Wind Energy

One man in the classroom earned more than $100,000 framing tract homes during the building heyday. Another installed pools and piloted a backhoe. Behind him sat a young father who made a good living swinging a hammer in southern Utah. But that was before construction jobs vanished like a fast-moving dust storm in this blustery high desert. Hard times have brought them to a classroom in rural Kern County to learn a different trade. Tonight's lesson: how to avoid death and dismemberment.

Supporters of a bipartisan effort to protect the American wind energy industry say that 37,000 U.S. jobs will be at risk this year if Congress fails to extend the production tax credits that have been vital to wind power development. The call for Congress to pass HR 3307, the American Renewable Energy Production Tax Credit Extension Act, was made during a teleconference hosted by three members of Congress, the American Wind Energy Assn. and TPI Composites, a Newton, Iowa-based wind blade manufacturer.

The wide, green gorge where the majestic Columbia River begins its final push to the sea generates so many stiff breezes that windsurfers from around the world make their way to Hood River, not far from here, to ply their colorful sails atop the churning whitecaps. Lately though, electricity, not recreation, has become the big-ticket wind client in the Columbia Gorge. Wind turbines have sprung up all over the blustery hilltops in eastern Washington and Oregon, an area soon to become home to the largest wind farm in the world, developed for customers of Southern California Edison.

Mitt Romney wants to fire some people to save the economy. The “gas-hike trio” at the top of President Obama's Cabinet, to be precise: Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, whom Romney alleged Saturday night at an Illinois town hall have conspired to drive up the cost of gas to make solar and wind energy more competitive. "Of course we want a clean environment, of course we want to preserve species, but we can't have these regulators, who, in the name of regulation, in the name of protecting and securing, are really trying to kill enterprise," Romney said.

The Department of Energy's Wind Powering America program has released new maps of wind energy potential in the U.S. The maps, the first new ones in 19 years, are meant to serve as a resource for policymakers, state and local governments and anyone looking to invest in wind power sites or anyone trying to determine the best potential locations. The maps are based on data gathered in 2010 and show average annual wind speeds at a height of 80 meters above the ground. Some of the information is fairly well know, such as the fact that the best states for wind energy are found along the north central tier of the country, the Great Plains, and in states farther south, such as Oklahoma and Texas.

Here is a roundup of alleged cons, frauds and schemes to watch out for. Mormons targeted - The Securities and Exchange Commission has accused several Utah residents of operating a Ponzi scheme that victimized members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In a Dec. 29 lawsuit filed in federal court in Utah, the SEC alleged that Joseph Nelson and his associates targeted investors at church functions, telling them they could double their money if they invested with Nelson's companies.

Supporters of a bipartisan effort to protect the American wind energy industry say that 37,000 U.S. jobs will be at risk this year if Congress fails to extend the production tax credits that have been vital to wind power development. The call for Congress to pass HR 3307, the American Renewable Energy Production Tax Credit Extension Act, was made during a teleconference hosted by three members of Congress, the American Wind Energy Assn. and TPI Composites, a Newton, Iowa-based wind blade manufacturer.

Wisconsin regulators approved a $250-million wind farm Friday that its proponents said would generate energy for 72,000 homes and opponents warned would kill migratory birds. Invenergy Wind LLC of Chicago hopes to begin work later this year on the 200-megawatt wind farm on 50 square miles in southern Wisconsin. One opponent predicted the 133 turbines -- each 389 feet tall with three 126-foot-long blades -- will produce a "slaughter" of birds that stop in a nearby marsh.

American Solar King is the nation's largest maker of solar water heaters, but next year the Waco, Tex., firm expects to make a lot of money on a new product--natural gas water heaters. Fafco, a major manufacturer of solar swimming pool heaters based in Menlo Park, Calif., predicts that a new product--plastic tubing--will provide one-third of next year's sales. Fayette Manufacturing isn't giving up its $65-million windmill business, but the Tracy, Calif.

The mood was grim, funereal. Captains of the nation's wind energy industry had gathered in San Francisco for their 1987 annual convention, but no one was having much fun. No wonder. The American wind industry, hatched in a climate of giddy optimism in the early 1980s, had taken a frightful tumble. Lucrative federal and state tax credits, which prompted rows of windmills to sprout like wildflowers in California's gusty passes, had expired, dramatically slowing new installations.

