Novelty Energy, Like Wind & Solar, will NOT Keep the Lights ON!

February 13, 2016 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

India’s Quest for ‘24/7 Reliable Power’ Means Munching More Coal, Not Praying for the Wind to Blow

February 13, 2016 by stopthesethings

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Among the selfish conceits peddled by the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers is the notion that a wholly weather dependent power source – which is 4 times the cost of coal-fired power and which will always require 100% of its capacity to be backed up, 100% of the time by conventional generation sources – represents the ‘salvation’ of nations like India, where some 250 million people have no power at all; and, accordingly, live in Stone Age poverty, cooking on twigs and dung and otherwise living a life of misery.

The pontificators that assembled in Paris, and sought to impose what Indians quite rightly regard as “fake electricity”, couldn’t care less about the world’s huddled masses and are, instead, happy to destine them to a world of eternal darkness and poverty. However, thankfully, India’s Power Minister, Piyush Goyal has other ideas.

India’s challenge is 24/7 electricity for all
The Australian
Greg Sheridan
13 February 2016

Piyush Goyal is a name you haven’t heard. But this week he has made one of the most important interventions of any foreign politician in an Australian political debate.

He is India’s Minister for Power, Coal and Renewable Energy. He is a big success politically and in line for more promotion.

I’ll give you his direct quotes in a moment. But let’s cut to the chase. Here are the important things he said in a lengthy interview with The Australian.

India will increase coal imports from Australia. Quite independently from that, if the Adani mine in Queensland goes ahead it is an integrated project and will be its own main customer, so India’s efforts to increase its coal production would not reduce the viability of the Adani project.

India is passionately committed to caring for the environment but also to economic development. That means a huge increase in coal-fired power stations as well as coal’s role in making steel.

The Indian government wants 24/7 reliable energy for all its people. Some 300 million Indians will move from rural to urban living in the next couple of decades. They will be on proper power grids. India’s baseload power will be provided by coal.

India will expand its renewable energy sector but, as the minister says, renewables have never provided baseload power for anyone.

India also will expand nuclear power and keep its gas power stations at roughly their current level.

The massive urbanisation in India means a surging demand for steel. Goyal says coking coal exports from Australia will increase particularly strongly. (Thermal coal goes to power stations, coking coal makes steel). Already nearly a third of India’s coal imports are coking coal.

Goyal’s remarks could not be more clear. Every Greens spokesman and climate-change jihadist who argues on the ABC that India is turning away from coal is inverting reality. Far from coal being a “dying industry”, as Geoff Cousins argued in a ludicrous article, the International Energy Agency forecasts Indian coal imports more than doubling by 2040.

Goyal does want to crank up India’s domestic production of coal but its coastal power stations are geared to take imported coal and that will continue, he tells me.

Now, dear reader, if you ever again hear anyone on the ABC claim that India is moving away from coal, or that Australian coal is not essential to get hundreds of millions of Indians out of poverty, you will know they are talking pure moonshine.

No one more consistently misrepresents what is happening all over Asia than the green lobby. The general ignorance of Asia among journalists allows these claims to be aired uncritically, especially on the ABC.

So let’s take up the Indian story in Goyal’s own words: “The first challenge of our government is to make sure that all Indians get 24/7 reliable power. We will expand the total energy output significantly.

“We are a very environmentally friendly country. We have been for generations. India is one country that has respected and even worshipped nature. So we will give renewed thrust to our renewable energy program. We are scaling it up massively, from 34 gigawatts to 175GW over the next six years. This is the world’s largest renewable energy rollout in the history of mankind.”

It is statements like this that green propagandists sometimes misuse to pretend renewable will replace coal in India. Nothing could be less true.

Gas power, Goyal says, will remain roughly where it is. But: “We will be expanding our coal-based thermal power. That is our baseload power. All renewables are intermittent. Renewables have not provided baseload power for anyone in the world.

“After all, solar works when the sun is shining, wind works when the wind is blowing, hydro works when there is water in the rivers. You must have coal.” Goyal says India will expand its nuclear power but this is a slow process and although nuclear will increase in absolute terms and as a percentage of India’s power overall, he continually comes back to the expansion of coal and its irreducible part in development.

“India does have certain development imperatives which we expect the world to accept. All ourINVESTMENT in coal is either supercritical power stations or ultra-super critical.” These produce about half the greenhouse emissions per unit of power as do older coal-fired power stations.

He refuses to accept lecturing from the West on India’s environmental responsibilities: “The people of India want a certain way of life. They want jobs for their children, schools and colleges, hospitals with uninterrupted power. This needs a very large amount of baseload power and this can only come from coal.

“I do wish people would reflect on the justice of the situation. Europe and America and Australia have messed up the world and the planet, and they’re saying to us, we’re sorry but you Indians can only have power for eight hours a day. The rest of the time you must live in darkness.

“We are fortunate that countries like Australia and Canada enter into serious agreements and we can rely on an uninterrupted flow of fuel.”

India is the fastest growing substantial economy, with a growth rate above 7 per cent in an anaemic global economy. This growth will be central to global economics. Goyal believes India will hit double-digit growth next year or the year after and stay there for a decade. If he is right, the development, and the economic opportunity this offers for Australia, is enormous, beyond anything that has yet entered the Australian imagination.

He says: “In the next couple of decades, imagine 300 million people moving from rural to urban centres. As we improve productivity in agriculture, the population will shift to manufacturing and services. Energy consumption will go up in agriculture itself with greater use of technology. There will be increased energy use in infrastructure. The government wants decent homes for every Indian by 2022; that means millions of homes will be built.” He points out that India’s per capita energy consumption is still below that of the US in the middle of the 19th century and says it will increase for decades.

India will not commit to a year when its greenhouse emissions will peak. This is “immaterial”, he says. On China’s commitment to such a year, his polite scepticism is robust: “We’ve all seen the reliability of that data. It’s up to you to judge what is optical and what is real.”

He is pro-Australian and wants the warmest relationship, but is utterly unimpressed with lectures from Australians about global warming: “Australia’s power consumption is coming down now anyway. Its economy is not growing, manufacturing is moving overseas, your economy is moving to services. You have jobs for everyone and a society satiated with energy. It’s easy for you to nominate a peak year. We have 250 million Indians without energy now. We have years and decades of growth ahead.”

Every word he says is true. It would be good if Australians listened.
The Australian

Wind Turbine Scam Destroys Power Supplies in Britain!

February 12, 2016 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

UK’s Wind Power Gamble Ends in Power Supply Bankruptcy

February 12, 2016 by stopthesethings 3 Comments

Until David Cameron’s Conservatives took full control of the UK Parliament, Britain had lumped every last chip on wind power: apparently hoping that a wholly weather dependent power source, that requires 100% of its capacity to beBACKED UP 100% of the time by conventional (dispatchable) power sources, would come up trumps and lead to oodles of secure, reliable and affordable electricity.

After more than just a fewSPINS of the energy wheel, it seems that Britain is blessed with the punter’s curse: a dwindling bag of cash and no hope of better ‘luck’ anywhere in sight.

Government energy policy will hike bills and lead to power supply gap
The Northern Echo
Sandy Richardson
26 January 2016

DAVID Cameron’s decision to close coal-fired electricity stations and scale back nuclearINVESTMENT will lead to massive power shortages and hike energy bills over the next decade, industry leaders have warned.

Growing electricity demand will leave the UK facing a 40 per cent to 55 per cent electricity supply gap, according to a new report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

It says plans to plug the gap by building Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) plants are unrealistic, as the UK would need to build about 30 such plants in less than 10 years.

The UK has built just four CCGTs in the last 10 years, closed one as well as eight other power stations. In 2005 twenty nuclear sites were listed for decommissioning, leaving a significant gap to be filled.

According to the report, the country has neither the resources nor enough people with the right skills to build this many power stations in time. It is already too late for any other nuclear reactors to be planned and built by the coal shut-off target of 2025, other than Hinkley Point C.

The report also highlights that a greater reliance on imported electricity from Scandinavia and the Continent is likely to lead to higher electricity costs and leave Britain at the mercy of foreign suppliers.

Dr Jenifer Baxter, Head of Energy and Environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and Lead Author of the report said:

“The UK is facing an electricity supply crisis. As the UK population rises and with the greater use of electricity use in transport and heating it looks almost certain that electricity demand is going to rise.

“However with little or no focus on reducing electricity demand, the retirement of the majority of the country’s ageing nuclear fleet, recent proposals to phase out coal-fired power by 2025 and the cut in renewable energy subsidies, the UK is on course to produce even less electricity than it does at the moment.

“Currently there are insufficient incentives for companies toINVEST in any sort of electricity infrastructure or innovation and worryingly even the Government’s own energy calculator does not allow for the scenarios that new energy policy points towards. Under current policy, it is almost impossible for UK electricity demand to be met by 2025.

“Government needs to take urgent action to work with industry to create a clear pathway with time frames and milestones for new electricity infrastructure to be built including fossil fuel plants, nuclear power, energy storage and combined heat and power. With CCS now out of the picture, new low carbon innovations must be supported over the course of the next 10 years.”
The Northern Echo

When Windweasel Lies Meet Reality!

February 10, 2016 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Wind Power Will Never Keep the Lights On: Propaganda Obscures Truth About Where Your Power Really Comes From

February 10, 2016 by stopthesethings

Claims and delivery are a gulf apart, when what’s put up by the wind and solar crowd is measured up against the hard cold facts that reside in ‘reality-land’.

With every new wind farm proposal we’re told how this operation would ‘power’ a hundred thousand homes (for ‘free’) – although these days it’s a line that accompanies moaning by wind power outfits about their inability to obtain power purchase agreements with retailers and, therefore, finance from banks to carry out their threats.

This story highlights the fact that talk about a wind and solar powered future is just that: ‘talk’.

The truth about our electricity supply is too hot to handle
The Australian (BusinessSpectator)
Keith Orchison
26 January 2016

How ordinary Australians are kept informed about arguably their most essential service, electricity supply, is a big issue for companies and competing lobbyists in a game where literally many billions of dollars are at stake.

If it is true that most Australians under 30 get their news from social media rather than newspapers or TV and radio — so claimed by Graham Richardson in a recent op-ed in The Australian — then what appears in the traditional media is no longer the dominant source of public information. (I’m from an era where too many PR types used to present their ‘success’ to their employers via column inches published in newspapers.)

We have had an example of the modern idiom in recent days with a minor hullabaloo about the promise of large-scale solar power based on the official commissioning of the two AGL Energy PV farms near Broken Hill, but not a syllable anywhere about the single biggest issue of the same moment for all electricity consumers: how supply has been sustained as a nasty heatwave baked the east coast.

That our community needs electricity big-time to cope with 40-degree temperatures and high humidity is beyond debate. For day after recent day, the east coast load neared or exceeded 30,000 megawatts, something it hasn’t done often in the past five years as prices (and, in the case of manufacturers, other factors too) pulled down demand.

That the delivery system, so often derided in the recent past as ‘gold-plated’, stood up well to the pressure is obvious. The dozen or so failures of supply (affecting 70,000 homes in one case) were attributable to big storms that ripped down houses and trees as well as poles and wires.

