Educated Consumers are the Wind Industry’s Worst Enemy! Knowledge is power!

May 13, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

America’s Worst Wind-Energy Project
Wind-energy proponents admit they need lots of spin to overwhelm the truly informed.

The more people know about the wind-energy business, the less they like it. And when it comes to lousy wind deals, General Electric’s Shepherds Flat project in northernOregon is a real stinker.

I’ll come back to the GE project momentarily. Before getting to that, please ponder that first sentence. It sounds like a claim made by an anti-renewable-energy campaigner. It’s not. Instead, that rather astounding admission was made by a communications strategist during a March 23 webinar sponsored by the American Council on Renewable Energy called “Speaking Out on Renewable Energy: Communications Strategies for the Renewable Energy Industry.”

During the webinar, Justin Rolfe-Redding, a doctoral student from the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, discussed ways for wind-energy proponents to get their message out to the public.Rolfe-Redding said that polling data showed that “after reading arguments for and against wind, wind lost support.” He went on to say that concerns about wind energy’s cost and its effect on property values “crowded out climate change” among those surveyed.

The most astounding thing to come out of Rolfe-Redding’s mouth — and yes, I heard him say it myself — was this: “The things people are educated about are a real deficit for us.” After the briefings on the pros and cons of wind, said Rolfe-Redding, “enthusiasm decreased for wind. That’s a troubling finding.” The solution to these problems, said Rolfe-Redding, was to “weaken counterarguments” against wind as much as possible. He suggested using “inoculation theory” by telling people that “wind is a clean source, it provides jobs” and adding that “it’s an investment in the future.” He also said that proponents should weaken objections by “saying prices are coming down every day.”

It’s remarkable to see how similar the arguments being put forward by wind-energy proponents are to those that the Obama administration is using to justify its support of Solyndra, the now-bankrupt solar company that got a $529 million loan guarantee from the federal government. But in some ways, the government support for the Shepherds Flat deal is worse than what happened with Solyndra.

The majority of the funding for the $1.9 billion, 845-megawatt Shepherds Flat wind project in Oregon is coming courtesy of federal taxpayers. And that largesse will provide a windfall for General Electric and its partners on the deal who include Google, Sumitomo, and Caithness Energy. Not only is the Energy Department giving GE and its partners a $1.06 billion loan guarantee, but as soon as GE’s 338 turbines start turning at Shepherds Flat, the Treasury Department will send the project developers a cash grant of $490 million.

The deal was so lucrative for the project developers that last October, some of Obama’s top advisers, including energy-policy czar Carol Browner and economic adviser Larry Summers, wrote a memo saying that the project’s backers had “little skin in the game” while the government would be providing “a significant subsidy (65+ percent).” The memo goes on to say that, while the project backers would only provide equity equal to about 11 percent of the total cost of the wind project, they would receive an “estimated return on equity of 30 percent.”

The memo continues, explaining that the carbon dioxide reductions associated with the project “would have to be valued at nearly $130 per ton for CO2 for the climate benefits to equal the subsidies.” The memo continues, saying that that per-ton cost is “more than 6 times the primary estimate used by the government in evaluating rules.”

The Obama administration’s loan guarantee for the now-bankrupt Solyndra has garnered lots of attention, but the Shepherds Flat deal is an even better example of corporate welfare. Several questions are immediately obvious:

First: Why, as Browner and Summers asked, is the federal government providing loan guarantees and subsidies for an energy project that could easily be financed by GE, which has a market capitalization of about $170 billion?

Second: Why is the Obama administration providing subsidies to GE, which paid little or no federal income taxes last year even though it generatedsome $5.1 billion in profits from its U.S. operations?

Third: How is it that GE’s CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, can be the head of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness while his company is paying little or no federal income taxes? That question is particularly germane as the president never seems to tire of bashing the oil and gas industry for what he claims are the industry’s excessive tax breaks.

Over the past year, according to Yahoo! Finance, the average electric utility’s return on equity has been 7.1 percent. Thus, taxpayer money is helping GE and its partners earn more than four times the average return on equity in the electricity business.

A few months ago, I ran into Jim Rogers, the CEO of Duke Energy. I asked him why Duke — which has about 14,000 megawatts of coal-fired generation capacity — was investing in wind energy projects. The answer, said Rogers forthrightly, was simple: The subsidies available for wind projects allow Duke to earn returns on equity of 17 to 22 percent.

In other words, for all of the bragging by the wind-industry proponents about the rapid growth in wind-generation capacity, the main reason that capacity is growing is that companies such as GE and Duke are able to goose their profits by putting up turbines so they can collect subsidies from taxpayers.

There are other reasons to dislike the Shepherds Flat project: It’s being built in Oregon to supply electricity to customers in Southern California. That’s nothing new. According to the Energy Information Administration, “California imports more electricity from other states than any other state.” Heaven forbid that consumers in the Golden State would have to actually live near a power plant, refinery, or any other industrial facility. And by building the wind project in Oregon, electricity consumers inCalifornia are only adding to the electricity congestion problems that have been plaguing the region served by the Bonneville Power Authority. Earlier this year, the BPA was forced to curtail electricity generated by wind projects in the area because a near-record spring runoff had dramatically increased the amount of power generated by the BPA’s dams. In other words, Shepherds Flat is adding yet more wind turbines to a region that has been overwhelmed this year by excess electrical generation capacity from renewables. And that region will now have to spending huge sums of money building new transmission capacity to export its excess electricity.

Finally, there’s the question of the jobs being created by the new wind project. In 2009, when GE and Caithness announced the Shepherds Flat deal, CNN Money reported that the project would create 35 permanent jobs. And in an April 2011 press release issued by GE on the Shepherds Flat project, one of GE’s partners in the deal said they were pleased to be bringing “green energy jobs to our economy.”

How much will those “green energy” jobs cost? Well, if we ignore the value of the federal loan guarantee and only focus on the $490 million cash grant that will be given to GE and its partners when Shepherds Flat gets finished, the cost of those “green energy” jobs will be about $16.3 million each.

As Rolfe-Redding said, the more people know about the wind business, the less they like it.

— Robert Bryce is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His latest book, Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future, was recently issued in paperback.

Aussie Government Windpushers, Pushing Renewable Energy Target Tax. A Form of Extortion?

May 12, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

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

May 12, 2015 by stopthesethings

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Wind industry front men, Ian “Macca” Macfarlane and, his youthful ward, young Gregory Hunt are out to defy all-comers: the Liberal’s core constituency (of conservative voters); their colleagues, Joe Hockey and Mathias Cormann; boss, Tony Abbott; and political, economic and environmental common sense – as they pump up a deal with Labor to salvage the Large-Scale Renewable Energy Target, and their mates at Infigen, Vestas & Co.

Over the last week or so, Macca’s last-ditch deal to get Labor to sign up to cut the LRET from 41,000 GWh to 33,000 GWh was hailed by economic dullards like The Australian’s Sid Maher as a “Breakthrough”, in a series of articles that included this piece of pure fantasy:

Mr Macfarlane has expressed concerns about the ability of the renewables industry to meet its RET targets after a collapse in investment in the sector. Failure to meet the target risks invoking a penalty clause that would double the cost of the scheme.

Anyone that follows these pages should spot the fiction within the fallacy; given that STT has been repeatedly pounding that kind of nonsense for some time now. And, like a dog with his favourite, well-gnawed bone, we won’t be letting go any time soon.

True, it is, that the wind industry will never meet the current target – and, as we’ve said before, it won’t meet the ‘new’ 33,000 GWh target, either. However, the claim that hitting the “penalty” will “double the cost of the scheme” is pure political twaddle; Macca knows it – and any journo who has bothered to do their homework – by reading the legislation, say, would have picked it in a heartbeat.

In short, Australia’s electricity retailers have closed ranks on wind power outfits by steadfastly refusing to enter Power Purchase Agreements, without which wind power outfits will never obtain the finance needed to build any new wind farms. The consequence being that retailers will be hit with the shortfall penalty (the ‘penalty clause’ referred to above), the full cost of which will be recovered from power consumers (a “stealth tax” that will add more than $20 billion to power bills). In addition, the cost of Renewable Energy Certificates will add a further $25 billion, taking the combined total of the REC Tax/Shortfall Charge added to retail power bills to a figure in the order of $46 billion.

At the risk of repeating ourselves (and we concede the point if challenged), in the balance of this post we’ll update our figures; and spell out just why this latest ‘deal’ is simply an effort to postpone the inevitable implosion of the most costly, and utterly pointless, Federal Government industry subsidy scheme ever devised. So, with that aside, on with the show.

The LRET is a policy debacle; it’s completely unsustainable, on every level: economic, social and political. It is not – as the likes of Macca and Hunt cynically pretend – and a gullible press naively reports – a warm and fuzzy, family and business friendly policy that won’t cost anyone a cent.

What journos like Sid Maher have either failed to appreciate – or are simply choosing to ignore – is the fact that the demise of the LRET has nothing to do with numerical targets, the death of the wind industry is a consequence of Australia’s electricity retailers’ commercially driven desire to destroy the LRET, and the wind industry along with it.

In the absence of the mandated subsidies (“the carrot”) directed to wind power outfits, and the mandated penalties (“the stick”) whacked on retailers under the LRET, there would simply be no market whatsoever for wind power (see our post here). Kill or cut the LRET, and the wind industry is completely finished – it’s mortally wounded now.

Commercial power retailers have not entered any Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) to purchase wind power (or, rather, to obtain RECs) since November 2012. The wind industry’s demise was laid out long before the RET Review panel got to work in April 2014 and the talk about ‘dreaded uncertainty’ is just that: wind farm construction in Australia has come to a grinding halt because it makes no commercial sense to purchase power from an intermittent and wholly weather dependent generation source, that costs 3-4 times the cost of conventional power.

The shortfall charge, set by the legislation at $65 per MWh, is not a deductible business expense (the shortfall charge is treated as a “fine”), the effective pre-tax penalty is, therefore, $92.86 ($65/(1-30%), assuming a 30% marginal tax rate. In the past, we’ve used $94 as the likely trading figure for RECs (as the shortfall charge starts to bite); but, as young Gregory Hunt uses the figure of $93 – when he refers to it as “a massive penalty carbon tax” – we’re happy to knock off the buck and run the numbers again.

