, Ohio, are unhappy with the environmental effects of a wind turbine farm proposed for their area.

“I love that they call this a wind farm, because what are you farming here? You’re making an industrial power-generating facility superimposed on a community, and it will alter it forever. Our property rights are being infringed upon.”

Ledet said he’s not against wind turbines, although like most opposed to these projects, he certainly sounds as if he is. He complains about federal subsidies “throwing a lot of good tax money” at wind farms, although a federal tax credit for turbines expired last year, with no signs that Congress intends to rejuvenate it any time soon.

Still, the Ledets probably wouldn’t be opposed to wind energy if it were coming from Texas or Oklahoma, where the wind power industry has really taken off. Here in Ohio, only two wind farms are in operation, in Van Wert and Paulding counties. Several more have been either approved by the OPSB or are in pre-application status with the state agency, including two in Richland and Crawford counties, the much larger Black Fork Wind Farm west of the city of Shelby and near the village of Tiro, and the Honey Creek Wind Farm in Crawford and Seneca counties.

Within just the past year, the legislative environment for wind energy in Ohio has grown progressively more unfavorable.

Gov. John Kasich has frozen the state’s renewable portfolio standard, which had stipulated that 25 percent of the electricity sold in Ohio must be generated from alternative energy sources, such as wind, located here by 2025. That mandate is now stuck at a much lower 2014 level, although the freeze is temporary.

Dennis Alvert discusses the environmental effects of a wind turbine farm that is proposed for the Greenwich, Ohio, community.

“It’s not a freeze at all, because if they don’t give us something that works we go back to the old rules, the old standards, which I don’t think fit the state,” Kasich said.

“The numbers that got set were pulled out of thin air. You don’t want to put burdens on companies in this state where they can’t possibly meet the rules, and we don’t want to burden the consumers where we’re costing them a fortune, so we’re going to do a reset.”

In addition, the governor signed over the summer legislation, which never received any public testimony, revising the setback provisions for wind farms from the outer wall of the nearest habitable structure to the edge of a property line, essentially rendering these projects impossible in a heavily populated state like Ohio.

“Look, here’s the issue. Private property rights are important. People choose to live somewhere, and you don’t just go in there and disrupt their life. The idea that you have a setback from your property line rather than your personal home I think makes a lot of sense,” Kasich said.

Will the new setbacks be the death knell for wind projects like Greenwich and Black Fork?

“That question is up in the air,” Dayna Baird Payne, a Columbus-based lobbyist for the American Wind Energy Association, said.

“There is language in the statute, House Bill 483, that projects certified as of early September (again, Greenwich Wind Park was approved in late August) will be grandfathered in. But some of the language in the statute suggests that if a project files an amendment, that kicks it out of grandfathering. There may be a rule coming soon from the OPSB explaining a little about the process.”

“There are not any immediate plans to do that,” Matt Butler, public outreach manager for the OPSB, said.

“The setback change has a number of legal issues that are subject to further interpretation before we can issue any additional clarification on that in a case that comes before the board.”

Kevin and Marcia Ledet of Greenwich, Ohio, discuss the negative effects not often addressed by the wind turbine farm advocates.

The energy marketplace also is challenging for the wind industry right now, given the abundance of natural gas being extracted from the Marcellus and Utica shale plays, along with a general decline in energy demand that’s persisted since the 2007-09 recession.

Still, the members of Greenwich Neighbors United aren’t taking any chances. They’re hoping to litigate the wind park to death before it gets off the ground, a strategy that’s so far been working for the opponents of the Black Fork Wind Farm.

“Windlab had an informational meeting, and just prior to that they took out a big, color advertisement in the newspapers that says how marvelous this is. It shows a little girl with these pinwheels on a prairie with some turbines,” Kevin Ledet said.

“It was an amicable meeting, but I told them we would fight them tooth and nail, take them all the way to the Supreme Court, whatever we have to do.”

Dennis Alvert, another opponent, questioned why Windlab has chosen Huron County, where the wind can be calm for days on end during the summer. There are, however, several power transmission lines stretched across the Buckeye State.

“The alarm for us is the way they have done business so covertly. They spend three to four years in an area getting their ducks in a row before they make an announcement,” he said.

Indeed, a flow chart showing the approval process for a wind project, provided by Windlab, has the first public mention (a legal notice in a local newspaper) more than halfway down the page.

“These people, they know the game we’re playing, and we don’t. By the time we got on board with this, the bus was already over the hill, we never even saw the taillights,” Ledet said.

“Everyone we talked to, they thought it was a done deal, there’s no sense in fighting, forget about it. And half didn’t even know what was going on,” Marcia Ledet said, adding Greenwich Neighbors United is $30,000 in debt.

The group is having its first fundraiser, a community chili rally, Friday from 5 to 8 p.m. at the South Central K-8 School, 3305 Greenwich Angling Road.

“And we’re selling hats,” she said. “Five dollars if you wear them, $10 if you don’t. If you think they’re ugly, you should see the wind turbines.”
Telegraph-Forum

Liberals Downplay the Auditor General’s Report…..As Usual.

December 12, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Auditor’s look at the Province’s books:

by lsarc

Another year, another Auditor, another Ontario Auditor General’s report – same findings of waste, mismanagement and incompetence.

Once again the Ontario Auditor General, a different one this time, in her 2013 Annual Report, looks at Ontario’s electricity sector and reveals the incompetence and lunacy of the Liberal government’s managing of the sector and the incoherence of their policies.