That the network operators have thrown emergency repair crews into the fray to bring back supply as quickly as possible has received little media mention. It’s a given — not that this will stop the networks getting kicked about their charges when the next revenue row arises.

For me, it is particularly notable and regrettable that what is wholly missing from mainstream media coverage is the breakdown of how the much-needed electrons have been generated.

This is not secret engineers’ business. The information is readily available — it’s just not passed on, even briefly, to the hot and sweaty public.

Take New South Wales as an example. It’s home to the largest number of consumers, whether we are talking households (just on three million, or roughly a third of the national total) or business (more than 400,000, also a third of the total).

NSW plus Victoria and Queensland account for roughly 90 per cent of national electricity customers, and on a typical midafternoon in January the trio’s consumers were getting some 73 per cent of their power (by committed capacity) from black and brown coal, with gas turbines accounting for another 11.8 per cent. Hydro-electric capacity (a critical resilience factor on high-demand days for NSW and Victoria) was contributing another 7.5 per cent.

In this situation, the green activists’ love children, wind and solar, accounted for 7.5 per cent of operating capacity, of which rooftop PVs met 5 per cent, a testament to the extra-ordinary emergence of household self-generation in response to public aggravation over retail power bill spikes and over-the-top political largesse (since cut back sharply), demonstrating how fast a fad can become a useful accessory in our affluent society.

Coming back to NSW specifically, at the peak of one of the heatwave days, the state’s generation load pushed past 12,200 megawatts at noon: met by almost 7,500 MW of black coal plant, 1,300 MW of gas plant, almost 2,500 MW of hydro-electric plant, 520 MW of wind power and nearly as much (428 MW) of rooftop solar plus 50 MW of large-scale solar. (The usefulness of rooftop solar, of course, fell away at dusk while, if anything, the heatwave’s grip was being felt more acutely by householders.)

It’s terribly easy to get tendentious about this stuff — you can find the types who do so hard at work all over the media space — but the real bottom line is twofold.

First, the biggest state in the Commonwealth (population, commercially, industrially, economically) would be stuffed without conventional power generation (coal, gas, hydro).

Second, replacing the coal elements of this reliable supply system is a great deal easier to talk about than to do.

Take the two Broken Hill solar farms, officially commissioned with federal and state ministers in attendance and lots of green trumpet blowing. Between them, their 155 megawatts of capacity is expected to produce 259,000 megawatt hours of electricity annually.

By comparison, AGL Energy’s 2,640 MW Bayswater black coal operation sends out 15,000 gigawatt hours a year.

One gigawatt hour is equal to a thousand megawatt hours.

It would take 58 sets of the Broken Hill solar twins to match Bayswater’s output. All the coal plants in the state deliver more than 50,000 GWh a year.

Without doubt, we are in a power transition period where new technology will play an increasing role. To what extent, over what time period and at what cost (in terms of capital outlays, taxpayer subsidies and consumer bills) is a very big question.

An even bigger one, perhaps, is just how much damage can be done to a supply system we take from granted via the posturing of ideologists and rent-seekers, the naivety of politicians and the energy illiteracy of the community?

More than 50 years ago I went to a high school that had as its motto ‘festina lente’ — Latin for “make haste slowly.” Perhaps it should be carved above the entry of our parliament houses and painted on the office walls of ministers (alongside ‘it’s the economy, stupid’).

Keith Orchison, director of consultancy Coolibah Pty Ltd and editor of OnPower, was chief executive of two national energy associations from 1980 to 2003. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia for services to the energy industry in 2004.
The Australian

The Wind Turbine Disaster in South Australia…

February 9, 2016 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Wind Power Disaster: South Australians Grapple with Rocketing Power Prices, an Unstable Grid & Rolling Blackouts

February 9, 2016 by stopthesethings

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In Australia’s wind farm capital, South Australia the terms ‘chaos’ and ‘crisis’ are used to describe the aftermath of an energy policy ‘designed’ on desktops by dimwits, who haven’t got the faintest clue about how power generation works (or much else, for that matter).

Wind power collapses and blackouts are now part of South Australian life: Wind Industry’s Armageddon: Wind Farm Output Collapse Leaves 110,000 South Australian Homes & Businesses Powerless

The Genesis of the wind power debacle was pretty well captured by Leo Smith in our recent post – Why Weather Dependent, Intermittent & Unreliable Wind Power is as ‘Useful as a Chocolate Teapot’ – and summed up as follows:

There is, above all, one salient feature that emerges across the board. Sanity and rationalism have been cast aside, and the whole arena is now a political and ideological battleground whose main protagonists understand little or nothing about the industry they seek to bend to suit their ideological (and possibly commercial) needs.

In short the world is full of people who have an opinion about power generation, who understand nothing about how it actually works or even what actually works. …

Rational scientific analysis shows conclusively that renewable energy cannot ever deliver on the very basis that it has been sold to the public. It’s not cheap, it’s anything but free, it’s not environmentally desirable, it offers no energy security, and it cannot exist in isolation from other technologies that are either even more costly than it itself is or have grave risks associated with them.

What we find when we analyse the intermittency problem, is that intermittent non-dispatchable power actually carries very little value at all. What society requires, is dispatchable power – power that can be on tap when it’s required, and turned off when it’s not, and it requires in addition a large component of cheap baseload power, that never needs to be turned off. What it does not require is wilful power that’s here today and gone tomorrow.

Just like SA’s 17 wind farms’ ‘efforts’ during May 2015:

And it’s the erratic delivery of ludicrously expensive wind power ($110 per MWh versus $40 per MWh for the reliable stuff) – and the insane cost of paying operators of highly inefficient Open Cycle Gas Turbines that their owners refuse to fire up until the spot price rockets to over $2,000 per MWh, when the wind drops – that has journos using ‘chaos’ to describe SA’s power market and ‘crisis’ to describe the economic aftermath meted out on struggling business, like Nyrstar’s Port Pirie Smelter.

The thing that kills the wind industry is the cost of attempting to integrate a wholly weather dependent power source (abandoned in the 19th Century, for obvious reasons) into a modern power system – where that cost, as it manifests in ever-rocketing power prices, simply can’t be hidden from the voting public.

Here’s another take on the South Australian wind power debacle from Richard Blandy (Adjunct Professor of Economics in the School of Management at the University of South Australia Business School) who – unlike the hacks at Adelaide’s The Advertiser – has a very solid head for numbers, due his background in that dismal science.

Oh, and to help illustrate Richard’s piece we’ve added a few pics courtesy of the boys over at Aneroid Energy – showing the output from SA’s 17 wind farms (with a notional capacity of 1,477MW) on the occasions referred to.

Crunching the numbers on SA’s high electricity prices
InDaily
Richard Blandy
19 January 2016

South Australia has set its energy sights on a renewable future but, asks Richard Blandy, at what cost?

On Christmas Day, according to the average price tables published by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), the Regional Reference Price (average spot price) for a megawatt hour of electricity in South Australia was $91.67.

The corresponding prices in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland were $37.33, $20.38 and $36.20.

The average daily spot price for a megawatt hour of electricity in December 2015 was $62.19 in South Australia, $43.37 in New South Wales, $46.84 in Victoria and $42.08 in Queensland.

On December 17, the average spot price for a megawatt hour of electricity in South Australia was $259.59, while on December 26 it was only $5.06.

It is clear that South Australia has the most expensive and most variable power on the eastern states grid.

The reason for the high (and extremely variable) price of electricity in South Australia is our very high dependence on solar and wind generation compared with the other states.

This results from the rapid expansion of renewable energy generation in South Australia.

According to a Deloitte Access Economics study recently released by the Energy Supply Association of Australia, South Australia’s solar and wind generation capacity per head of population is already more than three times that of any other state or territory.

A new Climate Change Strategy for South Australia was released by Premier Jay Weatherill and Minister for Climate Change, Ian Hunter, on November 29. The strategy was conveniently (if implausibly) rebadged as an economic development initiative.

In it they said to realise the benefits, we need to be bold. That is why we have said that by 2050 our state will have net zero emissions. We want to send a clear signal to businesses around the world: if you want to innovate, if you want to perfect low carbon technologies necessary to halt global warming – come to South Australia.

South Australia can be a low carbon electricity powerhouse. We have the ability to produce almost all of our energy from clean and renewable sources and export this energy to the rest of Australia.

But people want electricity to be available when they want it, and for it to stay on, with a steady current, while they want it – not just when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining.

The trouble with solar and wind generation is that it only generates electricity intermittently. Covering this intermittency is expensive in terms of idling standby plant.

Generators with the required flexibility (peaking generators using natural gas) produce expensive electricity, but are becoming more and more needed as the penetration of wind and solar in our energy generation mix increases. This is why electricity prices have risen in South Australia.

Wind farms and other renewable-energy generators also undercut the prices offered by efficient, base-load, coal and gas power plants, because they receive guaranteed, non-market, returns from selling Generation Certificates to electricity retailers under the Commonwealth Government’s Renewable Energy Target (RET) Scheme.

Under RET, electricity retailers must buy enough certificates to demonstrate their compliance with the RET scheme’s ever-increasing annual targets.

The revenue earned by each wind farm from the sale of certificates is additional to the revenue received, if any, from its sale of electricity to the electricity market.

The yearly RET targets imply significant annual investment in wind farms, while the sale of certificates to retailers is designed to guarantee a return to wind farms sufficient to justify the required investment, irrespective of the return they receive from actually selling electricity to the market. Well done, wind farm lobby.

If sales of electricity are growing only slowly (as they are in South Australia’s slow-growing economy), the subsidised market share of wind farms and other renewables will rise and the sale of electricity from conventional base-load power plants will fall.

At some point the coal and gas-fired conventional power plants will become unable to contribute towards their fixed costs, and they will go out of business. This is what has happened in South Australia.

But this is the whole point of renewables in climate change terms – to knock off CO2-producing coal and gas-fired power plants, thereby helping to save the planet from climate change.

The Port Augusta power station is closing because of Commonwealth and South Australian Government policy to expand renewable energy generation. This is not an accident. To save the planet, it was always intended to have this effect, but maybe not next year. Leigh Creek is shutting down as an unintended consequence.

Pelican Point has been mothballed and Torrens Island is also slated for closure.

If the demand for electricity is low – on a public holiday, say – while the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, the price of electricity in South Australia will be low. Conventional generators will make losses, while the market losses of the renewable generators will be covered by their sale of Generation Certificates.

If the demand for electricity is high – a heat wave on a working day, say – and it is a still, overcast day, the price of electricity in South Australia will be high, because it will be mostly produced by high-cost, back-up, peaking generators.

The high cost of maintaining back-up generation capacity (sufficient, essentially, to duplicate the generation capacity of the renewables) means that the average price of electricity produced in a system dominated by renewables will always be expensive without strong interconnection, such as in Denmark, to large, inexpensive, electricity-producing regions nearby, that produce most of their electricity from coal, gas or nuclear sources.

