By Tom Zeller Jr., New York Times
VINALHAVEN, Me. - Like nearly all of the residents on this island in Penobscot Bay, Art Lindgren and his wife, Cheryl, celebrated the arrival of three giant wind turbines late last year. That was before they were turned on.
Matt McInnis for The New York Times
Residents living less than a mile from the $15 million wind facility in Vinalhaven, Me., say the industrial whoosh-and-whoop of the 123-foot blades is making life unbearable.
“In the first 10 minutes, our jaws dropped to the ground,” Mr. Lindgren said. “Nobody in the area could believe it. They were so loud.”
Now, the Lindgrens, along with a dozen or so neighbors living less than a mile from the $15 million wind facility here, say the industrial whoosh-and-whoop of the 123-foot blades is making life in this otherwise tranquil corner of the island unbearable.
They are among a small but growing number of families and homeowners across the country who say they have learned the hard way that wind power - a clean alternative to electricity from fossil fuels - is not without emissions of its own.
Lawsuits and complaints about turbine noise, vibrations and subsequent lost property value have cropped up in Illinois, Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Massachusetts, among other states. In one case in DeKalb County, Ill., at least 38 families have sued to have 100 turbines removed from a wind farm there. A judge rejected a motion to dismiss the case in June. Like the Lindgrens, many of the people complaining the loudest are reluctant converts to the antiwind movement.
“The quality of life that we came here for was quiet,” Mrs. Lindgren said. “You don’t live in a place where you have to take an hour-and-15-minute ferry ride to live next to an industrial park. And that’s where we are right now.”
The wind industry has long been dogged by a vocal minority bearing all manner of complaints about turbines, from routine claims that they ruin the look of pastoral landscapes to more elaborate allegations that they have direct physiological impacts like rapid heart beat, nausea and blurred vision caused by the ultra-low-frequency sound and vibrations from the machines.
For the most extreme claims, there is little independent backing. Last year, the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group, along with its Canadian counterpart, assembled a panel of doctors and acoustical professionals to examine the potential health impacts of wind turbine noise. In a paper published in December, the panel concluded that “there is no evidence that the audible or sub-audible sounds emitted by wind turbines have any direct adverse physiological effects.”
A separate study financed by the Energy Department concluded late last year that, in aggregate, property values were unaffected by nearby wind turbines.
Numerous studies also suggest that not everyone will be bothered by turbine noise, and that much depends on the context into which the noise is introduced. A previously quiet setting like Vinalhaven is more likely to produce irritated neighbors than, say, a mixed-use suburban setting where ambient noise is already the norm.
Of the 250 new wind farms that have come online in the United States over the last two years, about dozen or so have generated significant noise complaints, according to Jim Cummings, the founder of the Acoustic Ecology Institute, an online clearinghouse for information on sound-related environmental issues.
In the Vinalhaven case, an audio consultant hired by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection determined last month that the 4.5-megawatt facility was, at least on one evening in mid-July when Mr. Lindgren collected sound data, in excess of the state’s nighttime sound limits. The developer of the project, Fox Island Wind, has contested that finding, and negotiations with state regulators are continuing.
In the moonlit woods behind a neighbor’s property on a recent evening, Mr. Lindgren, a retired software engineer, clenched a small flashlight between his teeth and wrestled with a tangle of cables and audio recording equipment he uses to collect sound samples for filing complaints.
At times, the rustle of leaves was all that could be heard. But when the surface wind settled, a throbbing, vaguely jetlike sound cut through the nighttime air. “Right there,” Mr. Lindgren declared. “That would probably be out of compliance.”
Maine, along with many other states, puts a general limit on nighttime noise at 45 decibels - roughly equivalent to the sound of a humming refrigerator. A normal conversation is in the range of 50 to 60 decibels.
In almost all cases, it is not mechanical noise arising from the central gear box or nacelle of a turbine that residents react to, but rather the sound of the blades, which in modern turbines are mammoth appendages well over 100 feet long, as they slice through the air.
