Maine Medical Association adopts resolution on wind energy and public health

Summary:

The Maine Medical Association adopted this important resolution regarding wind energy development and public health at its September 12, 2009 meeting.

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Maine Medical Association

Resolution RE: Wind Energy and Public Health

WHEREAS, proposals to locate and build wind energy facilities in the State have at times proven controversial, due to concerns regarding potential effects of such facilities on the public health, and

WHEREAS, the trade off between the public good of generating electricity and the adverse health effects warrant appropriate evidence-based scientific research, and

WHEREAS, assessing the potential health impact of wind turbines has been difficult to measure but if present would be of significant concern. This is especially apparent regarding the noise level and other noise characteristics specific to industrial wind turbines, and

WHEREAS, there is a need for modification of the State's regulatory process for siting wind energy developments to reduce the potential for controversy regarding siting of grid-scale wind energy development and to address health controversy with regulatory changes to include, but not limited to:

a) Refining certain procedures of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and the Maine Land Use Regulation Commission to reflect scientific evidence regarding potential health effects, and to further explore such potential health effects;

b) Judging the effects of wind energy development on potential public health by avoiding unreasonable noise and shadow flicker effects, with development setbacks and incorporating upto date noise regulations specific for industrial wind turbines adequate to protect public health and safety.

Therefore be it resolved that the Maine Medical Association work with health organizations and regulatory agencies to provide scientific information of known medical consequences of wind development in order to help safeguard human health and the environment.

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Maine Medical Association 1) work with other stakeholders to encourage performance of studies on health effects of wind turbine generation by independent qualified researchers at qualified research institutions; 2) ensure that physicians and patients alike are informed of evidence-based research results.

http://www.windaction.org/documents/23095

NSPI getting further into the wind energy business?

Nova Scotia Power Incorporated looks to be investing further into the wind energy generating business (see Herald stories copied below). Like so many vultures, NSPI is cleaning up the remnants of wind energy projects that have fallen by the wayside during this recent economic crisis.

The conditions of the contracts with NSPI that these projects are required to meet make them difficult to be financially successful in the first place. The Recession, and ensuing collapse of some of the financial backers, put the final nails in the coffins. These conditions make these projects profitable only to NSPI and for any developers who can hang on to a contract as project managers.

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NSP throws projects a lifeline

Published: 2009-09-11

Utility would buy stakes in four stalled wind power developments

By JUDY MYRDEN Business Reporter

Nova Scotia Power wants to kick-start several stalled wind power developments by buying a minority stake in them.

"We’re trying to get all of the projects that aren’t moving ahead as quickly as they would like, to get going," Robin Mc-Adam, the power company’s vice-president of sustainability, told reporters Thursday outside a meeting about the provincial government’s new targets for using energy from renewable sources.

Nova Scotia Power signed six long-term wind energy agreements last year but the collapse of the credit markets has put the future of four of them in jeopardy.

Mr. McAdam said it’s too early to say whether any of the developers will take the company up on its offer.

The two projects that are proceeding are the $12-million Maryvale wind turbine development in Antigonish County and RMSenergy’s plan to connect 34 turbines in the Cobequid Range 25 kilometres west of New Glasgow.

How much Nova Scotia Power would spend on moving the other four projects forward has yet to be determined, Mr. McAdam said.

"That’s going to depend on how many people are interested and how all that goes," he said. "It’s too early to know how much money will be involved."

The company’s investment would be recovered through customers’ power rates, and that would require regulatory approval, Mr. McAdam said.

"I think people understand how fundamental the economic turmoil has been that we’ve gone through," he said. "I think the public would like to see the projects going ahead. We know our customers want more renewables, so we’re trying to respond to that customer request."

Earlier this year, Nova Scotia Power gobbled up one of the province’s troubled independent wind power projects.

A proposed $90-million wind energy farm in Colchester County was put up for sale last October after its Calgary developer sought bankruptcy protection. EarthFirst Canada Inc. had announced it was not putting any more money into the wind farm, located at Nuttby Mountain, 20 kilometres north of Truro.

