Dysfunctional wind turbines!

Wind Pushers Losing Popularity!

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Wind Industry Still Wailing About ‘Uncertainty’ as Construction Finance ‘Drought’ Hits

February 8, 2016 by

banshee

Wind power outfits have now cottoned on to the fact (slow learners that they are) that Australia’s big power retailers have turned their backs on the wind to face the Sun, instead.

The former second-hand car salesmen that front the wind industry are still coming to grips with the recalcitrance of commercial retailers (we don’t count the ACT Government) who continue to refuse entering Power Purchase Agreements with wind power outfits (holding that stance since November 2012).

The big operators have absolutely no interest in wind power; and every interest in killing off the Large-Scale RET that created, and for the time being sustains, the wind industry.

As pointed out previously, the retailers’ switch to large-scale solar is a canny, but fleeting move – designed to avoid the shortfall penalty for the few years it takes for the LRET to collapse; as the political and economic toxicity of the policy escalates over the next year or two.

It is, after all, a pointless $3 billion a year power tax that runs until 2031 – for no other reason than to subsidise the production of insanely expensive and wholly unreliable wind power; at a time when Australia’s grid is swamped with oodles of the reliable, secure and affordable stuff.

Without PPAs with retailers, wind power outfits haven’t a hope in hell of obtaining bank finance to build any new wind farm capacity, as this ‘sackcloth and ashes’ piece from the SMH confirms.

Yass Valley Wind Farm recommended for approval, but retailer’s strike persists
Sydney Morning Herald
Lucy Cormack
4 February 2016

Financiers are yet to gain confidence that the legislative underpinning for renewable energy projects is going to be stable.

The state government has recommended approval for what could be one of Australia’s biggest wind farms, but continued uncertainty in the renewables sector may see the project added to the 6000 megawatt-strong “pile of wind farms” currently approved, but stalled, industry figures say.

The recommendation for approval of the Epuron Yass Valley Wind Farm by the NSW Department of Planning and Environment clears the way for the Planning and Assessment Commission to make its final decision on the wind farm.

While industry figures say the news is positive, it does not mean the wind farm will be built.

“This approval just adds to the 6000-megawatt pile of wind farms currently stalled:” Ric Brazzale, managing director …

“This approval just adds to the 6000-megawatt pile of wind farms currently stalled:” Ric Brazzale, managing director Green Energy Trading said of the Yass Valley Wind Farm.

“We’ve lost count of these announcements,” said Ric Brazzale, managing director of Green Energy Trading.

“It’s an important part of the process, but this approval just adds to the 6000-megawatt pile of wind farms currently stalled.”

The battle for new projects is obtaining finance and power purchase agreements: contracts with energy companies to sell electricity and large-scale generation certificates (LGCs).

Large-scale generation certificates are used by Renewable Energy Target-liable entities to meet compliance obligations based on the volume of electricity they purchase each year.

Mr Brazzale said the difficulty in sealing power purchase agreements is tied to the long-embattled context of renewable energy in Australia.

“They can’t raise finance because banks and financiers don’t want to go anywhere near these contracts unless they are contracted with energy retailers,” he said.

“So, why don’t financiers do it? The reason is, they are yet to gain confidence that the legislative underpinning is going to be stable,” he said. “We’ve heard from Greg Hunt and that helps, but if you want retailers and financiers to change, you need the Prime Minister to come out and say unequivocally, ‘We are not going to reduce the target.’”

Solar Council chief executive John Grimes agreed that any “drought” in renewables investment will only be reversed with increased positive sentiment from the government.

“Large scale projects are all built on policy, stability and confidence, but the entire renewable energy market has been massively disrupted by the federal government’s review and slashing of the Renewable Energy Target.”

Mr Grimes’ concern is that, despite having a new Prime Minister, “nothing has changed”.

“No moves have been made by the federal government to ensure that certainty and policy stability is returned to the sector,” he said. “It’s a double-edged sword. If power companies don’t build projects they will be slugged with a charge equivalent, which has a real post-tax value of $93 per large-scale generation certificate.”

Mr Grimes said liable entities are using that fact to go back to the government and say they cannot build the projects to meet the target in the time permitted.

“Their argument will be, if the federal government doesn’t slash the Renewable Energy Target again, then that price will be passed through to consumers and everyone will be paying for capacity that was never built,” he said.

At its proposed capacity of 124 turbines, the Yass Valley Wind Farm would have the capacity to power more than 130,000 homes each year, however the government’s recommendation suggests a significant reduction in the project’s scale, down to 79 turbines.

Epuron executive director Martin Poole said despite the recommended reduction “attitudes everywhere have improved” towards wind energy, since Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull took the leadership.

“It is important that NSW demonstrates its commitment to maximising the local jobs and expertise that flow from the transition to a cleaner electricity sector.”

Mr Brazzale estimates that processes contracting for large-scale generation certificates in the ACT, Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria suggest “there are probably more than 1000 megawatts of projects that could be committed over the next year or so.”

Despite being enough to power around 430,000 homes annually, Mr Brazzale said that figure is nowhere near enough to meet the large-scale renewable energy target by 2018.

“We need four times that level to ensure we meet the 2018 target, which obviously we’re not going to achieve. That’s why the LGC price is high, because it’s reflecting that the market is not going to meet the target.”
Sydney Morning Herald

The usual fawning starry-eyed ‘analysis’ from Fairfax there – with bunkum about a pie-in-the-sky wind farm one day “powering more than 130,000 homes”. Unless those households are prepared to sit freezing or boiling in the dark around 70% of the time, they will, in fact, be ‘powered’ by coal, gas and hydro (in that order).

That journalists are still pushing that kind of wind industry propaganda in 2016 is not just dumb, it’s lazy. A quick glance at Aneroid Energy debunks that myth. Here’s SA’s 17 wind farms (notional capacity of 1,477MW) ‘powering’ not so much as a kettle on 3 May 2015:

3 May 2015 SA

The other line that escapes any sensible criticism from Fairfax is what John Grimes says about the looming and massive cost of the LRET

“It’s a double-edged sword. If power companies don’t build projects they will be slugged with a charge equivalent, which has a real post-tax value of $93 per large-scale generation certificate.” …

“Their argument will be, if the federal government doesn’t slash the Renewable Energy Target again, then that price will be passed through to consumers and everyone will be paying for capacity that was never built,”

The cost of the LRET to power consumers will actually be lower if further wind power capacity is NOT built, than if it is. Retailers will get hit with the shortfall penalty (what Grimes calls ‘a charge equivalent’) and the cost of the REC – from here, the combined cost of which will exceed $3 billion a year, all recovered as a Federal Tax on all power consumers:

What Kills the Australian Wind Industry: A $45 Billion Federal Power Tax

What Grimes leaves out, of course, is that the wind power capacity that Epuron, Infigen & Co are so desperate to build (in order to keep their Ponzi scheme from collapsing, as it has with Pacific Hydro) – will cost at least a further $80-100 billion, in terms of extra turbines and the duplicated network costs needed to hook them up to the grid: all requiring fat returns to investors; costs and returns that can only be recouped through escalating power bills:

Ian Macfarlane, Greg Hunt & Australia’s Wind Power Debacle: is it Dumb and Dumber 2, or Liar Liar?

In the post above we looked at the additional costs of building the wind power capacity needed to avoid the shortfall penalty – including the $30 billion or so needed to build a duplicated transmission grid.

That is, a network largely, if not exclusively, devoted to sending wind power output from remote, rural locations to urban population centres (where the demand is) that will only ever carry meaningful output 30-35% of the time, at best. The balance of the time, networks devoted to carrying wind power will carry nothing – for lengthy periods there will be no return on the capital cost – the lines will simply lay idle until the wind picks up.

The fact that there is no grid capacity available to take wind power from remote locations was pointed to by GE boss, Peter Cowling in this article, as one of the key reasons that there will be no new wind farms built in Australia (see our post here).