Unfortunately their mismanagement is not confined to the electricity sector. The Auditor found that the government has continued to spend public money on programs without setting in place any metrics to judge the effectiveness of those programs, nor at times even to ensure that the services we have paid for are even delivered. Cost/benefit analyses are still a foreign concept to this government and its bureaucrats.

This does not come as a surprise to those of us who have been pointing out (here, hereand here) that these policies are universally based on nothing more substantive than ideology, never on a cost/benefit analysis or factual data.

The costs to the Province’s ratepayers and taxpayers documented in the Auditor General’s Report 2013 are no surprise to those of us that have been decrying the lack of good government in Ontario.

According the the Ontario Auditor General, Infrastructure Ontario is an $8-billion mess and the electricity sector $50 billion dollar mess includes the $2 billion wasted on thosenot-so-smart “smart meters.”

“The total Global Adjustment charged to ratepayers has grown from $654 million in 2006 to $7.7 billion in 2013, as shown in Figure 10. With more new contracted generators, especially of renewable energy, expected to begin producing energy at higher contract prices, the total Global Adjustment is expected to grow further, to $8.5 billion in 2014 and $9.4 billion in 2015. From 2006 to 2015, the 10-year cumulative actual and projected Global Adjustment is about $50 billion—an extra charge to ratepayers over and above the market price of electricity.”

The Auditor General does not speculate on what this waste and the inflated costs means to Ontario’s economy, society and people.

As we have said in previous posts, the damage done to our economy and society is not only the needless additional cost for electricity, nor the wasted billions, which in many cases have bought us nothing more than additional liabilities.

Certainly these costs are important, but they pale in comparison with the opportunity costs incurred. What wealth and jobs for Ontario would $5 billion a year have created if invested by individuals in the economy? How many nurses and doctors, long term care facilities and other social benefits would $5 billion a year allow? How many billions in lost Gross Provincial Product from companies that leave the Province or go out of business?

Almost everyone blames Tim Hudak for losing the last election by telling people the truth. The Liberals lied and were rewarded with a majority. OPSEU’s Smokey Thomasbelieved Kathleen Wynne was lying and will cut at least 30,000 public sector jobs; he said at least Hudak is “honest and straightforward”.

The Mainstream Media helped by misrepresenting Hudak’s position and allowing the Liberals to misstate it.

The lesson our politicians learn has been re-enforced – never tell the electorate the truth. Next time we complain about politicians lying we have only ourselves to blame.

The unassailable fact remains, Ontario has an enormous debt and deficit, given the size of our population and shrinking economy. At some point in the very near future the Liberals will be forced to make much more drastic cuts and layoffs than Hudak would have because, beholden to the special interests that elected them, they will continue to ignore the problem and continue to increase spending and their trademark waste.

The longer they put the inevitable corrections off, the worse it will be for Ontario’s people. The smug belief that Ontario is too big and too important, and, being part of Canada, cannot meet the fate of Greece and Cyprus, is sadly misplaced.

The longer they wait, the greater the debt. Tax revenues will continue to decrease as the Ontario economy continues to contract, the result of uncompetitive energy prices and a corporate welfare strategy that discourages innovation and competitiveness. Inevitably they will have to increase taxes and further ‘monetize’ services to a tax base reduced by those who can moving to other Provinces for work, with more unemployed, and with a population struggling to pay ever higher electricity bills that has seen its disposable income reduced, the result of wages driven down by the competition for fewer jobs and from the cost of goods driven higher by unaffordable energy.

The problem with ideologues is that sooner or later they run out of other people’s money.

Looking at Ontario over the past 11 years of Liberal ‘government’ and being familiar with UN Agenda 21 one cannot help but think this has been a deliberate course of action chosen by ideologues believe that a socialist totalitarian state is in the best interests of Ontario’s citizens – or at least those that will rule them.

Maurice Strong, former Director of the UN Environment Program and the moving force behind the Rio Declaration and the UN’s Agenda 21 said:

“It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class—involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing—are not sustainable. A shift is necessary towards lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns.”

“Isn’t the only hope for this planet the total collapse of industrial civilization? Is it not our responsibility to ensure that this collapse happens?”

Mr. Strong, a multi-millionaire who made his fortune from that same capitalist industrial civilization and took asylum in China as a result of his alleged links to the UN Oil-for-Food scandal, will not suffer from any collapse of industrial civilization given his wealth.

Most citizens of Ontario will though.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” – C. S. Lewis

Wind Turbines, and The Problems Caused by Their Nasty Habit of Burning Up!

December 11, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

BUSHFIRE RED ALERT: Wind Power Really Is Setting the World on FIRE

December 11, 2014 by stopthesethings

As the Australian countryside turns to the golden hues of summer, the attentions of its farming and rural communities also turn: hundreds of eager eyes become fixed on the horizon for tell-tale signs of the smoke that heralds the bushfires that cast fear amongst those that live and work in the bush.

Rules are set to avoid bushfires on high fire danger days – when a Total Fire Ban is called:

You cannot light, maintain or use a fire in the open, or to carry out any activity in the open that causes, or is likely to cause, a fire. No general purpose hot works such as using tractors, slashers and/or welding, grinding or gas cutting can be done in the open either, and this includes incinerators and barbecues which burn solid fuel, eg. wood or charcoal.

