U.S. Senators Mount Assault on Wind Power( illegal in certain areas)

The innocuously-named "Environmentally Responsible Wind Power Act of 2005" introduced by U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Senator John Warner (R-VA), which could be rolled into a comprehensive energy bill currently under consideration in Congress, would have an immediate and devastating effect on the U.S. wind power industry, according to experts and industry sources.

When introducing the bill in a Senate floor speech delivered on Friday, May 13, Sen. Alexander attacked wind power, saying that "wind produces puny amounts of high-cost unreliable power," and that "Congress should not subsidize the destruction of the American landscape."

The bill takes aim at wind power's coveted Production Tax Credit (PTC), the on-again, off-again tax credit that is the federal government's primary support mechanism to level wind power's playing field with the traditional energy industries. The bill would wipe out the availability of the PTC to any wind project located within 20 miles of a coastline, military base, national park or other highly scenic area. It would also allow a neighboring state to veto any wind project proposed within 20 miles of that state's border.
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story;jsessionid=aJqaxUtDXQgb?id=30845

Oh, Beautiful,
Re-Newable,
Everlasting,
Clean,
Environmentally friendly,
Power From The Gods,
Of Blessed Nature,
.....Get The Twenty Miles Out Of My Sight!

"on May 13th, Sen. Alexander gives a speech blasting the wind industry, and introduces a bill removing subsidies for all offshore wind, the area which GE's technologies lead the world," Kempton said. "It is either very odd timing, or the fossil fuel lobbyists are quick at running their bills and speeches through friendly Senators' offices."

When a proposal came up to build large wind power units off the coast of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, who got it killed? Kerry and Kennedy, the Massachusetts senators.

It's the typical NIMBY attitude that affects people of all political persuasions. (note: NIMBY = Not In My Back Yard)

http://www.capewind.org/

Note it is the GOP, not just Ted, Warner and Alexander specifically, that are working their asses off to throw a monkey wrench in the works: http://www.wgbh.org/cainan/article?item_id=2279953&parent_id=0

Mitt Romney isn't helping matters, either, but the tide is turning. More and more Cape Codders are liking the idea.

I think the turbines are very graceful and aesthetic, myself. People didn't like the look of the Statue of Liberty when it first went up, either...they'll learn to love the windmills, eventually. They make sense, on so many levels.

Also, since OTIS is on the chopping block, there is a convenient little (rather oddly prescient) report done by the Army Corps of Engineers well before the BRAC list came out, suggesting that the windmills be placed at OTIS. Advantages: rich assholes on Nantucket won't bitch, the land is mostly clear, maintenance is easier. Details here: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/05/21/relocating_the_cape_wind_farm?mode=PF

My favorite local view was marred by erection of an ugly cellular tower.

And as long as we are telling people what they can do with their property based purely on maintaining a nice view, let's put an end to the building of any more sub-divisions, malls, and big box retailers.

the list is endless

ever been in LA on a smoggy day? You wouldn't even know that there were MOUNTAINS there!

Isn't Tennessee a big coal producing state?

....preventing crowds from gathering in close proximity to one another as an unreliable heat supplement source in closed spaces.

all of their hot air as a replacement energy source. Talk about an infinite supply.

The link should include the semicolon and the rest of the URL. It appears that DU software automatically breaks up long URL's, so there's a space before the semicolon.

Copy the whole line, paste it into the browser, and delete the space following the word "story".

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story;jsessionid=aJqaxUtDXQgb?id=30845

and my links are normally good

I live in an area that is prime for wind power, we have the largest sand dunes that were built by wind on the west coast, close to Vandenberg, 20 miles would prevent this.

I have talked to "city and county leaders about building wind generators on prime agricultural land to protect the farm land from urban sprawl, the land and soil gets 3 crops a year, mostly lettuce, strawberries, broccoli, the soil is the color of black gold, but is slowly being taken over to homes

This bill is just crap. I'm surprised they didn't toss 20 miles from a school as well.

Gee who benefits from this legislation?

Bigoil.

Not like there's a lot of wind near the fucking ocean or anything...