Retailers, like Grant King from Origin Energy, have made it known that they have no intention of entering PPAs with wind power outfits – and, instead, will simply pay the shortfall charge, collect the full cost of it from their customers (ie $93 per MWh – compared with the average wholesale price of $35 per MWh) and declare the cost of the fines on their retail power bills as a “Federal Tax on Electricity Consumers”.

The cost of the shortfall charge at $65 per MWh compares with the average wholesale power price of between $35-40 per MWh. Therefore, at a minimum, retailers will be paying $100-105 per MWh for power, once the penalty hits (the average wholesale price plus the shortfall charge).

The Australian’s top economics writer, Judith Sloan has observed that the effect of the $65 per MWh shortfall charge “will be to triple the value of RECs and drive up electricity prices to a dramatic extent”; referring to the REC price in February this year – around $34 at that time – and the effect of the tax treatment of RECs versus the shortfall charge. As Judith notes, retailers will be looking to recover $93 in respect of every shortfall penalty charge they get hit with: ie, the $65 per MWh cost of the shortfall charge and the loss of the tax benefit that would otherwise be received were they to purchase RECs.

STT has likened the scenario to a “political time bomb”, where the government of the day will be belted at the ballot box for the utterly unjustified escalation in power prices, that will inevitably result from the LRET debacle.

And that brings us to Macca and Hunt’s latest efforts to salvage the wreckage of the LRET, their mates at near-bankrupt wind power outfit, Infigen (aka Babcock and Brown) and struggling Danish fan maker, Vestas, as well as their political skins.

Macca and Hunt are driving – with a lot of ‘help’ from the wind industry plants and stooges in their offices – a pitch whereby the ultimate annual LRET target gets pulled from 41,000 GWh to 33,000 GWh per year.

The LRET target is set by s40 of the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 (here); and it’s the annual target set under that section that Macca and Hunt are hoping to pull in a deal with Labor, that, as we go to print, also appears to need help from 6 of the 8 Senate cross-benchers.

At the present time, the total annual contribution to the LRET from eligible renewable energy generation sources is 16,000 GWh; and, because retailers have not entered PPAs with wind power outfits for nearly 2½ years – and have no apparent intention of doing so from hereon – that’s where the figure will remain.

With no new wind power capacity being added – and none likely to be added – that leaves the shortfall at 17,000 GWh, or 17,000,000 MWh (1GWh = 1,000MWh); based on Macca and Hunt’s 33,000 GWh ultimate annual target.

So, as we’ve done before, we’ll put some numbers under what Macca and Hunt’s latest, last-ditch Infigen and Vestas salvage mission means – should they succeed – for Australian power punters and their retail power bills – assuming, of course, that they aren’t already among the tens of thousands that have been chopped from the grid, because they can’t pay their power bills now (see our posts here and here); or among those whose businesses are getting slammed against the wall, due to rocketing power prices (see our posts here and here).

In the table below, the “Shortfall in MWh (millions)” is based on the current, total contribution of 16,000,000 MWh, as against the 33,000 GWh target being pitched by Macca and Hunt, set out as the “Target in MWh (millions)”.

The target currently set for 2019 is 36.4 million MWhs, but we’ll assume that gets pulled to 33 million too, under Macca and Hunt’s ‘ingenious’ Infigen and Vestas rescue plan.

A REC is issued for every MWh of eligible renewable electricity dispatched to the grid; and a shortfall penalty applies to a retailer for every MWh that they fall short of the target – the target is meant to be met by retailers purchasing and surrendering RECs. As set out below, the shortfall charge kicks in this calendar year.

As set out above, given the impact of the shortfall charge, and the tax treatment of RECs versus the shortfall charge, the full cost of the shortfall charge to retailers is also $93. Using that figure applied to the 33,000 GWh ‘deal’, we’ll start with the cost of the shortfall penalty.

Year	Target in MWh (millions)	Shortfall in MWh (millions)	Penalty on Shortfall @ $65 per MWh	Minimum Retailers recover @ $93
2015	18	2	$130,000,000	$186,000,000
2016	22.6	6.6	$429,000,000	$613,800,000
2017	27.2	11.2	$728,000,000	$1,041,600,000
2018	31.8	15.8	$1,027,000,000	$1,469,400,000
2019	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
2020	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
2021	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
2022	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
2023	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
2024	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
2025	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
2026	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
2027	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
2028	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
2029	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
2030	33	17	$1,105,000,000	$1,581,000,000
Total	495.6	239.6	$15,574,000,000	$22,282,800,000

Between now and 2031, Macca and Hunt’s 33,000 GWh total target couldbe satisfied by the issue and surrender of 495,600,000 RECs. However, with only 16 million RECs available annually there will be a total shortfall of 239,600,000: only 256 million RECs will be available to satisfy the LRET’s remaining 495,600,000 MWh target, set under the ‘brilliant’ 33,000 GWh Infigen and Vestas rescue ‘plan’.

Under the latest ‘deal’, assuming that RECs hit $93, as the penalty begins to apply later this year, the total cost added to power consumers’ bills will top $46 billion (495,600,000 x $93), as set out in the table below.

Power consumers will end up paying for the shortfall penalty collected by the Federal government, and for the cost of the RECs issued to wind power outfits – in relation to collecting the cost of the REC Subsidy from power consumers, Origin Energy’s Grant King correctly puts it:

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

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

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

But wait, there’s more: that subsidy doesn’t last for a single year. Oh no. A turbine operating now will continue to receive the REC subsidy for 16 years, until 2031 – such that a single 3 MW turbine spinning today can pocket a total of $13,686,624 over the remaining life of the LRET. Not a bad little rort – considering the machine and its installation costs less than $3 million; and that being able to spear it into some dimwit’s back paddock under a landholder agreement costs a piddling $10-15,000 per year. State-sponsored theft never looked easier or more lucrative!

The REC Tax/Subsidy, including that associated with domestic solar under the original RET scheme, has already added $9 billion to Australian power bills, so far.

At the end of the day, retailers will have to recover the TOTAL cost of BOTH RECs AND the shortfall charge from Australian power consumers, via retail power bills.

And that’s the figure we’ve totted up in the right hand column in the table below – which combines the annual cost to retailers of 16 million RECs at $93 (ie $1,488,000,000) and the shortfall penalty, as it applies each year from now until 2031, at the same ultimate cost to power consumers of $93.

Year	Target in MWh (millions)	Shortfall in MWh (millions)	Shortfall Charge Recovered by Retailers @ $93	Total Recovered by Retailers as RECs & Shortfall Charge @ $93
2015	18	2	$186,000,000	$1,674,000,000
2016	22.6	6.6	$613,800,000	$2,101,800,000
2017	27.2	11.2	$1,041,600,000	$2,529,600,000
2018	31.8	15.8	$1,469,400,000	$2,957,400,000
2019	33	17	$1,581,000,000	$3,069,000,000
2020	33	17	$1,581,000,000	$3,069,000,000
2021	33	17	$1,581,000,000	$3,069,000,000
2022	33	17	$1,581,000,000	$3,069,000,000
2023	33	17	$1,581,000,000	$3,069,000,000
2024	33	17	$1,581,000,000	$3,069,000,000
2025	33	17	$1,581,000,000	$3,069,000,000
2026	33	17	$1,581,000,000	$3,069,000,000
2027	33	17	$1,581,000,000	$3,069,000,000
2028	33	17	$1,581,000,000	$3,069,000,000
2029	33	17	$1,581,000,000	$3,069,000,000
2030	33	17	$1,581,000,000	$3,069,000,000
Total	495.6	239.6	$22,282,800,000	$46,090,800,000

Under the current ultimate LRET target of 41,000 GWh, the figure tops out at $3,854,000,000 a year; and $55,178,000,000 in total, so Macca and Hunt’s BIG compromise drops the REC Tax/Shortfall Penalty impact on retail power prices by a piddling $785 million a year, or $9,087,200,000 over the life of the LRET rort.

Whether it’s RECs being generated by current (or additional) wind power generation, or the shortfall charge being applied, retailers will be recovering the combined costs of BOTH – and power consumers will not “avoid” or, as Macca’s youthful ward, Greg Hunt asserts, be “protected” from any of it under Macca and Hunt’s Infigen and Vestas rescue plan.

As our simple little exercise in arithmetic makes plain, over $46 billion will be added to all Australian power consumers’ bills; irrespective of whether Macca and Hunt are able to satisfy the desires of their mates at Infigen, Vestas & Co to carpet the country in giant fans.

Not that it matters much to Australian power consumers footing the bill, but the ONLY difference is where that $46 billion gets funnelled. In the case of the REC Tax, that gets directed as a subsidy to wind power outfits (like Infigen and Pac Hydro); in the case of the shortfall charge, that gets directed to the Federal government, and goes straight into general revenue – as we call it, a “stealth tax” – as young Greg Hunt calls it, a: “massive $93 per tonne penalty carbon tax.”

Under Macca and Hunt’s piece of energy market ‘magic’, the $46 billion cost to power consumers of the REC Tax/Shortfall Penalty is just the tip of the iceberg.

The wind power capacity that Macca and Hunt’s mates at Infigen & Co are so desperate to build (in order to keep their Ponzi scheme from collapsing, as it has with Pacific Hydro) – and which Macca and Hunt hope will satisfy their ‘new’ target – 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?

LRET “Stealth Tax” to Cost Australian Power Punters $30 BILLION

In the first of the posts 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 recent article, as one of the key reasons that there will be no new wind farms built in Australia:

GEreports: Can Australia now learn from any other country in how to encourage renewables?

Peter: Oh yeah, certainly. I mean, I think China’s perhaps an extreme example, but the point is that you put a firm policy in place, and you take it seriously, you unleash infrastructure bottlenecks to allow it to happen, and it will happen.

GEreports: What are Australia’s infrastructure bottlenecks?

Peter: Quite often there are concerns about grid stability if you have large numbers of renewable plants out there. You can fix all that if you really are honest about wanting to increase the level of renewables in the system. There are technical fixes to all of this.