But let’s return to wailing about the requirement for policy ‘certainty’. What that wailing is really about, is a plea for the Federal government (read ‘taxpayer and power consumer’) to underwrite a politically toxic policy, that has already been slashed from an ultimate annual target of 41,000GWh to 33,000GWh, for precisely that reason.

In 2015, faced with the fact that the target could never be met, both Labor and the Coalition were forced to cut the target before the shortfall penalty inevitably took effect. But that was simply to stall the LRET’s ultimate collapse: the same factors Epuron moan about above are still in play. There will be no increase in wind power capacity; the shortfall penalty will apply; and the Federal government will be forced to cut the target, once again.

It’s the fact it was cut once that has bankers and retailers refusing to lend or sign PPAs. And, as with any ‘business’ that relies for its very existence on a piece of policy, what the government once did, can be just as easily undone – in full.

What kills the LRET – and the wind industry with it – is the same set of forces that led to the demise of the Australian wool industry. The lessons and parallels drawn from the implosion of its Federally mandated subsidy scheme during the 1990s – all but killing the industry and costing growers and taxpayers tens of billions of dollars – are worth repeating.

The wool industry’s “cause of death” was the Federally backed Reserve Price Support scheme (RPS), which set a guaranteed minimum price for all Australian wool.

A little background on the RPS

For over 150 years, Australia happily rode on the sheep’s back: until the 1970s the wool industry was, for the Australian economy, the “goose that laid the golden egg”; textile manufacturers from all over the world clamoured for the fibre; which was, for most of that time, the largest single commodity export by value; Australia produces over 80% of the world’s apparel wool. However, as fashions changed (the three-piece wool suit became, well, so “yesterday”) and new synthetics began to eat into its market share, the dominance of Australian apparel wool was no longer a certainty.

Against the backdrop of increasing competition, for the wool industry there was always the perennial issue, not only of fluctuating demand, but also of wildly fluctuating swings in production. Dorothea McKellar’s land of “droughts and flooding rains” meant that a few years of meagre production (and favourable, and even phenomenal, wool prices) would be soon eclipsed by sheds and wool stores overflowing with fibre ready for market (sending prices and woolgrower profits plummeting).

The response to these (often climate driven) marketing “swings and roundabouts”, was the establishment of the Australian Wool Corporation (AWC) and the RPS in 1973.

The RPS would set a minimum price for all types of wool, guaranteeing woolgrowers a minimum return; such that if supply exceeded demand, the AWC would purchase any wool being offered, if it failed to reach the minimum price set (referred to as the “floor price”).

Wool being offered at auction that failed to meet the floor price was purchased by the AWC and “stockpiled” (ie stored), until such time as either supply fell or demand conditions improved; at which point the AWC would offer stockpiled wool to the trade. The aim being the smooth and more orderly marketing of wool over the supply and demand cycle; with higher average returns to growers; and less risk for buyers and sellers along the way.

The scheme worked swimmingly (as designed and intended) until the late 1980s.

The reserve price set under the RPS was fixed in Australian dollar terms. However, with the float of the Australian dollar in 1983 (resulting in a massive 40% depreciation of the dollar between February 1985 and August 1986), maintaining the reserve price without reference to the terms of trade and fluctuations in trading currencies (particularly the US dollar) set the scheme up for a spectacular failure; simply because what goes down can just as easily go up.

During the 1980s, there was a solid increase in demand for wool, driven by demand from the USSR, a then fast growing Japan, buoyant Europeans, and a newly emergent China, as a textile manufacturer and consumer. However, that surge in demand occurred in the context of an Australian dollar trading in a range around US$0.55-75.

During the 1980s, under pressure from wool grower lobby groups, the floor price was continually increased: from 1986 to July 1988 the floor price jumped 71% to 870 cents per kilogram.

That did not, in itself, create any problems: a general surge in demand, relatively low production and a plummeting Australian dollar generated auction room sale prices well above the rising floor price, which reached their zenith in April 1988: the market indicator peaked at 1269 cents per kg, and the market continued its bull run for most of that year, well above the 870 floor price set in July.

However, as international economic conditions worsened, Australian interest rates soared (the consequence of Paul Keating’s “recession that we had to have”) and the value of the Australian dollar with it (hitting US$0.80 by early 1990), the market indicator headed south and, over the next few years, the AWC was forced to purchase over 80% of the Australian wool clip at the 870 cent per kg floor price. Adding to the AWC’s difficulties was a massive surge in production; driven by growers responding to the high and “guaranteed” floor price; and a run of exceptional growing seasons (1989 being a standout across Australia). Production went from 727 million kg in 1983/84 to over 1 billion kg in 1990/91.

Despite worsening market conditions, the AWC, under pressure from wool grower lobby groups, was forced to maintain the 870 cent per kilogram floor price.

However, from around August 1989, international wool buyers simply sat on their hands in auction sale rooms (in May 1990 the AWC bought 87.5% of the offering); and waited for the RPS to implode.

Knowing that the system was unsustainable, the last thing that buyers wanted was to be caught with wool purchased at prices above the floor price which, when the floor price was cut or collapsed, would immediately be worth less than what they had paid for it. Moreover, traders were dumping stock as fast as they could to avoid the risk of a collapse in the RPS and, therefore, a collapse in the price of any wool they happened to hold.

The RPS was ultimately backed by the Federal government. With the buying trade sitting on their hands, those responsible for maintaining the floor price ended up in a staring competition, the only question was, who would blink first: the AWC (or, rather, the government underwriting the RPS); or the buyers?

With the AWC purchasing millions of bales of wool at the floor price the cost of supporting the RPS was running into the billions of dollars: primarily the support came from a grower levy on sales, but, at the point which that soon became insufficient to support the RPS (despite upping the levy from 8% to 25%), support came from $billions in mounting government debt; the buyers had no reason to blink.

Instead, in May 1990, the government announced its decision to retreat to a new floor price of 700 cents per kilogram, and directed the AWC to fight on in support of the reduced floor price. The Minister for Primary Industry, John Kerin boldly asserting that the 700 cent floor price was “immutable, the floor price will not be reduced”.

But, having blinked once, the buyers largely continued to sit on their hands and simply waited for the government to blink again. The stockpile continued to balloon; and with it government debt: by February 1991 the stockpile reached 4.77 million bales (equivalent to a full year’s production); the accrued government debt stood at $2.8 billion; and the cost of storing the stockpile was over $1 million a day.

Faced with the inevitable, the government blinked, again: John Kerin was forced to eat his words about the floor price being “immutable”; on 11 February 1991, announcing the suspension of the floor price. The RPS had totally collapsed; the buyers had won.

The wool industry’s saga is beautifully, if tragically, told by Charles Massy in “Breaking the Sheep’s Back” (2011, UQP), which should be required reading for any of our political betters pretending to know more than the market (eg, the power market).

Which brings us to the lessons and parallels.

The LRET effectively sets the price for RECs: the minimum price is meant to be set by the shortfall charge of $65 per MWh (rising to $93 when account is given to the tax benefit), as the penalty begins to apply on the shortfall (as detailed above). That equation is based on an ultimate 33,000 GWh target.

In the event that the cost of the shortfall charge was reduced, there would be a commensurate fall in the REC price. Likewise, if the LRET target was further reduced: the total number of MWhs which would then attract the shortfall charge if RECs were not purchased would fall too; also resulting in a fall in the REC price.

In addition, any reduction in the LRET would simply result in a reduction in the demand for RECs overall: fewer RECs would need to be purchased and surrendered during the life of the LRET; again, resulting in a fall in the REC price. Of course, were the LRET to be scrapped in its entirety, RECs would become utterly worthless.

The retailers, are alive to all of this, hence their reluctance to enter PPAs for the purpose of purchasing RECs; agreements which run for a minimum of 15 years.