We are not in that fortunate position. According to Deloitte, South Australia’s interconnectors with Victoria are able to supply only 23 per cent of South Australia’s peak demand (although their capacity is presently being increased).

According to a report in the Australian Financial Review in December, South Australian Treasurer and Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis called a meeting of energy users and suppliers to deal with the sharp rises and falls in wholesale electricity prices that, in particular, threaten the economics of the lead and zinc smelter at Port Pirie operated by Dutch company, Nyrstar.

South Australian businesses face electricity prices in 2016-18 of between $87 and $90 per megawatt hour, compared with $37-$41 in Victoria and $43-$48 in New South Wales.

South Australian irrigators are said to be facing electricity price increases of more than 100 per cent next year.

According to the AFR, forward electricity prices in South Australia are far higher than when Nyrstar signed up in May.

Further, the threat of disruption of supplies if the inter-connectors to Victoria fail, or become inadequate to meet the demand for electricity in South Australia on peak days, are of understandable concern to the company. Nyrstar is scheduled to start operations in mid-2016.

Options for the Government to stop Nyrstar quitting all look expensive.

In the short run, the Government’s main option could be to cover the extra anticipated cost of electricity and the cost of any supply disruptions with a further subsidy to Nyrstar over and above the $291 million it has already promised. This subsidy could be substantial.

In the long run, the Government’s main option could be to pay for even more interconnection to Victorian, New South Wales or Queensland coal or gas-powered electricity generators.

It will have to do so to protect the stability of the electricity grid in South Australia soon, anyway, as well as to put a cap on wholesale prices (the price of base load electricity interstate plus the cost of shipping it here through an interconnector). This will also be costly.

The high price of electricity in South Australia is eating away at our economic competitiveness. The probability that we will become, sometime in the distant future, a “low carbon electricity powerhouse” looks extremely low.

As often happens with Government initiatives in South Australia, significant Government subsidies are likely to be offered to appropriate companies to locate here, so that the Government’s aspirations appear to be vindicated.

Richard Blandy is an Adjunct Professor of Economics in the Business School at the University of South Australia.
In Daily

Looking Forward to WindPushers being Held Accountable!

February 6, 2016 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Governments Lying About Wind Turbine Noise: Ignorance No Defence to Claims Worth $Millions

February 6, 2016 by stopthesethings

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As the number of cases launched against wind power outfits and the landholders who ‘host’ these things takes off, the government agencies that continue to run the wind industry line that the incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound and the sleep deprivation it causes is all in the victims’ heads (a former tobacco advertising gurusaid so) – are setting themselves up for liability in the hundreds of $millions. And the kind of ignorance displayed in this little piece is no defence.

Ignoring harm of noise
Rutland Herald
Sandy Reider
24 January 2016

The Vermont Health Department and the Vermont Department of Public Service persist in reassuring us that there are no significant health effects related to industrial wind turbines under Vermont’s current noise standards.

Such a blanket statement is not only incorrect, it is a disservice to the Vermonters who are already experiencing adverse health effects, such as headaches, vertigo, nausea, anxiety, ringing in the ears and, most importantly, chronic repetitive sleep disruption. There is an ongoing academic debate about the mechanisms behind these effects (direct vs. indirect, the nocebo “its all in your head” effect, audible vs. inaudible infrasound), but little disagreement that some persons living too close to these large wind turbines are suffering, whatever the mechanism.

Critical methodological shortcomings plague many of the large-scale industry or government-sponsored studies that state agencies rely upon to establish protective sound levels:

Failure to measure the full sound spectrum, in particular ignoring the very low frequencies that are likely responsible for many of the reported adverse health effects.
They assume a constant sound pressure and tone, not at all like the impulsive sound produced by large turbines, which has its own distinct signature that differs from other environmental sources (planes, trains, automobiles, wind, leaves rustling).
Sound levels are often averaged over an hour, or longer, making it possible for periods of very loud intrusive sound to fall within an “acceptable” calculated level.
Measurements are usually not taken indoors, where the sound may be more intrusive due to the well-established resonance effects of low frequency sound.
Most importantly, the large studies fail to focus their investigations on those households that are most severely affected.

In spite of these research design limitations, a recently released large Health Canada study found that at wind turbine sound pressure levels greater than 35 dB(A), health-related complaints will increase, and at levels greater than 40 dB(A) a significant number of persons will be “highly annoyed” (meaning adverse health effects, especially sleep disturbance).

The current Public Service Board threshold of 45 dB(A) of audible sound through an open window, averaged over an hour, has actually never been proven safe or protective. Some studies recommend that audible sound should not exceed 35 dB(A), or 5 dB(A) above normal background sound levels. (This is crucial in rural areas where background noise is minimal, particularly at night). The level should be a maximum, not an hourly average. Above 35 dB(A) there are likely to be significantly more complaints, particularly difficulty sleeping.

Several recent small, well-designed, independent clinical studies (Ambrose & Rand, Nissenbaum, Pierpont, Schomer, Cooper, Thorne) that do take the aforementioned factors into consideration, all conclude that lower, more protective noise limits for these huge industrial wind installations are needed (for more details: docs.wind-watch.org/DRSANDYREIDER_042413.pdf).

To the benefit of the wind industry, and apparently to those agencies promoting large wind installations on our ridgelines here in Vermont, the issue of infrasound has thus far been successfully suppressed and ignored. Space does not permit a detailed discussion, but consider the following:

The World Health Organization has definitively established (2009) that inaudible very-low-frequency infrasound is a human health hazard, that it can disturb sleep, and increase heart rate and blood pressure, leading in susceptible individuals, to permanent effects such as hypertension and cardiovascular disease, even at sound levels below 30 dB(A).
In the mid 1980s, Neil Kelley and his team thoroughly documented significant adverse health effects resulting from inaudible, very-low-frequency sound produced by a large wind turbine in Boone, N.C. This scientifically rigorous NASA and Department of Energy-sponsored study, in cooperation with MIT and four other prestigious universities, as well as the wind industry, has been conveniently dismissed as irrelevant by current wind developers, even though the study’s conclusions have never been disputed, and even though we now know that the large turbines being installed today do indeed generate clinically significant amounts of infrasound.
Three more recent preliminary studies (Ambrose & Rand’s Falmouth, Mass., 2011; Schomer, Rand, et. al., Shirley project, Brown County, Wisconsin, 2012; Cooper, Bridgewater, Australia, 2014) of projects with large modern upwind turbines have replicated and confirmed Kelley’s findings; i.e., infrasound, not audible sound, is a major contributor to the health fallout from today’s industrial wind projects.

Taken together with the thousands of case reports from around the world (I personally have seen three families here in the Northeast Kingdom that have been forced to abandon their homes due to adverse health effects from nearby wind turbines), stricter full-spectrum noise standards for these large wind projects are urgently needed. However, Vermonters should not expect meaningful change until the governor, as well as his appointees in the Health and Public Service departments, recognize the importance of being more inclusive in their selection of scientific data, and until they demonstrate a genuine willingness to take the health complaints of the neighbors of these turbines seriously.

Dr. Sandy Reider is a physician who lives in Lyndonville.
Rutland Herald

The wind industry and its pet acoustic consultants are acutely aware of the true facts – viz, that the noise ‘rules’ they wrote together are meaningless (that was the objective, after all) and, in order to spear ever larger turbines ever closer to homes – and thereafter to operate with perceived impunity – have convinced the useful idiots in planning and health departments to the contrary.

But, as with most things in life, the facts have a funny way of bubbling to the surface. Any government that continues to run with the wind industry will find itself in the dock with the principal offenders in the not too distant future.

Germans Gear Up to Fight the Windweasels, Politically!

February 4, 2016 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

German Opposition to Wind Farms Spawns New Political Party

February 4, 2016 by stopthesethings

Remember all the guff about Germans loving wind power to bits?

And stories about how Germany is the wind power pioneer, and that its cheerful rural volk are 100% behind having thousands of these things speared all over their bucolic homeland?

No? We’ve forgotten them too.

German wind farm neighbours suffer from incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound – just as they do all around the World:

Germans Driven from their Homes by Wind Turbine Generated Infrasound

So, it’s no surprise that there are more than 500 well-organised groups fighting back against ‘green’/left lunancy – in an effort to protect their homes, their health and their families.

What, to date, has been a reactionary force sprouting up in regions set upon by the wind industry, has now coalesced into a full-blown system of political opposition; and has just given rise to a political party aimed at bringing the great German wind power fraud to an end. Here’s another story you won’t see in the mainstream press from NoTricksZone.

Rapidly Evolving Protest: German Wind Energy Opponents Form Political Party In Response To A Deaf System
NoTricksZone
Pierre L. Gosselin
25 January 2016

Not a single one of Germany’s established political parties officially opposes the construction of wind parks despite all the proof of their inefficiency, hazard to health and wildlife, ugliness, and lack of economy.

As a consequence, a growing number of citizens are becoming fed up with a political system that has become deaf to the concerns of citizens. Some 10 years ago what once began as a huge welcome of “green and clean” wind energy, has since turned into fierce protest – and is now developing into organized political opposition.

North Germany’s online daily nordkurier.de here reports how in the state of Mecklenburg Western Pomerania citizen initiative groups against ugly wind parks are taking their protest activity to a whole new level: the formation of a political party to be on the ballot in September’s state elections. In summary environmentalist citizens have had it with the green-preaching parties who refuse to listen and have allowed themselves to be corrupted by Big Wind.

The name of the citizens’ initiative, which comprises some 50 smaller initiatives statewide, is called “Freier Horizont” (Free Horizon) and it plans to be on the ballot under the same name in this fall’s election.

Deaf political system

The reason the Freier Horizont is forming a political party? The nordkurier.de quotes initiative’s chairman Norbert Schumacher:

Currently there is no democratic party which rejects the uncontrolled expansion of wind power that people can elect.”

The hardest hit of course will be the region’s Green Party as disenchanted environmentalist realize that the Greens have long sold out to profiteering wind energy opportunists. The movement led by the Freier Horizont is taking on formidable dimensions. The nordkurier.de writes:

“Schumacher sees voter potential foremost in the countryside. At many places citizens have had the experience that there voices against wind turbines carry no weight with the deciding committees. Last year the protest group gathered more than 22,000 signatures in a short time in support of a citizens’ initiative calling for greater distances between turbines and homes and coastlines. The state parliament rejected the initiative.”

Initiative leaders tell the nordkurier.de that it was never their intention to form a party. However, elected officials simply just don’t listen anymore.
NoTricksZone

Wind Weasels Don’t Care Who They Destroy!!

February 2, 2016 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Mexican Wind Farm Madness: Wind Industry Crime & Corruption Crush an Ancient Culture

February 2, 2016 by stopthesethings

***

Renata Bessi is a freelance journalist and contributor the Americas Program and Desinformémonos. She has published articles in Brazilian media: The Trecheiro newspaper magazine, Página 22, Repórter Brasil, Rede Brasil Atual, Brasil de Fato, Outras Palavras.

Santiago Navarro is an economist, a freelance journalist, photographer and contributor to the Americas Program, Desinformémonos and SubVersiones.

Together they have determined to expose the wind industry in Mexico for precisely what it is: despicable.