GEreports: Can you give me an example?

Peter: Ultimately, what you might have to do is what they’ve done in Texas, which is get out there and build a new grid – big backbone powerlines – and then the wind turbines come. The problem in Australia is we look at a big windy area and say, “Oh, look, it hasn’t got any grid.” No individual developer can afford to build grid, so it doesn’t happen.

GEreports: The government should do that?

Peter: They could if they wanted to, or they could step up and put in place the mechanism to encourage someone else to do it.

Australia has stepped back from that sort of planning of the grid. The government used to own the grids, and we’re pulling back from that. And that’s fine. It’s not vital that you own it. But you do have to have a plan and send the right signals to investors that you’re serious about the plan for them to be able to risk investing. And that’s a critical question.

Let the private sector do it and I think you’d probably drive your best result, particularly in an economy like Australia. But, you do need the certainty, and the reason things have stalled in Australia is not because it’s too hard or because there’s planning issues or anything else.

It’s simply that people cannot be certain at the moment that the renewable energy target will still be binding on those liable under it, so people pull back from investing. Too risky.

Network owners have no incentive to build the whopping additional transmission capacity required to accommodate new wind power capacity; and nothing like the capacity needed to send a further 17,000 GWh into the grid to meet a 33,000 GWh target.

In many places, there are numerous wind farms planned, but the existing transmission lines are literally full to capacity. One example is the Hornsdale project north of Jamestown in South Australia, which Investec offloaded a year or so back (see our post here). The original plan was for 105, 3MW turbines (or 315MW of nameplate capacity), but the line they were targeting is only capable of taking a further 60-90MW when the wind is blowing (wind farms at Jamestown and Hallett all hook in to the same line). STT hears that the latest ‘plan’ involves 30 turbines, in recognition of the fact that the line has no room to take anything more.

Moreover, even if investors were prepared to – in a Field of Dreams, “build it and they will come” moment, of the kind suggested by GE – throw money at a duplicated grid, the returns demanded by those investors can only be recovered from retail power customers. Which is yet another reason why retailers are out to wreck 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 $46 billion electricity tax to retail power bills (the ‘modest’ figure under Macca and Hunt’s cunning Infigen and Vestas rescue plan) 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.

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. It’s a strategy with a mercenary purpose; and has Hunt, Macca and their wind industry backers in a flat panic.

The continued public squabbling in Canberra over the ‘magic’ LRET number, 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 that have thrown the spanner in the works.

Power retailers have no incentive to lock themselves into PPAs that run for 10-15 years (the time frame demanded by wind power outfits or, rather, the banks lending to build wind farms), at prices 3-4 times the wholesale price, where the demand for power has fallen, along with the wholesale price; and demand is unlikely to improve much from here.

Nor do they have any incentive to support a policy that will simply price their customers out of the market; leaving them sitting in their – soon to be, if not already, disconnected homes – freezing (or boiling) in the dark; or shutting the doors on power hungry enterprises, like mines and mineral processors, or manufacturing, for starters.

With the collapse in iron ore prices, Australia’s economic dream run is over.

Despite the economic punishment that’s coming, Macca and Hunt are working over-time to ensure the survival of their mates at Infigen and Vestas, via a $3 billion a year wind industry subsidy, that will simply result in further generating capacity (albeit of the kind that can only be delivered, if at all, at crazy, random intervals) – at a time when Australia has REAL power generating capacity coming out of its ears.

There is NO shortage of electricity in Australia: what there is, is a shortage of reliable and affordable power. With Macca and Hunt pulling out all-stops to throw $46 billion at a wholly weather dependent power source – that’s 3-4 times the cost of the reliable stuff – it simply begs the question: just who do these clowns pretend to represent?

It’s against that backdrop, that it’s necessary to be reminded that Hunt and Macfarlane are supposed to be on the conservative side of politics. Their fervent (and seemingly inexplicable) support for the wind industry stands in lamentable contrast with the approach being shown by the Conservatives in the UK, where David Cameron won an election promising to end all subsidies to on-shore wind power:

UK Elections: Brit’s Deliverance from its Wind Power Disaster

The US, where the ‘wind power’ states have cut their state based subsidies to wind power outfits (or are well on the path of doing so); and Republicans are out to prevent the extension of the Federal government’s PTC wind power subsidy:

2015: the Wind Industry’s ‘Annus Horribilis’; or Time to Sink the Boots In

US Republicans Line Up to Can Subsidies for Wind Power

Germany, where consumers and industry are fed up with escalating power prices:

German’s Top Daily – Bild – says Time to Chop Massive Subsidies for Wind Power

And Vesta’s home turf, Denmark, where the government’s brewing and massive legal liability to wind farm neighbours has resulted in a full-blown moratorium on planning permits for new wind farms:

Denmark Calls Halt to More Wind Farm Harm

While Hunt and Macfarlane might consider themselves smarter than the market, for power consumers – and the economy as a whole – salvation comes from the fact that power retailers do NOT have to follow the insane path set by the LRET: by refusing to sign PPAs with wind power outfits, they hopped off that commercially suicidal track nearly 2½ years ago; which has given them round one on points: markets usually win in the end – ask Australian motor manufacturers, General Motors Holden and Ford.

The fact that power consumers (read ‘voters’) will be walloped with a $46 billion electricity tax under the LRET is not so much a problem for retailers, as a brewing political nightmare for the Federal government.

That the bulk of that tax will be collected as fines by retailers, provides them with the perfect piece of political leverage. Once power punters work out that they’re being slugged with a fine that’s around 3 times the cost of the power being supplied to them (ie an additional $93 per MWh, on top of the average wholesale price of $35 per MWh), they won’t just be a little miffed, they’ll be furious.

With wind power outfits in a state of grief stricken panic and their political saviours, like Macca, and Hunt powerless to make retailers enter PPAs, retailers need only keep their nerve, keep their pens in their top pockets, and watch the whole LRET debacle implode.

Far from ‘saving’ the LRET, or avoiding the shortfall penalty, the latest ‘deal’ has simply guaranteed the demise of the former, by the certain imposition of the latter. Political punishment will follow, as night follows day.

Green/Greed Energy….Long Past it’s “Best Before” date……

May 12, 2015May 12, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Goodbye, Green Energy

By Stephen Moore

CBN News Contributor

May 11, 2015

The green energy movement in America is dead. May it rest in peace.

No, a majority of American energy over the next 20 years is not going to come from windmills and solar panels. One important lesson to be learned from the green energy fad’s rapid and expensive demise is that central planning doesn’t work.

What crushed green energy was the boom in shale oil and gas, along with the steep decline in the price of fossil fuel that few saw coming just a few years ago.

A new International Energy Agency report concedes that green energy is in fast retreat and is getting crushed by “the recent drop in fossil fuel prices.” It finds that the huge price advantage for oil and natural gas means “fossil plants still dominate recent (electric power) capacity additions.”

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Most of the government experts – and many private investors, too – bought into the “peak oil” nonsense and the forecasts of fuel prices continuing to rise as we depleted the oil from the earth’s crust.

Oil was expected to stay way over $100 a barrel and potentially soon hit $200 a barrel. National Geographic infamously advertised on its cover in 2004: “The End of Cheap Oil.”

President Barack Obama told voters that green energy was necessary because oil is a “finite resource” and we would eventually run out. Apparently, Mr. Obama never read The Ultimate Resource by Julian Simon which teaches us that human ingenuity in finding new resources outpaces resource depletion.

When fracking and horizontal drilling technologies burst onto the scene, U.S. oil and gas reserves nearly doubled almost overnight. Oil production from 2007-2014 grew by more than 70 percent and natural gas production by nearly 30 percent.

The shale revolution is a classic disruptive technology advance that has priced the Green Movement out of the competitive market. Natural gas isn’t $13; it is now close to $3, an 80 percent decline. Oil prices have fallen by nearly half.

Green energy can’t possibly compete with that. Marketing windpower in an environment of $3 natural gas is like trying to sell sand in the Sahara. Instead of letting the green energy fad die a merciful death, the Obama administration only lavished more subsidies on the Solyndras of the world.

Washington suffered from what F.A. Hayek called the “fatal conceit.” Like the 1950s central planners in the Politburo, Congress and the White House thought they knew where the future was headed.

According to a 2015 report by the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, over the past 5 years, the U.S. government spent $150 billion on “solar power and other renewable energy projects.” Even with fracking changing the energy world, these blindfolded sages stuck with their wild green-eyed fantasy that wind turbines were the future.

Meanwhile, the return of $2.50 a gallon gasoline at the pump is flattening the battery car market. A recent report from the trade publication Fusion notes: “electric vehicle purchases in the U.S. have stagnated. According to auto analysts at Edmunds.com, only 45 percent of this year’s hybrid and EV trade-ins have gone toward the purchase of another alternative fuel vehicle. That’s down from just over 60 percent in 2012.”

Edmunds.com says that “never before have loyalty rates for alt-fuel vehicles fallen below 50 percent” and it speculated that “many hybrid and EV owners are driven more by financial motives rather than a responsibility to the environment.”

That’s what happens when the world is awash in cheap fossil fuels.

This isn’t the first time American taxpayers have been fleeced by false green energy dreams. In the late 1970s the Carter administration spent billions of dollars on the Synthetic Fuels Corporation which was going to produce fuel economically and competitively.

Solar and wind power were also brief flashes in the pan. It all crash landed by 1983 when oil prices crashed to as low as $20 a barrel after Reagan deregulated energy. The SFC was one of the great corporate welfare boondogggles in American history.

A lesson should have been learned there, but Washington went all in again under Presidents Bush and Obama. At least private sector investors have lost their own money in these foolish bets on bringing back energy sources from the Middle Ages like wind turbines.

The tragedy of government as venture capitalist is that the politicians lose OUR money. These government-backed technologies divert private capital away from potentially more promising innovations.

Harold Hamm, president of Continental, and one of the discoverers of the Bakken Shale in North Dakota tells the story of meeting with Obama at the White House in 2010 to tell him of the fracking revolution. Mr. Obama arrogantly responded that electric cars would soon replace fossil fuels. Was he ever wrong.