EarthFirst said it sold the project to Nova Scotia Power for $800,000, minus working capital and other adjustments. In fact, the power company said it would get a cheque for $300,000 as it held a security deposit of $1.125 million in case the wind farm did not proceed.

Last year, EarthFirst signed a 25-year agreement with Nova Scotia Power to sell wind-generated electricity to the power company.

Mr. MacAdam said work is proceeding on the project, with the regulatory filings to be made later this month.

Federal environmental approval, which would take advantage of financial incentives worth million of dollars for renewable energy projects, is underway, Mr. McAdam said.

The Nuttby wind farm would have a capacity of 45 megawatts and produce enough electricity to power about 15,000 homes. The original proposal included up to 22 wind turbines but the recent plan has 15 larger turbines.

New targets will have the province generating one-quarter of its electricity from renewable sources by 2015.

The target could rise to as high as 40 per cent by 2020.

Nova Scotia Power now generates 10 to 12 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Business/1141930.html

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NSP seeks OK for 22 Nuttby turbines

With URB approval, company will spend $120 million on Pictou County wind farm
By JUDY MYRDEN Business Reporter
Sat. Sep 12 - 4:46 AM

Nova Scotia Power is seeking regulatory approval to spend $120 million to construct a 22-turbine wind farm in Pictou County.

The utility filed its application Friday with the Utility and Review Board to develop the 45-megawatt project at Nuttby Mountain, Colchester County. It would begin operation late next year.

"The Nuttby Mountain project responds in a significant way to our customers’ desire for more clean energy," said Robin McAdam, NSP vice-president of sustainability, in a news release Friday.

"We are excited about being able to undertake this development and demonstrate our commitment to meeting government targets and public expectations regarding renewable energy."

NSP is also asking the board to give the green light for the project by Dec. 1, and wants immediate approval to proceed with project construction, which includes ordering turbines.

In addition to the Nuttby Mountain project, two other wind projects are underway in Nova Scotia by independent power producers.

RMSenergy of Westville is building a 51-megawatt farm on Dalhousie Mountain in Pictou County, and will sell the electricity to NSP. At Maryvale, north of Antigonish, an additional six megawatts of independently produced wind power will be online by the end of this year.

The wind developments are critical to moving Nova Scotia beyond its heavy reliance on dirty, coal-fired electrical generation.

The Nuttby Mountain project, about 20 kilometres north of Truro, would include purchasing and erecting 22 turbines rated at 2.05 megawatts each, construction of a new substation, and transmission interconnection.

The regulatory filing comes a day after Mr. McAdam said the utility is willing to buy a minority stake in three delayed wind projects that were scheduled to start producing wind generated electricity by the end of this year.

Mr. McAdam said it was too early to know if any of the companies would take the utility up on its offer.

In April, NSP purchased the development rights for Nuttby Mountain from the financially troubled EarthFirst Canada Inc. of Calgary.

NSP says the design for the Nuttby Mountain farm will generate electricity at a cost that is more than 10 per cent lower than what customers would have paid through the contract with EarthFirst.

The turbines will produce enough energy to power approximately 15,000 homes. The project has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 100,000 tonnes annually.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Business/1142136.html

Wind Farms: the Death of Britain

Originally found in UK's (admittedly very Conservative newspaper) The Daily Telegraph from July 16th from James Delingpole's blog www.jamesdelingpole.com.

I have used the Telegraph link (below) for the sake of the 109 following comments. Very interesting to see what other counties are going through and there are some useful links to other sites in the comments. I am going to look more at the Aeolian Tones idea.

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Wind Farms: the death of Britain

“How the hell did we let that happen?” we often ask ourselves when we look at the brutalist monstrosity tower blocks which we allowed to blight our towns in the sixties. In a few decades’ time we’re going to be asking exactly the same question about the 300 foot wind turbines ruining what’s left of Britain’s wilderness.