The dark side of clean energy in Mexico
Truthout
Santiago Navarro F. and Renata Bessi
29 January 2016

A palm hat worn down by time covers the face of Celestino Bortolo Teran, a 60-year-old Indigenous Zapotec man. He walks behind his ox team as they open furrows in the earth. A 17-year-old youth trails behind, sowing white, red and black corn, engaging in a ritual of ancient knowledge shared between local people and the earth.

Neither of the two notices the sound of our car as we arrive “because of the wind turbines,” Teran says. Just 50 meters away, a wind farm has been installed by the Spanish company Gas Natural Fenosa. It will generate, at least for the next three decades, what governments and energy companies have declared “clean energy.”

Along with this farm, 20 others have been set up, forming what has come to be known as the wind corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, located in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. The corridor occupies a surface area of 17,867.8 hectares, across which 1,608 wind turbines have been installed. The secretary of tourism and economic development of Oaxaca claims that they will collectively generate 2,267.43 megawatts of energy.

The Tehuantepec Isthmus stretches just 200 kilometers from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean, making it the third narrowest strip of land connecting the Americas, after isthmuses in Nicaragua and Panama. In this area, mountains converge to create a geological tunnel, which funnels extremely high-speed winds between the two oceans. Energy investors have focused on the region after the government of Oaxaca claimed that it’s capable of producing 10,000 megawatts of wind energy in an area of 100,000 hectares.

“Before, I could hear all the animals living in the areas. Through their songs and sounds, I knew when it was going to rain or when it was the best time to plant,” Teran said with sadness and rage in his voice. “Now though, it seems the animals have left due to the wind turbines.”

What Teran does not know is whether the turbines, built in accordance with the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), as defined in the Kyoto Protocol, are generating alternative energy that will actually help to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of large corporations and industrialized countries. The main objective of these polluters is to prevent global temperatures from rising 2 degrees Celsius before 2100, according to the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), better known as the COP21, which concluded in December 2015. “I don’t know what climate change is and neither do I know about the COP. I only know that our ancestral lands are being covered by these turbines,” Teran said.

At the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992, participating countries passed the UNFCCC in response to climate change. With this accord, states set out to maintain their greenhouse gas emissions at the levels reached in 1990. At the third Conference of the Parties (COP3), held in Japan in 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was approved by industrialized countries, with the aim of reducing national emissions to an average of 5 percent below the 1990 levels, between 2008 and 2012. In order to help reduce the costs of this reduction, three “flexibility mechanisms” were designed: emissions trading, joint implementation and the aforementioned Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), under which a large number of the wind farms in the Tehuantepec Isthmus have been constructed.

According to the Kyoto Protocol, these mechanisms are meant to permit industrialized countries and private companies to reduce their emissions by developing clean energy projects in other parts of the world where it is more economically viable, and later include these reductions into national quotas. The second period of engagement of the Protocol is 2013-2020. In this period, countries in the European Union (excluding Iceland) have agreed to a collective emission reduction of 20 percent with respect to 1990 emission levels.

The Clean Energy Extraction and Energy Transition Financing Law statesthat Mexico will install technology to generate 25,000 megawatts of clean energy by 2024. “Mexico has an obligation to limit the electrical energy generated by fossil fuels to sixty-five percent (from the current eighty percent) by 2024,” the law states.

Teran continues sowing his corn while we ask him about the benefits he’s gained from the wind corridor and, a bit irritated, he responds: “They have not provided me or anyone in my family a job, and I don’t want anything to do with these companies or the government; I just want them to leave me in peace on my land. To let me live as I did beforehand.”

Wind Farms for Sale

***

The US Department of Energy and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), with the justification to help accelerate the use of wind energy technologies in the state of Oaxaca, developed an atlas published in 2003, which mapped the wind potential in the state of Oaxaca. The mapping confirms that the isthmus is the region with the largest wind potential.

“This wind resource atlas is an important element of the Mexican strategy to ensure availability of the necessary information and to define specific renewable energy projects as well as tools access to financing and development support,” according to the atlas document.

The paper organizers say they will not share specific maps related to the respective areas of wind potential due to the confidentiality required in possible contracts signed between companies and the government of Mexico. Although more than a decade later, with the arrival of more parks in this territory, it has become clear which of these sites are mainly located on the shores of Laguna Superior.

For all the good intentions the United States had to cooperate with Mexico to invest in renewable energy, USAID made another document in 2009, called “Study of Export Potential Wind Energy of Mexico to the United States,” which confirms that the greatest potential of this energy is concentrated in the states of Oaxaca (2,600 megawatts) and Baja California (1,400 megawatts). In August 2015, the government of Mexico officially announced that the wind farm “Energía Sierra Juárez” in Baja California, the first wind project between Mexico and the United States, will export energy to California. And they are waiting for an interconnection to export the energy produced in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

“This mapping is only one part of a series of mega-projects that are designed for this area,” said biologist and coastal ecology and fishery sciences professor and researcher Patricia Mora, of the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Integral Regional Development of Oaxaca (CIIDIR Oaxaca) based at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional.”Not only is it wind energy, but also oil and gas, and also mining, an infrastructure for the movement of goods. Therefore, this wind mapping is only a pretext to map the full potential of this whole geostrategic area, which functions as a type of catalog to offer it to businesses.”

The wind corridor was designed from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed in 1994 by Mexico, the United States and Canada, subsequently given continuity with the international agreement, Plan Puebla Panama (PPP), and now remade into Proyecto Mesoamerica. The project’s main objective was to “create favorable conditions for the flow of goods, oil, minerals and energy.”

“Clean energy is part of this context. It’s part of the continuity of the exponential economic growth of capital; it is not something alternative to it. It’s another link that is painted green,” Mora said.

Not-So-Clean Energy

To set the turbines, hundreds of tons of cement that interrupt water flows are used. “It is worth mentioning that they are using the cement company Cemex, who also has a wind farm in the Isthmus,” Mora said.

The population of Venta, where the first wind farm was built, was literally surrounded by turbines. Insufficient with the already installed complex, under the argument of self-sufficiency and with a capacity of 250 megawatts, the park called Eurus, built in 2009, was auctioned off with capital from the Spanish company Acciona and transnational construction materials company Cemex.

It seems that Cemex is the role model of the CDM, a clean and responsible company that has registered several projects this way. In its 2013 report, Cemex boasts of expanding their projects with the CDM model. “Six new initiatives were registered as CDM in 2013, which include four alternative fuel projects in Mexico and Panama and two wind farms located in Mexico, among those Eurus and Ventika.”

In 2015, the Eurus wind farm won the prize awarded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB Infrastructure 360°) in the category of “Impact on Population and Leadership,” which recognizes outstanding sustainability practices in infrastructure investments in Latin America and Caribbean.

In February 2015, community activists from the organization Defenders of the Earth and Sea announced, “about 150 wind turbines owned by Acciona and located in the Eurus wind farm and Oaxaca III, have spilt oil, from the blades and main coil, which has polluted the ground and the water, affecting several farmers and ranches surrounding the area.”Both wind farms have 1,500-megawatt turbines, which need 400 liters of synthetic oil, while the 800-megawatt turbines only need 200 liters of oil per turbine per year.

The Costs of Clean Energy

***

The dominant development model in the production of electricity from wind power in the Tehuantepec Isthmus is stated as a formula in which everyone wins – the government, developers and industry. The model has been of self-supply, in which a private developer of wind power generates energy production contracts for a wide portfolio of industrial customers (Coca-Cola, Cemex, Walmart and Bimbo, for example) for a certain period. In this way, companies can set prices lower than the market for the long term, and separately they enjoy the financial benefits of carbon trading, which on one hand, allows them to continue polluting and, secondly, to speculate on the sale of these pollution permits to other companies. Developers can access financing schemes for “green” projects through organizations like the Inter-American Development Bank and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the UN.

The communities are also presented as winners in these projects for the development of self-sufficiency and the income they receive from the lease of their land.

Why the Resistance?

***

In November of 2012, the consortium Mareña Renovables set out to build the largest wind farm in Latin America in the Barra de Santa Teresa, in San Dionisio del Mar, Oaxaca. The Barra is a strip of land between two lagoons that connects to the sea in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Here the Indigenous community of Binni Záa (Zapotec) and Ikojts (Huave), together with the community of Alvaro Obregon, opposed and blocked all access to this strip of land. In response, the state sent about 500 troops from the state police to unblock access, acting with extreme violence. The Indigenous community resisted until the government suspended construction of the wind park. In response to constant harassment and persecution,the Alvaro Obregon community created a community police force called “Binni Guiapa Guidxi” on February 9, 2013.

What was known as Mareña Renovables has changed its name and its form several times. The Spanish energy company, the Preneal Group, which had signed exploration contracts and obtained permits from the state government, sold the rights to the project for $89 million to FEMSA, a subsidiary of the Coca-Cola Company and the Macquarie Group, the largest investment bank in Australia. These companies quickly sold part of their stakes to Mitsubishi Corporation and Dutch pension fund PGGM, signing at the same time a power purchase agreement with FEMSA-Heineken for 20 years.

They also sought to speculate with the reduction of 825,707 tons of carbon dioxide a year, equivalent to the emissions of 161,903 cars.

“Mother Earth is sick; the disease is global warming. They want to profit with the same disease that they have caused to Mother Earth,” said Carlos Sanchez, a Zapotec activistwho participated in the resistance against the installation of the wind farm in Barra de Santa Teresa Park and the installation of a park by Gas Natural Fenosa in Juchitan de Zaragoza.”Under the pretext of reducing global warming, they come to our territories to control our forests, mountains, our sacred places and our water.”

Sanchez is also founder and member of the community radio station Totopo, created to report on mega-projects in the region of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. During an intermission of his radio programming, we asked Sanchez about what the Zapotec people know about the CDM. “It is a discourse between businessmen. They are labels exchanged between companies to justify their pollution and do not explain anything to Indigenous peoples,” he said.

“Could we, with our forests, also sell carbon credits, bypassing these companies? Who will buy?” Sanchez asked. “It is no coincidence that only those who understand these mechanisms are the only ones who benefit as employers and the state.”

He added, “We do not even benefit from the energy produced. If you walk by the communities you will notice what the clean development they have brought consists of, and I challenge one of the owners of the companies to see if they want to live in the midst of these turbines.”

Following the demonstrations made by Indigenous peoples on May 8, 2013, the secretary of tourism of the state of Oaxaca, José Zorrilla Diego, announced the cancellation of the proposed Renewable Mareña in the Barra de Santa Teresa. Shortly after the announcement of the cancellation, the state government said the project would continue in other areas of the isthmus.

Human Rights Violations and Perspectives

Community organization against the wind farm in the Barra de Santa Teresa was the first major resistance against the ways in which these companies are developing their projects on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Sanchez reports that, not coincidentally, it is in this period that the companies began hiring hit men, with the backing of the state.”We see gunmen escorted to the state police. Some of us have been persecuted with absurd lawsuits, accusing us of kidnapping, attacks on the roads, and damage to other people’s private property. The radio station has undergone several attempts at closing, with the invasion of the federal police and Navy,” Sanchez said.

