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February 06, 2012
Batavia - On the Genesee County Legislature’s docket for Wednesday night is a curious item: the Legislature is planning a protest against a law that has already passed. Legislature Chair Mary Pat Hancock is hoping to send a formal statement to the capitol, railing against the “Power NY Act” (bills A08510 & S5844). The bill, which passed in Albany in 2011, is designed to begin a loan program for eligible homeowners to properly seal and power their home under green energy-efficiency standards. Hancock doesn’t have a problem with that. But, another caveat of the bill also gives the state a quasi-eminent domain – theoretically allowing the state to place energy projects such as windmills or solar panels wherever it pleases.

February 8, 2012
Engand - KPMG is refusing to publish the full findings of a controversial study examining the cost of the government’s green energy policies, according to the The Guardian. The report was originally used as a basis for a series of media reports attacking the cost of renewable energy.

The preliminary findings of the report, dubbed Thinking about the Affordable were made public last November. They claimed Britain could meet its 2020 carbon reduction targets more cost effectively by building nuclear and gas-fired power stations instead of wind farms The report was seized on by critics of the government’s green agenda and also formed the basis of a number of media reports, including a BBC Panorama special that attacked the cost of renewable energy subsidies.

FEBRUARY 8, 2012
CAPE VINCENT — The Town Council passed a seven-month moratorium halting all wind-power development in Cape Vincent on Tuesday night without any surprises. The vote was 4-1, with the last remaining pro-wind councilman, Mickey W. Orvis, opposing the resolution. Cape Vincent now has until Sept. 7 to put together a new wind law, although some believe this is meaningless as wind-farm developers may choose to work around Cape Vincent’s local wind law by submitting another application for the state to consider under Article X. “I think Article X would make us a neutral party,” Mr. Orvis said before voting against the moratorium, adding that this would also allow the town board to “start the healing” of the divide the debate over wind power has caused.
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February 5, 2012
•On February 1, an urgent alert was sent to supporters of wind energy. It stated: “The PTC is the primary policy tool to promote wind energy development and manufacturing in the United States. While it is set to expire at the end of 2012 ... the credit has already effectively expired. Congress has a choice to make: extend the PTC this month and keep the wind industry on track...” The wind energy industry has reason for concern. America's appetite for subsidies has waned. Congress is looking for any way it can to make cuts and the twenty-year old Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind energy is in prime position for a cut—it naturally expires at the end of 2012. Without action, it will go away.

Click here to read the rest of Marita's article...

February 5, 2012
Documentary makers are always hoping that their film will come out at just the right moment, when a favorable news cycle and popular sentiment are converging so that the public is primed for their message. In 1989, Michael Moore made his career with “Roger & Me,” a documentary that pinned the decline of his hometown — Flint, Mich. — on General Motors. By focusing his fire on GM’s chairman, Roger Smith, Moore tapped into the public’s anger at tone-deaf corporate bosses as well as the growing disenchantment with the American car industry. Laura Israel’s new film, “Windfall,” has the same sort of fortuitous timing. Her documentary — which focuses on the fight over the siting of wind turbines in the small upstate town of Meredith — premieres at the same time that “green energy” stimulus failures fill the news, and the wind-energy industry faces an unprecedented backlash from angry rural residents.

CROHnote: Laura Israel's film, WINDFALL, hits the bulls eye!! AWEA (American Wind Energy Association) is not happy with famous film critic, Roger Ebert's reaction to the film and replies to him with a four-page letter extolling the wonders of wind development. The timing was perfect with vote on the Production Tax Credits set to held at the end of this month. Thank you, Roger and Laura!

February 4, 2012

As the anti-wind docu-diatribe "Windfall" opened this weekend in Chicago and New York, AWEA extended an unusual invitation to noted film critic Roger Ebert to come visit an actual operating wind farm so he can better judge for himself whether the film tells the truth. AWEA's letter, from AWEA VP for Public Affairs Peter Kelley, gets right to the heart of the matter: "It was disappointing to see such a normally clear-eyed film critic taken in by such a fact-free and slanted take on wind power." 

Viewers may be taken in by Windfall's HD cinematography and lingering landscape views of rural New York landscapes, but there is little pretense of balance or scientific accuracy in its content. Some other reviewers have noticed. 

CROHnote: YES! YES! YES! YES!!!!!! Thank you, Roger!!!!

February 1, 2012
Driving from Los Angeles to Palm Springs, you pass through a desert terrain in which a new species has taken hold. Wind turbines grow row upon row, their blades turning busily as they generate electricity and pump it into the veins of the national grid. This wind farm is a good thing, yes? I've always assumed so, and driven on without much thought. A documentary named "Windfall" has taken the wind out of my sails. Assuming it can be trusted (and many of its claims seem self-evident), wind turbines are a blight upon the land and yet another device by which energy corporations and Wall Street, led by the always reliable Goldman Sachs, are picking the pockets of those who can least afford it. There is even some question whether wind energy uses more power than it generates.

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FEBRUARY 2, 2012

WASHINGTON—Wind power is facing a make-or-break moment in Congress, with renewable-energy firms' projects on hold as lawmakers debate whether to extend subsidies for new wind farms this month. Currently U.S. tax credits are available only for facilities that come online before the end of 2012. Iberdrola Renewables, the second-largest U.S. wind operator, has suspended work on new U.S. projects for "anything we can't build in 2012," said Rich Glick, vice president of government affairs for the unit of Spain's Iberdrola SA. Industry players see two main chances for Congress to act this year. One comes in February, when the wind subsidies could be tacked on to an extension of payroll-tax cuts. The other would come in the lame-duck session after November elections, when lawmakers must address the expiration of tax cuts from 2001.