Farmers engaged in crop harvesting operations think twice about operating harvesters when the northerly winds pick up and send temperatures into the 40s – the safety conscious leave their headers parked in the shed or the corner of the paddock and spend the day in front of the A/C enjoying the cricket on TV – ready to respond in a heartbeat to the call if a fire does break out. Better to miss a day’s reaping than set the country ablaze.

All sensible stuff.

But such is the seriousness with which country people take the ever-present threat of a bushfire, that can turn a swathe of country black; destroy homes, sheds, equipment, livestock, fences, generations of hard work; and, most savage of all – lives.

The approach taken to the threat of the savagery of an Australian bushfire is about the common sense management of RISK – and, wherever possible, taking steps to minimise or prevent that risk altogether.

But one massive – and utterly unjustified – RISK is the one created by the roll-out of hundreds of giant fans across WA, SA, NSW, Tasmania and Victoria – all in areas highly prone to bushfires.

Turbines represent the perfect bushfire incendiary: around the world, hundreds have blown up in balls of flame – in the process – each one raining molten metal and hundreds of litres of flaming hydraulic oil and burning plastic earthwards. Here’s a few pics showing these plucky ‘green’ fire-starters in action:

Wind turbine fires are ten times more common than the wind industry and its parasites claim (see our post here and check out this website:http://turbinesonfire.org).

Here’s a report on, yet more, turbines bursting into fireballs.

One Suzlon turbine destroyed and two badly damaged
Wind Power Monthly
Mike McGovern
8 December 2014

NICARAGUA: A Suzlon 2.1MW turbine nacelle caught fire and later crashed to the ground on Sunday in an incident involving three damaged turbines at the 63MW Amayo complex in Nicaragua, the country’s first wind project.

“There were no injuries and the site has been secured,” Suzlon told Windpower Monthly in a written statement, confirming the affected turbines to be S88-2.1MW machines.

Suzlon declined to comment on the possible cause, pending further investigation. Nobody at the US-based owner company, AEI Energy, was available for comment.

Local press reports, citing ground staff and fire fighters, said all three machines at the 23MW Amayo II plant — in service since 2010 — suffered failure in their emergency braking systems, leaving them helpless against high gusts of wind. No other turbines were affected, claimed Suzlon.

The turbines caught ablaze at 5.15am, just under an hour after a blackout hit the Rivas municipality, where the wind farm is located.

All three machines reportedly spun uncontrollably. Turbine 28 finally fell and all three blades of turbine 25 were flung off. A blade on turbine 29 was left broken.
Wind Power Monthly

If the story has an upside, it’s the successful bid for “freedom” made by the blades during yet another “component liberation” event (see our posts here and here and here and here and here).

And glad to see our favourite Indian fan maker, Suzlon making the news! But they weren’t overly keen to let much slip – its spin-masters quickly switching to “radio silence” when quizzed about the cause. And – in typical wind weasel fashion – the wind power outfit concerned went into complete media lock-down. No surprises there.

Suzlon – aka Suzlon REPower, aka Senvion – have planted hundreds of its S88s all over the Australian countryside: near-bankrupt wind power outfit, Infigen operate a stack of them in NSW; Trustpower planted 47 at Snowtown, in South Australia’s Mid-North; and AGL speared a hundred or so into SA’s Mid-North, around Jamestown and Hallett.

Senvion are the crowd behind the ridiculous CERES project – which aims to spear 197 of its whirling, pryro-technic devices into SA’s agricultural Heartland, the Yorke Peninsula. Thankfully for farmers and fire-fighters, the chances of that debacle eventuating are slimmer than a German supermodel.

There have been at least 4 bushfires started by wind turbines in Australia, so far:

Ten Mile Lagoon in Western Australia in the mid-1990s;
Lake Bonney, Millicent (SA) in January 2006 (see the photo below);
Cathedral Rocks Wind Farm, Port Lincoln (SA) in February 2009 (see The Advertiser article below); and
Starfish Hill (SA) in November 2010 (see this link for more detail).

When it comes to talking about the exceedingly “hot” topic of bushfires started by turbines, Australian wind power outfits exhibit the same well-drilled, reticence shown by American outfit, AEI Energy in the article above, about its flaming little Suzlon beauties.

As a result, the media rarely report on the bushfires that are started by turbines. On the rare occasions that the media do – as in this Advertiser article – wind power outfits never comment, keep their heads well below the PR parapet and hope that the flames die down quickly.

Cathedral Rocks Wind Farm turbine fire
The Advertiser
2 February 2009

A $6 MILLION wind turbine has caught fire near Port Lincoln, starting blazes on the ground as embers fall.

The fire, at the Cathedral Rocks Wind Farm about 30km southwest of the town, was first noticed by a boat about 1am.

The turbine is alight halfway up its 60m structure, making it difficult for the 14 Country Fire Service firefighters trying to deal with it to extinguish the blaze.

They are also busy controlling the spotfires, but consider the situation to be safe.

The cause of the blaze is as yet unknown.
The Advertiser

Not only do wind turbines act as the perfect bushfire-starters, their presence precludes the best and safest method of fire-fighting from controlling them: aerial water bombers won’t fly within cooee of these things – experienced pilots have declared that they won’t fly within 3km of a wind turbine, even without the country around them on fire. For a rundown on pilots’ attitudes to flying anywhere near wind farms – see our posts here and here and here.

Aircraft and wind turbines – standing 160m tall, with a whirling wing-span of over 100m – don’t mix at the best of times (see our post here). Add billowing smoke, 50m flames and scorching heat and no-one could blame fire-fighting pilots for giving wind farms a very wide berth when the country around them is ablaze.