In December 2014, Ian “Macca” Macfarlane and his youthful ward, Greg Hunt started running around pushing for a target of 27,000 GWh; and their boss, Tony Abbott made clear that he wanted to kill it outright. There followed overtures from the Labor opposition pitching for a target around 35,000 GWh.

Whether they knew it or not – with their public debate on what an amended target should be – in the staring competition with retailers – these boys blinked.

Faced with the inevitable political furore that will erupt when power consumers (ie, voters) realise they are being whacked with the full cost (and some) of the shortfall charge (being nothing more than a “stealth tax” to be recovered by retailers via their power bills), the pressure will mount on both sides of politics to slash the LRET – once again.

That both Labor and the Coalition have already blinked (in obvious recognition of the brewing political storm in power punter land over the inevitable imposition of the shortfall charge) is not lost on the likes of Grant King from Origin, and all of Australia’s other electricity retailers.

And for retail power buyers the choice of sticking with permanent recalcitrance has been made even easier: with the previous PM Tony Abbot making it plain that he would have cut the LRET even harder, were it not for a hostile Senate; and Labor’s Bill Shorten pushing for an entirely ludicrous 50% LRET – that would require a further 10,000 of these things to be speared all over Australia’s rural heartland. Where there was once ‘bipartisan’ support for these things, the major parties are diametrically opposed.

Grant King

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With the politics of the LRET already on the nose, like wool buyers sitting on their hands in sale rooms during 1990, waiting for the floor price to collapse, electricity retailers need only sit back and wait for the whole LRET scheme to implode.

Like wool buyers refusing to buy above the floor price and carry stock with the risk of the RPS collapsing, why would electricity retailers sign up for 15 year long PPAs with wind power outfits in order to purchase a stream of RECs over that period, knowing the value of those certificates depends entirely upon a scheme which is both economically and politically unsustainable?

However, the similarities between the wool market and the market for wind power end right about there.

There is, and always was, a natural market for Australian wool; the only issue during the late 80s and early 90s was the price that had to be paid by buyers to beat the floor price, set artificially under the RPS.

Wind power has no such market.

Available only in fits and spurts, and at crazy, random intervals, at a price which is 3-4 times that of conventional generation, retailers have no incentive to purchase it.

In the absence of the threat of the $65 per MWh fine (the stick), coupled with the promise of pocketing $93 as a subsidy in the form of a REC (the carrot), electricity retailers would not touch wind power with a barge pole: it simply has no commercial value.

Moreover, with an abundance of conventional generation capacity in Australia at present, retailers are very much in a “buyers’ market”.

Overcapacity, coupled with shrinking demand (thanks to policies like the LRET that are killing mineral processors, manufacturing and industry) means that retailers can expect to see wholesale prices decline over the next few years, at least. And, for the first time in almost 20 years, a sharply declining Australian economy is a fast looming reality: unemployed households have an even tougher time paying rocketing power bills.

With those fundamentals in mind, electricity retailers will simply opt to pay the shortfall charge and recover it from power consumers, knowing that that situation will not last for very long.

Sooner or later, the Federal government (whichever side is in power) will have to face an electorate furious at the fact that their power bills have gone through the roof, as a result of a policy that achieved absolutely nothing.

Current PM, Malcolm Turnbull might mouth platitudes about ‘renewables’ and ‘innovation’, but his chances of leading the Coalition to a second term in power are tied to fundamental ‘mum and dad’ policies like electricity costs.

Power prices matter; and in a battle between Australia’s Big 3 Retailers and the LRET, STT’s money is firmly on commercial self-interest.

STT hears that the big retailers plan to exhaust the pile of RECs that they’re sitting on at present, while building a few large-scale solar power facilities, in order to obtain the RECs needed to avoid the shortfall charge; and to wait for the politics to turn gangrenous. As soon as the LRET gets scrapped, the plan is to sell the panels back into the residential roof-top market.

The cost of the LRET – and all that comes with it – to retail customers is at the heart of what’s driving retailers’ efforts to crush the LRET; and the wind industry with it.

This might sound obvious, if not a little silly: electricity retailers are NOT in the business of NOT selling power.

Adding a $45 billion electricity tax to retail power bills can only make power even less affordable to tens of thousands of households and struggling businesses, indeed whole industries, meaning fewer and fewer customers for retailers like Origin, AGL and EnergyAustralia.

The strategy adopted by retailers of refusing to ‘play ball’ by signing up for PPAs will, ultimately, kill the LRET; it’s a strategy aimed at being able to sell more power, at affordable prices, to more households and businesses.

And it’s working a treat, so far.

The wind industry’s incessant daily whining about “uncertainty”, is simply a signal that the retailers have already won. Once upon a time, the wind industry and its parasites used to cling to the idea that the RET “has bi-partisan support“, as a self-comforting mantra: but not anymore. And it’s the retailers’ refusal to sign PPAs that’s thrown the spanner in the wind industry’s works.

While the likes of Epuron and Infigen will continue to work themselves into a lather about their inevitable fate, in the meantime, retailers, like Origin, AGL and EnergyAustralia, can simply sit back, watch the political fireworks, and wait for the inevitable and complete collapse of the LRET; and, with it, the Australian wind industry.

In this ‘drought’ only the retailers have the capacity to survive.

drought-2004

Looking Forward to WindPushers being Held Accountable!

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

February 6, 2016 by

200355536-002

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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.

Jury-being-sworn-in-006

Germans Gear Up to Fight the Windweasels, Politically!

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German Opposition to Wind Farms Spawns New Political Party

February 4, 2016 by

German wind farm

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

angry german kid

Wind Weasels Don’t Care Who They Destroy!!

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

February 2, 2016 by

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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

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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

Two-hundred kilometers connect the Pacific Ocean with the Atlantic. Photo archive of the first consultation that occurred in the Isthmus, specifically regarding Southern wind farm.

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

Archaeological remains found by farmers on their land.

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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?

Community women demonstrate against the wind projects on their ancestral land.

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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

Many homes have been surrounded by wind farms across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

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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.

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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

There is currently no established wind farm that respects biodiversity. (Photo: Renata Bessi) There is currently no established wind farm that respects biodiversity.

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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

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

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

February 1, 2016 by

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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!

Nuclear-load-follow-graph

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.

June 2015 National

[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.

JULY22

[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…

Facts

A Worthy Opponent, for the Wind-Pushers!

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

January 31, 2016 by

gillon mclachlan

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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.

Rosebank

Vermonters Stand Up Against the Windpushers!

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

January 30, 2016 by 1 Comment

Mount Hunger

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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.

ridges not renewable

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.

bear

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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.”

vote

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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

ridgeline destruction

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

tubine protest

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.

protest

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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

angry-mob

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’.

vive la resistance

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Bankers & Investors Close Ranks & Doom Wind Industry to Death By A Thousand Cuts

January 28, 2016 by

solar-panels-at-Nyngan

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Earlier this week we looked at how Australia’s big power retailers have turned their backs to the wind to face the Sun, instead.

Commercial retailers (we don’t count the ACT Government) haven’t entered any Power Purchase Agreements with wind power outfits since November 2012; and, we hear, have determined not to enter any more PPAs for wind power, ever again.

The big operators have absolutely no interest in wind power; and every interest in killing off the Large-Scale RET that created, and for the time being sustains, the wind industry.

As pointed out previously, the retailers’ switch to large-scale solar is a canny, but fleeting move – designed to avoid the shortfall penalty for the few years it takes for the LRET to collapse; as the political and economic toxicity of the policy escalates over the next year or two.

It is, after all, a pointless $3 billion a year power tax that runs until 2031 – for no other reason than to subsidise the production of insanely expensive and wholly unreliable wind power; at a time when Australia’s grid is swamped with oodles of the reliable, secure and affordable stuff.

Without PPAs with retailers, wind power outfits haven’t a hope in hell of obtaining bank finance to build any new wind farm capacity; and the retailers’ recalcitrance has investors spooked, too – as the following articles attest.