Turbine noise can be controlled by reducing the rotational speed of the blades. But the turbines on Vinalhaven already operate that way after 7 p.m., and George Baker, the chief executive of Fox Island Wind - a for-profit arm of the island’s electricity co-operative - said that turning the turbines down came at an economic cost.
“The more we do that, the higher goes the price of electricity on the island,” he said.
A common refrain among homeowners grappling with sound issues, however, is that they were not accurately informed about the noise ahead of time. “They told us we wouldn’t hear it, or that it would be masked by the sound of the wind blowing through the trees,” said Sally Wylie, a former schoolteacher down the road from the Lindgrens. “I feel duped.”
Similar conflicts are arising in Canada, Britain and other countries. An appeals court in Rennes, France, recently ordered an eight-turbine wind farm to shut down between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. so residents could get some sleep.
Richard R. James, an acoustic expert hired by residents of Vinalhaven to help them quantify the noise problem, said there was a simpler solution: do not put the turbines so close to where people live.
“It would seem to be time for the wind utility developers to rethink their plans for duplicating these errors and to focus on locating wind turbines in areas where there is a large buffer zone of about a mile and one-quarter between the turbines and people’s homes,” said Mr. James, the principal consultant with E-Coustic Solutions, based in Michigan.
Vinalhaven’s wind farm enjoys support among most residents, from ardent supporters of all clean energy to those who simply say the turbines have reduced their power bills. Deckhands running the ferry sport turbine pins on their hats, and bumper stickers seen on the island declare “Spin, Baby, Spin.”
“The majority of us like them,” said Jeannie Conway, who works at the island’s ferry office. But that is cold comfort for Mrs. Lindgren and her neighbors, who say their corner of the island will never be the same.
“I remember the sound of silence so palpable, so merciless in its depths, that you could almost feel your heart stop in sympathy,” she said. “Now we are prisoners of sonic effluence. I grieve for the past.”
See post here.
Add to that the birdkill and the much lower than promised energy efficiency resulting in much higher electric bills, one has to ask whether this is really the future of energy?
By Colin McClelland, Bloomberg
Cheap, low-emission shale gas, with double the global reserves of conventional sources, will discourage investment in nuclear reactors and carbon storage that would fight climate change, a British study shows.
“In a world where there is the serious possibility of cheap, relatively clean gas, who will commit large sums of money to expensive pieces of equipment to lower carbon emissions?” Paul Stevens, senior research fellow at Chatham House, a London- based institute for the study of international affairs, wrote in the report published today.
Global shale gas reserves are estimated to be 456 trillion cubic meters (16,110 trillion cubic feet) compared with 187 trillion cubic meters for conventional gas, the London-based World Energy Council said in a 2010 report. More than 60 percent of shale gas deposits, or plays, are in North America and Russia.
Shale gas is considered unconventional because it is found in sedimentary rock, not in reservoirs. Tapping it requires more wells, advanced horizontal drilling and chemicals that can pollute ground water.
A confluence of drilling history, tax credits, emission goals, technology, and incentives for landowners to allow wells has reduced U.S. shale gas production costs to less than half of conventional gas in some places, Stevens wrote. That is shaking investor confidence in conventional gas.
Cheaper Than Conventional
The cost of producing shale gas is $3 or less per million British thermal units in the Texas plays of Barnett and Haynesville, Stevens wrote. Conventional gas drilling is about $10 per million Btu, said Chris Rowland, executive director of a research unit of Ecofin Ltd., a London-based investment management company.
‘If gas is available at $5 per million Btu, the all-in price for gas-fired plants would fall to around 50 euros ($67) per megawatt-hour without carbon capture and storage, or 70 euros with it,” Rowland said. That compares with 160 euros for a coal plant with CCS, perhaps falling to 130 euros in 10 years, and 85 euros for a nuclear plant, Rowland said.