Fitting it is then, that the Senate Select Committee has the clearly obvious fire risk created by giant fans, and the ability to fight those fires, squarely in its sights – its terms of reference include scrutiny of: “the effect that wind towers have on fauna and aerial operations around turbines, including firefighting and crop management” (see our post here).

For those in the country keen to avoid the very real threat of incineration that comes hand-in-glove with having wind turbines speared all over it – note that the opportunity to make submissions to the Committee ends on 27 February 2015. See the link here.

It’s high time our political betters brought this insanity under control.

Institute for Energy Research Exposes the Wind Power Fraud!

December 10, 2014 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Institute for Energy Research Takes the Scalpel to the Great Wind Power Fraud

December 10, 2014 by stopthesethings

As time goes by, the number of crack energy market experts joining the effort to bring the great wind power fraud to its inevitable denouement – and the quality of their work directed at that fine and noble task – has increased exponentially.

The American “Institute for Energy Research” has just released a brilliant piece of analysis (pdf available here) that tips an enormous bucket on each and every one of the vacuous claims made by the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers about the “merits” of wind power.

We’ve picked the eyes out of the (very substantial) paper and summarised its key points below – but we recommend you take time to digest the whole study for the range of topics covered, its attention to detail and carefully crafted arguments – all thoroughly supported and well referenced.

The study also includes a solid section on the adverse effects of wind turbines on human health, the slaughter of millions of birds and bats and the toxic mountains of sludge generated during the manufacture of turbines, which we haven’t included in our summary below – providing another good reason to read the whole study.

The study has direct application to the wind industry rort in Australia: just substitute “Canberra” for “Washington”; the “Clean Energy Council” for the “American Wind Energy Association (AWEA)”; and substitute “Large-Scale Renewable Energy Target (LRET) and Renewable Energy Certificate (REC)” for “Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) and the Production Tax Credit (PTC)”.

The Case Against the Wind Production Tax Credit
Institute for Energy Research
November 2014

Executive Summary

The federal wind Production Tax Credit (PTC) is a substantial subsidy that has provided the wind industry billions of taxpayer dollars and is working to harm reliable, affordable sources of electricity generation such as natural gas, coal, and nuclear power. The PTC was first enacted in 1992 as a temporary measure to bolster the wind industry. From 1992 through today, it has been extended seven times. In its current form, the PTC provides owners of wind facilities a subsidy of $23 per megawatt-hour of electricity generated for the facility’s first 10 years of operation.

The PTC technically expired at the end of calendar year 2013, but new facilities will still qualify through 2015 under new, expanded conditions. A new two-year extension, as is contemplated in a bill passed by the Senate Finance Committee, would cost American taxpayers more than $13 billion. For context, that amounts to 4.8 million families’ entire federal tax bill in a single year – or enough to buy the entire Mongolian economy and still have more than a billion dollars left over.

This report offers hard facts about the PTC. Another extension of the PTC would:

Give tax breaks to politically well-connected investors at the expense of taxpayers
Increase the overall cost of electricity
Threaten the reliability of America’s power grid
Destroy more jobs than it creates
Stifle innovation in energy technologies
Provide a handout to a large, mature industry
Add to a tangled web of over 80 different federal programs supporting wind power
Do nothing to advance the environmental goals it was designed to address

In sum, the PTC is one of the most egregious subsidies that the federal government provides.

Introduction

The wind industry in the U.S. benefits from many federal programs intended to make wind-generated electricity competitive with other sources. Chief among these federal programs is the wind Production Tax Credit (PTC). The PTC was first enacted in 1992 and has since been extended seven times. In its current form, the PTC provides owners of wind facilities a subsidy of $23 per megawatt-hour of electricity generated for the facility’s first 10 years of operation. To put the size of the subsidy in perspective, prices in wholesale electricity markets typically hover around $50 per megawatt-hour.

Most recently, the PTC was extended in January 2013 and expired at the end of that year. In the last extension bill, however, Congress expanded the qualification criteria to include facilities that had commenced construction by the end of 2013 instead of requiring that facilities be complete.

The change in language enabled the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to expand eligibility to projects that had not initiated physical construction but had merely secured financing, including many facilities that began or will begin operation between January 1, 2014 and January 1, 2016.

As a result, taxpayers will be on the hook for PTC payments through the year 2025.

In April 2014, the Senate Finance Committee approved an $85 billion extension of roughly 60 expired tax provisions commonly referred to as “tax extenders.” The bill includes a two-year extension of the PTC — a retroactive extension for 2014 and a new extension through 2015. The PTC extension in the Senate bill would cost American taxpayers more than $13 billion over the next ten years.

The House has taken a piecemeal approach to the expiring tax provisions and has not put forward an extension of the PTC. During the current lame-duck session to close out the 113th Congress, passing a tax extenderspackage will be a top priority.

In a final push to include the PTC in the coming tax legislation, wind industry lobbyists such as the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) will likely repeat a variety of well-worn arguments about why the PTC should be extended for the eighth time.

The PTC was never intended to be permanent, and even AWEA has recognized that the PTC should end soon.

If Congress chooses not to extend the PTC during the lame-duck session, the result will be a gradual 10-year phase-out of PTC payments, and new eligibility for the PTC will likely remain closed after 2015.