We don’t know if renewables will ever play a significant role in America’s energy mix. But if it does ever happen, it will be a result of market forces, not central planning.

*Stephen Moore is a distinguished visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

Infrasound, from Wind Turbines, makes Life Unbearable, and we Have Proof!

May 11, 2015May 11, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Top Acoustic Engineer – Malcolm Swinbanks – Experiences Wind Farm Infrasound Impacts, First Hand

May 11, 2015 by stopthesethings

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Top Acoustic Engineer, Dr Malcolm Swinbanks has been at the forefront of investigating the impacts of infrasound and low-frequency noise for over 40 years; and has been on the wind industry’s stinky trail in Michigan since 2009.

Last month, he delivered this technically brilliant paper: “Direct Experience of Low Frequency Noise and Infrasound within a Windfarm Community” at the 6^th International Meeting on Wind Turbine Noise – the conference poster is available here: M.A.Swinbanks Poster

The results and observations as to the character and nature of incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound backs up the groundbreaking work done by Steven Cooper at Pac Hydro’s Cape Bridgewater disaster (see our post here).

In that respect, the work sits amongst fine company. However, it’s Malcolm’s own experience with turbine noise and vibration that makes his paper all the more remarkable. Here’s a few extracts that tend to knock the wind industry’s ‘nocebo’ story for six.

Summary

The author first became aware of the adverse health problems associated with infrasound many years ago in 1974, when an aero-engine manufacturer approached him to consider the problems that office personnel were experiencing close to engine test facilities. He had been conducting research into the active control of sound, and the question was posed as to whether active sound control could be used to address this problem. At that time, this research was in its infancy, and the scale of the problem clearly lay outside practical implementation. Five years later, however, the author was asked to address a related problem associated with the low-frequency noise of a 15,000SHP ground-based gas-turbine compressor installation, having a 40 foot high, 10 foot diameter exhaust stack.

This problem was of a more tractable scale, and the author and his colleagues successfully reduced the low-frequency noise of the installation by over 12dB. He subsequently was requested to address a similar installation of significantly greater size and power, again with accurately predicted results.

As a consequence of this and subsequent work, the author has gained considerable experience of the disturbing effects of low-frequency noise and infrasound. So when he first became aware of the nature of adverse health reports from windfarm residents, they were immediately recognisable as effects with which he had been familiar for as many as 35 years.

Since late 2009, the author has lived part-time within a Michigan community where windturbines have been increasingly deployed. Consequently he has had significant interaction with residents whose lives and well-being have been damaged, and moreover has experienced the associated very severe effects directly, at first hand. His resultant perspective is thus based on both detailed theoretical analysis, and extensive personal, practical experience.

Introduction

In the latter part of 2009, the intention was announced to install up to 2,800 wind turbines in Huron County, Michigan, together with adjacent regions of the Thumb of Michigan. The agricultural areas of the county are made up of 1 square mile sections, bounded by a grid of roads running north-south and east-west. The proposed wind-turbine density would amount to approximately 2-3 turbines per square mile, but in each square mile there can be typically 4 to 6 residences, usually located around the perimeter. Consequently, the requirement for adequate turbine separation would very substantially restrict the possible setbacks from residences. At that time, there existed two recently commissioned windfarms in Huron county, at Elkton (32 Vestas 80m diameter V80 turbines) and Ubly (46 GE 1.5MW 77m diameter turbines). The Elkton windfarm is in unobstructed open country, but the Ubly windfarm is in an area with significant clusters of trees, which in certain wind directions could obstruct and disrupt the low-level airflow to the turbines.

Following this announcement, the author attended an Open Meeting of the Michigan Public Services Commission, at which a number of residents spoke of the problems that they were already encountering from the windfarms, in particular the windfarm at Ubly.

This author immediately recognized these problems as relating to the characteristics of low-frequency noise and infrasound, with which he had been familiar for many years. But on subsequently visiting the windfarms, it became clear that the higher frequency audible noise levels were also unacceptable, at Ubly in particular, with up to 50dBA L10 being permitted by the ordinances. The author was astonished that any professional acoustician could possibly regard the levels as acceptable.

Following the county’s early experience the ordinances were reconsidered, so that the existing setbacks of 1000 feet, and levels of 50dBA L10, were changed for non-participating landowners to 1320 feet and 45dBA L10. But problems at Ubly were still apparent even at 1500 feet and 45dBA.

The author obtained data from one such residence, which was immediately downwind of 6 turbines located approximately in a line at distances of 1500 feet to 1.25 miles, and found that there could be significant impulsive infrasound present, even though these turbines were of modern, upwind rotor design. Under some circumstances this infrasound took the form of single pulses per blade passing interval, presumably from the nearest turbine, but sometimes up to 6 separate impulses could be detected from the turbine array.

The commissioning of further wind-turbine developments was initially hampered by the lack of high capacity transmission lines, but more recently a 5GW high voltage transmission line has been routed through the county, permitting more than adequate capacity for any intended number of windfarms and turbines. Several further windfarms, with larger 100m and even 114m diameter turbines up to 500 feet in height have now been constructed, resulting in a total of more than 320 wind-turbines installed to date.

Recently, the county has turned to reconsidering the ordinances, but as of the present date has not finalized any changes. Currently permitted wind turbine sound levels and setbacks appear to be dictated primarily by an over-riding incentive to install the requisite number of turbines per square mile.

The author has attended and commented at many public meetings, but has found that the reluctance to acknowledge adverse effects associated with low frequency and infrasound, has resulted in a situation where little traction can be gained.

Several aspects deriving from his first-hand experience will now be described in the following sections.

During the early 1980’s while working on an industrial gas turbine compressor, the author became very aware that the very low-frequency sound can quickly become imperceptible when outside in any moderate breeze. More recently, while attempting to sleep in a house 3 miles from the nearest wind-turbine of a new wind farm consisting of 35 GE 1.6 100m diameter wind turbines, the author and his wife have sometimes been kept awake by the lowfrequency rumble or infrasonic “silent thump” of the turbines.

This situation can occur when the wind has veered from a cold north wind from Canada, to a warm wind from the south blowing over cold ground. Such conditions give rise to a classic temperature inversion, and the resultant wind turbine infrasound can readily propagate for 3 miles or more.

On such occasions, the author has more than once donned outdoor clothes at 1am and gone out onto the road outside the house, clear of trees and obstructions, but in the airflow of an outside wind has been consistently unable to detect any similar subjective disturbance.

It is often argued that infrasound is more readily detectable within a residence simply because the building structure greatly attenuates the higher frequencies, but has little effect on the lower frequencies. There is an additional effect, however, that tends to be overlooked. Outside, individual ears effectively represent unshrouded pointwise microphones, equally sensitive to the full effects of airflow and true infrasound. In contrast, the conditions within a building are very different.

Pressure due to wind turbulence tends to be only locally correlated over the outside surface of the building, whereas true infrasound acts coherently over the entire structure. This gives rise to an additional spatial filtering effect, whereby the wind induced pressure distribution tends to cancel itself out, but the fully coherent very low frequency wind-turbine infrasound acts to fully reinforce itself over the entire structure.

This characteristic has been exploited for many years in the design of conformal sonar arrays – distributed pressure sensing surfaces which preferentially detect acoustic signals that are fully coherent over the surface, yet “average-out” the uncorrelated pressures due to hydrodynamic flow, yielding a significant improvement in signal-to-noise ratio.

A direct consequence of this difference between inside and outside observation is that observers visiting windfarms in the open air may quite correctly comment that they cannot hear any significant low-frequency sound. Put simply, they are not observing under the appropriate conditions. Perception within a residence, particularly in a quiet bedroom, can be entirely different.

This difference is significantly enhanced by the fact that the threshold of hearing is not a constant threshold, but is automatically raised or lowered according to the background ambient sound conditions. It is for this reason that people in urban areas, with typical ambient sound levels around 55dBA, have a naturally raised threshold and are able to tolerate additional noise of comparable level, yet this same level of noise would be completely intolerable in rural areas where ambient levels can be very much lower, not infrequently in the region of 25-30dBA.

This is one of the most important effects with respect to perception of low-frequency noise and infrasound, yet the widely cited AWEA/CANWEA Expert Health Report of 2009 (3), completely failed to indicate the consequences of this process of automatic threshold adjustment.

First Hand Experience of the Severe Adverse Effects of Infrasound.

Approximately 18 months ago, the author was asked by a family living near the Ubly windturbines to help set up instrumentation and assess acoustic conditions within their basement, which is partially underground, where they hoped to encounter more tolerable sleeping conditions.

In the early evening, the author arrived at the site. It was a beautiful evening, with very little wind at ground level, but the turbines were operating. Within the house, however, it was impossible to hear any noise from the turbines and it became necessary to go outside from time-to-time to confirm that they were indeed running.

The author did not expect to obtain any significant measurements under these conditions, but nevertheless proceeded to help set up instrumentation in the form of a B&K 4193-L-004 infrasonic microphone and several Infiltek microbarometers. Calibration of the microbarometers had previously been confirmed by performing background infrasonic measurements directly side-by-side with the precision B&K microphone. The intention was to define measurement locations, to establish instrumentation gains having appropriate headroom, and to agree and go through practice procedures so that the occupants could conduct further measurements themselves.

After a period of about one hour, which time had been spent setting up instrumentation in the basement and using a laptop computer in the kitchen, the author began to feel a significant sense of lethargy. As further time passed this progressed to difficulty in concentration accompanied by nausea, so that around the 3 hour mark, he was feeling distinctly unwell.

He thought back over the day, to remember what food he had eaten and whether he might have undertaken any other action that might bring about this effect. He had light meals of cereal for breakfast and salad for lunch, so it seemed unlikely that either could have been responsible. Meanwhile, the sun was going down leaving a beautiful orange-pink glow in the sky, while ground windspeed levels remained almost zero and the evening conditions could not have been more tranquil and pleasant.

