Into the Wind - the AWEA Blog

The factory tour: it's become a standard way of underlining wind energy's ability to create new manufacturing jobs and calling on Congress to extend the federal wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC), to preserve those new jobs and allow the industry to create more.

There's a good reason for this.  The past several years have seen an explosion in American wind turbine and turbine component manufacturing, with the domestic content of turbines soaring from 25 percent in 2005 to nearly two-thirds today, and nearly 500 factories from coast to coast in on the action.

U.S. Senators Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and

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Investor-owned utility Constellation Energy has released a new video describing Maryland's first wind farm, the Criterion Wind Project on Backbone Mountain, and its economic benefits to Garrett County and the local area.  The star of the show doesn't make his appearance until the last minute (of 6:31), but it's still enough for him to steal the scene.

He's Randall Smallman, an operations and maintenance technician for the project, and he's a former coal miner: "I come from a coal background. I was born and raised in coal country, worked in underground coal mines for nine years. ... It's been a complete turnaround to be here in the wind industry.  It's exciting, it's clean, it's green, and I love it."

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Insistent wind critic Robert Bryce had a column in the National Review last week which raised a number of objections to wind power. Clean Line Energy's Jimmy Glotfelty responded in an op-ed, to which Mr. Bryce has written an additional response. Among the issues Mr. Bryce discusses is that of wind turbine sound. The following comment on his assertions is from Christopher Long, AWEA's Manager of Offshore Wind and Siting Policy.
 
With regards to the issue of wind turbines and human health, the credible peer-reviewed scientific data and various government reports in the U.S., Canada, Australia and the U.K. ...

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Columbia Gorge Community College, in The Dalles, Ore., is hoping for an extension of the federal wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC), according to a Public News Service article.

The college, which was one of the first in the U.S. to develop a training course for wind energy technicians, is seeing a drop-off in the number of new applications "because the perception is out there that the nation is not behind renewable energy," said college development director Dan Spatz, adding, "It has been 5, 6, 7 years or longer where we've been going on year-to-year renewals, and we need to ...

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A new wind turbine rotor blade factory in Aberdeen, S.D., has helped keep that city's economy strong, but its success to date is threatened by impending expiration of the federal wind energy production tax credit (PTC), according to Richard Morrison, CEO and president of Molded Fiber Glass Cos. (MFG).

At a meeting of the Aberdeen Development Corp. (ADC) yesterday, Morrison said the blade plant employs 400 and has an annual payroll of $16 million, according to the Aberdeen American News, and has manufactured blades for wind farms in 16 states and two countries.

ADC spokesman Jim Barringer underscored the degree to which the city has been able to prosper despite the ...

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Wind power now provides residents of an isolated Alaska village with renewable energy to run a water treatment facility, reducing the village’s dependence on imported diesel fuel while maintaining crucial infrastructure.

Southwest Windpower, in conjunction with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) and Anchorage-based Susitna Energy Systems, installed three of the distributed wind turbine maker’s Skystream 3.7 machines, which will power ANTHC’s two-year-old, state-of-the-art water plant. The wind turbines are projected to supply approximately 75 percent of the roughly 18,000 kWh consumed annually by the facility. In high wind conditions, excess energy produced by the wind turbines will be distributed to the village, called Goodnews
Bay, through a ...

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Illinois’s 23 largest wind farms have generated 19,047 construction and maintenance jobs and will add $5.8 billion to local economies over the lifetime of the projects, according to a study released Tuesday by the Center for Renewable Energy at Illinois State University, but the study's author said further jobs and economic development are threatened by the impending expiration of the federal wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC).

“It’s important that decision-makers are educated about the economic development impact wind energy has on state and local communities so that informed decisions regarding future adoption of wind energy projects can be made,” said the Center's ...

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The following opinion article originally appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Monday and is reprinted here with permission of the author.  Aitor Sotes is chief executive officer of Ingeteam, Inc.

Milwaukee's manufacturing roots run strong. With its easy access to Lake Michigan and other waterways, industry has been an important part of the region's fabric, from the 19th century well into the 20th. Those waterways--along with the region's railroads, and, later, highways--bustled with the movement of goods made with pride in Milwaukee and in many other Wisconsin cities and towns. Today, Milwaukee's manufacturing might is awakening, and Ingeteam is tapping that very ...

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Tuesday's edition of the Eugene (Ore.) Register-Guard carried a nice Associated Press article about how wind power is helping ranchers in eastern Oregon survive, by giving them a source of regular, dependable income which helps to cushion the "bust" years in the notoriously boom-and-bust business of agriculture.

The AP article describes a proposed 504-MW wind farm which would be sited on 61,000 acres and generate enough electricity to power the equivalent of about 125,000 homes.

Explains the article, "In order to pay the costs of producing crops or livestock each year, most land­owners take out agricultural loans at the start of the season and ...

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The following article is cross-posted from the Natural Resource Defense Council's (NRDC) Switchboard blog with permission of the author. Nathanael Greene is NRDC's Director of Renewable Energy Policy.

[July 13, 2012] Today, Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu visited 

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