The Case Against the PTC

The PTC Puts Wealthy, Politically-Connected Investors Before American Families and Taxpayers

Average Taxpayers Shoulder the Burden of the PTC

The Senate Finance Committee estimates that a two-year extension of the wind PTC would constitute a tax expenditure of $13.35 billion, an enormous implicit transfer from the general taxpayers to the wind industry and its financial partners over ten years.

For scale, that’s enough to pay 124 million Americans’ average monthly electricity bill for a whole month. Alternatively, this is the same as the total tax bill of 4.8 million families with median incomes for a single year.

The PTC Raises the Cost of Electricity

Supporters of the wind PTC argue that new wind turbines are the cheapest way to generate electricity and to replace the rapidly retiring fleet of coal-fired power plants.

However, adding wind power to the grid raises the total cost of delivering electricity in two important ways. First, wind is a more expensive source of electricity than new natural gas-fired power plants, or existing coal plants, nuclear facilities, and hydroelectric plants.

Second, the unreliable nature of wind power imposes new costs on the grid and hurts current sources of electricity generation.

The High Cost of Wind Power

PTC advocates often cite the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) to argue that wind energy is cheaper than alternatives. LCOE is an estimate of the cost of electricity from new electricity generators produced by both the Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

This method, however, fails to measure the true cost of wind energy on the grid for three main reasons: 1) Comparing the levelized cost of electricity from natural gas, coal, or nuclear to wind is an apples to oranges comparison, 2) LCOE ignores the low cost of existing sources of generation, and 3) the LCOE for wind power is based on unrealistic assumptions.

Comparing the cost of electricity from intermittent wind (a non-dispatchable source) to sources that can be controlled (dispatchable sources) is an apples-to-oranges comparison because there is a lot of value to being able to rely on electricity sources to help keep the lights on. Here’s how EIA explains this issue:

Since load must be balanced on a continuous basis, units whose output can be varied to follow demand (dispatchable technologies) generally have more value to a system than less flexible units (non-dispatchable technologies), or those whose operation is tied to the availability of an intermittent resource. The LCOE values for dispatchable and non-dispatchable technologies are listed separately in the tables, because caution should be used when comparing them to one another.

Despite EIA’s words of caution about directly comparing reliable sources and intermittent sources, frequently people make the comparison. The way to make an apples to apples comparison between wind and natural gas, coal, or nuclear would be to include the cost of backup power with other wind costs to make a valid direct comparison.

To the second point, most levelized cost calculations focus on the costs of new generation. It does not provide a useful comparison of the cost of existing coal, gas, and nuclear plants against wind power. Even if the EIA’s estimate of wind power’s LCOE — around $80 per MWh — is assumed to be accurate, wind cannot supply electricity as cheaply as current wholesale electricity prices, which hover around $50 per MWh.

These low wholesale prices reflect the low cost of providing electricity using the existing infrastructure of natural gas, coal, and nuclear plants.

Further, a recent IER study shows that the EIA makes many questionable assumptions in formulating its LCOE for wind power. Using more realistic assumptions, the IER study found the following:

While expenses faced by wind project developers are an important element of the overall cost of wind power, addition of wind power to the power grid involves a number of other costs. If a more reasonable estimate of the installed cost of capital is $88 per MWh and operating costs are $21 per MWh, we can estimate a reasonable LCOE for wind power near $109 per MWh rather than NREL’s estimate of $72 — a more than 50 percent increase. [emphasis added]

A study by George Taylor and Tom Tanton found that, when factoring in a 20-year lifespan for wind turbines and a lack of subsidies, wind power costs $101 per MWh. When backup generation is accounted for, the cost goes up to $149-$153.

Levelized cost estimates don’t incorporate the full costs of long-distance transmission associated with wind power.

Because high-quality wind resources are often located far away from places where people use electricity, wind power is more expensive to transmit than conventional sources that can be sited closer to demand. The costly transmission investments needed to bring wind power to the grid factor into electricity rates and frequently translate into higher rates for customers.

According to Berkeley Labs researchers, transmission expenses range from $0 to $79 per MWh — the median cost being around $15 per MWh.

One example of the high cost of new transmission projects is the Competitive Renewable Energy Zone in Texas (CREZ). This electricity transmission project linked the large wind facilities in west Texas to the population centers in east Texas. The CREZ project cost nearly $7 billion.

Lastly, the cost of building new wind facilities and new transmission lines to get the electricity from the windy areas to the population centers of the United States also creates additional costs because total U.S. electricity generation has not increased in nearly 10 years.

This lack of an increase in electricity generation means that adding new sources to the generation system is duplicative in many cases.

The PTC Imposes New Costs on the Grid

In Germany, despite more than two decades of subsidies, solar and wind power only accounted for 11 percent of overall electricity generation in 2011. As the German government began pursuing aggressive green energy targets by closing reliable power plants, electricity costs dramatically increased.

The levelized cost of electricity focuses on each source of electricity on its own (one at a time). As such, it fails to reflect the costs that wind imposes on other components of the power grid, including other sources of generation. In addition to the long distance between the best wind resources and population centers, the inherent variability and unpredictability of wind power necessitates additional (backup) generation resources.

We can see how adding more and more wind power to the energy mix has played out in the real world. Electricity prices are high and rising in countries that have aggressive policies subsidizing wind, like Germany, Spain, and Canada. It’s the same story in many of the largest wind-producing states in the U.S.

In Germany, despite more than two decades of subsidies, solar and wind power only accounted for 11 percent of overall electricity generation in 2011. As the German government began pursuing aggressive green energy targets by closing reliable power plants, electricity costs dramatically increased. According to the Wall Street Journal:

Average electricity prices for companies have jumped 60% over the past five years because of costs passed along as part of government subsidies of renewable energy producers. Prices are now more than double those in the U.S.