Wind optimism stalls
The Courier
Matthew Dixon and Peter Hannam
16 January 2016

STALLED: Investment in large wind projects isn’t coming as quickly as expected.

THE confidence that everyone had expected to return to the renewable energy sector following the demise of Tony Abbott is yet to come to fruition.

Investors spent just $15 million since February 2014 on big wind, solar or other clean energy projects that were not otherwise supported by government programs such as the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

That figure is a huge drop from when investment peaked in 2011 on the back of government support for renewables.

The figures and belief that the industry may have stagnated according to an annual survey by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Despite Mr Abbott’s removal as prime minister, and many key figures in the industry expectations of a return to bigger levels of investment, there is no certainty that the investment will return in 2016.

With a number of major wind farms in the Ballarat area already securing planning approval and only waiting on investment for construction to begin, development has stagnated.

This includes huge farms planned in Stockyard Hill and within the Moorabool Shire.

Australian Wind Alliance national coordinator Andrew Bray said the industry had not rebounded as some had hoped, but there was still a lot of optimism.

“It is definitely the case that the market has not recovered since the Abbott government’s attack on the Renewable Energy Target,” he said.

“While there appears to be some optimism surrounding projects starting to progress, that hasn’t eventuated.

“It is now up to all the players, the banks, the retailers to come to the table and start resolving this impasse.”

The Abbott government’s repeal of the carbon tax in July 2014 – which removed long-term price support – and a mishandled review that led ultimately to a cut of about one-fifth in the 2020 Renewable Energy Target meant “confidence evaporated” in the sector according to Kobad Bhavnagri, head of Bloomberg New Energy Finance in Australia.

“It can’t be understated that the actions of the Abbott government have destroyed confidence in the renewable energy market,” Mr Bhavnagri said.

“Lenders in the market are almost all of the view that the political risks in the RET … have made it too risky to invest in.”
The Courier

Predictable ‘sackcloth and ashes’ stuff from a pair of typically deludedFairfax wind-cultists, but the line they pull from Bloomberg’s boffin that: “Lenders in the market are almost all of the view that the political risks in the RET … have made it too risky to invest in” is absolutely spot on!

Not only are investors not game to throw so much as a shekel at wind power in Australia anymore, those with skin in the game are cutting and running as fast as their panicked, jelly-legs can carry them.

To give some insight into the fear that’s driving them, we’ll head back in time to trace a little tale about a Spanish wind power outfit’s efforts to ditch the Taralga wind farm in NSW.

Renewable energy sector crisis forces Banco Santander to quit Taralga wind farm
Sydney Morning Herald
Angela Macdonald-Smith
31 March 2015

Banco Santander, a major investor in renewable energy, will sell its only Australian wind farm and exit the local sector because of policy uncertainty that has dragged the industry into crisis.

Santander will seek a buyer for its 90 per cent stake in the 106.8 megawatt Taralga wind farm near Goulburn, which is not being included in the renewable energy fund it set up late last year with two Canadian pension giants because of the perceived poor prospects for the sector in Australia, say sources.

David Smith, executive director of Santander in Sydney, declined to comment.

Australia’s renewable energy sector has been left in limbo by the political debate surrounding the country’s 2020 renewable energy target. The government and Labor Opposition agree the 41,000GWh target for large-scale renewable energy needs to be reduced to suit the downturn in total power demand from the grid, but have been unable to agree on a compromise.

As of last week, the government was proposing a 2020 target of 32,000GWh, while Labor wants a target in the high 30,000GWh range. A compromise suggested by the Clean Energy Council at 33,500GWh, up from the current level of about 17,000GWh, has failed to find backing.

Investment in large-scale renewable energy collapsed by almost 90 per cent in 2014 as a result of the deadlock, which has been criticised by several large foreign investors in the local renewable energy sector, including GE, Spain’s Fotowatio Renewable Venture and Infigen Energy cornerstone shareholder, the Children’s Investment Fund. They have all warned of the harm to Australia’s sovereign risk, which will deter long-term infrastructure investors.

In December, Santander struck a deal with the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board in Canada to transfer its portfolio of renewable energy and water infrastructure assets into a new company owned equally by all three parties. But despite the partners having an appetite for other infrastructure assets in Australia, the wind farm was excluded from the $US2 billion-plus ($2.6 billion) portfolio of assets in the new company because of the uncertainty around the RET and the decision by the Coalition government to ditch the carbon tax, say sources close to the company.

The new company will, however, invest in Brazil and Mexico, which are seen as offering better prospects for renewable energy investors than Australia.

“It is quite clear that the uncertainty around the RET and other changes to policy that have occurred over the past few years has created a lot of uncertainty for investors in the renewable energy space,” said Richard Pillinger at BlueNRGY LLC, which owns 10 per cent of the Taralga wind farm.

The Taralga wind farm, which has a 10-year contract to supply power to EnergyAustralia, was financed with about $280 million from Santander, CBD Energy, Danish export credit agency EKF, ANZ and the federal government’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Production of electricity from the first of the 51 wind turbines began in December.

CBD Energy has since gone into administration and been acquired by US-based BlueNRGY LLC.

Santander is closing the Sydney office for its equity investment arm, which focuses on renewable energy, in mid-2015.
Sydney Morning Herald

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With the dreaded Tony Abbott little more than political history, and the ‘immutable’ 33,000 GWh annual LRET target now set in stone (just like the previous 41,000 GWh target!), Banco Santander should have been knocked to the floor with a rush of cashed-up and willing buyers.

So, let’s wind the clock forward and tally up the bids for Taralga.

Taralga Wind Farm sale runs out of puff
The Australian
Bridget Carter and Gretchen Friemann
22 January 2016

The sale of the Taralga Wind Farm could be put on hold, with sources suggesting the sales process for the asset generated limited buyer interest.

Apparently, one mystery bidder did circle the operation, but it is now thought unlikely it is still interested.

AMP Capital is among other groups that had a look in the early stages.

But sources say that the carrying value of the asset is too high, and long-dated swaps in the capital structure that are difficult to change are deterring buyers.

The Spanish owners, Banco Santander, appointed ANZ last year to sell the wind farm on the NSW coast, 45km north of Goulburn.

Taralga was expected to sell for about $200 million.

It gained state approval in 2012 to build 51 wind turbines, generating 106.8 megawatts of electricity.

Banco Santander, the world’s third-largest clean energy lender, had moved to sell the asset as part of its decision to exit the Australian market.

It is understood to have reached a global tie-up with some of Canada’s pension funds in recent times.
The Australian

Not a serious bid in sight! Whatever could have got investors to balk at a ‘sure-fire’ one-way bet?

Could it be that investors have worked out that ANY business that depends entirely on a piece of government policy can be done in at the stroke of a pen?

For STT’s analysis of what’s behind the investors’ panic see: Wind Industry Still Wailing About ‘Uncertainty’ as Australian Retailers Continue to Reject Wind Power ‘Deals’

We’ve said it before and we’ll keep saying it: the wind industry is among the greatest Ponzi schemes of all time. If you have so much as a penny anywhere near it, then grab it and get out fast.

please-take-a-moment-and-look-around-and-find-the-nearest-exit

Wind Weasel Wants To Attack Innocent Victims…

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Wind Industry Peopled by Career Criminals: Convicted Felon Launches Ludicrous Defamation Claim Against Opponents

January 27, 2016 by

Definition of fraud

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

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

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

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

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

Now, here’s another story detailing not only the fact that the wind industry is peopled by career criminals, but also that their audacity knows no bounds.

Wind farm developer sues project opponents for defamation
Arkansas Online
Dan Holtmeyer
16 January 2016

The CEO of the company hoping to build the state’s first wind farm west of Springdale has sued two of the project’s opponents for defamation.

Jody Davis, head of Texas-based Dragonfly Industries International, claims several disparaging posts made by Jonathon and Vivian Hamby on the “Stop the Elm Springs Wind Farm” Facebook page aren’t true and have damaged his and his company’s reputation. Davis filed the lawsuit in Washington County Circuit Court and asks for a judge to order the married couple to remove the posts, compensate Davis for the damage done and pay punitive damages.