It was only after about 3.5 hours that it suddenly struck home that these symptoms were being brought about by the wind-turbines. Since there was no audible sound, and the infrasound levels appeared to be sufficiently low that the author considered them to be of little consequence, he had not hitherto given any thought to this possibility.

As further time passed, the effects increasingly worsened, so that by 5 hours he felt extremely ill. It was quite uncanny to be trying to concentrate on a computer in a very solid, completely stationary kitchen, surrounded by solid oak cabinets, with granite counter tops and a cast-iron sink, while feeling almost exactly the same symptoms as being seasick in a rough sea.

Finally, after 5 hours it was considered that enough trial runs had been taken and analysed that it was decided to set up for a long overnight run, leaving the instrumentation under the control of the home owners. The author was immensely relieved finally to be leaving the premises and able to make his way home clear of the wind turbines.

But it was by no means over. Upon getting into the car and driving out of the gateway, the author found that his balance and co-ordination were completely compromised, so that he was consistently oversteering, and the front of the car seemed to sway around like a boat at sea. It became very difficult to judge speed and distance, so that it was necessary to drive extremely slowly and with great caution.

Arriving home 40 minutes later, his wife observed immediately that he was unwell – apparently his face was completely ashen. It was a total of 5 hours after leaving the site before the symptoms finally abated.

It is often argued that such effects associated with wind turbines are due to stress or annoyance brought about by the relentless noise, but on this occasion there was no audible noise at all within the house. Moreover, it was a remarkably tranquil evening with a very impressive sunset, so any thought that problems could arise from the turbines was completely absent.

It was only once the symptoms became increasingly severe that the author finally made the connection, having first considered and ruled out any other possibilities. So explanations of “nocebo effect” would hardly appear to be appropriate, when such awareness occurred only well into the event.

In the following two figures, the typical measured infrasound levels in the basement are shown, as measured with one of the Infiltek microbarometers.

Figure 8 shows the power spectrum, measured with a nominal 0.1Hz FFT bandwidth. As can be seen, the peak of the fundamental blade rate component, at 55dB, might not normally be considered to represent a particularly obtrusive level of infrasound. Several higher harmonics of progressively reducing amplitude are visible, but this characteristic is very much as one would expect for an upwind-rotor turbine operating in comparatively smooth airflow.

The corresponding time-trace is shown in Figure 9. It can be seen that there is a single comparatively sharply defined pulse per blade-passage, so it would appear that only the closest wind-turbine is contributing significantly.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that while the fundamental harmonic of blade-passage is at only 55dB, the cumulative effect of the higher harmonics can raise the peak level of the waveform on occasion to 69-72dB. Most of the author’s prior work has concentrated on time-history analysis of the waveform, consistent with the 2004 observation by Moller & Pedersen (4) that at the very lowest frequencies it is the time-history of infrasound which is most relevant to perception. Simply observing separate spectral levels at discrete frequencies and regarding these as independent components can lead to considerable underestimate of the true levels of repetitive infrasound.

The fact that balance and coordination were found to be adversely compromised during the night drive home would suggest interference with the vestibular organs, as proposed by Pierpont (5) and subsequently by Schomer (6).

An important additional observation, however, is that the effects persisted for 5 hours afterwards, when the immediate excitation was no longer present. In contrast, for sea-sickness, effects tend to dissipate rapidly once sea conditions moderate. It is of interest that a 1984 investigation (7), in which test subjects experienced 30 minutes exposure to 8Hz excitation at very much higher levels of 130dB, reported that some adverse effects could persist for several hours later.

Conclusions

It has been shown that upwind-rotor turbines can indeed sometimes give rise to impulsive low-frequency infrasound – a characteristic commonly attributed only to old-fashioned downwind rotor configurations. But perception of wind turbine low frequency noise and infrasound can be quickly suppressed by the effects of wind-induced airflow over the ears, with the result that incorrect conclusions can easily result from observations made when exposed to outside breezy conditions.

The effects within a residence are much more readily perceptible, and cannot be ignored. An account has been given of an occurrence of severe direct health effects experienced by the author, and considered to be due entirely to wind-turbine infrasound, yet manifest under superficially benign conditions where no such adverse effects were anticipated.

MA Swinbanks
23 April 2015

Angry Locals Willing to Fight the Wind Scam!!!

May 10, 2015 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

Community Defenders Down MET Mast in Donegal, Ireland

May 10, 2015 by stopthesethings 3 Comments

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There aren’t many guarantees in life – death and taxes spring to mind: to which can be added open community hostility to giant fans.

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

The Irish have already hit the streets to bring an end to the fraud: some 10,000 stormed Dublin back in April last year. The sense of anger in Ireland – as elsewhere – is palpable (see our post here). And they’re tooling up for a raft of litigation in order to prevent the construction of wind farms, wherever they’ve been threatened on the Emerald Isle (seeour post here).

Having seen their political betters co-opted by the wind industry and acquiesce – if not actively condone – the wanton and needless destruction of neighbours’ common law rights to live in and enjoy their own homes and properties, community defenders in Ireland are fighting back. And, as elsewhere, some of the tactics used have led to sanctimonious huffing and puffing from an industry devoid of any moral compass or human empathy, and always quick to ride roughshod over the living and the dead:

Wind Power Outfits – Thugs and Bullies the World Over

The Wind Industry Knows No Shame: Turbines to Desecrate the Unknown Graves of Thousands of Australian Soldiers in France

The MET masts used by hopeful wind power outfits to gauge wind speeds are the vanguard for every wind farm disaster: no MET mast data, no wind farm. As soon as they go up, the locals circle their wagons, marshal their forces and declare war on the proponent. No surprises there.

With the wind industry on the ropes in Australia, developers are quietly pulling down their MET masts at places like Robertstown and Hallett in South Australia – much to the delight of locals (see our post here).

In Ireland, and elsewhere, locals have sought to bring matters to a head by bringing MET masts plummeting back to earth, a little earlier than their wind weasel owners had planned.

Do you know who tore down this mast at Lismulladuff in Co Donegal?
Irish Mirror
Stephen Maguire
4 April 2015

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This giant 250ft mast was found cut down today on the site of Ireland’s biggest wind farm.

The scene of the crime at Lismulladuff outside Killygordon is currently the subject of local protests.

Plans were lodged with with An Bord Pleanala (ABP) a number of weeks ago by Planree Ltd for the Carrickaduff Wind Farm.

The giant wind farm will stretch from the iconic Barnesmore Gap in Donegal, along the Tyrone border, to near Castlefin.

The plans include an application for 49 giant wind turbines, some of which will be 500ft in height.

A recent meeting organised by protest group Finn Valley Wind Action (FVWA) group, was held in the Parochial Hall in the tiny village of Crossroads and attracted more than 300 locals.

The test mast was erected in recent weeks to take wind readings in the area.

Now gardai believe the mast was attacked in recent days but only discovered yesterday.

The group who are protesting over the planned wind farm have condemned the attack.

A spokesperson for the FVWA protest group condemned the attack on the test mast.

“It’s down so other than that we don’t know what happened. We can’t understand why anyone would want to do that.

“It’s bad form because it wasn’t bothering anybody. We think it was better up – as a size guide being half the height of the proposed wind turbines.

“The FVWA condemns this act of vandalism any anyone with any information should contact Ballybofey Gardai,” said the spokesperson.

Gardai from Ballybofey were on site this morning and have launched a full investigation into the attack.
Irish Mirror

The FVWA “Goldilocks” position is ‘just right’; as an effort to distance themselves from the guerrilla tactics employed – and understandable from that political perspective.

However, the saboteurs’ actions are – given what they’re up against – perfectly understandable too; and not without precedent:

More MET Mast Mayhem: Community Defenders Drop Mast in Fight to Save Homes near Bangor, Maine

MET Mast Mayhem: Scots Use Guerrilla Tactics to Stop These Things

Wave of Destruction: Ontario Wind Farm Neighbours in Open Revolt

While the Gardai set off to investigate a crime scene, it’s clearly arguable – on moral, if not legal, grounds – that what is laid out in the story (and the posts linked above) is conduct aimed at preventing a series of greater – and wholly unnecessary – crimes.

Faced with the threat of sonic torture, smashed property values and the risk of death and injury from self-igniting turbines and “uncontrolled flying blades” – from the developer’s potential victims’ viewpoint – it could equally earn the tag of community “self-defence”. And self-defence is a complete defence, to all bar murder.

As the defenders in Donegal (and elsewhere) were ostensibly acting to protect their homes, families and businesses from an acoustic trespasser (see our post here) the “castle doctrine” clearly comes into play.

That doctrine is one of some force and antiquity – it’s been on the books for nearly 400 years, when lawyer and politician Sir Edward Coke (pronounced Cook), scratched it out in The Institutes of the Laws of England, 1628:

“For a man’s house is his castle, et domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium [and each man’s home is his safest refuge].”

And so, if a few pro-family and pro-community activists have to drop a MET mast here and there to make their point in the active defence of their homes, and the health and safety of their families, it’s action that’s probably excusable and clearly understandable. And, all the more so, when those that are paid handsomely to protect the health and welfare of their citizens, do little more than spin propaganda on behalf of the wind industry – a form of malign indifference, at best.

Many a good revolution kicked off with a handful of hotheads out to make their point, with a few misdemeanors against the property of the powerful; acts quickly deemed ‘threats to civil order’, if not ‘crimes against the state’, by those under threat – with the actors just as quickly rounded up in chains.

In the main, efforts aimed at suppressing the outrage that led the offenders to act, and punishing them for their actions, only added to their fury, and encouraged other, less passionate souls, to eagerly join the fray; and, thereafter, the rest – as they say – “is history”.

Governments Finally Starting To Open Their Eyes to the Wind Scam…

May 8, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

2015: the Wind Industry’s ‘Annus Horribilis’; or Time to Sink the Boots In

May 8, 2015 by stopthesethings

Any ‘business’ model or industry that is built around endless streams of government mandated subsidies – like Australia’s REC Tax/Subsidy or the US’s Production Tax Credit – pins its hopes of long-term survival on the whims of our political betters, which tend to ebb and flow with the economics that dictate the fortunes of those they pretend to govern. Or, more crudely, if your business can only survive when firmly nuzzled to the public tit, then at some point, with the stroke of a parliamentary pen, you can expect to see your firm’s future grind to a shuddering halt.