Natural gas has averaged $4.63 over the past year. Gas for October delivery settled at $4.019 yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
CCS involves trapping emissions of CO2, a greenhouse gas blamed for climate change, from sources including power stations and pumping it into underground reservoirs such as oil and natural-gas fields or saline aquifers for permanent storage.
Rowland said European shale exploration is growing. Germany and Sweden are planning to drill within 18 months. Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron Corp., the three largest U.S. oil companies, are negotiating exploration contracts for shale in the Lublin and Podlasie Basins in southeast Poland.
Stevens said “the list of constraints is formidable” for developing shale gas in Europe, including poor geology, high population density, low numbers of drilling rigs, tougher local environmental legislation and opposition to hydraulic fracturing.
See post here.
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That Balanced Coverage is Blowin’ in the Wind
By Chris Horner, American Spectator
You’ve surely heard the information presented here, right? Or, given the inane visual and rhetorical campaign promoting windmills and solar panels to reduce our dependence on foreign oil - because, you know, the menace of all of those (foreign-) wind- and solar-powered cars...er,...because we get electricity from burning oil...or, something - you’ve seen this in stories about windmills just as you recently were inundated with snaps of the oil-covered pelican?
There are plenty more where that came from. And as one fellow just emailed me, with an amazing series of photos of wind turbines ablaze:
Given the obsession with the media portraying any downside of energy sources that actually work, and provide that which in fact makes us richer, freer and safer, just consider these things when you read about the sunshine and lollipops that await us if only we would get beyond our fear of success and leap forward to the future to relying on inefficient, uneconomic, and yes ecologically harmful windmills and solar panels. The stuff we abandoned when we learned to liberated even better energy.
Coal saved the forests, petroleum saved the whales and all hydrocarbons saved an awful lot of birds.
See post here.
Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr. and Niger Innis
Are these people crazy? Are they so disconnected from reality that they don’t understand how vital coal is to jobs, living standards, civil rights progress and life itself?
How else can anyone react to a new environmentalist campaign to erect black crosses at coal mines and coal-fired power plants, to symbolize their opposition to this vital energy source? The Black Cross Alliance (BCA) is little more than another sordid campaign against affordable energy, especially hydrocarbons. Its policies are misguided at best, harmful and even lethal at worst.
When we see the Black Crosses, we need to remember the blessings of coal-based electricity: the economic uplift, the enhanced quality of life it provides for millions of working class Americans of every color. When we think of groups like the Black Cross Alliance and their undue influence over energy and economic policy, we need to remember the pain of rising unemployment and poverty in America. We need to remember the needless deaths of millions every year in the mostly black and brown developing world, due to radical environmentalist campaigns against energy and economic development.
America needs coal. Half of our nation’s electricity is generated with coal. Moreover, as National Black Chamber of Commerce president Harry Alford has pointed out, 86% of all African Americans live within 700 miles of Nashville, TN - many of them in states that get half to nearly all their electricity from coal.
These states are also our industrial heartland. Millions of jobs, millions of families, thousands of communities depend on abundant, reliable, affordable, coal-based electricity. It is their lifeblood. Illinois generates 48% of its electricity with coal; Alabama 51; Pennsylvania 53; Michigan 61; Tennessee 63; Wisconsin 66; Missouri 81; Ohio 85; Kentucky 94; Indiana 95; West Virginia 98 percent!
When militant environmentalists attack coal mining and burning, they attack mining jobs - and jobs in factories, hospitals, schools, offices and stores that depend on the affordable, dependable electricity that coal provides. They shackle people’s hopes and living standards. They make it harder for people to heat and cool their homes, pay their rent and mortgage, afford a car or medical treatment.
The pressure groups’ websites shout out, “Donate!” Translation: Help us wreak more havoc.
In Britain, nearly 25,000 more people died during recent winters than during the summers. Most of them were elderly people, who had circulatory or respiratory problems and could no longer afford adequate heat, due to energy costs that keep rising because of global warming and renewable energy policies. That’s just plain wrong. It cannot be allowed to happen here.
