Wind Farm Gets US Approval Despite Controversy

Wind Farm Gets US Approval Despite Controversy

edition.cnn.com

A massive offshore wind farm planned for Cape Cod that has generated fierce political and legal controversy has cleared all federal and state regulatory hurdles.
The Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday the Cape Wind project, the first of its kind in the United States, would not interfere with air traffic navigation and could proceed with certain conditions.
Previous agency approvals were challenged in court, including a ruling last year that forced the latest FAA safety evaluation. A leading opposition group said another legal challenge was possible.
The Obama administration firs

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This is great news! A win for sustainable, clean energy!

However, this is what the residents think of the proposal;

Critics claim the wind farm with its 130 turbines would threaten wildlife and aesthetics of Nantucket Sound. Some local residents also fear it will drive down property values.

I appreciate the concerns to a degree however, I still deem these attitudes as extremely selfish in terms of sustainability!

People have to stop concerning themselves (and admittedly OURselves as I am not perfect either) with only their benefit but that of us all.

Sure the wind turbines may be less pleasing to the eye than trees but considering the alternatives currently in use such as nuclear power, coal power, oil etc. I for one would welcome wind turbines!

I hope this is the beginning of a cascading deployment of sustainable energy...but I can't see it.

edition.cnn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I hope they do good. The ones around here have been a major waste of money. It will take like 30 years just to have them pay for themselves. And it is windy as hell here.

reply to post by Pirateofpsychonautics


Sounds like some stuffy fat cats are more worried about the turbines clogging up their shoreline view.
I'm sure it would be perfectly fine for them to get their power from a coal plant miles away though...
Eat the rich.

reply to post by Pirateofpsychonautics


If they built a windfarm you couldn't pay me to live in nantucket. Those things are disgustingly ugly, not to mention like all other windfarms in a few years it will be abandoned and just sitting there with no moving turbines.

(by the way, wind power is by far the least efficient form of energy production. It literally takes decades to offset the pollution required to build the parts, construct it and maintain it. It's simply a horrible conversion process... it's been proven, wind is not the future..... not even mentioning that it decimates the natural pristine state of any region they get placed.)

reply to post by Pirateofpsychonautics


Can i ask a question..?

exactly what minerals are used in the manufacturing of wind turbine technology, How much of these minerals are being dug up from the ground, where is the minerals coming from, who is possessing the minerals what are the pollutive by products of the minerals that are being fashioned in to components and where are they storing the pollution created from the manufacturing of the products....?

Clean energy yep that is right and star trek is all so real.

reply to post by Legion2024


They were all sourced from renewable stockpiles. Every single one of them.

Prove me wrong.

reply to post by Rockpuck

not to mention like all other windfarms in a few years it will be abandoned and just sitting there with no moving turbines.

This phenomena seems to be mostly isolated to the western portions of the United States. Given that nationally and internationally massive amount of wind turbines are not being abandoned, this seems to be more indicative of the incompetence of the cali government. California is the only place I know of that this seems to be happening on a large scale.

(by the way, wind power is by far the least efficient form of energy production.

Inefficient in what way?

Onshore wind energy is actually probably the cheapest scalable non-hydro renewable, cheaper than solar in most places and far cheaper than tidal and wave energy. The energy returned on energy invested is rather high for onshore wind turbines. Per megawatt-hour, wind energy is about as expensive as nuclear, and both are cheaper than CCS that doesn't exist at the moment. Of course, both are much more expensive than coal and gas (gas in the USA only, gas is much more expensive everywhere else) when neither are forced to pay for the damages they cause.

Off-shore wind turbines seem to be massively expensive and given how much space the USA has it makes it baffling as to why these are going to be built. It will cost 2.5 billion dollars and will on average generate 170 MW of electricity, which is about $15/watt. Land based wind turbines are less than half that. Reactors are also less than half that.

The main problem is they are unreliable so they, themselves, cannot phase out existing power stations. Geologically separating wind farms by large distances as well as smart-grids could help solve this, but the reality at the moment is that another flexible source is required to provide the juice when the wind isn't blowing. Since natural gas is flexible, it is usually natural gas that does this. Wind turbines would have to be paired with something else that's renewable to truly replace fossil fuel burning plants with renewable energy.

Originally posted by Legion2024
reply to post by Pirateofpsychonautics

 

Can i ask a question..?

exactly what minerals are used in the manufacturing of wind turbine technology, How much of these minerals are being dug up from the ground, where is the minerals coming from, who is possessing the minerals what are the pollutive by products of the minerals that are being fashioned in to components and where are they storing the pollution created from the manufacturing of the products....?