The lawsuit cites five examples of the posts, including one in November asking of Davis and another man involved in the project, “Do these look like ‘experts’ in wind energy to you, or do they look like career criminals who scam people out of their hard-earned money?” Davis claims the Hambys knew the statements were false or were published with reckless disregard of the truth.

That post referred to Davis’s history of crimes involving money. Davis pleaded guilty in 2009 to embezzling about $785,000 from three organizations in Oklahoma and served 17 months in prison, according to federal court documents. He was also sentenced to probation in Arkansas for a hot-check violation in 1999.

The Hambys’ attorney, Travis Story, dismissed the complaint in a statement as an attempt to intimidate the Hambys. The truth is “an absolute defense” in defamation cases, Story wrote.

“This is a pathetic and desperate move by Jody Davis,” Jonathon Hamby said Friday evening. “His criminal history is what is causing him problems, not some Facebook post.”

Davis didn’t return an email or phone message requesting comment Friday evening. Last year he said he had paid for and had grown past his mistakes.

“It is really sad that the press and the community wish to put more emphasis on tearing a person down who has truly changed their life and worked hard to build a life and future for their family that is structured around Godly relationships,” Davis wrote in an email last month.

Davis and other Dragonfly representatives have said they plan to build dozens of turbines on a 300-acre site on the western edge of Elm Springs, a town of about 1,700 people. They have said they intend to use a unique turbine design that’s quieter, safer for wildlife and more efficient than the standard design.

The Hambys live next to the land. They and other neighbors worried about the project’s impact on their health and property value and said the turbine design was untested and unproven. After the City Council approved the land’s annexation into Elm Springs last fall, the Hambys were involved with the successful petition drive to put the annexation up for a public vote. The vote’s scheduled for March 1.

Elite Energy, a related company that owns the site, tried to get the land rezoned from residential-agricultural use for the project but dropped the request in December. Hamby said he believed the project could still go forward, because residential-agricultural zoning allows utility facilities under city code.

At the Planning Commission’s meeting Monday, chairman Matt Casey said he agreed the 150-foot turbines could be built on the land as zoned, according to a recording of the meeting. The project would still need building permits and perhaps other permitting before going forward, Casey said. The commission didn’t take any formal action.

Jonathon Hamby attended the meeting and said neighbors’ concerns must be addressed.

“It seems like you’re trying to find a way around this,” he told the commission.

Mayor Harold Douthit said Hamby and others had several public opportunities to speak their minds. Hamby and Douthit argued for a moment before Casey ended public comment and adjourned the meeting.
Arkansas Online

As attorney, Travis Story, correctly points out, “the truth is “an absolute defense” in defamation cases”. Indeed it is.

Now, here’s the unvarnished truth about Jody Davis

Wind Farm Company CEO Responds To Past Embezzlement Conviction
5 News KFSM
Zuzanna Sitek
19 November 2015

ELM SPRINGS (KFSM) — The chief executive officer of a Texas-based company that has proposed building a wind farm on 300 acres in Elm Springs addressed his past embezzling conviction Thursday (Nov. 19).

Jody Douglas Davis is the CEO of Dragonfly Industries International, LLC. On Aug. 10, 2009 he pleaded guilty to 18 counts of wire fraud and 64 counts of money laundering in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma. Upon sentencing 46 counts of money laundering were dropped and Davis was sentenced to a little over three years in federal prison. Davis was released July 18, 2011 and was put on supervised release until July 17, 2014, according to records from the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

On Thursday, he released the following statement to 5NEWS:

“I made some mistakes in my past. I paid a high price for these mistakes, including a debt to society. The experience transformed me. Since that time, I have tried to live my life as an example, so others might understand how they can be transformed.   I hope and believe my business and personal achievements in recent years reflect that example.”

The Board of Directors of Dragonfly Industries also sent 5NEWS at statement:

“The Board of Directors of Dragonfly Industries International, LLC are completely behind Mr. Davis as our Chief Executive Officer. As a company, we believe that there are such things as second chances when a person does not just modify their behavior but one goes through complete heart change. Mr. Jody Davis has our full support and we eagerly look forward to the future in all our business endeavors.”

Davis embezzled $1,153,627 from Windsong Marketing, LLC, Newsong Assembly and Buyers Assistance, LLC, according to a federal indictment. All three companies were involved in home-buying assistance and Davis was employed as an account executive from about August 2003 to February 2005, the indictment states.

Windsong, Newsong and Buyers would advance money to help home buyers in meeting their financial obligations for their home purchases. When the home purchase was completed, the seller of the home would send Windsong, Newsong and Buyers an amount that equaled or exceeded that which had been advanced to the home buyer. If the sale failed completely, then the home buyer would be obligated to return the amount which had been advanced to him or her to purchase the home.

From January 2004 to February 2005, Davis would contact home buyers and sellers and instruct them to wire transfer the money that was supposed to be returned to Newsong, Windsong and Buyers to a bank account he had set up at First Pryority Bank in Pryor, Oklahoma instead of wiring the money into bank accounts belonging to Newsong, Windsong and Buyers, according to the indictment. Davis had listed the account at First Pryority Bank as belonging to Autos, Inc. even though Davis was not in the business of vehicle sales or servicing, the indictment states.

Davis used the money sent to the Auto, Inc. account to settle prior debts, as well as to purchase vehicles, real estate, building and property improvements, boats, personal water craft, all-terrain vehicles, tractors and jewelry, including a diamond ring and earrings, according to the indictment.

As part of his plea agreement Davis must make restitution to his victims. Newsong, Windsong and Buyers were owned by Gayle Towry before the companies were dissolved, according to court documents. Upon Towry’s death in December 2009, just months after Davis’ guilty plea, restitution payments were transferred to one of his children, Kenneth Towry.

Kenneth Towry spoke with 5NEWS about the case and identified the Jody Davis pictured in the photograph on the Dragonfly Industries website as the same man who embezzled money from his father. Towry said of the amount Davis has been order to pay back, he has seen about $1,000 so far.

Towry’s attorney also confirmed the CEO of Dragonfly Industries and the man who defrauded his client were the same person.

Federal court documents show jurisdiction over Davis’ 2009 case was transferred from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas in August 2012.

Documents filed with the Texas Secretary of State’s office show Dragonfly Industries International, LLC filed its certificate of formation Sept. 5, 2014. The registered agent on the formation form is listed as Nadine R. King-Mays, an attorney based out of Dallas, Texas.

On a Texas Franchise Tax Public Information Report filed in 2015 Jody Davis is listed as a governing member of the company. His address on the form is listed as being in Farmington, Arkansas. The other governing members listed on the report are Phillip Ridings and Craig Cook. Both of their addresses are listed as being in Jupiter, Florida. According to the Dragonfly Industries website, Ridings is listed as the inventor of the wind turbine that the company has proposed to use in Elm Springs and Cook is listed as the chief operating officer.

5NEWS contacted the address where Dragonfly Industries has its office and was told the suite is undergoing renovation.

The wind farm project proposed in Elm Springs would be Dragonfly Industries’ first wind farm, according to the company’s website. Mayor Harold Douthit said he didn’t know about Davis’ criminal history, and said it wasn’t his place to ask.

“We give every business that wants to operate in Elm Springs no matter what they are, the same level of scrutiny,” Douthit said. “If they’re approved we welcome them, and we wish them well, but the scope of what we can do is limited to the proposal that’s in front of us.”

The Elm Springs City Council tabled a motion Monday (Nov. 16) to rezone the property for the wind farm to give council members more time to look into Dragonfly Industries and to address residents’ concerns.