Sanchez reports that since 2013, he does not go to public places. His mobility is restricted to the community. “We endorse the protection mechanism of the Ministry of Interior. But we have realized that their task of protection has been given to the state police, the same people who attacked us. I do not know whether they have come to protect me or arrest me. So I rejected this protection mechanism and started a small personal protection protocol,” Sanchez said. “The state supports the wind companies,” he added.

The Committee for the Integral Defense of Human Rights Gobixha (CódigoDH) Oaxaca demanded the immediate intervention of the federal and state governments to stop the wave of violence against supporters of the Popular Assembly of the People of Juchitan who have been victims of threats, harassment, persecution and attacks, including the murder of one of its members. This followed the conflict rooted in the construction of the Bii Hioxo wind farm, according to CódigoDH. But there was no response.

The company Gas Natural Fenosa rejects the accusations, ensuring, “While certain groups have filed several allegations regarding violations of human rights of communities affected by the project, Gas Natural Fenosa says they are unfounded, that they lack objective justification, and are incompatible with the commitments made by the company’s Human Rights Policy.”

New Strategy, New Park, Old Problems

***

It did not take long for the government’s 2013 promise – to relocate the project from the Barra de Santa Teresa toward another zone in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec – to take shape. In 2014, the company Mareña Renovables, now called Eolica del Sur (Southern Wind), found a new place to develop clean energy and contribute to the goals of reducing greenhouse gases in Laguna Superior.

In 2016, the project foresees the installation of 132 wind turbines of three megawatts each in an area of 5,332 hectares, avoiding the emission of 879,000 tons of greenhouse gases per year, according to the company.

An independent report released by researchers from different fields and universities points out various inconsistencies in the environmental impact study submitted by the company and approved by the Secretariat of Environmental and Natural Resources (SEMANART).

The first contradiction is in regards to the company that made the study. The company responsible is Especialistas Ambientales (Environmental Specialists). And according to the constitutive act of the company, it was possible to determine that the founding partner is the engineer Rodolfo Lacy Tamayo, current undersecretary of planning and environmental policy of the SEMANART.

The document warned that there are many inconsistencies with respect to the surface of Baja Espinoza Forest (Selva Baja Espinosa), which is to be cleared for the construction of this project. Evaluating the information available on the environmental impact statement’s (EIS) own field research, “our analysis shows that the developer intends to cut 100% of the tree surface without proposing any measure of compensation.”

“This is particularly worrying,” according to the document. “The Selva Baja Espinoza connecting the Priority Marine Regions: Continental Shelf Gulf of Tehuantepec, and Upper and Lower Laguna; and Terrestrial Priority Regions: Northern Sierras of Oaxaca Mixe and Zoque-La Selva Sepultura.”

According to Eduardo Centeno, director of the Eolica del Sur company, the EIS is submitted in accordance with Mexican law and contains mitigation measures and preventive measures for the environment, including reforestation.

Another concern of communities is in relation to water pollution in the lagoon and sea area as a result of the oil that will drain on the beaches – 300 liters per wind turbine. Biologist Genoveva Bernal of SEMANART explains that the institution responsible for approving the EIS says the park will not affect Laguna Superior at 3.9 kilometers. “With this distance, it will not have an impact,” Bernal said.

***

Alejandro Castaneira, professor and researcher at the National School of Anthropology and History, who participated in the creation of the report, says the SEMANART authorized an environmental impact study that was wrongly produced. “It is announced that parks are generating clean energy. Are we going to use clean energy to produce Coca-Cola and Lay’s chips while poverty continues?” Castaneira said.

A Far From Participatory Process

***

After the events of 2013, Eolica del Sur and the state convened for the first free, prior and informed consultation, under Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization for Indigenous peoples, 22 years since the arrival of the first wind farm in Isthmus of Tehuantepec. This consultation was initiated in November 2014, and completed in July 2015, and is regarded as an essential element for the project to become effective.

On the one hand, both the federal and state governments (as well as the company) claim that the consultation fulfilled its role, which justifies the project, since most of the participants approved. On the other hand, there is enormous pressure for the cancellation of the same consultation because of the irregularities.

At a press conference, Bettina Cruz Velázquez, a member of the Assembly of Indigenous Peoples of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Defense of Land and Territory, said that the consultation was carried out after local and federal permits and approvals of land use had already been given by authorities. This shows the federal government’s decision to strip Binni Záa(Zapotec) of its territory. “The consultation is a simulation. They do not respect international standards,” Cruz Velázquez said.

A petition for relief was filed for the 1,166 Indigenous Binni Záa in order to protect Indigenous rights and defend their territory against the wind project. On September 30, 2015, the judge issued an order to suspend all licenses, permits, goods, approvals, licenses and land use changes granted by federal and local authorities, until the final judgment is issued.

“The state allows these projects on the one hand, allowing all the state and federal agencies to expedite permits,” said lawyer Ricardo Lagines Garsa, adviser to the community. “Yet Indigenous peoples are not aware of these legal proceedings, so that they can actually participate in decisions. The whole isthmus territory has been divided between companies [due to] the lack of awareness of the peasant and Indigenous communities who live here.”

Who Benefits From “Clean” Energy?

According to documents from the Commission for Dialogue with the Indigenous Peoples of Mexico, international experience has shown that remuneration paid by energy companies erecting wind farms on leased land oscillates between 1 and 5 percent of the gross income of the energy produced by the turbines. “However, the case of Mexico is drastically different if you take into account the much lower value compared to international standards: here, remuneration is between .025 and 1.53% [of gross income].”

The Tepeyac Human Rights Center states that “because there is no organization that regulates the value of land in Mexico, energy companies pay landowners far less than the actual value, which can provoke tension in communities in which wind farms are set up.”

The criteria that have been used to justify the implementation of wind parks in Mexico as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as total energy production, are insufficient to determine the benefits, risks and broader implications of wind energy production, according to the Commission for Dialogue with the Indigenous Peoples of Mexico. “The criteria ignore or underestimate the complexity and cognitivist and ethical uncertainty of the risks and impacts created by wind parks on a large scale,” the commission stated. “They cannot be seen as a viable energy alternative if they continue to reproduce and deepen socioeconomic and environmental inequalities between countries and between social groups within individual countries.”
Truthout

***

Finally….The Truth is Catching Up with the Wind Industry…

February 1, 2016 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Wind Industry Loses Support of Lunatic Fringe: Green-Left Blog ‘New Matilda’ Turns Against the Wind Power Fraud

February 1, 2016 by stopthesethings

****

When the following piece crossed STT’s inbox, the editor thought it to be some kind of April fool’s joke, delivered a few months early.

But, no. Knock us down with a feather, the article that follows did, in fact, appear on ‘New Matilda’ – a politically correct, hard-‘green’-left bastion for all things cuddly and fuzzy (mostly its logic) – and, until now, a safe-haven for the dwindling wind-worship-cult.

But, not any more. The article was penned by Geoff Russell – who would blend in perfectly with the mung bean and tofu crowd, as his PC, CV attests:

Geoff Russell qualified in mathematics and has written software all of his working life. But in the past decade has devoted increasing time to writing non-fiction with a simple goal … make the world a better place. A three decade vegan and member of the Animal Justice Party, his first book in 2009 was “CSIRO Perfidy” a critique of the high-red-meat CSIRO “Total Wellbeing diet”; the most environmentally destructive diet on the planet. His concerns about climate change and the ineffectiveness of renewables led to a reexamination of his lifelong opposition to nuclear power. After considerable research he realised that the reasons people fear nuclear are built on obsolete knowledge about DNA and cancer. His second book “GreenJacked! Derailing environmental action on climate change” is an e-book available on Amazon. He has been a regular contributor to BraveNewClimate.com since 2008 and has had pieces published in “The Monthly”, “Australasian Science” and a number of Australian newspapers.

Now, pinch yourself and enjoy what must have had New Matilda regulars choking on their organic Pinot Gris. Oh, and to help Geoff get his point across we’ve added a few pics, courtesy of the boys over at Aneroid Energy.

Capacity Factors And Coffee Shops: A Beginner’s Guide To Understanding The Challenges Facing Wind Farms
New Matilda
Geoff Russell
13 January 2016

It’s still ‘all about the baseload’, writes Geoff Russell, in this simple guide to understanding the limitations of energy sources like wind farms.

Renewable-only advocates claim that we can build a reliable, clean electricity system using mostly unreliable sources; like wind and solar power. And of course we can; the theory is simple, just build enough of them.

Coffee shops operate rather like our current electricity system; there are a few permanent staff who are analogous to what are called baseloadpower stations. Additional staff are hired to cover the busy period(s) and correspond typically to gas fired generators.

The renewable alternative is like running a coffee shop with a crew of footloose narcoleptics who arrive if and when they feel like it and who can nod off with little notice. Would this work? Of course; just hire enough of them.

Any criticisms of renewable plans is typically subjected to execution by slogan: That’s soooo last millennium; baseload is a myth!

I’ve used something like this coffee shop analogy elsewhere, but it doesn’t capture other critical features of electricity sources … let’s begin with the capacity factor.

Capacity factor

When someone talks about a “100 megawatt” wind farm, this refers to its maximum power output when the wind is blowing hard. Energy is powermultiplied by time, so if it’s windy for 24 hours you’ll get 24 x 100 = 2400 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electrical energy. But actual output over the course of a year is obviously only a percentage of the maximum possible and that percentage is measured and called the capacity factor; typically about 33 percent for wind.

A rooftop solar system is also labelled according to its maximum output and also has a capacity factor… averaging 14 percent in Australia but only 9 or 10 percent in the UK or Germany.

Nuclear plants also have capacity factors because they usually need to be taken off line every year or two for refuelling. Typical percentages are 90 in the US and 96 in South Korea.

You can’t compare electricity sources without understanding capacity factors. Since the capacity factor of a nuclear plant is about 90 percent and that of rooftop solar is about 14 percent and because 90/14 = 6.429, then you’d need to install 9,000 megawatts worth of solar panels to match the amount of electricity you’d get from a 1400 megawatt South Korean APR1400 nuclear reactor over a year (6.429 x 1400 = 9,000).

Which is more than double the 4041 megawatts installed in Australia between 2007 and the end of 2014.

Matching supply and demand

But 9,000 megawatts of solar panels is still very different to 1,400 megawatts of nuclear, even if both produce the same amount of electricity annually. With 9,000 megawatts of PV panels, you don’t control the output and on any day it will range from nothing at night through to 9,000 megawatts if it’s hot, cloudless and the right time of day.

In contrast, 1,400 megawatts of nuclear power can be adjusted to match demand; turn it down, turn it up.

Below is a picture of the output of some German nuclear plants. Note that the output of one plant, KKI 1 (Isar), is pretty constant. That plant began operation in 1979, which is about the vintage of the seemingly immortal but obviously false anti-nuclear claim that nuclear plants can’t follow load; see Margaret Beavis’s recent NM article for a 2015 misstatement.