The Department of Energy's Wind Powering America program has released new maps of wind energy potential in the U.S. The maps, the first new ones in 19 years, are meant to serve as a resource for policymakers, state and local governments and anyone looking to invest in wind power sites or anyone trying to determine the best potential locations. The maps are based on data gathered in 2010 and show average annual wind speeds at a height of 80 meters above the ground. Some of the information is fairly well know, such as the fact that the best states for wind energy are found along the north central tier of the country, the Great Plains, and in states farther south, such as Oklahoma and Texas.

Here is a roundup of alleged cons, frauds and schemes to watch out for. Mormons targeted - The Securities and Exchange Commission has accused several Utah residents of operating a Ponzi scheme that victimized members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In a Dec. 29 lawsuit filed in federal court in Utah, the SEC alleged that Joseph Nelson and his associates targeted investors at church functions, telling them they could double their money if they invested with Nelson's companies.

The American Bird Conservancy on Wednesday petitioned the U.S. Department of the Interior to replace its proposed voluntary guidelines for siting and operating wind farms with mandatory enforceable standards designed to make the technology safer for wildlife including migrating birds and bats. The 100-page petition prepared by the conservancy and the Washington-based law firm Meyer, Glitzenstein & Crystal recommends that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service establish a mandatory permitting system for the booming alternative energy source and mitigation of its impacts on bats and migrating birds, thousands of which are killed each year by wind turbines.

The wide, green gorge where the majestic Columbia River begins its final push to the sea generates so many stiff breezes that windsurfers from around the world make their way to Hood River, not far from here, to ply their colorful sails atop the churning whitecaps. Lately though, electricity, not recreation, has become the big-ticket wind client in the Columbia Gorge. Wind turbines have sprung up all over the blustery hilltops in eastern Washington and Oregon, an area soon to become home to the largest wind farm in the world, developed for customers of Southern California Edison.

Reporting from Oakland — Scores of protected golden eagles have been dying each year after colliding with the blades of about 5,000 wind turbines along the ridgelines of the Bay Area's Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area, raising troubling questions about the state's push for alternative power sources. The death count, averaging 67 a year for three decades, worries field biologists because the turbines, which have been providing thousands of homes with emissions-free electricity since the 1980s, lie within a region of rolling grasslands and riparian canyons containing one of the highest densities of nesting golden eagles in the United States.

Google Inc. is backing a plan to lay undersea cables to connect proposed windmills off the mid-Atlantic coast, a step the Internet giant hopes will boost wind power as an energy source. The offshore wind power transmission line would stretch 350 miles from New Jersey to Virginia and could supply enough electricity to serve about 1.9 million households. But the ambitious project, which could cost billions of dollars, faces major hurdles as federal subsidies for construction of wind power installations are set to expire in 2012.

"A Second Wind for Turbines" (Feb. 2) was completely one-sided; it was nothing more than a puff piece for the wind industry. The environmental cost of wind energy is lower than for coal and oil, but it is not free. Nowhere did you mention the effect of literally hundreds of miles of new roads cut to haul the turbines and construction equipment, many of them high up in wilderness areas where erosion of sensitive soil is easily begun and difficult to stop. You didn't mention that the proposed wind farms in the Tehachapis will require clear-cutting in some places, and the local citizens are not happy about that.

A plan to harvest energy by building Los Angeles County's first wind farm on 270 acres of hilly ranchland near Gorman has drawn strong opposition from residents and environmentalists who claim it will bring visual blight to the now scenic, pristine area. Opponents say the proposed 458 windmills, many as tall as 150 feet, will lower property values, destroy a wildflower area that attracts sightseers in the spring and endanger birds that might fly into the whirling turbines.

It's being called the largest wind power project in the country, with plans for thousands of acres of towering turbines in the Mojave Desert foothills generating electricity for 600,000 homes in Southern California. And now it's finally kicking into gear. The multibillion-dollar Alta Wind Energy Center has had a tortured history, stretching across nearly a decade of ownership changes, opposition from local residents and transmission infrastructure delays. But on Tuesday, the project is officially breaking ground in the Tehachapi Pass, a burgeoning hot spot for wind energy about 75 miles north of Los Angeles.

Environmental groups filed suit Friday in federal district court arguing that the nation's first offshore wind energy project violates the Endangered Species Act. The suit accuses the Obama administration of failing to protect endangered birds and whales in approving the Cape Wind project, a set of 130 wind turbine generators to be installed on Nantucket Sound off the Massachusetts coast. The suit is first legal challenge to the project since it was approved April 28 by federal officials, who lauded it as a model of renewable energy production.