Stop the Elm Springs Wind Farm, which opposes the project, issued the following statement Thursday:

“We were surprised to learn of Jody Davis’ criminal history this morning when the news story aired. Needless to say, we have been suspicious of this operation from the beginning. The individuals involved with Dragonfly have no wind energy experience, they have never built one of their “experimental” turbines, and they don’t have a buyer for their energy. In addition, they wanted to build a wind farm in an area that does not have the wind speeds necessary to sustain a wind farm. Mr. Davis is supposed to be present at the Elm Springs Planning Commission meeting on Dec. 14 to answer all of the public’s questions. We look forward to hearing what he has to say on Dec. 14.”

A court records search shows Jody Davis also has a criminal record in Arkansas.

In April 1999, Davis was accused of violating the Arkansas hot check law, according to records filed in Washington County Circuit Court. In January 1999 Davis wrote himself a check in the sum of $10,000 on an account at McIlroy Bank (now Arvest Bank) based on a deposit from Peoples Bank in Westville, Oklahoma which would later deny payment because of insufficient funds on deposit, the documents state.

In June 1999, Davis pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six years probation, according to court records. He was also ordered to pay $10,096 in restitution. Davis satisfied the conditions of his judgement in September 2002, records show.

Records show Davis was also arrested in May 2007 in Faulkner County on possession of a controlled substance. He later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years of probation. In 2009, just months before he pleaded guilty to federal embezzlement charges, he was arrested on a probation violation, according to court records.

In a letter from 2009 to a federal judge, Davis asks the court to let him voluntarily surrender to serve his time in federal prison. In the letter, Davis writes he developed a drug problem four years earlier because of a series of tragic events. He also asks the court to give him time to make sure his ill mother is taken care of and to see his children before beginning his federal prison sentence.

As part of his federal prison sentence, the court recommended Davis be put in a facility where he will have the opportunity to participate in the Bureau of Prisons’ Residential Drug Abuse Treatment Program. The court also recommended Davis be placed in a facility as close to Searcy, Arkansas as possible. The closest federal facility to Searcy is in Forrest City.

A search of the Arkansas Secretary of State website also shows Davis had three companies in Northwest Arkansas registered in his name: Global Growth Investments, Inc in Fayetteville in 2001, J.D. Davis, Inc in Springdale in 1998 and Star City Collision Center, LLC in Star City in 2009. The licenses for all three were revoked.
5 News KFSM

jody-davis-mug-shot

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And it seems that Jody Davis wasn’t the only felon attracted by the wind industry’s impeccable record for probity and integrity ….

Records show proposed wind farm representative has history of financial trouble
5 News KFSM
Zuzanna Sitek and Dillon Thomas
24 November 2015

ELM SPRINGS (KFSM) – Another key player involved in the proposal to build a wind farm in Elm Springs has a history of criminal and civil cases involving his finances.

Court documents obtained by 5NEWS show Cody Fell has a history of financial issues in Arkansas and Oklahoma. According to city council meeting minutes, Fell and two others represented Dragonfly Industries International at initial meetings with Elm Spring city leaders in December 2014. However, Fell’s official role in the company is unclear and he is not listed on the company’s website.

Court documents that go back to May 2003 show Fell has a history of failure to appear, failure to pay for services and a conviction for violating Arkansas’ hot check law.

In 2003, Fell was ordered to pay $5,357 in Washington County when he didn’t appear for a case involving one of his companies, Creative Home Designs, after he failed to pay his account with Smith Tile Company.

Later in March 2004, court records show Fell pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor violation of Arkansas’ hot check law after he knowingly made out a check to Air Control Corporation for $2,462 that wouldn’t clear. Fell was sentenced to 12 months of probation with minimal supervision.

Also in 2004, documents show Fell faced foreclosure on a property in Tontitown after owing Arkansas National Bank more than $316,000.

In 2005, after failing to respond to another court case, Fell and another one of his companies, Builder Services of Northwest Arkansas, were ordered to pay nearly $5,400 to United Bank of Springdale.

Then in 2009, First State Bank of Northwest Arkansas took Fell to court after he failed to make payments on a loan and again didn’t respond to a summons. Fell was ordered to pay nearly $29,000.

Fell also has a record of financial cases in Oklahoma.

In 2007, in Adair County, Fell was order to pay more than $40,500 to the Theodore R. Murray Living Trust after defaulting on a promissory note and mortgage.

That same year, Fell and one of his companies in Oklahoma, Custom Structures, was summoned to court by Tulsa Casting and ordered to pay nearly $3,500. Records show a bench warrant was issued for Fell in 2009, but was returned several months later after Fell couldn’t be located.

In 2008, Fell and another one of his companies, Eagle Management, were summoned to court for breach of contract, although the sum sought in the case was not available in online records. The records show a judge issued several bench warrants for Fell after he failed to appear in court. Fell and his wife filed for bankruptcy, but their case was dismissed “because of various misrepresentations of the defendants,” according to a citation for contempt.

And as recently as 2012, Fell and Eagle Management were once again brought to court for breach of contract after failing to pay a $55,000 contract. Again, the judgment was by default because records show Fell never showed up for court or responded to any summons.

Records show Fell has also been a defendant in several cases in Delaware County. In two of the civil cases the sought monetary relief exceeded $10,000.

Dragonfly Industry’s CEO, Jody Davis, released a statement last week regarding an embezzlement conviction from 2009 for which he served time in federal prison.

5NEWS contacted Davis regarding Fell’s background, but didn’t receive a response.

Elm Springs Mayor Harold Douthit sent the following statement to 5NEWS Tuesday (Nov. 14):

The information brought to light recently surrounding Dragonfly personnel no doubt has put a cloud on the future of the wind farm project. I am confident the Planning Commission and City Council will make the right decisions for the citizens of Elm Springs. I respectfully support those decisions.

According to Washington County real estate records, the plot of land for the proposed wind farm project is located at Tally Gate Road and Kenneth Price Road and was annexed into Elm Springs by the city council in October.

Records indicate the land is owned by Elite Energy, LLC, a company that’s registered to Brandon Smith, and was purchased in February 2015 from Chambers Bank. City council meeting minutes show Smith was also present to discuss the wind farm project with city leaders in December 2014. Fell, Smith and Ron Filbeck are listed in the minutes are representing Dragonfly Industries. None of the three men are listed on the company’s website.

Arkansas Secretary of State records show Fell, Smith and Filbeck listed as managing members of CBR Investments, also Auto Solutions Used Cars, in Springdale.

Documents from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality indicate the Arkansas One Elite Energy Wind Facility has been granted a stormwater construction general permit. The permit correspondence was addressed to Arkansas Wind Power, LLC and Jody Davis. Arkansas Secretary of State records indicate Arkansas Wind Power is registered to Phillip Ridings, who is listed as the inventor of the wind turbine technology that will be used in Elm Springs, according to the Dragonfly Industries webpage.
5 News KFSM

cody-fell-mugshot

2016 Australian of the Year Awards, by STT

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STT’s Australian of the Year Awards 2016

January 25, 2016 by

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Australians are a weird mob – as demonstrated by that, somewhat militaristic, culinary mash up; detailing ‘Operation Boomerang’ – a top-level mission to extract expats from far-flung, lamb-free-zones and return them to mouth-watering, succulent barbecued delights.

The fact that Aussies love our lamb, and frown on vegans, upsets the PC Police, but then we’ve never had much time for priggish authority: whether defending France in the Great War;  or ourselves from fire and flood, we’re a bunch that tends to get on with the job, without much fuss or fanfare. And, quite rightly, treat the presumed elite and pompous with a mixture of suspicion and derision.

Mildly hedonistic, and hard-wired with a sense of fair-play, Australians, on the whole, are slow to anger, but quick to jump in to a stoush when the bullies of the world start throwing their weight around.

Australian soldiers afghanistan

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And, despite ingrained and healthy irreverence, Australians pull together as a pretty decent, civil society – built around protection for the weak and the vulnerable among our number – whether it be one or hundreds.