Brokdorf, on the other hand, is a little newer and has been operating since 1986 and has no trouble ramping up and down. Not only can most nuclear plants load-follow (this is the technical term), it’s increasingly necessary in Germany because of the growth of wind and solar; it’s a thankless task but somebody has to do it!

Now you understand why it’s silly to do what non-technical journalists like Bernard Keane have done, and compare costs per kilowatt of solar with those of nuclear without understanding the capacity factor; let alone grid costs or load-following.

But the capacity factor is also important for another deeper reason and it will take us back to that coffee shop.

First, imagine a small city with a constant electrical demand of 1,000 megawatts and a wind farm supplying, on average, 333 megawatts. Assume the rest is supplied by gas. Given the capacity factor of wind, we can infer that the peak output of that wind farm is about 1,000 megawatts.

What happens to excess electricity?

Now consider what happens if you triple the size of your wind farm.

Since you now have (a maximum of) 3,000 megawatts of wind power, you’ll be averaging 0.33 x 3,000 x 24 megawatt-hours (of energy) per day; which is 100 percent of demand; excellent.

But what happens when it’s really windy? The output is then triple the demand; so, without storage, that electricity gets dumped.

Dumping electricity on your neighbours isn’t a nice thing to do if they don’t need it at the time.

Wind farms, like any low capacity factor unreliable electricity source, are fine when they are a small contributor to a large grid, but not so fine when their surges are large relative to the demand on the grid; then they become a veritable bull in a china shop.

[total output from all wind farms connected to the Eastern Grid, June 2015]

How does this look in coffee shop terms? If you run your coffee shop with a large bunch of narcoleptic staff, then some of the time they’ll all be awake and rearing to go, but there’ll be few customers and your staff will be twiddling their thumbs at best and getting in each others way at worst.

But perhaps the analogy is broken? Instead of a single wind farm, we could have multiple farms spread over a huge area and interconnected so that the wind must surely even out; never blowing hard (nor totally calm) at all sites. Certainly this sounds plausible… but what actually happens?

John Morgan looked at the Australian data on wind power in an article a couple of months ago on bravenewclimate.com.

In the 12 months to September 2015, Australia had 3,753 megawatts of wind power across the National Electricity Market (which excludes WA which isn’t connected) and the daily average output ranged from 2.7 percent (101 megawatts for 24 hours) to 86 percent (3,227 megawatts for 24 hours).

This isn’t so different from what would happen with a single 3,753 megawatt wind farm. So despite expectations, there were times when it was pretty windy almost everywhere and other times, including runs of multiple days, when it was pretty damn still almost everywhere.

The overall capacity factor was measured at 29 percent. So despite expectations, many wind farms, even in a big country like Australia, aren’t that much different to one very big one. And you really do have to worry about being becalmed.

[total output from all wind farms connected to the Eastern Grid, 22 July 2014]

I argued in my last New Matilda article that wasting battery capacity papering over the deficiencies of wind and solar will reduce our ability to solve our clean transportation problems.

Copper plates and real networks

Clearly if many wind farms are intended to even out supply, then they need to be interconnected.

A study commonly cited in Australia supporting the feasibility of a 100 percent renewable system is that of Elliston, Diesendorf and MacGill.

One assumption of that study was that electricity can flow freely from where-ever it is generated to where-ever it is needed.

This is called the “copper plate” assumption; it assumes the continent is just one massive copper plate conducting electricity everywhere at high speed.

But real interconnectors have to be built, and how much connectivity do low capacity factor sources need? A European study found that the grid capacity to transfer electricity under a 100 percent renewable scenario needs to be ramped up by between 5.7 and 11.5 times; depending on the quality of service required.

The “flow freely” assumption occupied just one sentence of the Australian study but conceals a wealth of problems and complexity. The EU goal is that member countries provide interconnection capacity equal to just 10 percent of installed capacity… by 2020.

The need for extra national interconnections is mirrored internally within the larger countries by the need for extra internal interconnections. In Germany this is being implemented under the Power Grid Expansion Act (EnLAG) involving 3,800 kilometers of new extra-high voltage lines.

These lines aren’t being built without protest. The path of least resistance will be wildlife habitat; to avoid concerns both real and imagined over reducing property prices and health risks.

To extend the coffee shop analogy to cover distributed wind farms, we move from a single shop to a WindyBucks Chain of shops spread over the country.

The European study implies that making this work will require not just extra staff but a fleet of lightening fast taxis to shunt the staff around from shop to shop. This is so that when we have too many baristas in Cairns, we can shunt them down to cover for those having a kip in Hobart.

Again, the theory is simple; just add another layer of duct tape until it holds together.

Markets, profits and planning

There’s one not so obvious way in which the coffee shop analogy breaks down. Coffee shop staff get paid by the hour, not by the number of coffees they make; but users of electricity pay for what they use, not for what is generated.

Does anybody want to pay 10 times the going rate for a coffee just because there happen to be 10 grinning baristas twiddling their thumbs behind the Espresso machine?

If not, then consider what happens to electricity prices during our imagined tripling of wind capacity. Remember, we started by assuming wind provided about 30 percent of electrical energy, so when we triple the number of farms and the wind is blowing pretty strongly everywhere, they’ll be generating about triple what we want.

In a free electricity market where suppliers bid for electricity, the price will dive. So while it’s very profitable to build a wind farm when total wind energy is less than the capacity factor, it soon becomes very unprofitable because nobody wants your product; you also create a mess that somebody has to clean up by building extra grid magic to handle power surges.

Why didn’t people see this coming a decade ago? Probably somebody did, but they were “Sooo last millennium”!

This market failure gets worse and worse as wind penetration exceeds the capacity factor. Our whole climate mess can be viewed as one massive market failure; which is part of why I’m not a fan of using markets to solve problems of consequence.

People who build solar farms, hospitals, nuclear plants, bridges, aeroplanes, submarines, battery factories and any other bloody thing are unanimous in their use of planning; in contrast, people who love markets are people like politicians, lawyers and market traders who rarely build anything that doesn’t come in an Ikea box.

This article has tried to explain as non-technically as possible some of the problems that arise as penetration rates of intermittent electricity sources rise. I’ve used wind as a concrete example, but the same problems occur with any low capacity factor sources.

It may help people understand why Germany is burning half of her forestry output for electricity to provide some level of baseload power amid the renewable chaos. She could be, and should be, maximally expanding forests to draw down carbon, but instead, her logging and fuel crop industries are booming.

But the German use of baseload biomass to paper over renewable deficiencies isn’t just a love of lumberjacks and hatred for wildlife – when AEMO (Australian Electricity Market Operator) reported in 2013 on the feasibility of 100 percent renewable electricity, both her scenarios were “Sooo Last Millenium” and postulated a baseload system underneath the wind and solar components; either biomass (Log, Slash, Truck and Burn) like the Germans, or geothermal (ironically driven by heat from radioactive decay within the earth).

Technical readers should consult John Morgan’s articles here and here in addition to the various papers and studies he mentions.
New Matilda

What the wind industry hates most is facts: and what a bitter dish they must make, when plated up by the crowd that once loved them so dearly…

A Worthy Opponent, for the Wind-Pushers!

January 30, 2016 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

SA Wind Farm War: AFL CEO – Gillon McLachlan – Launches Litigation Against NZ’s Trustpower

January 31, 2016 by stopthesethings

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New Zealand’s Trustpower love throwing their weight around – provided the targets of their violence and thuggery are 79 Year Old Pensioners and Disabled Farmers.

Now, these delightful characters have a real fight on their hands.

Gillon McLachlan is as well-heeled as he is passionate about his beloved property, Rosebank – the magnificent range of Hills in which it nestles, and the thriving communities that surround and support it.

Back in December, Gillon pitched in with a well-delivered plea to the Mid-Murray DAP to knock back Trustpower’s ludicrous proposal to carpet 114 of these things all over the Eastern Mount Lofty Ranges:

AFL’s CEO – Gillon McLachlan Hammers the ‘Desecration of his Country’ & the ‘Extreme Community Division’ Caused by Wind Farms

With the stinky little DAP predictably rubber-stamping the application, Gillon has now thrown his considerable resources into the battle, along with a hundred or so others, with an Appeal launched in South Australia’s planning appeal court, the Environment, Resources & Development Court. Here’s SA’s local Sunday rag’s take on the unfolding war against the threatened destruction of SA’s iconic Mount Lofty Ranges and the dozen of communities that those fertile hills sustain.

AFL boss’s bid to ban wind turbines near his farm
Sunday Mail
Ben Hyde
31 January 2016

AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan has launched court action over the approval of a massive wind farm on the doorstep of his family’s historic Rosebank property, near Mt Pleasant.

Mr McLachlan has appealed against the approval of the $700 million wind farm, to feature 114 turbines standing up to 165m high dotted along the ranges between Palmer, Tungkillo and Sanderston.

The appeal is listed against wind farm developers Trustpower, the Mid Murray Council, Environment Protection Agency, the Planning Department and the Environment Minister.

A preliminary conference is scheduled to be heard in the Environment, Resources and Development Court by Commissioner Lolita Mohyla at 3.30pm tomorrow.

Mr McLachlan’s is one of four appeals filed against the wind farm, which was approved by the Mid Murray Council’s development assessment panel on December 18. He yesterday declined to comment about the appeal.

In December, he submitted a video message to the development assessment panel opposing the wind farm being built.

“Even if it were to be conclusively established wind farms do not produce health problems, it’s annoying and affects quality of life,” he said.

“I was frankly heartbroken that this land will be forever marred by enormous man-made structures.”

Mr McLachlan also said any wind farm would cause significant damage to the land, would hinder potential tourism opportunities and “cause extreme division in the community”.

Rosebank, a prominent and historic sheep station east of Mt Pleasant, was pioneered in 1843 by Scottish-born landowner George Melrose, whose descendants include the McLachlan family.

The Eastern Mount Lofty Ranges Landscape Guardians, on behalf of up to 90 residents in the region, have also appealed against the development. They are scheduled for a preliminary conference in the ERD Court in mid-February.

During an ERD Court preliminary conference, the parties discuss how they would like the court proceedings to occur. This could include through continued negotiations, mediation or by trial or hearing.

Eastern Mount Lofty Ranges Landscape Guardians chair Tony Walker said opponents felt the approval process was unjust. “We believe that the whole process failed to give any weight to the objectors,” he said. “There is a lot of opposition — from the little man on the ground and from people with more resources.”

Numerous people living near wind farms have claimed they cause health problems, including severe headaches and disrupted sleep patterns.

However, the National Health and Medical Research Council issued a report last year that found there was “currently no consistent evidence that wind farms cause adverse health effects in humans” — but said there was a need for more in-depth research.

Mr Walker said those opposed to the development were prepared for a fight. “We’ve been fighting for almost five years (and) it’s a fight that could go on for years, depending on who blinks first,” he said. “(But) it’s worth fighting for.”
Sunday Mail

If Ben Hyde truly believes there’s nothing to complaints about living with incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound, he should get out more.

