Into the Wind - the AWEA Blog

This article by Jeff L. Fox originally appeared in the Billings (Mont.) Gazette November 10, and is reprinted with permission of the author.

“It’s not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It’s the customer who pays the wages.” ― Henry Ford

PPL’s announcement that it will mothball its 44-year-old Corette coal plant in 2015 generated a lively conversation this election season. The plant is old, dirty, and uncompetitive in today’s market. Yet, little coverage has focused on the relative benefits for Montana in this story. I would like ...

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We've written here several times about the U.S. Department of Energy's Wind for Schools program, a laudable initiative that has resulted in the installation of wind turbines at a number of local elementary and secondary schools around the nation.  But there's another "wind for schools" benefit in many areas--property tax income--that is exemplified by a recent article in the News-Gazette, a local paper serving East Central Illinois.

According to the article, the Paxton-Buckley-Loda (PBL) school district "should see a $1 million spike in revenue next year, while homeowners in the district should see a savings on their property tax bills next summer, thanks to the ...

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Pointing to the enormous uncertainty Congress has created by failing to extend the federal wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC), the Pueblo (Colo.) Chieftain newspaper yesterday called for the incentive to be renewed.

The Chieftain's editorial noted that wind turbine manufacturer Vestas employs 1,400 workers in Colorado and that the company, facing a cloudy future in the U.S. market, has begun laying off employees in Pueblo and elsewhere.

The editorial noted the support of Sens. Mark ...

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On November 10, wind generation hit record levels on the systems of two of the country's major independent transmission system operators, ERCOT (the Electric Reliability Council of Texas) and SPP (the Southwest Power Pool, which includes Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and parts of neighboring states). SPP then broke its November 10 record a week later on November 17.

ERCOT: At 10:21 a.m. on November 10, wind energy provided 8,521 MW, a new record high, on the ERCOT system, the electric utility system serving most of Texas. Wind accounted for about 26% of total electricity demand at the time. The prior wind output record was 8,368 MW, initially set on June 19, 2012, and tied late on November 9 in the build-up to Saturday’s record. Saturday’s record capped three ...

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Two new public opinion polls, one national and one conducted in the state of Michigan, have reaffirmed Americans' broad support for clean, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.

The national survey, from which pertinent results were released last week, was carried out in early September by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.  Highlights:

- A large majority of Americans (77%) say global warming should be a “very high” (18%), “high” (25%), or “medium” priority (34%) for the president and Congress. One in four (23%) say it should be a low priority.

- Nearly all ...

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In addition to the endorsements listed here yesterday, The Olympian, a newspaper based in Olympia, Wash., editorialized today in favor of extending the federal wind energy Production Tax Credit.

In an editorial titled "Wind energy still worthy of tax credit," The Olympian said in part, "Wind energy has made tremendous strides in this nation in recent years, including here in the Pacific Northwest ... This year alone, the wind industry has added more than 4,700 megawatts of generation, and another 8.430 megawatts of wind turbines [are] under construction across the country ... Despite the genuine need ...

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First Wind has another Maine wind farm under its belt, and it’s a project that once again highlights wind power’s ability to save utility customers money.

The just-finished, 34-MW Bull Hill Wind project in Hancock County has entered commercial operations, the company announced. Bull Hill Wind features 19 Vestas V100 1.8-MW wind turbines that can generate enough electricity to power the equivalent of nearly 18,000 homes.

In August 2011, utility NSTAR and First Wind entered into a 15-year contract for the project's output following NSTAR’s competitive solicitation seeking a low-cost source of energy. The project's fixed-price contract is expected to save NSTAR ratepayers about $57 million over the life of the contract.

“The power from Bull Hill Wind ...

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With the Nov. 6 election past, several newspapers have turned their attention to the lame-duck post-election session of Congress, and announced or renewed their backing for an extension of the federal wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC).  Among them:

Denver Post (Nov. 15): Editorial titled "Wind tax credit is an easy call": "Even if you wanted to argue with the economic wisdom of the wind-energy tax credit--as some Republicans do--you can't deny that its absence would undermine a growing industry at a time of high unemployment. No doubt that's why leading politicians of both parties have called for its extension. In the latest example, this week a bipartisan group of ...

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The following op-ed by AWEA CEO Denise Bode appeared yesterday in Politico.

The results of the 2012 elections represent a paradigm shift in U.S. energy policy.

As the 18th-century English diarist Samuel Johnson said, “the prospect of a hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully.” In the energy field, it was the oil shocks of the 1970s that first focused our attention on the peril of banking our future on fossil fuels alone.

Since then, policy makers, industry leaders and consumers have accelerated development of all energy sources, such as wind power, that help reduce our dependence on foreign energy, create new jobs that can’t be outsourced, ...

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Washington, D.C., November 15--Much of the information contained in a recently published paper, "Effects of industrial wind turbine noise on sleep and health" by Michael A. Nissenbaum, Jeffery J. Aramini, and Christopher D. Hanning (all directors/scientific advisors for the Society for Wind Vigilance), was previously reviewed and considered by experts at the first Environmental Review Tribunal (Erikson v. MOE 2011) hearing on wind energy in Ontario and in the Queen's Bench of Saskatchewan case McKinnon v. Martin (Red Lily Legal Case in 2010).

This information was also reviewed by an expert panel on wind turbines and human health commissioned by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MassDEP/MDPH, 2012), which ...

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