When faced with the unarguable suffering of human beings, arguments pitched along the lines of “it’s all for the greater good” don’t cut it with STT – and they tend not to cut it with Australians, either.

Last time we looked, Australians were gifted with a few fundamental precepts in their treatment of their fellow Australians.

First, don’t annoy your neighbours – and, if one of them is in trouble, don’t hang back and wait to be asked – get in there and help them.

queensland flood clean up

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Whether it’s bushfires or floods – Australians know how to pitch in and save their neighbours’ lives and property.  Why?  Because it is the right thing to do.

As Operation Boomerang suggests, 26 January is the day when Australians hit the beach, haul-out the barbie and wash down paddocks full (or, rather emptied) of Aussie lamb, with frosty cold beer and humongous Australian reds. Mmmmm

And, on Australia Day, the country turns to reflect on the achievements of those who fight with honour and courage, in a whole range of human endeavours, for the betterment of our collective lot.

In Australia, the fight to bring the great wind power fraud to a shuddering halt is being won: the wind industry is on its knees, investment is at a standstill and the financial collapse of wind power outfits – like the near-bankrupt Infigen – is a case of when, not if.

The talk has turned from consideration of the wind industry’s “future”, to the timing of its inevitable demise.

But that switch in fortune has come thanks to the blood sweat and tears of hundreds of well-informed and dedicated individuals around this country.

As with any public gong, it’s impossible to mention them all, so we’ll stick to those who STT thinks have made outstanding contributions in their respective fields.

Once again, following the style of Australia’s national daily, The Australian, STT throws up a list of notables as nominees for “STT’s Australians of the Year”.

It’s not necessarily a beauty contest, so feel free to vote according to your heads and not your hearts. And, because our little list is obviously cursory and incomplete, you have absolute liberty to nominate and vote for all of those unsung heroes in your communities who have made the kind of contributions that are worthy of recognition and praise.

We gratefully recognise and thank our perennials, whose tireless devotion to either destroying the wind industry, or saving those who suffer at the hands of that callous industry and those paid handsomely to supposedly protect them, earned them awards for remarkable efforts in our 2015 Australia Day Honours:

Starting with the Tireless Community Defenders:

With this award, STT hopes to recognise the tireless and dedicated work of the people who have rallied to promote the interests of farmers and rural communities around the Country.

Where the wind industry and its parasites attack these people as “anti-wind” (a strange and meaningless epithet, if ever there was one – STT thinks it impossible to find a human being with antipathy towards a gentle summer’s breeze) – STT says the proper characterisation is of a group of people who are positively fearless in advocating in favour of sensible energy policy and, therefore, are better described as “pro-Australian”, “pro-farming” and “pro-community” leaders and advocates.

We again note and thank:

South Australia’s Mary Morris – who continues to impress and inspire with efforts to ensure communities get relevant noise rules and that they get enforced. Her relentless efforts to get the facts before the Senate Inquiry were super-human: Wind Farm Senate Inquiry Fallout Continues19 June 2015.

Victoria’s Annie Gardner – who is leading the charge with the new wind farm commissioner, Andrew Dyer – hammering him with the kind of facts that he’ll never get from AGL, Greg Hunt or any of the other puppets controlled by the wind industry; and calling out her heartless neighbours for setting up hundreds of these things on their properties, destroying her community and leaving them all for dead: Macarthur Turbine Hosts Destroy Local Community & Bolt, as Hammering the Wind Industry becomes the “New Black” 27 June 2015.

Victoria’s Keith Staff  – who continues to use his awesome email contact list to great effect, bombarding our political betters and journalists with every “inconvenient” fact that scuttles the endlessly repeated lies, upon which the great wind power fraud depends. As we’ve come to expect, Keith gave them hell in his evidence to the Senate Inquiry, too: Senate Inquiry: Hamish Cumming & Ors tip a bucket on the Great Wind Power Fraud 15 April 2015.

New South Wale’s Patina Schneider – is the NSW’s Tablelands answer to the Celtic warrior queen, Boadicea. Patina is the brains and muscle behind the Australian Industrial Wind Turbine Awareness Network – a group dedicated to smashing the wind industry and exposing the corruption that it exploits to its advantage; and she just keeps giving them hell: Time to Tune-In Tony: Coalition’s $46 Billion Wind Industry Rescue Package has Liberal Voters Seething 9 June 2015.

Then there are the experts and their immeasurable Contributions to Science and Public Health:

South Australia’s Professor Colin Hansen – is one of nature’s true gentleman; and Australia’s leading academic authority on noise and vibration. Colin’s work on identifying the precise nature of the noise generated by industrial wind turbines, and its relationship to the health effects suffered by neighbours, has been going on quietly in the background for almost 7 years now. His evidence before the Senate Committee was as compelling as it was impressive. He continues to press for a set of noise rules that actually protect people, instead of the wind industry: Top Acoustics Professor Calls for Full Compensation for Wind Farm Victims, as Council Calls for “National Noise Cops” 29 March 2015.

New South Wales’ Steven Cooper – was another who impressed the Senators during the Inquiry into the great wind power fraud. Quiet and methodical, Steven Cooper is the acoustican’s acoustician. Motivated by the ethical responsibilities that are attached to acousticians, requiring them to put public health and safety first and foremost; Steve laid out that, and much more, before the Senate Inquiry: Senate’s Wind Farm Inquiry: Steven Cooper’s Evidence on his Groundbreaking Study 14 April 2015.

South Australia’s Dr Sarah Laurie – defines fortitude, resilience, stoicism, fearlessness, and an overall desire to let right be done: terms that only begin to capture the essence of a remarkable women. Sarah continues in her efforts to win an Australian ‘fair go’ for all: Senate Wind Farm Inquiry – Dr Sarah Laurie says: “Kill the Noise & give Neighbours a Fair Go” 17 July 2015.

There are the gifted and inspired leaders and their Contributions to Political Reform:

Victorian Senator, John Madigan – holds that “justice” and “right” are not just fancy concepts to chatter about – they are the pillars of decent, civil society. Dogged and determined, John, as Chair, provided the teeth needed to put last year’s Senate Inquiry on track and ensured a cracking set of recommendations hit the press; and he continued to expose the insane cost of the most pointless policy ever devised: Wind Power Fraud Finally Exposed: Senator John Madigan Details LRET’s Astronomical 45 Billion Dollar Cost to Power Consumers 20 June 2015.

South Australian Senator, Nick Xenophon – SA’s favourite Greek, has rallied behind South Australian communities set upon by wind power outfits from the very beginning; and he gets it. Nick’s efforts on the Senate Inquiry were as remarkable as they were breathless. Appearing, often by phone hook-up and with time stolen from the most punishing schedule in politics, his cross-examination of pompous, obnoxious and arrogant wind industry spruiker, Vesta’s Ken McAlpine – later forced to apologise for spreading malicious falsehoods about Dr Sarah Laurie – was well-worth the admission price: Vesta’s Ken McAlpine Forced to Apologise to Dr Sarah Laurie for …. well, just being ‘Ken’ 20 September 2015.

New South Wales Senator, David Leyonhjelm – doesn’t hide his light under a bushel – and is always on the front foot in his efforts to educate and inform Australians about the nature, scale and scope of the greatest rort of all time. David sat on the Senate Inquiry – the existence of which was due in no small part to his powers of influence and persuasion – needling the shills that lined up to protect what’s left of the wind industry; and otherwise giving them hell: NSW Senator – David Leyonhjelm – Hammers the “Smug Untouchability” of the wind industry14 June 2015.

Western Australian Senator, Chris Back – has been an STT Champion from the very beginning. Despite plenty of bitter opposition from the wind industry plants in Environment Minister Greg Hunt’s office, and a few rabid wind-cultists working as staffers on the Senate Committee, Chris manged to steer the Senate Inquiry in precisely the right direction. Not content with impressing his mark on the thumping Senate Report, Chris came out pressing for an immediate end to the madness: Liberal Senator – Chris Back – Demands Moratorium on New Wind Farms 17 October 2015.