Are they insane?

as you can get--and was knocked off my feet by here reply-Well, it is something about an unobstructed view".

she lives in NM

There's nothing wrong with a building. We have skyscrapers that "mess up" acres more than a windmill would.

the American landscape."

Again, irony seems to be lost on these people. Does being right-wing mean one lacks an irony gene?

:eyes:

But maybe French vineyards in the foreground help.

is, what? maybe 5-6 miles away? You can't even see a friggin wind tower 20 miles away, much les anything else that size. Well, maybe pollution spewing out of a GD oil refinery.

1) Strip malls
2) Gas stations
3) McDonalds'
4) ...

Hypocrisy really IS a Republican value.

In 1991 the DOE put out a report on America's wind resources. It stated there is enough harvestable wind resources in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas alone to supply the entire US electrical needs through the year 2030. Doesn't sound like "puny amounts" to me.

Well, the loss of the PTC is going to suck for me, but my place doesn't fit the rest of the criteria, so I'll still put up my windmill anyway. The cost savings in electric will pay for the cost of the windmill and then some. Besides, then I won't have to be feeding the beast either.

...this life that we are accustomed to, we will need to build more renewable sources of energy, wind power being one of them.

I'm just SURE they're doing it out of the best interests of the country.

Coal Creek Station



Located between Washburn and Underwood, ND, on U.S. highway 83. North Dakota's largest lignite-fired electric generating station, two units.

Some good info and pix at: http://www.ohvec.org/

Rich people live near coasts (such as the Nantuckett Sound).

Tesha

According to the senator's logic.

There's a huge one not 1/4 mile from my home, and I think it's poetry in motion, literally. No noise, no pollution, no upkeep, and no threat to birds. Anybody who thinks that polluting coal plants or nuclear power plants are better than wind should go live next door to a coal plant or nuclear power plant.

What? You don't want to live next to one? Gee, what a surprise.

it's very pretty to look at.

...or maybe that's just the mercury in me talking.

How do you define that? Vague and subjective stuff like that makes for laws that get overturned. We wouldn't want to see that happen. :eyes:

Speaking of scenic areas, isn't this lovely?

where it's always windy and the only thing I could think of that would be uglier than a bunch of windmills would be freaking OIL RIGS plugged all through the channel.

f*cking idiots...

Wind power would work phenomenally in this area. /sigh

david

outside my front door tell me every single day that we should have wind turbines somewhere around here. They just won't shut up about it. Day and night they chime about it.

I put them out there in the back yard and they get torn to shreds. All my trees are growing at a 30° angle.

It's crazy how well windmills would work here, but dang it if we're not within BOTH 20 miles of a military base AND the coastline.

Wouldn't want to ruin that great military base view!

david

Wind power could generate enough electricity to support the world's energy needs several times over, according to a new map of global wind speeds that scientists say is the first of its kind.

The map, compiled by researchers at Stanford University, shows wind speeds at more than 8,000 sites around the world. The researchers found that at least 13 percent of those sites experience winds fast enough to power a modern wind turbine. If turbines were set up in all these regions, they would generate 72 terawatts of electricity, according to the researchers.

That's more than five times the world's energy needs, which was roughly 14 terawatts in 2002, according to the U.S. Department of Energy


http://www.wired.com/news/planet/0,2782,67600,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_6

n/t

But allow OIL AND GAS development sometimes in those very parks (Padre Island National Seashore)

Warner & Alexander, the Coal Clowns.

Sanctimonioius bullshit artists who haven't the common sense God gave a field mouse or the vision with which earthworms are endowed.

In Holland I find them attracive.

The system is interesting because farmers were loaned money to put the modern ones up on their properties - and when enough electricity is put back into the grid, they actually pay it off and derive an income from the modern windmills you see below. I believe Germany and Denmark are doing the same thing. Government gets clean cost effective power from farms, farmers develop another source of income, and less destructive ways of creating power are lessening.

The old





and the new



This reminds me of the Amtrack situation and I find it all pretty insane really. These people are lopping off all advances to lessen dependency on oil by whacking the wind programs and fucking up rail transit.