In Australia, successive governments threw $billions in subsidies at (and/or erected impregnable tariff barriers – a tax on consumers – to protect) manufacturers of agricultural machinery, like HV McKay; textile, clothing and footwear manufacturers; and car manufacturers.

But, eventually, the cost of propping up uncompetitive industries wears thin; governments grow tired of endless excuses as to why the recipients aren’t ready to ‘compete’, just yet; and/or pleading for the gravy train to roll for that little bit longer, at everyone elses’ expense.

Sometimes, when the flabby firms concerned are threatened by a government out to axe mandated corporate welfare schemes, they pipe up with claims of being ‘competitive’ SOON – like the naughty boy caught for the umpteenth time stealing mum’s Tim Tams, promising to be better in future.

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One such example is from Christopher Flavin, the President emeritus of the Worldwatch Institute, when he pitched the yarn that, in a few years’ time, wind energy will not need to be subsidised at all.

But, hang on, that was 1984 – and the very same line gets reloaded and fired off ad infinitum – without a hint of irony, or shame, at begging for more, over and over and over again.

But, sensible governments are catching on: the fiction that the wind industry will SOON be competitive with conventional power generators, is being treated with the contempt it rightly deserves; and, as a consequence, wind power outfits are being threatened with that which spells their immediate demise: the chance to compete NOW!

Here’s a take from the US on what the wind industry fears most.

It is a Bad Time to be in the Renewable Energy Industry
Heartland.org
Marita Noon
27 April 2015

2015 may go down in the books as the year support for renewable energy died – and we are only a few months in. Policy adjustments – whether for electricity generation or transportation fuels – are in the works on both the state and federal levels.

While the public is generally positive about the idea of renewable energy, the reality of years-long policy implementation that offers it special favors has changed public opinions. An October 2014 report in Oklahoma’s Enid News titled: “Wind worries?: A decade after welcoming wind farms, states reconsider,” offers this insightful summary:

“A decade ago, states offered wind-energy developers an open-armed embrace, envisioning a bright future for an industry that would offer cheap electricity, new jobs and steady income for large landowners, especially in rural areas with few other economic prospects. To ensure the opportunity didn’t slip away, lawmakers promised little or no regulation and generous tax breaks. But now that wind turbines stand tall across many parts of the nation’s windy heartland, some leaders in Oklahoma and other states fear their efforts succeeded too well, attracting an industry that gobbles up huge subsidies, draws frequent complaints and uses its powerful lobby to resist any reforms.”

But, it isn’t just wind energy that has fallen from favor. 2015 state and federal legislation reflects the “reconsider” prediction. Likewise “powerful” lobbyists are resisting the proposed reforms.

Oklahoma is just one state in what has become a new trend.

About a decade ago, when more than half of the states enacted strict Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), Oklahoma, and a few other states, agreed to voluntary targets. Now, nearly one-third of those states are reconsidering the legislation that sounded so good in a different energy era. Back then, it was widely believed that there was an energy shortage and “dealing with global warming” was a higher public priority.

“Roughly 30 bills relating to the Oklahoma wind industry have been filed in the state legislature in the 2015 session, including at least one targeting the tax breaks and others attempting to alter regulatory policies,” reports Fox News. On April 16, the Oklahoma House voted, 78-3, to eliminate the wind energy tax credit. The measure now moves to the Senate, which will review a companion bill introduced by Senator Mike Mazzei – it is expected to pass and will likely be headed to Governor Mary Fallin soon.

Oklahoma isn’t the first state to reconsider its renewable energy policies. That distinction goes to Ohio, which in May 2014, passed legislation that paused the state’s RPS for two years. Governor Kasich signed it in June. Meanwhile, according to Eli Miller, the Ohio State Director for Americans for Prosperity: “the economic well-being of our working families and businesses can be factored in before moving forward.” The International Business Times projects that the two years a commission has to study will lead to a “permanent reduction.”

Earlier this year, West Virginia became the first state to repeal its RPS. With unanimous support in the Senate and a 95-4 vote in the House, renewable energy supporters are dismayed. Calling it “pure political theater and probably a flop,” Nick Lawton, Staff Attorney at the Green Energy Institute dismisses the move: “West Virginia’s withdrawal of its weak renewable energy policy is unlikely to significantly change that state’s energy markets.” Nancy Guthrie, one of the four Democrats who voted “No,” did so because she believes “we are running out of coal, it’s that simple” – which is, of course, totally incorrect.

Last month the Texas Senate voted to end its RPS and another program that, according to the Star Telegram, “helped fuel the state’s years-long surge in wind energy production.” The bill now moves to the House State Affairs Committee. It is expected to pass the House and be signed by Governor Greg Abbott. While Texas is known for its leadership in wind energy, the termination of the RPS will impact the solar industry as well. Charlie Hemmeline, executive director of the Texas Solar Power Association, states: “Increasing uncertainty for our industry raises the cost of doing business in the state.”

Coming up, Kansas, North Carolina, and Michigan have legislation that revisits the states’ favorable renewable energy policies.

New Mexico and Colorado had bills to repeal or revise the RPS that passed in one chamber, but not in the other.

While Louisiana doesn’t have an RPS, it does have generous tax credits for solar panel installations that have exploded the cost to the state’s taxpayers.

The credits were originally expected to cost the state $500,000 a year. In 2014 the payouts ballooned to $63.5 million according to the Baton Rouge Advocate. Repealing or revising the policy is a key priority in the current legislative session.

“Taxpayer support for wind energy is also losing momentum in Congress,” says Fox News. It points out: “Capitol Hill lawmakers at the end of last year did not extend the Federal Production Tax Credit (PTC). And in March, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), failed to rally support behind an amendment that would have put a five-year extension on the PTC.”

It is not just wind energy that has lost favor in Congress. The Ethanol mandates – known as the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) – are being re-examined, too.

On January 16, 2015, Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) introduced the “Corn Ethanol Mandate Elimination Act of 2015.”

More recently, a “former Obama economic adviser” issued a report that calls for changes to the 10-year-old RFS. Harvard University Professor Jim Stock served on the Council of Economic Advisers in 2013 and 2014.

The Hill states: “His report comes at a time of growing angst among lawmakers, regulators and the industry over the future of the RFS, which mandates fuel refiners blend a certain volume of ethanol and biodiesel into their traditional gasoline and diesel supplies.” The Wall Street Journal(WSJ) supports the sentiment calling Stock’s report: “a key voice to a growing chorus of people who say the policy isn’t working.” It continues: “The report adds to a growing body of politicians and experts who are questioning the law’s effectiveness amid regulatory uncertainty and lower prices.”

Hawaii, uniquely, has its own ethanol mandate, but it, too, is coming under attack. KHON states: “Nine years after a major change at the gas pump was forced on Hawaii drivers, many are now calling it a failed experiment and want it gone.”

In both the case of Hawaii and the federal government, lawmakers are looking toward advanced biofuels that don’t raise food costs. However, the Environmental Protection Agency – tasked with implementing the RFS – has repeatedly waived or reduced the cellulosic biofuel requirements because, despite more than $126 billion invested since 2003, the industry has yet to produce commercially viable quantities of fuel.

Addressing dwindling investment in biofuels and growing skepticism, The Economist, on April 18, says: “Campaigners generally find it easier to fulminate against those which damage the environment or food security than to explain exactly how they ought to be grown.” It concludes: “Whether such bright ideas can be commercialised at scale is a different question. Some companies, indeed, are starting to give up. Several algae-to-fuel ventures in America are switching to the manufacture of high-value chemicals instead. Sunlight is a great source of energy. Biology may not be the best way of storing it.”

And this doesn’t include the public’s failure to embrace higher-priced electric cars – even with tens of thousands of dollars of subsidies and tax credits.

Looking at all the policy reviews, the trend is clear. As Watchdog.org, in areport titled: “Why repealing the renewable energy mandates is good for the economy,” concludes: “The best policy for the states is to leave energy consumption decisions to consumers in the market rather than legislate them.”
Heartland.org

Noise From Wind Turbine Disrupting Children at School.

May 6, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Fury over school turbine racket in Rhosesmor

06 May 2015, By Robert Doman

NOISE from a school wind turbine likened to a helicopter continues to cause problems – more than a year after a fight to have it removed.

High winds yesterday led to more noise coming from the blades on the 20m turbine at Ysgol Rhos Helyg in Rhosesmor – just as youngsters tried to concentrate for important exams inside.

And one man living nearby said vibrations from the turbine in high winds is making things in his kitchen shake.

The latest problems come despite the blades on the turbine being changed last year in an attempt to cut the noise problem and more than a year after parents and residents petitioned for the turbine’s removal.

At that time school headteacher Gareth Roberts said the structure, which was installed by Flintshire Council, would be taken away if the noise persisted.

Yesterday parents voiced concerns about children at the school taking national curriculum exams being disturbed by the noise.

Flintshire Council staff say the new blades are less noisy than the old ones and Mr Roberts said there was no impact on pupils taking the tests, but parents said they did not know how their children would be able to concentrate.

Julia Weigh, 53, whose 11-year-old daughter is taking the tests, said: “The turbine is making a horrendous noise.

“It is ridiculous for them to be taking important tests with that racket going on.

“People aren’t going to let this lie. It has been up for a long time now and been dogged with problems.

“The headteacher promised it would be taken down if the problem persisted, but nothing has happened.”

Resident David Wright, who lives near the school, said: “The turbine howls a lot and the ground vibrates when the wind changes direction, causing things to shake in my kitchen.

“It shouldn’t have been put up this close to houses. I can’t imagine what the children in the school are thinking when they are trying to concentrate.

“It has never been quiet but it really comes alive when the wind gets up. I can’t sit outside and enjoy my garden because it makes such a racket.”

Germany Buckling Under the Weight of the Wind Scam!