Clean energy yep that is right and star trek is all so real.

I wonder if anybody has ever asked a dealer this before buying a Prius?

Anyhow, I lived in the California Bay Area for over a decade and passing through the Altamont Pass there is a big wind farm that does absolutely nothing. Our electricity bills out there were even more expensive than in the Capitol where - as far as I can tell - the only power source is Nevada.

ETA: I can't speak for the rest of the country, but I can confirm what C0bzz says about California.

reply to post by Pirateofpsychonautics


# the residents! It if offshore for Christs sake. I would understand f in were onshore, there does seem to be a few environmental and noise problems in those cases.

But offshore? Get on with it, everywhere!

reply to post by C0bzz


It's an international phenomena.. wind farms are abandoned due to incredibly low efficiency (in the USA its between 10-25% when companies claimed they could run at 35-40% efficiency)
www.telegraph.co.uk...

The research found over 395 days, the wind farms could have produced 17,586,000 MW hours of energy running at full capacity. In reality, 3,881,900MW hours was generated, equivalent to 22.07 per cent.

And over the past two years, wind generation across the sites fell below 20MW on 123 separate days for a combined duration of 25 days. For a total of nine days, output dipped below 10MW, barely enough power to boil 3,300 household kettles.

interestingenergyfacts.blogspot.com...

Despite what some may say wind power costs a lot. We only have to look at tax subsidies for wind power that are according to the U.S. Energy Industry Administration around 200 times greater than for oil and gas, based on per-unit-of-energy produced. The „not so bright idea“ of replacing cheap, highly efficient fossil fuels with windmills was best demonstrated in Scotland, where wind farms managed to produce only half of their predicted power output. The reason for this was “calm weather“. Germany, one of the world's renewable energy leaders also has number of people that have expressed serious doubts in wind power efficiency. For instance 40 German top business managers recently complained that mandated renewable energy, including wind power will cause significant extra costs in years to come with 8 billion Euros this year alone.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

A breathtaking sight awaits those who travel to the southernmost tip of Hawaii’s stunningly beautiful Big Island, though it’s not in any guidebook. On a 100-acre site, where cattle wander past broken ‘Keep Out’ signs, stand the rusting skeletons of scores of wind turbines.
Just a short walk from where endangered monk seals and Hawksbill turtles can be found on an unspoilt sandy beach, a technology that is supposed to be about saving the environment is instead ruining it.

Literal beacons of the "green" energy movement, giant wind turbines have been one of the renewable energy sources of choice for the US government, which has spent billions of taxpayer dollars subsidizing their construction and use across the country. But high maintenance costs, high rates of failure, and fluctuating weather conditions that affect energy production render wind turbines expensive and inefficient, which is why more than 14,000 of them have since been abandoned.

Before government subsidies for the giant metals were cut or eliminated in many areas, wind farms were an energy boom business. But in the post-tax subsidy era, the costs of maintaining and operating wind turbines far outweighs the minimal power they generate in many areas, which has left a patchwork of wind turbine graveyards in many of the most popular wind farming areas of the US.

Learn more: www.naturalnews.com...

toryaardvark.com...

The symbol of Green renewable energy, our saviour from the non existent problem of Global Warming, abandoned wind farms are starting to litter the planet as globally governments cut the subsidies taxes that consumers pay for the privilege of having a very expensive power source that does not work every day for various reasons like it’s too cold or the wind speed is too high.

The US experience with wind farms has left over 14,000 wind turbines abandoned and slowly decaying, in most instances the turbines are just left as symbols of a dying Climate Religion, nowhere have the Green Environmentalists appeared to clear up their mess or even complain about the abandoned wind farms.

If you fell for the "green dream" I'm sorry. If you're still falling for it, you're an ignorant tool.
online.wsj.com...

A July 2008 study of the wind farm at Altamont Pass, Calif., estimated that its turbines kill an average of 80 golden eagles per year. The study, funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency, also estimated that about 10,000 birds—nearly all protected by the migratory bird act—are being whacked every year at Altamont.

Exxon had to pay $600,000 for killing 85 birds. PacificCorp $1.4m for electrocuting 232 birds. ONE single wind turbine farm kills over 10,000 migratory birds, many of which are protected, and pay nothing.