Starting with a look at the Federal Senate Inquiry Report, that excoriatedthe corruption and bias of the NHMRC- an outfit peopled by wind industry plants, that ignores almost every relevant piece of wind turbine acoustic research and, instead, relies on the musings of a former tobacco advertising guru, who claims noise induced sleep deprivation suffered by wind farm neighbours is all in their heads:

NHMRC Fails Science 101 in Continued Wind Farm Health Cover Up

Ben might also jump in a set of wheels and head for Jamestown, where he can meet with Clive and Trina Gare, cattle graziers in SA’s Mid-North.

Since October 2010, the Gares have played host to 19, 2.1MW Suzlon S88 turbines, which sit on a range of hills to the West of their stately homestead. Under their contract with AGL they receive around $200,000 a year; and have pocketed over $1 million since the deal began.

In a remarkable move, the Gares gave evidence to the Senate Inquiry into the great wind power fraud during its Adelaide hearing, in June 2015. Any journalist worth their salt would start by taking a look at what they told a Federal Senate Committee about ‘the worst decision of their lives’:

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

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

What Gillon McLachlan is about to tackle is willful ignorance and institutional corruption – of precisely the kind that resulted in the decision to approve the construction of 114 of these things, shoe-horned into hundreds of backyards, all over the prettiest and most productive part of the Adelaide Hills.

What makes the DAP’s decision all the more ridiculous is that South Australians are already paying the highest power prices in Australia (if not the World on a purchasing power parity basis) with a grid on the brink of collapse.

It’s been almost a decade since SA’s Labor Party shackled itself to wind power: a wholly weather dependent power source; that’s intermittent and unreliable, requiring 100% of it’s capacity to be backed-up 100% of the time by conventional power generators; that, accordingly, has NO commercial value (save the massive power consumer and/or taxpayer subsidies it attracts); kills millions of birds and bats; and, with the incessant low-frequency noise and infrasound it generates, drives people mad in their homes, or drives them out of them altogether.

It takes a certain kind of fool to believe that SA’s energy disaster can be improved by backing more of the same. But SA’s public institutions are drenched in deluded Labor (green/left) ideology; and peopled by lunatics who wouldn’t know the first thing about power generation (or much else, really).

Gillon McLachlan and his compatriots are about to hit them with a solid dose of common sense and a mountain of facts. The Battle has begun.

Vermonters Stand Up Against the Windpushers!

January 30, 2016 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Vermonters in Full-Scale Open Rebellion Against Planned Wind Turbine Roll-Out

January 30, 2016 by stopthesethings 1 Comment

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Vermont is the place where dreams of peace and tranquility come true. Rolling waves of verdant hills, interspersed with fertile valleys and filled with a tenacious band that endure bitter winters and short bursts of what those in America’s North-East think passes for ‘Summer’: that’s Vermont.

But the element that’s brewed to the surface in the Green Mountain State– and that’s now reached boiling point – is unbridled anger.

Vermonters are set upon by the same cowardly, callous and criminal chancers found all around the Globe – that appear from nowhere – like flesh-craving zombies – slobbering at the thought of massive and (seemingly) endless subsidies.

While their so-called political betters dance to their back-handing benefactors’ tune, the communities set upon have risen to the point of a full-scale, open rebellion. The following pieces tell the story of a mass movement of Vermonters venting fury and of a few politicians gifted with grace (rather than beguiled by wind industry ‘grease’) who’ve decided to put a halt to the most ludicrous energy ‘policy’ ever imagined.

Vermont’s energy siting struggle hits crescendo
Michael Bielawski and Bruce Parker
Vermont Watchdog
21 January 2016

MONTPELIER, Vt. — What started as a letter from Rutland regarding a lack of local control over renewable energy siting has culminated in an 86-town strong “Vermont energy rebellion.”

On Wednesday, more than 100 protesters gathered at the Statehouse to demand local control for energy siting.

Leading the demonstration were state Sen. John Rodgers, D-Essex/Orleans; Karen Horn, policy director for the Vermont League of Cities and Towns; and Don Chioffi, a member of the Rutland Selectboard. Together they argued the energy project siting process as it now stands oversteps the will of ratepayers.

“I would like to acknowledge those here today whose homes and lives have been sacrificed by our state’s energy policy, those of you who have been encroached upon and bullied by energy developers, and those of you who have lost not only property values but the health of your families to industrial wind plants. The process that we use to site energy in Vermont is broken and it’s long past time to fix it,” Rodgers said, opening the event.

According to Rodgers, renewable energy developers, with rubber-stamp support from the Public Service Board, have been given unrestrained power over land use in Vermont to the detriment of cities, towns and the environment, adding that the process had become “anti-environmental and anti-democratic.”

His two-part solution was also the largest applause line of the day: “First, I propose that we ban the development of industrial wind in Vermont. … Second, I propose that we require land use decisions related to energy generation to go through Act 250.”

To that end, Rodgers is sponsoring S210 and a slew of of other bills to ban industrial wind and subject the Public Service Board’s energy development certification process to stipulations found in Vermont’s strict land use and development law.

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Other community leaders, including Chioffi, offered comments about the problem.

“You may as well throw selectboards and planning boards out the window if you are going to operate the state this way. They are being treated as if they are nonexistent and useless,” Choiffi told Vermont Watchdog. “… There has never been a solar projected rejected by this Public Service Board — there’s the proof in the pudding.”

Mark Whitworth, board member of Energize Vermont, a pro-renewable energy group, attended the event to protest the manner in which renewable energy projects are being implemented.

“They’re industrializing wildlife habitat, they are fragmenting forests,” Whitworth said. “They are developing our ridgelines, which is going to result in a loss of flood resiliency, and they’re converting farm land for meager energy production — so we are jeopardizing our food security. We think that these guys are just worsening the very problems that they claim they are helping us to avoid.”

Vermonters from across the state traveled to the Statehouse to have their voices heard as well.

“There aren’t any constraints on where they put them up or how big they are,” said Rachael Carr, of St. Albans. “If they don’t get some legislation to put some restrictions on these projects, it’s going to be too late.”

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Her young son, Alex Carr, added an imaginative twist on the problem: “I’m here to protect the state from these huge monsters,” he said. “People think they are good, but they are not.”

Giselle Chevallay, a Newark resident dressed up as a displaced Vermont bear, said, “We want to help make sure we are more careful about our siting choices, whether it’s solar, wind, nuclear, hydro or anything.”

Given such urgency and backing by 86 towns, Rutland’s 2014 letter seems almost prophetic: “We are attempting, through this resolution, to form a coalition of Vermont communities which will support reasonable legislation to restore local community input to the regulatory process when addressing the issue of solar citing in our state.”

Whitworth explained what it means for a town to be part of the rebellion.

“These towns have either signed onto the Rutland resolution or they’ve adopted town plans which have explicit language regarding energy citing or certain energy technology,” Whitworth said, adding that his town of Newark has a town plan that says industrial wind turbines are inappropriate.

Currently, energy projects are exempt from Act 250 requirements. These requirements include adhering to regional municipal plans not unlike those of Newark. Rodgers’ bills attempt to make energy development subject to the same requirements other commercial developers face.

The plan is certain to hit resistance, largely because of the money involved. Chioffi said public money, including federal subsidies of 30 percent and state subsidies of about 8 percent, is what drives these projects. He argues that a 40 percent up-front return is also fueling the green energy rush.

“The best kept secret in the world is that these are really, really big cash cows,” he said. “There’s a lot of money to be made in these things. I’ve always been told if you ever want to get to the bottom of any argument on this kind of stuff, follow the money.”

Whitworth said the state’s renewable portfolio standards — which require every municipality to periodically increase its percentage of renewable energy sources — is another driving force. “It really lit a fire under this,” Whitworth said.

He added that while there are no current calls to freeze or repeal Vermont’s RPS, he thinks if legislators don’t respond to the pushback from communities, that will change. At least four of 29 states with such standards have halted or repealed them.

When asked about the status of Vermont’s RPS, Rodgers expressed concern about the economics of renewable energy. “There are a huge number of manufacture and installation jobs with solar today — I think it’s like 16,000 jobs,” he said. “The problem is, after the construction, we have basically set up a pipeline of our cash out of state because most of the owners of the big installations are out-of-state people or corporations.

“So it’s basically taking the tax credits out of state and the ratepayer money out of state. If we were building more on Vermonter’s homes and businesses, the tax credits and savings would stay more in Vermont” Rodgers said.
Vermont Watchdog

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Energy Critics Make Strongest Statehouse Push
Terri Hallenbeck
Seven Days
20 January 2016

The makeshift wind turbine erected in front of the Statehouse, emblazoned with the governor’s last name, was the first hint. Then there were the sign-bearing protesters flanking the Statehouse doors.

Inside, in the halls of the Statehouse, the cafeteria and committee rooms, scores more were dressed in bright green vests to highlight their presence and emphasize the danger they feel.

Wednesday brought the biggest show of force yet by Vermonters upset with the state’s siting process for energy projects. What has in recent years been a relatively small group of wind opponents has grown into a legion of people worried about wind and solar, including town leaders from across the state.

“Now, it’s being taken more seriously,” LuAnn Therrien said of the opposition. Therrien has spent years speaking against the Sheffield wind project, which she said drove her family out of town.

The proliferation of solar projects around Vermont has changed the volume of the opposition, said Mark Whitworth, who is with the organization Energize Vermont. The group has long opposed decisions about the siting of wind projects, and it now finds new friends opposed to suggested solar sites. “That is what really has lit a fire under this energy rebellion. When it was wind in the Kingdom, it was pretty easy for people in other parts of the state to ignore it,” Whitworth said.

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Wind and solar siting opponents filled the Senate chamber. Now, many town officials are also fired up. The Vermont League of Cities and Towns, not exactly a rebellious organization, joined in Wednesday’s event. Nearly a dozen local officials testified to legislative committees about how their towns have spent thousands of dollars and still feel powerless during the process to determine renewable energy sites.

“We’ve been inundated with solar,” Russ Hodgkins, Westminster town manager, told the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee on Wednesday. He said his town supports renewable energy, but the locations chosen so far are taking prime agriculture and industrial sites out of the economy. “There’s not one of them that’s in a great location.”

Whether this growing throng of rebels will get their way is another matter. While they are railing against what they consider poorly sited projects, Gov. Peter Shumlin has been touting the growth of renewable energy and the jobs it brings.

Wednesday’s events — hours of meetings with the Senate and House Natural Resources and Energy committees and a noontime press conference and rally — were organized by Sen. John Rodgers (D-Essex/Orleans), author of a bill calling for a ban on industrial wind projects.

“In 1968, Vermont passed a landmark anti-billboard law,” Rodgers told those gathered for the press conference. The “billboard ban is what inspired me to do what I’ve known to be right for years, and that is introduce S. 210, to ban industrial wind from Vermont.”

Prospects for a ban seem as weak this year as in previous years, however. “We’ll listen, but I think the problem with that proposal is we have an orderly development process,” said Sen. Chris Bray (D-Addison), chair of the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee.

Bray insists, though, that he’s working on changes that will help, at least on the solar front. “That is the most urgent need we are responding to,” Bray said.