May 6, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

German Climate Physicist says: Time for Germans to Sober Up, kill their Wind Power Debacle & Save Millions of REAL Jobs

May 6, 2015 by stopthesethings

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The Germans went into wind power harder and faster than anyone else – and the cost of doing so is catching up with a vengeance. The subsidies have been colossal, the impacts on the electricity market chaotic and – contrary to the environmental purpose of the policy – CO2 emissions are rising fast: if “saving” the planet is – as we are repeatedly told – all about reducing man-made emissions of an odourless, colourless, naturally occurring trace gas, essential for all life on earth – then German energy/environmental policy has manifestly failed (see our post here).

Some 800,000 German homes have been disconnected from the grid – victims of what is euphemistically called “fuel poverty”. In response, Germans have picked up their axes and have headed to their forests in order to improve their sense of energy security – although foresters apparently take the view that this self-help measure is nothing more than blatant timber theft (see our post here).

German manufacturers – and other energy intensive industries – faced with escalating power bills are packing up and heading to the USA – where power prices are 1/3 of Germany’s (see our posts here and hereand here). And the “green” dream of creating thousands of jobs in the wind industry has to turned out to be just that: a dream (see our post here).

Now, with Germany’s wind powered energy debacle clearly running completely out of control, a few sober individuals – like German physicist, climate scientist and spokesman for the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), Prof. Dr. Horst-Joachim Lüdecke – have weighed in. Prof Lüdecke has ripped into his country’s insane renewables policy; in an effort to get his compatriots to sober up, before they’re all left without a job, living on welfare and sitting freezing, in the dark.

German Climate Physicist: Alternative Energy, Climate Are A “Religious Creed”… “Miles Away” From Openness
NoTricksZone
P Gosselin
26 April 2015

****

Yesterday approximately 15,000 coal miners turned out to protest the German government’s energy policy.

German Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel announced earlier he intended to levy a CO2 surcharge on older coal power plants with the aim of shutting them down.

Before yesterday’s demonstration, German physicist and climate scientist and spokesman for the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), Prof. Dr. Horst-Joachim Lüdecke, published a sharply-worded commentary here on the government’s anti-fossil fuel/nuclear power policy. As the introduction Lüdecke wrote:

“Climate protection and the switch over to renewable energies were instilled in German citizens by state propaganda, green brainwashing and with the help of all of Germany’s mainstream media. The unconditional necessity to advance into alternative energies has become a religious creed. By historical and global comparison, such a thing happens the most easily here, time after time. The logic used by the politically interested parties every time appears to be infallible. [..]

The argument goes as follows: The rescue of the planet from a death by heat and the immediate shutdown of the irresponsible German nuclear power plants are essential. The question of whether this is really true is not to be asked, let alone discussed.”

Lüdecke says, however, that public awareness over the madness of Germany’s energy policy is beginning to dawn and that he believes “now is the phase of sobering up, but unfortunately not yet one of reason.” Leading print media are beginning to soften their support for the so-called Energiewende as it now stands, he writes. As angry coal miners take to the street, and thousands of industrial jobs become threatened, it is becoming increasingly apparent something has gone awry.

Lüdecke thinks that the sobering-up process will take time because every political party has made green issues part of its platform. “Green is a very difficult color to wash away,” the German physicist writes.

Lüdecke then explains the primary disadvantage of renewable energy: their low energy density, i.e. meaning they require vast areas and that the major ones are weather-dependent. The German EIKE professor does not know how long the sobering-up process will take, citing the immense power of an array of lobbies behind the green movement.

Lüdecke also aims harsh words at Germany’s pompous and one-sided media:

“Finally a word for the German media, here especially for the public TV and radio networks. They are rightly being compared by the current contemporaries to the conditions of former East Germany or even earlier times.”

At the political level, Lüdecke blasts the atmosphere of intimidation against people who have alternative views, who often are threatened with physical violence from radical leftists groups.

When it comes to openness, such as that proclaimed by French philosopher Voltaire, the German climatologist writes “in the dark media of Germany, we are miles away.” He adds:

“Factual discourse, connected with polite listening and taking the arguments from opponents seriously, is definitely not in fashion.”

Lüdecke describes Germany as a desert when it comes to independent reporting and expression of opinions.
NoTricksZone

There, as here, a gullible and pliant media has aided and abetted the greatest environmental and economic fraud of all time. Whether it’s bone laziness, or intellectual dishonesty, modern journos have a lot to answer for.

****

Once upon a time, the ambitious young hack was inquisitive, suspicious and had the kind of forensic zeal that would have teamed up well with Sherlock Holmes and his side-kick, Watson. Not any more.

Sadly, save for a few remarkable examples – like Graham Lloyd, Alan Jones, James Delingpole, Emily Godsen, Christopher Booker and Rodney Lohse – the press-pack simply parrot the drivel tossed out as “media releases” by the Clean Energy Council, and its wind industry funded equivalents around the globe.

But, thanks to the likes of NoTricksZone, and a few other dedicated bloggers, the unassailable facts are seeing the light of day; much to the horror and annoyance of the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers.

As the scale and scope of the fraud is steadily being revealed – despite the wind industry’s best efforts to keep a lid on it – those who are in a position to have called it a long time ago – and failed or refused to do so – are going to end up looking like either gullible dupes; or willing worshippers, in an insidious, quasi-religious cult.

The Inability to Sleep Due to Wind Turbine Noises…..Very Dangerous!

May 5, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

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

May 5, 2015 by stopthesethings

****

Deprive someone of a decent night’s sleep and the wheels start to fall off pretty quickly.

In the absence of quality sleep, it’s not long and people start suffering mood swings, impaired mental function, lose capacity for abstract thought and – if operating heavy machinery or driving – become a danger to workmates and/or fellow road users.

Next time some tobacco advertising guru or other apologist for the harmcaused by giant fans starts mouthing off that there are no adverse health effects from turbine noise, flick them a copy of the WHO Night-time Noise Guidelines for Europe – the Executive Summary at XI to XII covers the point – and a copy of Anne Schafer’s brilliant survey of AGL’s victims at Macarthur.

STT thinks they’ll be reduced to arguing the unarguable. The only response left is, of course, to attack the victims. Ah, but that takes very special kind of person.

Sleep is essential for good health. THE most prevalent adverse health impact from giant industrial wind turbines is noise related sleep deprivation.

We’ve covered the fact that Industrial Noise – is always and everywhere a public health issue and that Sleep Deprivation the Most Common Adverse Health Effect Caused by Wind Turbine Noise.

Depriving anyone of a decent night’s sleep is tantamount to cruel and unusual punishment; to inflict that punishment on people trying to sleep in their own homes is an invasion of their property rights; and, therefore, amounts to a form of theft, as well:

Wind Turbine Infrasound: an “Acoustic Trespasser”

But stealing someone’s ability to get a solid 8 in the sack, has particular consequences for those who work with dangerous tools, machinery; or those who jump behind the wheel of a 60 tonne B-Double, and thunder off on days long treks, on Australia’s endless highways.

****

Australian heavy vehicle drivers are all subject to very strict rules about the maximum time behind the wheel, rest intervals and sleep. The assumption is that if the driver is off the road, then he or she will be catching some ZZZs; and, thereafter, be refreshed for yet another 8 hour slog down the road, before taking another scheduled break. All of these common sense rules are aimed at road safety – the driver’s own, and every other road user. And fair enough, too.

****

Farmers often jump behind the wheel of trucks in the wee-hours to get stock to markets or grain to silos; and spend endless hours on tractors during cropping activities. And there are a range of other dangerous activities that require a farmer to have their wits about them: operating post-hole diggers; and hanging onto a whirring handpiece while shearing or crutching a thumping big wether keen to avoid losing any part of its fibrous coat, to name a couple.

****

So, to deprive this class of people of a decent night’s sleep creates a health and safety problem, with the potential for some very serious impacts.

Ron and Chris Jelbart are farmers who live next door to AGL’s Macarthur wind farm disaster in Western Victoria. Chris has detailed, in graphic terms, her suffering, caused by the incessant low-frequency noise and infrasound generated by 140 3MW Vestas V112s, since they kicked into operation in October 2012, in hundreds of complaints to AGL; and as set out in this letter to the local rag:

From: Chris JelbartSent: Tuesday, September 10, 2013 7:05 PM
To: editor@thestandard.net.au
Subject: wind farm noise

Dear Sir,

I write in answer both to Nick Thies (Saturday letter), and to AGL (Tuesday Standard article). No-one who has not lived next to a wind farm can speak about the effects.

Multi-disciplinary scientific research has NOT been carried out. Any evidence is usually produced by groups or individuals who don’t want the truth known. Any evidence contrary to their views is ignored.

The extensive testing done by AGL by “independent” acoustic companies rely on parameters set by AGL so that full spectrum testing is not done. Sounds or noise that they don’t want are filtered out. Their testing could be compared with Collingwood being able to choose their own umpire on Saturday. I am sure the result would have been to Collingwood’s advantage.

The Senate recommended TWO years ago that research should be done, but nothing has happened. Now people surrounding the Macarthur Wind Energy Facility are suffering the consequences.

Why should we have to put up with disturbed and broken night’s sleep? Why should I have to hang over the sink dry-retching as I get lunch organised for the day? (I am 58 and not pregnant.) Why should my friends and neighbours suffer headaches, palpitations and head pressure? Why should families have to leave their homes to escape the effects of both audible and inaudible noise?

Not all people suffer from these problems. Some began experiencing symptoms immediately, for me it took at least 6 months. Others around the district are becoming more aware of problems as time goes on. It is NOT Simon Chapman’s nocebo effect. Some of those suffering believed we were talking utter nonsense 12 months ago.

We have to put up with the ridicule of people who live in their cities and towns with no clue of what is happening in our homes, expressing their disbelief at our suffering.

If AGL truly believes that their WEF at Macarthur is compliant, and not causing the distress that the surrounding residents are suffering, then it should encourage totally independent research to refute our suggestion to the contrary.
Chris Jelbart
Penshurst

****

Ron, and their son, Peter recently gave evidence to the Senate Inquiry into the great wind power fraud at Portland (see our post here) – evidence of the kind described by Senator Bob Day as “harrowing”:

Australian Senators – Day, Leyonhjelm & Canavan – Line Up to Can Big Wind

Peter also presented this submission.