Due to theses price increases, as many as 800,000 citizens have been unable to pay their electricity bills and have had their power cut off. The situation has gotten so out of hand that the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned of consumer backlash if the government fails to contain energy costs.

Also, German industries such as BASF are curtailing investments in Germany as a result of the country’s energy policies.

In the U.S., many states that have seen the greatest increases in wind power have also seen prices rise. In fact, with the exception of Oklahoma, every one of the top ten wind power states has had electricity prices increase by at least 14 percent. Given that this rise is five times faster than the national average, it is a trend that cannot be ignored by policymakers.

The chart below from the U.S. EIA highlights the rapidly increasing electricity prices in Europe as compared to the U.S. The EIA explains that regulatory structures, taxes, and investment in renewable energy technologies influence electricity price.

In Spain, a program to subsidize renewable energy began in 2000 and was expanded in 2008. One consequence of these policies has been a large increase in rates — electricity prices have risen by more than 90 percent in the last 6 years.

A similar story has unfolded in Canada, where government-subsidized wind power provides just under 4 percent of Ontario’s power, but accounts for about 20 percent of the cost of electricity.

Given that this rise is five times faster than the national average, it is a trend that cannot be ignored by policymakers.

Simply put, the framework used by wind PTC proponents to demonstrate the “low” price of wind power does not reflect reality. While we can see how wind power increases electricity prices, perhaps more concerning are its effects on grid reliability.

The PTC Threatens Power Grid Reliability

Subsidizing wind power on a per-megawatt basis threatens the reliability of our electric grid. The stability of the U.S. power system depends on the ability of electricity suppliers to match demand second by second, every day. Because wind power depends on the weather (and there is still no cost-effective way to store electricity for times when the wind isn’t blowing), wind energy is not capable of continuously meeting demand.

Wind power also tends to be more available at night, when demand is low. Despite the low value of electricity overnight, the PTC gives wind developers the same tax credit to produce electricity at night as it does to produce it during times when electricity is the most valuable.

This means that wind generators are not concerned about trying to produce electricity when demand is high and electricity is available, but rather to produce as much electricity as possible whenever the wind is blowing regardless of whether the electricity is needed or not. The unreliable nature of wind power, fueled by the PTC, threatens the reliability of our electric grid because it makes it more difficult to balance supply and demand. The PTC also makes affordable and reliable electricity sources less economical by allowing wind producers to pay utilities to take their power.

Wind production tends to peak in the spring and the fall, when the need for energy is at its lowest, and it decreases in the winter and summer when heating and cooling needs drive up electricity use. The same problem occurs on a day-to-day basis: more wind energy is produced at night, when power demand is down, than during peak hours during the day. This directly threatens grid reliability: at times when demand for power is low, the grid is flooded with excess of wind generated power which forces base load plants running on coal and natural gas to operate at inefficient levels. Plants running at these inefficient levels produce far more CO2 emissions than they normally do, which offsets much of the reduction in CO2 emissions to which wind power might lead.

A 2011 report from BENTEK Energy revealed that any decreases in CO2 levels resulting from wind power were negligible in size or economically impractical.

Wind Energy Cannot Keep the Lights On

In order to supply electricity when people demand it, some power plants have to be ready to quickly increase and decrease production to match consumer demand in real time. To accomplish this feat, different plants provide varying amounts of power at different times of the day. Wind power does not fill any of the roles below because it is not “dispatchable” (a grid operator cannot “turn on” a wind facility because its output depends entirely on weather conditions).

There are three types of power plants:

Baseload plants are those which provide consistent power in an efficient and cost-effective manner, handling electricity demand at all times of the day or night. These plants are usually coal-fired or nuclear-powered.
Intermediate load plants, such as combined cycle natural gas facilities, can ramp up and down in a relatively efficient way depending on electricity demand, but they are most efficient when they operate for extended periods.
Peak load plants, which are usually simple cycle natural gas or oil-burning plants, are even more flexible and can increase or decrease output very quickly, but they operate less efficiently than baseload or intermediate generators.

Wind power only produces electricity when the wind is blowing, so these other sources of electricity have to back it up to satisfy demand. When demand is low and winds are high, reliable power plants are sometimes forced to back off, as wind turbines generate unneeded power. It is inefficient for any plant to ramp up and down more than is needed to meet demand.

Instead of helping utilities match supply and demand, wind makes it more difficult to operate the grid reliably.

The PTC Destroys More Jobs than it Creates

The question isn’t whether the PTC “creates jobs” — it’s whether it creates more jobs than it takes away from the rest of the economy.

The wind PTC does not create jobs on net, compared to an alternative policy in which the federal government refrains from using the tax code to pick winners and losers.

Although the American Wind Energy Association claims that failing to reauthorize the tax credit would “kill jobs,” the money used to subsidize those jobs comes from taxpayers, not from thin air.