Most Americans understand this intuitively. A September 2010 Ipsos Public Affairs poll found that fully half of all Americans are unwilling to pay even $5 more per month in total energy costs, even to create “green” jobs, build wind and solar projects or prevent “global climate disruption.” A third opposes paying even a dime more than they do already.
We need to burn coal more cleanly and efficiently. Thanks to tougher laws, changed attitudes and improved technologies, we’ve already made tremendous progress. Power plant emissions are way below where they were in 1970, and they keep going down.
Groups like BCA say we should end coal mining and burning - and replace it with renewable power. This is technologically impossible and economically unfeasible currently. Renewable energy requires billions of dollars in subsidies that governments can no longer afford. It means thousands of wind turbines, solar panels, and new high-voltage transmission lines and access roads across millions of acres of land. It requires mining, processing and manufacturing operations - driven by oil, gas, coal and nuclear power - to get steel, copper, concrete, fiberglass and other materials to make the turbines, panels and power lines.
This Green Jobs Revolution does create “green” jobs - for China and India. Green Jobs Revolution indeed! The United States is paying billions in subsidies for these energy programs, but the mining, manufacturing and thus job creation are increasingly taking place overseas, where labor and energy costs are lower, and environmental regulations are far less stringent than in the US.
In addition, because China, India and other emerging economies are building new coal fired power plants every week - to reduce energy deprivation, poverty, misery, disease and premature death - they are steadily increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Even if the United States, Canada and Europe all reduced their hydrocarbon use and CO2 emissions to zero, global atmospheric levels would continue to rise.
This radical chic energy/economic policy may be fashionable in the elite university parlors of Berkeley and Cambridge. But it is economic euthanasia for millions of struggling working class Americans.
The percentage of Americans below the poverty line is the highest in 15 years, the Census Bureau reports. Millions are barely getting by, through a mixture of unemployment and welfare benefits, pooled incomes and combined households. Especially for the 24 states that rely on coal for over half of their electricity, restricting coal use would be economically ruinous. For them, the Black Crosses represent RIP for jobs, modern living standards, and the progress the Civil Rights Revolution promised in America.
Around the world, the Black Crosses symbolize disease and death for millions. Over 3.5 billion people worldwide still do not have electricity, or enjoy its countless benefits only a few hours a week.
For them, anti-coal campaigns mean no lights or refrigeration, no jobs, no modern hospitals and schools. They mean lives spent foraging for manure and cutting trees in wildlife habitats, for heating and cooking fires that cause rampant lung disease. They mean walking miles with canisters of water so laden with bacteria and parasites that the next drink can kill a parent or child. For them the Black Cross movement equals Black Death.
The Black Cross militants and allied groups say absolutely nothing about these needless, unspeakable, intolerable conditions. They invent all kinds of eco-hobgoblins, but ignore the real, life-or-death threats that real people endure every day. The militants might promote solar ovens, solar panels on huts and a few wind turbines for villages - enough to power a light bulb, radio and 1-cubic-foot refrigerator. But they oppose the abundant, dependable, affordable energy that only coal (or natural gas) power generation can bring to the world’s poorest countries, communities and families.
So when you see one of their Black Crosses or self-serving news releases, remember what they really commemorate. Opposition to jobs, decent living standards and civil rights progress here in America. Opposition to life-enhancing, life-saving electricity for billions who have yet to enjoy any of the basic necessities and comforts that electricity brings. And perpetuation of poverty, misery, disease and death in far too many communities all over our planet.
Give thanks to God for the blessings that electricity brings. And resolve to champion real environmental and social justice for millions of Americans, and billions of destitute people worldwide. PDF
Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr. and Niger Innis are co-chairs of the Affordable Power Alliance, a humanitarian coalition of civil rights, minority, small business, senior citizen and faith-based organizations that champion justice through access to affordable energy.