Peter Jelbart
Penshurst, Victoria

This is my submission in regard to the senate enquiry to wind farms.

My name is Peter Jelbart, I am 31 years old and grew up at our home property, where mum and dad farm to this day. It was a great place to grow up and my upbringing, although it was not perfect, was very good.

I remember as a young child dad working away shearing 5 days a week and farming on weekends, to hold onto the dream of farming grandpa’s block.

I remember them having to sell land up the road, and only just holding onto the home block. I remember as a primary school age kid feeding hay and grain to sheep after school, while dad was away for, at times, weeks.

I remember sheep being pitted and being told to play while the crack of 22 bullets rang out and truck load after truck load of sheep got dumped in a pit. This was in the early 90’s, wool was bad, land was worth nothing and interest rates were running into the 20% region.

However, as bad as things were at home mum and dad did everything they could for us. Obviously education was a priority, as was being involved with local football and cricket. The farm and home means everything to us. It is my parent’s life’s work, superannuation and life savings, all in one neat block of Western Victorian dirt.

From the age of 19 I moved to Port Fairy to play football and fell into work driving trucks, which I have loved from as early as I can remember. I lived in town for 3 years, and then moved to Portland for a year before ending up in Western Australia.

Since I started driving trucks I have been very focused on firstly building a career and secondly trying to work toward financial security. I have been quite successful at this early stage.

As I sit here writing this I am financially secure, happy and healthy. But there is a big problem. I am back at home after working away and the Macarthur Industrial Wind Turbines are driving me mad. I have had disrupted sleeps since day one of operation, but only when I stay at home. I am not neurotic or psychotic, I do not suffer from “The Nocebo Effect”, I have very disrupted sleep at home.

As a truck driver I have become used to sleeping in different environments. I have worked big hours in the past. I have slept beside busy highways often, and in Western Australia I regularly slept with an “Ice Pack” running, which is basically a diesel motor that runs a refrigerated air con unit and an alternator, which is used when the truck is parked, to cool the bunk. Initially these take a lot of getting used to. They are noisy and they cycle. They cut in and out but once I’m asleep they don’t worry me. I have become very aware of the way I sleep since I started to be disrupted by the Macarthur IWF.

My parent’s farm is within a couple of kilometres from the nearest tower, not that that means anything to you or to us, as we may as well have a tower on the back lawn.

From an aesthetic point of view they are unattractive. It is not this that that worries me. The Industrial Wind Turbines are not necessarily noisy, although they are audible most days. The problem is the sleep disruption, the inaudible noise and the “un-feelable” vibration.

We are suffering a very real and serious problem at home. Dad is suffering from severe sleep disruption; I have severely interrupted sleep, mixed with lucid dreams. I have been fortunate to spend most of my time away from home since the Macarthur IWTs started.

I have recently ended up living at home again and this has only reinforced what I already knew, that there is a serious problem coming from the emissions of the IWTs next door.

As a professional heavy vehicle driver I know about fatigue. I have sat through courses related to fatigue management yearly for the last ten years. I have worked big hours, illegal hours, and I know what tired is. I know what sleep is. I know the principals of circadian rhythms, how to handle shift work, what to eat, what to drink and what to avoid.

I also know that the sleep, or lack of, that happens at home, is completely foreign. It is not a problem with my head, my mind, my body, or anything else. It is a problem from being externally stimulated by the IWTs close to home. It is a combination of infrasound and low frequency noise. “Noise” that doesn’t get measured by planners, government, hosts or acousticians. “Noise” that doesn’t exist. “Noise” that is all in our heads. “Noise” that is completely denied by wind farm companies.

For years I have dreamed of running a truck of my own. Ideally I would use home as a base. This is no longer a viable option because of the sleep issue. How can I as a heavy vehicle driver, whose fatigue is measured in 15 minute intervals, with fines starting at $600 for minor breaches, work out of a place where I can’t sleep? What am I to do when I can’t turn up fit for duty, even if I spent 8 hours in bed?

Wind is a dirty industry, built on lies, mistruths and hypotheticals. It is an unsustainable industry. It will cost Australia dearly, not just now but into the future. We at home are merely political road kill. We don’t matter. As the great green con rolls on, our lives have been disrupted to a level unimaginable to almost all. Unless you personally experience the disruption, the sleepless nights, the constant battering, you don’t get it.

I have only touched on the most personal issue to me, the disrupted sleep. There are far more qualified people out there who will hopefully make submissions outlining the political and financial failings of wind farms. I can live in the shadows of a wind farm, I can put up with the industrialisation of the landscape. The thing I can’t handle is not being able to sleep at home.

My submission is to outline purely the fact there is a real and proper concern as far as sleep deprivation and sleep disturbance go as neighbours of a wind farm. I realise there are too many people investing too much money and I realise that politicians and policy makers don’t like knowing or admitting that they have been lied to, conned and bluffed by wind energy, and as such I doubt any real outcome will be achieved by this senate enquiry, although I thank anyone who holds real concern for us.

The only thing that I can realistically relate wind energy to is asbestos, and maybe tobacco. For how long have we heard the proponents claiming all the upsides with no side effects, at all, EVER!!

Wake up to the con, the lies, the bullshit, that is wind, before more disruption to good everyday people takes place. There is a reason a senate enquiry is taking place and it is about time some real answers were heard from people affected by wind farms.

Peter Jelbart
Submission 270
Select Committee on Wind Turbines

The Full Impact of the Damage, from the Wynned Fiasco, is being felt in increments. Greed Energy!

May 4, 2015May 4, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

GWYN MORGAN

Special to The Globe and Mail

Published Sunday, May. 03 2015, 7:20 PM EDT

Last updated Monday, May. 04 2015, 7:31 AM EDT

Last month’s announcement by Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne that her province would link up with the existing Quebec and California carbon dioxide cap-and-trade systems prompted an editorial in this newspaper headlined, “Is this Green Energy Act Round Two?”

Ontario’s Green Energy Act offered so-called “feed-in rates” almost four times existing electricity rates for wind and more than 10 times for solar power. Like bees to honey, wind and solar companies rushed in. By the time the government realized that these subsidies were driving Ontario from one of the lowest to one of the highest power cost jurisdictions in North America, the province had signed myriad 20-year-locked-in-rate-guaranteed contracts that will drive power rates up a further 40 per cent to 50 per cent in coming years. Adding salt to this self-inflicted wound is the reality that much of the green power comes on stream when it isn’t needed. This unneeded electricity is dumped into the United States at bargain-basement prices that Ontario’s Auditor-General found has already cost Ontario power consumers billions of dollars, with much bigger losses yet to come before those 20-year contracts expire.

Given these disastrous results, one would think that Ms. Wynne and her cabinet colleagues would have carefully studied experience in other jurisdictions before implementing green policy two. The first and largest carbon cap-and-trade scheme is Europe’s 10-year-old system. As in Ontario, the story begins with huge subsidies for wind and solar power that drove up electricity prices precipitously. Cap-and-trade handed wind and solar power companies a second windfall by creating a “carbon trading market” that allowed them to sell “carbon offsets” from their low-emission projects.

On the other hand, many factories and industrial plants, already struggling with high power costs, found it more profitable to shut down and sell their carbon credit allocation in the carbon trading market. As a result, the bulk of Europe’s emissions reductions have been achieved by the departure of energy-intensive industries to overseas locations. Many of the products consumed by Europeans are now produced in countries without emissions limits, demonstrating the futility of imposing local carbon cap measures without global commitments. And since European industry was already among the world’s most energy efficient, the emissions embedded in most of those imported goods are higher than when the same goods were produced domestically.

Adding irony to this job-exporting fiasco, some European countries, including Germany, have implemented subsidies in an effort to keep the remnants of their industrial sector from shutting down. German electricity consumers paid some €20-billion ($27.2-billion) in green power subsidies last year, while at the same time their government spent billions of euros to help industrial plants survive the combination of high electricity and cap-and-trade costs that made them uncompetitive in the first place.

The Ontario announcement has promulgated a debate as to whether cap-and-trade is a tax. Clearly, for those having to buy carbon credits, it amounts to a tax. But for those who have credits to sell, it amounts to a subsidy.

But what most commenters have missed is that former premier Dalton McGuinty’s Green Energy Act created what is, for practical purposes, an indirect tax on energy consumers. Now comes Ms. Wynne’s equally ill-considered cap-and-trade tax. In mirror image to Europe’s green-power-driven levy on electricity consumers followed by cap-and-trade, Ontario’s ill-considered green scheme No. 2 could strike the final blow that drives industry elsewhere.

This leaves the question as to why Quebec so warmly welcomed Ontario’s decision to join its cap-and-trade system. Quebec’s electricity comes almost entirely from cheap, emissions-free hydropower, mitigating much of the competitive impact of cap-and-trade. Quebec has just announced a massive expansion of its hydropower capacity and is looking for markets. The net effect of signing Ontario onto its cap-and-trade system may well be the export of jobs from Ontario to Quebec businesses and the export of electricity from Quebec to Ontario consumers, along with the added bonus of selling carbon credits to Ontario businesses unable to meet cap-and-trade targets.

Ontario generates just 0.5 per cent of global carbon emissions. Even a giant 20-per-cent reduction would knock just a tenth of 1 per cent off global emissions. A minuscule gain for the globe, at a potentially enormous cost to the people of Ontario, and all Canadians.

Gwyn Morgan is a retired Canadian business leader who has been a director of five global corporations

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Community Defenders Down MET Mast in Donegal, Ireland

Governments Finally Starting To Open Their Eyes to the Wind Scam…

2015: the Wind Industry’s ‘Annus Horribilis’; or Time to Sink the Boots In

Noise From Wind Turbine Disrupting Children at School.

Germany Buckling Under the Weight of the Wind Scam!

German Climate Physicist says: Time for Germans to Sober Up, kill their Wind Power Debacle & Save Millions of REAL Jobs

The Inability to Sleep Due to Wind Turbine Noises…..Very Dangerous!

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

The Full Impact of the Damage, from the Wynned Fiasco, is being felt in increments. Greed Energy!