Open your eyes.

reply to post by Pirateofpsychonautics


Another waste and abuse under the Obama administration of failed projects paying tax payer moneys to companies that fail to meet expectation.

They also have skewered certain Energy Department programs that extended millions in taxpayer loans and other aid to alternative energy companies or projects that faltered or did not meet expectations.

While the president keep eroding the nations productive class he seems to careless how he waste the money he appropriate for this failed projects.

People in the communities of cape code have all the rights to protect as home and property owners.

I guess people forget that many of the companies that Obama has given tax payer dollars to finance the so call clean energy has failed miserably.

During the next three years, the department provided $2.4 billion in public funding to clean-energy companies in which Wagle’s former firm, Vantage Point Venture Partners, had invested, a Washington Post analysis found. Overall, the Post found that $3.9 billion in federal grants and financing flowed to 21 companies backed by firms with connections to five Obama administration staffers and advisers.

www.washingtonpost.com...

It most be nice to be friend with Obama and his staffers.

He keeps increasing the welfare state while making his buddies rich with tax payers money.

reply to post by Pirateofpsychonautics


So more of the NIMBY crowd raise their voices in protest. It seems that everyone agrees that we have to take action, but few are willing to contribute at all. People think it's great, just not in their back yard.

I personally love wind farms. I don't see how anyone can find them unpleasant. I certainly wouldn't mind living near one.

It amazes me that all those who scream about it find nothing wrong with blighting the landscape with ugly buildings, power plants, overhead cables, roads, rail lines and so on. Do they petition for every other obstruction of the view to be removed? No.

The idea that it would lower property prices is a mindless one, for every person who thinks a wind farm is ugly there are ten who think it looks beautiful. I wouldn't hesitate to move into a house near one, in fact if I were choosing between properties the one with a view of a wind farm would have that going for it!

I don't like to seem ageist, but I'll bet all of those people screaming about it are over 50. It seems that when we have this debate in the UK it's those of a certain age who kick off about it while everyone younger (the people who will eventually be buying those houses) are perfectly fine with it.

People are so naive, i wish they could see how dangerous and short sighted their demand for "renewable" and "green" power sources are, being as how relative those terms are. I mean when the power generation method is less efficient it requires more materials, thus is more wasteful and destructive when in high demand.
What might appear better is not always what it appears to be. I guess when waters go stagnant, the air goes bad and people start getting sick others might see the truth about "renewable power sources".
I see it this way, the ones who scream the loudest of saving the environment are the ones who will inadvertently destroy what they're trying to save, all because their impatience and shortsightedness. but they will find out how truly "renewable" and "green" these technologies really are soon enough, unfortunately for those who will suffer to open their eyes though.

Originally posted by detachedindividual
reply to post by Pirateofpsychonautics

 

I wouldn't hesitate to move into a house near one, in fact if I were choosing between properties the one with a view of a wind farm would have that going for it!

Until you started getting severe headaches, nausea and the noise drove you mad. Do you think exposed turbines are really good to live near or harmless?

Back to the olden ages I guess.

Just do a Google image search on "Wind Turbine Collapse" and "Wind Turbine Fire" to see how pleasant these things are.

It's amazing the excuses peopel come up with in order to justify the continued use of fossil fuels and non-renewable energy.

As opposed to using renewable energy like these wind farms.

The best arguments people can come up with is that they are ugly? Really? Clearly, based on the wind farms we see in Europe and other places, these can be done correctly and be a great source of power in the long run if properly maintained.

That's like the solar panel array that was supposed to go up in Nevada I believe, but they cancelled the program because it would 'ruin the look of the dessert'.....

Sure, there will probably be hurdles, but you gotta start somewhere don't you?

~Tenth

reply to post by tothetenthpower


So.. to stop using coal (most popular in America) we will replace one coal plant sitting on 10 acres with 10,000 wind turbines sitting on several thousand acres (chewing up birds by the thousands).

I'm amazed at how far people go to burry their heads in the sand. The idea is great, the practicality is horrendous. The only reason people like you still support it is that your have some preconceived notion that by supporting it regardless of practicality, efficiency or pollution levels you support something "good." This in turn gives you a nice self satisfactory smile whenever someone speaks out against it because you feel you have some moral superiority over those "fossile fuel supporters."

Do we need alternatives? Yes. Should we stick with an idea that has failed miserably just for the sake of saying we are doing something good? No.

I installed a small wind turbine in a home I own to produce electricity to backfeed the batteries on my solar electrical system which doesn't work when it's night, cloudy or raining.