Queensland Senator, Matt Canavan – is an economist by trade, having worked for the Productivity Commission, he’s got a head for facts and figures; and he gets it. Matt’s well-reasoned musings have graced the pages of STT more than just a couple of times. Matt slipped onto the Senate Committee and made a very solid contribution to the Inquiry, grilling wind industry hacks about the true (insane) cost of wind power; and he continued his offensive in the Senate, with his attack on ‘Green’ hypocrisy and the nonsense of wind power: Australian Senator – Matt Canavan – Slams “Greens” Hypocrisy & Skewers the Great Wind Power Fraud 31 March 2015.

Federal MP, Angus Taylor – aka “the Enforcer” – has been smashing into the great wind power fraud, even before he was elected in a landslide to the New South Wales seat of Hume in September 2013. Angus, a Rhodes scholar in economics and law, has been on the front foot ever since. Recent Liberal party shenanigans aimed at shunting Angus out his electorate have only stiffened his resolve; expect to see him on the front bench soon; and in a position to finally put to death the ludicrously costly and thoroughly pointless LRET. Meanwhile, the Enforcer’s relentless work to protect Australian rural communities continues: Angus Taylor MP: Retailer Boycott – Wind Farms will NOT be Built where there is ‘Negative Community Reaction’ 27 October 2015.

There are the journos noted For Excellence in (Proper) Journalism:

Alan Jones AO – took more than just a passing “interest” in the great wind power fraud, its consequences and victims; starting with his appearance as the MC at the great wind power fraud rally in Canberra, June 2013 (seeour post here). Ever since, Alan has been very much the ‘voice’ of the people; and continues to torment the gullible and corrupt among our political betters, with powerful pieces that expose the rottenness of the wind industry and those behind it: Three Magnificent Women Take On Australia’s Monstrous Wind Power Outfits & their Pathetic Political Backers 12 August 2015.

Graham Lloyd – is The Australian’s Environmental Editor and, among his journalistic peers who claim that tag, is unique. Where Graham differs, is that he lives up to the ethical responsibilities, which were once central to journalism as a profession: he equips himself with the facts. Once armed, he’s positively dangerous – uncovering the fraudsters and charlatans that parade as ‘Friends of the Earth’, with pointed pieces that get the ‘troublesome’ truth out: Pacific Hydro & Acciona’s Acoustic ‘Consultant’ Fakes ‘Compliance’ Reports for Non-Compliant Wind Farms 19 September 2015.

For more on our perennial contenders check out last year’s: STT’s Australian of the Year Awards.

Now, we introduce our new contenders for 2016.

And the categories and nominees are:

Tireless Community Defenders

Martin Hayles

Martin Hayles

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Martin Hayles skips the nomination process and takes a prize, without contest. But, tragically, this gong is delivered posthumously: Martin died suddenly, at an all too young 51, a fortnight ago.

STT followers will know of Martin through the variety of characters he adopted on our comments boards: The Goat of Greenhill Road; and Jeff’s Last Goodbye (a nod to his favourite artist, the seminal Jeff Buckley), to name a few. Whichever of these characters he adopted, his comments were erudite, insightful, full of passion and always entertaining.

Martin was the attack dog for the Heartland Farmers – a group of equally dogged community defenders – dedicated to saving South Australia’s premier grain growing region, Yorke Peninsula from the ludicrous Ceres wind farm proposal; a proposal which SA’s favourite Greek, Senator Nick Xenophon, quite rightly, described as an “economic kick in the guts for South Australians”.

Martin took it up to the handful of Judas Iscariot types – heartless land-owners, who were prepared to destroy their community for a measly 30 pieces of silver.

And he hounded, without mercy, the former second-hand car salesmen that fronted Suzlon aka RePower aka Senvion – who tried – with the seemingly indestructible tenacity of cockroaches – to sleaze (and when that failed), lie, threaten, bully and deceive the crème de la crème of South Australia’s grain growers, in an effort to spear almost 200 of these things into the most productive barley growing region in the Country.

But that’s Martin the warrior. Martin, the man, touched so many lives, and his death will affect so many, many people. Martin was gifted with great care and compassion for others; and always found time in his heart for people set upon by the tyranny and inequity of this stinking industry. His tenacity, strength and drive was something to behold and inspire.

As his spirit soars further and beyond us, in the words of another great who passed this month, to Martin we say ‘Check ignition and may God’s love be with you.’

For Excellence in (Proper) Journalism

Hendrik Gout

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Channel Seven’s Today Tonight is the must-watch current affairs show for South Australia’s aspiring working class – when an issue becomes the top story on Today Tonight, you can guarantee you’ve reached not only a substantial audience by number; but that you’ve also hit political dead-centre – in terms of reaching voters capable of deciding elections; and policies on the way to them.

The Today Tonight viewer mightn’t be a Twitter jockey, but he or she is a first-class talker; whether it’s at work or backyard barbecues, whatever they’ve seen soon becomes the topic of the day (or the week).

When the topic is their spiralling power bills and, despite paying through the nose for the stuff, suffering statewide blackouts to boot, you can guarantee plenty of fist-waving fury being added to tea room and backyard debates on just who, or what’s to blame.

Leading Today Tonight’s charge against SA’s wind power driven energy and economic crisis is Hendrik Gout. Laid back, with a laconic flair, Hendrik has earned his stripes as an STT Champion in recent months, with brilliant pieces detailing SA’s unfolding, ‘double-whammy’ nightmare of rocketing power prices (already double the rates of the ACT, and set to double again) and a grid on the brink of collapse.

Here’s a taste of Hendrik’s dry wit and insight:

STT’s Special Award for True Courage & Real Compassion

Clive and Trina Gare

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Clive and Trina Gare are cattle graziers from South Australia’s Mid-North with their home property situated between Hallett and Jamestown.

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 truly noble and remarkable move, the Gares gave evidence to the Senate Inquiry into the great wind power fraud during its Adelaide hearing, in June 2015:

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

In their evidence, the Gares made it very clear that it was the worst decision of their lives; describing the noise from the turbines on their property as “unbearable”; requiring earplugs and the noise from the radio to help them get to sleep at night; and the situation when the turbines first started operating in October 2010 as “Crap, to put it honestly” – entirely consistent with, and properly vindicating, the types of complaints made routinely by wind farm neighbours who don’t get paid, in Australia and around the world.

The Senators on the Inquiry were moved no end by the daily misery laid bare by people who’ve had to live up close and personal with these things for over five years, and all the more so knowing that over that period they’ve pocketed over $1 million for doing so. Trina Gare candidly observing, in the same terms as Clive, that:

In my opinion, towers should not be any closer than five kilometres to a dwelling. If we had to buy another property, it would not be within a 20-kilometre distance to a wind farm. I think that says it all.

The Gares – along with plenty of others in the same position – were played by wind power outfits for dupes; as their evidence to the Senate attests.

Admitting to a mistake takes honesty and personal integrity; admitting to a colossal mistake, even more so. However, to not only do so in public, but to your Parliament, exhibits moral decency – especially given the potential of that admission to operate as a sobering warning to others who have made, or who are likely to make, the very same error.

What the Gares did is both remarkable and noble: these fine and decent people deserve the gratitude and sympathy of all; from those in their community, and well-beyond.

What they also deserve is that our political betters admit their mistakes; and immediately correct the errors that have led to the single greatest policy disaster in the history of the Commonwealth. After what the Gares have done, anything less is a monstrous insult.

On careful and considered reflection, Clive and Trina Gare take STT’s Special Award for True Courage & Real Compassion; and earn our undying respect and gratitude, as well.

So, as you wash down your rack of lamb with a thumping Barossa Valley shiraz, we think it only fitting to spare a thought for the efforts outlined above. Australia is all the better for people like these and the tireless contributions that they make.  STT thanks them all.

STTAustralianof the year