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1 kilometer from the shore Denmark







Kilgore Texas

But that's GOP America: destroy any initiative that promises to move us in the right direction.

there is a breathtaking number of modern white windmills on the mountainsides. It's still beautiful, and somewhat surreal.
On our ranch here, the little farmhouse has an old metal windmill built over the well, probably 40 years ago. The original plan apparently was to not have to pump the water up by PG&E electricity. Problem is, they could never get it to work for whatever reason. And at this point, it's so old and rusty, it's probably not salvageable. New ones are incredibly expensive.
But I love the idea. I understand you can also get a solar battery that would do the same thing.
Most of the big farms in this area have windmills.

Hawaii island will have to take down all exisiting wind generators? Absolutely ludicrous!

GOP is Pro-business: unless it threatens the profit margin of the fossil fuels industry.

works. Put wind generators in areas of constant high winds and use the energy to generate hydrogen from water. When the hydrogen is "burned" it produces water again - no CO2. Yes, hydrogen is difficult/dangerous to handle but that is an engineering problem that can be solved. No waste - no CO2, no radioactive waste, no hydrocarbons, no aerosols, no nitrogen oxides, ozone or sulfur dioxide. Just water, which can be captured and used. Win/win all around. It is the ONE thing I agree with George W. Bush about.

This has to be the dumbest piece of legislation introduced for the most bullshit reason that I have ever seen. If this sort of legislative tectic is legal, the Democrats should introduce legislation that prevents all smoke-producing factories to move their facilities 20 miles from all of these same locations (and lets include residential neighborhoods, as well), citing the same reason.

If for anything, just to watch them howl like banshees.

I think the windmills are beautiful and kind of intimidating when you get close to them (150 foot blades spinning around at ridiculous speeds). The only peeople I can think of to object to these windmills would be the Audobon society. Surely these things kill more than a few birds.

A price I am, of course, willing to pay in order to replace our dirty energy with clean, free, sustainable energy.

I wish the UK would consider a similar reduction of the credit for
farms situated in scenic areas.

Germany is by almost 2 times the world wind power leader, and there are
individual windmills that generate 5Mw each at peak capacity... but they
are REALLY HUGE... and the moving rotors are noisy, cause some people
to get sickness when they are between the sun and the windmill... and
they are like 600 feet to the top of the rotor blade... visible for
many miles.

There are a couple of windmills on the coast to the east of here, that
are visible from 15 miles off, and those ones are small, 200 feet ones.

Really, the best place to situate them is offshore, and indeed, it is
more expensive, but then the flicker and noise are not an impact... and
with a decent distance offshore, in a shallow bank, they are a great
asset... just wind power companies go straight for the windiest places
and want to situate them right there.

Wind power has a serious drawback, that there must be an alternative
source of energy available when the wind is not blowing. It means that
they can only supplement the energy stock, but really do not serve
to cut energy generation requirements.

It is a much wiser investment to subsidize solar roofing, insulation
of old houses and solar architecture, as solar power does not "turn
off" with no wind... and roofs are already in ample supply on which
to situate generation. It creates more jobs, net net.

www.AWEA.org - american wind energy association
www.GWEC.net - global wind energy council

Wind power should use brown sites, places where noise and big
industrial objects are already de-facto in the landscape. I am
against having them in natural areas... the big ones are REALLY
massive and they are indeed unsightly whirlygigs that make a low
pitch whirring in a quiet natural spaces.

currently installed 2004 wind power some megawattages:
india: 3000mw
EU-25: 34,205Mw
Latin America: 208Mw
USA: 6,740Mw
Canada: 444Mw
Australia: 380Mw
New zealand: 168.7Mw

sweetheart we have oil derricks of our coast and they are ugly compared to a wind generator.

One thing about those windmills is they "move"... and are very very
visually distracting because of this. As ugly as dericks are, they
are not moving... nor are they as large as wind pilons. I've a photo
of a helicopter landing on top of the little spindle thingie at the
center of the windmill!!.. and not a little helicopter... that they
are THAT large, to have heliport capability at the hub.

Really, coastlines are sacred spaces as far as i'm concerned, and all
i was saying is that they should not be trashing them up with ANY
sorts of construction (and my major beef is over-housing and privatization
of the coastline).