Rather than arbitrarily limiting tax credits to wind producers, generally returning the money to taxpayers would have “created jobs” as well — jobs that produce goods and services that Americans actually want. As we have pointed out:

At the end of last year [2012], the federal wind production tax credit was extended for another year. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, this one-year extension of the PTC would cost $12.1 billion. The American Wind Energy Association, the lobby for the wind industry, claims that 37,000 jobs would have been lost if the PTC was not extended. This means that each job “saved” cost the U.S. Treasury $327,000. While the PTC…might “create” some identifiable jobs, they do not create jobs “on net.” The money to pay for the…PTC, has to come from somewhere. In other words, if taxpayers had been able to keep the money instead of it going to subsidies, the taxpayers would have spent the money and that spending would have created other jobs. [Emphasis added]

The question isn’t whether the PTC “creates jobs” — it’s whether it creates more jobs than it takes away from the rest of the economy.

In Spain, for example, where the government pushed “green energy subsidies” aggressively, 2.2 jobs were lost for every “green job” that the subsidies supported.

For the reasons above, it is completely disingenuous for AWEA to sell the PTC as a job creator.

The PTC Never Protected an “Infant” Industry

Modern wind turbines have been used for electricity generation more than 125 years, and the wind PTC has existed since 1992. In 1995, wind expert Paul Gipe wrote about the wind industry’s maturity in his book Wind Energy Comes of Age:

Although wind energy suffered severe growing pains and struggled through a stormy adolescence during the 1980s, it has matured. Wind energy is now ready to take its place alongside fossil and nuclear fuels as a conventional source of electricity.

Gipe is not alone in arguing that the wind industry is mature. Senator Chuck Grassley, the original author of the PTC, stated in 2003 that “we’re going to have to [subsidize wind] for at least another five years, maybe for 10 years. Sometime we’re going to reach that point where it’s competitive.” Senator Grassley’s statement was eleven years after the PTC was enacted. Now, eleven years after that, the Senate is grappling over Grassley’s recent addition of a two-year extension of the PTC to a broader tax extenders package.

According to data from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2014, installed wind turbine capacity increased 3,705 percent from 1997 to 2013, jumping from 1,611 MW to 61,292 MW. If the wind industry was mature before it saw such rapid growth, why does it still need the PTC now?

A 2012 study by David Dismukes, professor, associate executive director, and director of Policy Analysis at the Center for Energy Studies at Louisiana State University, notes that wind energy is far from an “infant industry”:

Contrary to popular rhetoric, the wind industry is not an “infant industry” in need of continued training wheels, but one that is comprised of 50,000 megawatts (“MWs”) of nameplate capacity, representing close to a five-fold increase since 2006 and a 1,300 percent increase in riskier merchant wind over the last ten years. [Emphasis added]

The “infant industry” rationale for supporting wind power thus has little basis in reality.

If AWEA is correct when it says, “Wind power in good wind resource areas is now very cost-competitive with any other new generating plant,” then there is no need to continue propping up the wind industry with taxpayer subsidies. If AWEA is wrong, and the wind industry still isn’t competitive after twenty-two years of heavy subsidies, then the PTC amounts to a failed experiment and a waste of taxpayer funds.

Federal Support for Renewables Increased through “Stimulus” Package

The Energy Information Administration conducted a renewable energy subsidy analysis for FY2007 to FY2011 and found that federal support for renewables increased by 108 percent. This increase was mainly because of the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, which was meant to “stimulate” the economy during the worst part of the recession. Specifically, the amount of federal subsidy money available to the wind industry skyrocketed to $4.99 billion.

Rather than replace other federal and state subsidies for wind power, this surge in the amount of federal financing available merely added to the total. Much of the ARRA stimulus money for wind came from the Treasury through Section 1603 of the law.

The Section 1603 program provided grants equal to 30 per cent of the cost of a renewable energy project to developers. The program expired on December 31, 2011. Today, no new projects can take advantage of this subsidy, but projects that were initiated before 2011 can still garner funding from this program, if the project is completed by December 31, 2016.

In FY 2010, wind was subsidized more heavily per unit of energy production than coal, natural gas, nuclear power, geothermal, and hydropower. Only solar energy received more subsidies than wind.

In FY 2010, wind received $52.68 per MWh. Despite generating the majority of U.S. electricity for that year, coal only received $0.64 per MWh, and natural gas and petroleum liquids received only $0.63 per MWh.

Carbon Dioxide Emissions

Wind is frequently promoted as a way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. But wind does not generate much in the way of carbon dioxide emission reductions. Energy expert Robert Bryce explained:

The American Wind Energy Association claims that wind energy reduced U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 80 million tons in 2012. That sounds significant. But consider this: global emissions of that gas totaled 34.5 billion tons in 2012. Thus, the 60,000 megawatts of installed wind-generation capacity in the United States reduced global carbon dioxide emissions by about two-tenths of 1 percent. That’s a fart in a hurricane. [Emphasis added]

Thus, even if AWEA is correct in its CO2 reduction estimates, wind power has no appreciable impact on global CO2 emissions. In fact, contrary to AWEA’s claims, wind can also actually increase emissions. A study by the United Kingdom-based research group Civitas, for example, explains:

Wind-power … requires conventional back-up plants to provide electricity when the wind is either blowing at very low speeds (or not at all) or with uncontrolled variability (intermittency) … This is all the more relevant given the relatively high CO2 emissions from conventional plants when they are used in a back-up capacity. In a comprehensive quantitative analysis of CO2 emissions and wind-power, Dutch physicist C. le Pair has recently shown that deploying wind turbines on “normal windy days” in the Netherlands actually increased fuel (gas) consumption, rather than saving it, when compared to electricity generation with modern high-efficiency gas turbines. Ironically and paradoxically the use of wind farms therefore actually increased CO2 emissions, compared with using efficient gas-fired combined cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) at full power. [Emphasis added]

That is, because wind power relies on backup electricity from coal-fired or natural gas-fired plants when the wind isn’t blowing, we have to take into account CO2 emissions from the backup generation. The Civitas study reveals that CO2 emissions from these plants are especially high when used in a backup capacity — combined cycle natural gas plants operating without wind on the grid would emit less CO2.

