Poor Ontario. An energy policy created by green activists is a grotesquely expensive mess that consumers will be paying for …. for the rest of their lives.
Read and weep here. Unfortunately Canada now has a pretty Prime Minister who will drag us down the same road and commit economic suicide.
Because of the boom of renewable energy, more and more wind turbines have to be switched off. The reason is power overloading. The network operators must turn down electricity generated from windmills when their power threatens to clog the network. Originally, this was intended only as an emergency measure. The operators of wind and solar parks, however, are being subsidised for electricity that is not produced.
For the grid operator Tennet alone, these costs added EUR 329 million in 2015 – two and a half times as much as in the previous year. The other network operators 50Hertz, Amprion and EnBW had a combined cost of 150 million euros, according to a survey of Wirtschaftswoche among the four network operators in Germany.
Wind farms can never be relied upon to keep the lights on in Britain because there are long periods each winter in which they produce barely any power, according to a new report by the Adam Smith Institute.
The huge variation in wind farms’ power output means they cannot be counted on to produce energy when needed, and an equivalent amount of generation from traditional fossil fuel plants will be needed as back-up, the study finds.
http://www.thegwpf.com/wind-farms-can-never-deliver-uk-energy-security/
What a shame.
The Shiloh IV Wind Project LLC, 60 miles east of San Francisco, will receive a special permit allowing up to five golden eagles to be accidentally killed over five years. Previously, such a violation could potentially draw criminal charges and discourage private investment in wind farms known for catching birds in their rotors.
It’s not an accident.
“Michael Hutchins of the American Bird Conservancy said he believes the five-year permit for the California wind farm is reasonable … ”
He should resign in shame.
“An Associated Press investigation in 2013 found that the Obama administration has charged oil companies for drowning birds in their waste pits, and power companies for electrocuting birds on power lines, but it has taken little if any action against wind-energy companies, shielding them from liability.”
I hate writing about these stories, but people should know whats going on.
“(Washington, D.C., March 28, 2014) American Bird Conservancy, one of the nation’s leading bird conservation organizations, is calling for a detailed reanalysis of a proposed wind power facility in Maryland that could prove to be the single most deadly project for bald eagles in the Americas. The Great Bay Wind Project is proposed to be located in Somerset County, Maryland, near the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. “
http://www.abcbirds.org/newsandreports/releases/140328.html
The sub headline is: “Proposed Project Outside Washington, DC May Be Biggest Man-Made Killer of Bald Eagles Ever”
Shouldn’t it be: “Washington, DC May Be Biggest Man-Made Killer of Bald Eagles Ever”
Wind Farms have a license to kill.
(h/t Small Dead Animals – Best Canadian Blog)
James Delingpole has a good article on the corruption of The National Trust and the Royal Society for the Protection Prevention of Birds.
“There’s a problem here and it’s so glaring it’s a wonder that the authors of the report were able to write this section without burying their heads in shame and wishing the earth would swallow them up as punishment for their intellectual dishonesty and positively Gorean levels of hypocrisy. The fact that they were capable of doing so speaks volumes as to just how out of touch with reality environmentalists like the ones who have taken over the RSPB hierarchy have become.
That problem – *exasperated sigh* – is this: if the RSPB is really concerned about the potential disturbance to wildlife of a few noisy lorries and drill rigs (which, let’s not forget, are only up for a short period, after which they are replaced by a silent extraction device called a Christmas tree), how come it’s so cheerfully complacent about the epic numbers of rare birds and protected bats which are sliced and diced (or, in the case of bats, barotraumatised – i.e. made to implode) by the industrial wind turbines which the RSPB not only champions but from which it benefits financially.
Yes that’s right. The RSPB – supposed guardians of Britain’s birdlife – makes hundreds of thousands of pounds in partnership with the wind industry, despite the fact that wind turbines around the world kill as many as 22 million birds every year, including rare and protected species such as America’s national bird the Bald Eagle, Whooping Cranes and Hen Harriers.
And how many birds does the fracking industry kill each year? Well, put it this way: the number is an awful lot closer to zero than it is to 22 million.”
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/03/15/National-Trust-And-RSPB-mislead-over-fracking
I love a happy story (and a burning wind turbine picture).
“Plans for a huge expansion of the world’s largest windfarm, the London Array in the Thames Estuary, have been scrapped. The consortium running the project blame the abandonment of an additional 65 giant turbines on “various factors”, but especially the requirement for a 3-year study on the potential impact on birds. The Thames estuary site is a designated environmental Special Protection Area.”
Between 46 and 64 golden eagles would likely be killed every year by one wind farm
“Two conservation groups are urging federal regulators to slow down on approval of what would be the nation’s largest wind farm until more efforts are made to mitigate the impact on eagles.
The groups—the American Bird Conservancy and the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance—told the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in a 15-page letter released Wednesday that between 46 and 64 golden eagles would likely be killed every year by the spinning blades of 1,000 wind turbines planned by the Power Company of Wyoming.”
“But a recent Fish and Wildlife Service rule-making exempts wind generators from prosecution for causing eagle deaths for up to 30 years“.
Slaughtering Eagles will soon be legal thanks to Obama.
This is Shameful.
“The Obama administration is about to approve a rule that will ensure the death of golden and bald eagles for the next 30 more years.
Hundreds of thousands of birds die each year flying into the deadly turbine blades atop the soaring towers that compose wind farms.
The rule will give wind farms thirty year permits for the “non purposeful take of eagles-that is where the take is associated with but
not the purpose of, the activity.’’ The take of eagles is also a euphemism for the slaughter of them.”
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/12/05/Obama-to-Sign-Rule-Allowing-Death-of-Eagles
A paper in the Journal For Nature Conservatism points out that the level of Red Kite deaths at wind turbines in German is very high. They estimate 308 deaths in 2012 out of 9972 individual Red Kites.
With the projected increase in wind turbines, and the fact it is young breeding pairs being killed, the whole population may be threatened.
“Mortality from collisions with increasing numbers of wind turbines is a potential hazard to raptor populations, but the actual effects on a population scale have rarely been studied based on field data. We estimated annual collision numbers for Red Kites Milvus milvus in the German federal state of Brandenburg (29,483 km2). A hierarchical model considering carcass persistence rate, searcher efficiency and the probability that a killed animal falls into a searched area was applied to results of carcass searches at 617 turbines. Collision risk varied significantly with season. The model estimated 308 (95% CrI 159–488) Red Kite fatalities at 3044 turbines operating during 2012, representing 3.1% of the estimated post-breeding population of 9972 individuals. Using the potential biological removal (PBR) method, mortality thresholds of 4.0% were obtained for migratory Red Kite populations. This level of mortality may be reached when turbine numbers increase within a few years. Since wind turbine collisions may affect Red Kites throughout the global range, a more detailed assessment of the actual impacts on populations is needed, especially because the PBR does not account for the predominance of adult birds among the collision victims.”
sunshine hours 