His committee is putting together a bill — S.230 — that he hopes will offer incentives to build solar projects in specific locations and direct the Public Service Board to consider town plans in approving projects. Changes coming to the state’s net metering regulations will also likely slow down the proliferation of solar projects, he said.

Bray’s House counterpart, Rep. Tony Klein (D-East Montpelier), said he’ll await the Senate’s bill, but he agreed changes to energy-project siting should be made this year, even if there is not yet agreement on what those should be. He said, “There’s a pretty clear message that towns do not think they’re being heard.”
Seven Days

This video pulls together reports on the uprising from Burlington Free Press and NewsChannel 5.

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Vermonters rally at Statehouse for new rules governing wind projects – Sen. Rodgers sponsors bill to ban more industrial-scale turbines
Stewart Ledbetter
WPTZ-News Channel 5
21 January 2016

MONTPELIER, Vt. — More than 100 Vermonters turned out Wednesday at the Statehouse to demand changes in the law governing the siting of industrial-scale energy projects.

At noon, the noisy crowd jammed into the Statehouse gallery to cheer Sen. John Rodgers, the Essex-Orleans Democrat who has introduced Senate Bill 210.

“This rebellion has spread to dozens of towns across Vermont and I believe it will continue to spread,” Rodgers told the crowd. “We won’t achieve our energy goals in the face of this rebellion. And I offer a solution. First, I propose we ban industrial wind in Vermont.”

The crowd erupted in applause.

Rodgers said Vermonters resent a system which allows wind developers who stand to earn millions from turbines to hire lawyers to argue their case before the Vermont Public Service Board — while citizens most impacted and the towns that host the projects have little voice and no veto power.

S. 210 would make a second key change, shifting permitting for renewable energy projects from the PSB to district environmental commissions and the development review process known as ACT 250. Supporters think Act 250 would provide citizens a far better shake.

Anthony Iarrapino, spokesman for Swanton Wind, a proposed turbine project in Franklin County, said the criticism was unfounded.

“If you look at the polls and the success of the projects we have (in Vermont) the majority of Vermonters understand how important wind is to our economy and getting us to clean energy goals,” he said.

Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, said the state’s goal of securing 90 percent of its energy from renewable sources will mean Vermonters have to get used to seeing turbines on mountaintops and large solar arrays in farm fields.

S. 210 has been referred to the Senate Natural Resources Committee for consideration.
WPTZ.com

Funny about all that!

That Vermonters are furious about the destruction of their thriving and healthy communities in ‘exchange’ for a wholly weather dependent power source; that’s intermittent and unreliable, requiring 100% of it’s capacity to be backed-up 100% of the time by conventional power generators; that, accordingly, has NO commercial value (save the massive power consumer and/or taxpayer subsidies it attracts); kills millions of birds and bats; and, with the incessant low-frequency noise and infrasound it generates, drives people mad in their homes, or drives them out of them altogether, is hardly a surprise.

What the wind industry hates most are facts. And anyone with the temerity to present them is targeted in a style and with a zeal that would have made the East German Stasi proud. Here’s just another example of the wind industry’s standard tactics.

AG’S Office investigating complaints against Annette Smith, anti-wind advocate
Mike Polhamus
VT Digger.org
23 January 2016

The state attorney general’s office has opened an investigation into criminal complaints against a prominent champion of Vermonters who are adversely affected by renewable development.

The attorney general’s office is investigating whether Annette Smith, executive director of Vermonters for a Clean Environment, has practiced law without a license — a charge with penalties left entirely to the court’s discretion.

Smith says the complaints that prompted the AG’s investigation are politically motivated.

Attorneys who have argued against Smith’s clients say she gives bad advice, unconstrained by the sanctions licensed attorneys would incur for similar behavior.

Smith says the AG’s investigation “is very intimidating.”

“I don’t know what to do. I think our work’s being shut down,” Smith said. “I believe this has the potential to shut down my organization of 16 years. It clearly falls under the definition of harassment.”

Residents who live near planned and existing renewable projects have claimed she’s their only advocate.

Smith said she represents people who too frequently have nowhere else to turn. Renewable energy developers hire talented attorneys against whom landowners near project sites have no other way of successfully representing themselves.

Many of these cases involve people who can’t afford a lawyer, and who didn’t want to become involved in legal proceedings to protect their interests, she said. Lawyers know it’s impossible to fight renewable energy developers, Smith said, and won’t take on affected landowners’ cases anyway.

“Anybody who does this with a lawyer has wasted tens of thousands of dollars,” she said. “The reason I’m doing this is so people have a voice without bankrupting themselves.”

The attorney general’s office would not offer comment on the case.

“There is a matter under investigation by the criminal division, and we can’t comment on it further, and we never comment on ongoing criminal investigation,” said John Treadwell, Chief of the Criminal Division at the AG’s office.

Practicing law without a license is a charge that has rarely been prosecuted in Vermont, Treadwell said. It carries potentially severe penalties. “It is punished as criminal contempt of the Vermont Supreme Court, and is potentially punishable by fine or imprisonment or both, in the court’s discretion,” Treadwell said.

“In the court’s discretion,” Treadwell said, means there are no maximum defined penalties.

Assistant Attorney General Zachary Chen named five cases in a letter notifying Smith of the investigation, and two attorneys were involved in both cases. Smith said one of them had previously accused her of practicing law without a license. Both have given Smith reason to believe they’ve sought to instigate an investigation against her, she said.

Joslyn Wilschek is one of the attorneys, and in a previous Public Service Board hearing she told hearing officers that Smith had been in that instance practicing law without a license.

Non-lawyers aid participants in legal and other proceedings all the time to good effect, Wilschek said, but Smith represents herself as having training that she actually lacks.

“She gives legal advice to landowners, and she drafts their filings to the Public Service Board, and I think it’s a real disservice, because she puts herself out there as having the knowledge of a lawyer, when she doesn’t,” Wilschek said.

Wilschek said she didn’t file a complaint against Smith with the AG’s office, but said she supports it and said that if asked, and if her clients consented, she’d testify Smith had done what she’s been accused of. Wilschek said her remarks reflect only her personal observation, and not her clients or their positions.

Based on what she’s seen, such charges have no basis in political motives, Wilschek said. “I disagree with people all the time — that’s what a lawyer does — but when someone does something this egregious, it’s not political, it’s protecting the public,” she said. “When you see someone putting themselves out there like a lawyer, it’s a real disservice to people who don’t understand the training a lawyer needs.”

People who Smith has assisted say they have no other effective advocate, and say they’re shut out of the hearing process for renewable projects by the excessive legality of the proceedings.

“What she does is she provides citizens — normal, everyday citizens in the state of Vermont — with a possibility of having any chance at participating in the Public Service Board process,” said Christine Lang.

Lang, with her husband and with Smith’s assistance, is attempting to persuade the Public Service Board to assess penalities on prospective wind developer Travis Belisle for constructing a meteorological tower without a permit. The met tower is a precursor to the wind turbine development project, and she says a permit filed with the board would have given the public advance notice.

State agencies and developers are well-represented by lawyers at Public Service Board hearings, while ordinary citizens are shut out of the process, Lang said.

“I think it’s a witch hunt to distract her from the work she’s trying to do to help citizens, because she’s the only one out there who’s helping citizens,” Lang said. “Does that make sense I should have to have an attorney to participate in what is supposed to be a public process?

“This is why this entire process is completely broken,” she said. “It is a developer-run process run by the developers and their lawyers, and they are getting everything they want, and they are going to destroy this state.”

Leslie Cadwell, another attorney who has represented wind developer David Blittersdorf, says Smith has led her clients to bad ends. Cadwell participated in a case against Smith that complaints with the AG’s office have highlighted as representative of Smith’s alleged illegal behavior.

“As a result of Annette’s participation in a case she was involved with before the Public Service Board, the town of Irasburg has violated open meetings law twice, and has admitted it,” Cadwell said.

Professional ethical standards lawyers abide by prohibit this kind of behavior, Cadwell said.

“If Annette wants to represent people in the Public Service Board process, or advise people about how to participate in the Public Service Board process, she ought to go to law school,” Cadwell said. “Or, in Vermont, she can actually do a four-year clerk program where she can learn how to be a lawyer and understand how to ethically represent her clients in courts.”

Vermont is one of few states that allows lawyers to work as clerks in lieu of law school as a means of studying to become an attorney, Cadwell said.

Cadwell said that she did not file complaints against Smith with the attorney general’s office.
VT Digger

What utter bunkum.

Annette Smith has absolutely no case to answer. She hasn’t represented herself to be legally qualified to practice law (to those she represents or anyone else); hasn’t raised a fee for her services; and hasn’t pretended to have qualifications that she does not possess.

Instead, all she has done, is to have given collective advice to, and advocated for and on behalf of, people who simply cannot afford legal representation; and done so in ‘Mickey Mouse’ hearings before an administrative planning panel (the Public Service Board); which has no Curial authority – and all the Judicial formality of the process required to obtain a driver’s licence at the DMV.

Planning panels and tribunals (indeed, Supreme and High Courts) hear self-presented plaintiffs, applicants and defendants on a routine and regular basis. It’s now so common as to be unremarkable – especially in planning cases.

In Australia, and other common law jurisdictions, otherwise unrepresented litigants are entitled to have what’s called a ‘McKenzie friend‘ represent them in courts of law.

The McKenzie friend openly gives legal advice and assistance in and out of court; and does not need to be legally qualified to do so. The crucial point is that litigants in person are entitled to have assistance, lay or professional, unless there are exceptional circumstances. Provided the McKenzie friend does not represent themselves to be legally qualified to practice law and doesn’t charge for their time (although charging for time is permitted in England and Wales), there can be no complaint from the court hearing the case, other parties or their lawyers about them giving advice, assistance and otherwise advocating for the litigants they help to present their cases.

Given the fact that there is no obligation on litigants, in any forum, to retain and pay for the services of a qualified lawyer, the charge against Annette Smith is pure, unadulterated nonsense; and is nothing more than the usual bullying, stand-over tactics employed by the wind industry and its parasites – tactics that see its goons beating up on pensioners, disabled farmers and middle-aged mothers.

The ridiculous nature of the developer instigated trumped-up charge against Annette Smith was noticed by another famous American community defender, Erin Brockovich – who has endorsed a crowd funding page for Annette’s legal defence costs on her facebook page – Erin Brockovich – noting that:

The head of Vermonters for a Clean Environment, Annette Smith, is under criminal investigation by the Vermont Attorney General’s office for alleged “unauthorized practice of law”. Whoever could have imagined helping people have a voice in regulatory proceedings would lead to this; it is obviously politically motivated. I am outraged. The charge is highly unusual; if there is prosecution, it would be tried at the Vermont Supreme Court. This hasn’t happened since 1962 and only five times in the history of Vermont. The legal community in Vermont is scratching their heads, outraged, and various things in between. A gofundme page was set up yesterday to help with her legal fees https://www.gofundme.com/74kx663w

With its ham-fisted attempt to crush Annette Smith and the communities she helps to defend, the wind industry can expect nothing but fury and revenge in Vermont, from here on. Let’s call it the beginning of a ‘revolution’.

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