Conclusion

We can do better. We shouldn’t pursue an energy strategy that subsidizes unreliable sources of power while simultaneously cracking down on reliable sources with new regulations from the EPA.

It is well past time for Washington to take the training wheels off of the wind industry and let it chart its own course. The federal wind production tax credit has propped up the wind industry for 22 years — on top of dozens of other federal and state policies designed to support wind — yet industry lobbyists claim it still needs help.

Two decades after the PTC was first enacted, wind-generated electricity comprises less than 5 percent of our total supply. At the same time, wind power has contributed little to the environmental and energy security goals it was meant to address. Unfortunately, the PTC is a very effective way to accomplish at least one thing: wasting American taxpayers’ money.

We can do better. We shouldn’t pursue an energy strategy that subsidizes unreliable sources of power while simultaneously cracking down on reliable sources with new regulations from the EPA. Wind energy can’t deliver reliable power because, even after two decades of a tax credit, it still relies on random weather patterns to generate electricity. Subsidizing today’s wind industry does nothing to solve wind power’s fundamental reliability problem.

Furthermore, far from being a “job creator,” the PTC is a net jobs loser. Even if the industry does add some jobs to the economy, those jobs come at the expense of other jobs in industries that would create new value for customers. We should not follow the example of Spain, where 2.2 jobs were lost for every “green job” created.

The PTC cannot be justified on environmental grounds, either. The U.S. is already outpacing the rest of the world in terms of CO2 reductions, largely because of innovations in natural gas rather than because of wind power. Wind turbines also kill a staggering amount of protected birds and bats and have negative health effects on nearby residents.

The costs of the PTC overwhelmingly outweigh the benefits. Lawmakers should prioritize American households over wind industry lobbyists.

Institute for Energy Research
November 2014

The cost of the PTC to American taxpayers – at a mere US$23 (currently AUD$27.65) per MWh – is a modest snip compared to the expected cost to all Australian power consumers of its Australian equivalent – the Renewable Energy Certificate (the “REC” aka the “LGC”).

While RECs are currently trading at $32, from 2017 – when the annual figure for the LRET starts to increase dramatically – RECs will be worth at least as much as the mandated shortfall charge of $65 per MWh.

The total renewable energy target between 2014 and 2031 is 603,100 GWh, which converts to 603.1 million MWh (1 GW = 1,000 MW). In order for the target to be met, 603.1 million RECs have be purchased and surrendered over the next 17 years: 1 REC is issued for every MWh of renewable energy dispatched to the grid. The REC is a Federal Tax on all Australian electricity consumers.

The cost of subsiding the wind industry through the REC Tax is born entirely by Australian power consumers. As Origin Energy chief executive Grant King correctly put it earlier this year:

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

It’s power consumers that get lumped with the “retail price of electricity” and, therefore, the cost of the REC subsidy to wind power outfits.

Even at the current REC price of $32, the amount to be added to power consumers’ bills will hit $18 billion. However, beyond 2017 (when the annual LRET target ratchets up from 27.2 million MWh to 41 million MWh and the $65 per MWh shortfall charge starts to bite) the REC price will almost certainly reach $65 and, due to the tax benefit attached to purchasing RECs, is likely to exceed $90.

Between 2014 and 2031, with a REC price of $65, the cost of the REC Tax to power consumers (and the value of the subsidy to wind power outfits) will approach $40 billion – with RECs at $90, the cost of the REC Tax/Subsidy balloons to over $54 billion (see our post here).

This massive stream of subsidies for wind power is the greatest wealth transfer in the history of the Commonwealth; and stands as a regressive tax/subsidy grab by stealth, which hits the poorest and most vulnerable; struggling businesses; energy intensive industries; and cash-strapped families the hardest – with absolutely NO measurable economic or environmental benefit in return.

Precisely as the Institute for Energy Research concludes: “The costs of the PTC overwhelmingly outweigh the benefits. Lawmakers should prioritize American households over wind industry lobbyists.”

Adapted for Australian circumstances that conclusion reads:

“The costs of the mandatory LRET overwhelmingly outweigh the benefits. The Coalition and the Senate Cross-Benchers should prioritize Australian households over Infigen, Pac Hydro, et al; wind industry lobbyists, like the Clean Energy Council, the Australia Institute, Union Super Funds; and every other parasite and rent-seeker out to profit from the greatest rort of all time.”

The insane and pointless costs of the mandatory LRET are little more than a form of economic and social self-flagellation.

The LRET (like the PTC) is simply unsustainable. Any policy that is unsustainable will either fail under its own steam; or its creators will eventually be forced to scrap it.

STT hears that Tony Abbott is acutely aware that the mandatory LRET is an entirely flawed piece of public policy; and is nothing more than an out of control industry subsidy scheme.

As such, it represents a ticking political time-bomb for a government that doesn’t need anymore grief from an angry proletariat. And boy, the proletariat are going to be angry when they find out that under the mandatory LRET they’re being lined up to pay $50 billion in REC Tax – to be transferred as a direct subsidy to wind power outfits and added to their power bills – over the next 17 years.

For Tony Abbott to have any hope of a second term in government, the mandatory LRET must go now.

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