I grew up in Malibu, and they destroyed the coastline there during
my childhood by building on every square inch of space, that what was
a beach access community is now just a "wall" from the coast highway
and no access whatsoever.

The USA has HUGE spaces in places where windmills can be sited for
the benefit of all persons, and those spaces are in the uninhabited
areas that, carefully sited, wind power can be both invisible AND
effective. Just the coastlines have lotsa wind, so the developers
will be there wanting to put them up and i think its a great idea
to pull their subsidy for that... they can still try, but the public
should not pay for power generators (period, IMO), but at least
where they are defacing the public good.

As for military bases, all i can figure is that windmills could be
used as giant "trebuchets" as the tip speed will toss an object for
miles.. (there is a serious concern when the blades swing too fast
on the big ones, that a broken blade would really fly for several
miles and perhaps kill persons)... a well attached bomb object, with
the right timing to release it, could hurl a bomb in to a military
base of substantial size.

As well, birds hit those big buggers... military birds, as the
pilots are rather not used to being swatted as they do low flying
exercises... that's all i can figure about the military bases.

...but it would increase the price of wind power dramatically. There are ways of sequestering power produced during peak production hours and saving it for later use. Industrial sized hydrogen fuel cell plants being one of the most obvious, but hydroelectric resevoir storage is another option, albiet one that cannot be implemented on a large scale. However, either of these options reduces the economic viability of wind power dramatically, so as wind power provides a larger and larger share of the power we consume, unless off peak power generation from other sources is used, wind power will become more expensive not less. Most likely it would cost more to upgrade the grid and provide power sequestration than such mass production of turbines would save in scale of production costs.

However, even with such problems to overcome wind would still be cheaper than PV solar, unless nanotechnology (i.e. carbon nanotubes or quantum dot PV) brings down costs of production. Should PV production no longer require semiconductor production methods and environments, it may become a superior power source. Until then Congress removing subsidies on any renewable energy source is foolish and short-sighted.

The nuclear power industry absorbs a MASSIVE amount of subsidy, and i
agree with you that we should not be subsidizing ANY power supplies.

In this regard, i am for charging the full cost of military adventures
at the petrol pump, and the FULL cost of 10000 years of nuclear cleanup
for every nuclear kilowatt hour. Wind energy is rather cheap, just
the problems they're encountering here in scotland, is that the grid
is not "big" enough where the wind is, to get the power to the places
where it is needed. In this regard, wind developers are getting a
hidden subsidy from the grid that the public picks up the tab for
shifting the power to its application point.

I've libertarian blood and i agree with you, that subsidies are grossly
distorting markets and creating "gold rush" fever. It is the wrong
way, as by tampering with the market, they scare away stable investment
and sustainable development.

Wind power, solar power, insulation, house-energy-efficiency ratings
and tied-property tax, solar water and WAVE power between them could
power the nation leaving the petrol for transport only, where it is
needed in the long term until another source of such easily transported
fuel can be arrived at.

Even that bio-deisal crap is grossly subsidized, that is just pork
doled out from congress... that it takes arguably more energy to
produce the petrol and transport it to market, than is realized in
its application.

Welcome to DU. :-) Noble Cynic... please stick around.

What's the going rate to buy a senator these days? Couldn't someone just pony up the money?

I hear Delay's for sale.

And then there's the House of Representatives...

keep that $$$$$$OIL FLOWING$$$$$$$:puke:

ANWR will only produce "puny" amounts of oil, and yet the Republicans were perfectly willing to subsidize the destruction of the Alaskan landscape.

"Sen. Alexander attacked wind power, saying that "wind produces puny amounts of high-cost unreliable power," and that "Congress should not subsidize the destruction of the American landscape." "

Well, Sen. Alexander certainly saw it fit to subsidize the destruction of the Alaskan landscape for oil. Asshole.

Can't make a buck on wind. Asshole corporatist install lobbyists in each Senatorial ass cavity. This makes greed the 1st rule in good ethics for traitor congress-critters.

You've seen mystical scenic windmills.

It does not take anything out of the earth.

The footprint is smaller than an oil well.

migrating birds dont see them untill its too late.