And a bit like the perpetrators of terrible sixties architecture now, no one’s going to be able to come up with a satisfactory answer because, quite simply, there isn’t one: wind turbines are a bad idea in almost every way imaginable.

They don’t work when there’s no wind.

They don’t work when it’s too windy.

They produce so little power - and so unreliably and erratically - that even if you put one on every hill top in Britain you’d still need to rely on nuclear, coal and gas-generated electricity for your main source of energy.

They chew up flying wildlife and scare horses.

They produce a subsonic hum which drives you mad if you’re downwind of them.

They turn pristine landscape into Teletubby-style horror visions.

They destroy property values.

They steal light.

They’re visible for miles around so that just when you’re thinking you’ve got away from it all you’re reminded of man’s grim presence by the whirling white shapes on the horizon.

They’re environmentally damaging: their massive concrete bases alone requiring enough concrete to fill two Olympic-size swimming pools; then there’s the access roads that have to be built through the unspoilt landscape to put them up in the first place.

They’re twice as expensive as conventionally-produced electricity.

They make you feel a bit queasy, especially the three-bladed ones whose asymmetry is disturbing.

To supply the equivalent output of one nuclear power station you’d need a wind farm the size of Greater Manchester.

When I wrote all this a couple of years ago in How To Be Right, my polemical A to Z of everything wrong with Blair’s and Brown’s Britain, I did think I was erring slightly towards the Dystopian.

The “wind turbines” entry was more of a warning of the awful things that could go wrong if the more extreme eco-nutters got their way and the government completely lost its head. Not even in my darkest moments did I imagine that this nightmare vision would come true.

Why? Well, apart from anything else, because the British landscape is our greatest asset, the thing that makes so proud to have been born here and to live here. In July, I’ll be walking with my family in the near-deserted hills of the Welsh Borders; in late August, I’ll be in Scotland wandering amid the purple heather of the Highlands; in October, the coastal path round Prawle Point and Bolt Head. I love swimming in burns, rock pools, rivers, beneath waterfalls, in the sea off South Dorset. I count it one of my greatest privileges to have been hunting over the stone walls of the Cotswolds and the steep valleys of Exmoor. Few things make me happier or more glad to be alive than the joy that so much of our countryside remains so pristine and stunningly beautiful.

And now, in the name of environmentalism, to serve a cause - CO2 reduction - that will not make the blindest bit of difference to global climate, our Government is destroy this landscape.

Well I suppose they would. They’re Labour and they’ve never really understood the country in the way the Conservatives do.

Or rather, the way the Conservatives did. For, it would seem judging from the comments of Tory environment spokesman Greg Clark that the Conservatives now hate our countryside just as much as Labour does.

To me, it quite beggars belief that a party led by an ex-hunting man representing as beautiful a rural seat as Witney should yet fail to take a stand on this, the gravest environmental threat to Britain in our lifetime. Wind farms are a disaster and an act of lunacy. If the Tories refuse to take a stand against them, they most definitely do not deserve our vote.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100003510/wind-farms-the-death-of-britain/

No access to N.B. transmission lines could hamper P.E.I. wind power export plans

THE CANADIAN PRESS

CHARLOTTETOWN — A P.E.I. plan to export wind energy to New England may be in jeopardy now that New Brunswick says it has no room for Island power on its transmission lines.

Last year, the province announced a $1-billion plan for wind energy development that would see the Island increase its wind power production to 500 megawatts by 2013.

Under the plan, private developers would invest the capital needed to achieve the province’s energy objective and most of the power would be earmarked for export to the eastern United States.

But an official with NB Power told the Charlottetown Guardian on Tuesday there’s no room on its transmission lines for any energy exports from P.E.I.

“The transmission that is available right now is completely tied up,” said Heather MacLean, manager of media relations for NB Power.

Over a year ago, the New Brunswick utility did tender some of its transmission capacity for use by other jurisdictions, but all of the excess was bought up by Quebec.

MacLean said if P.E.I. still wants to export wind power to New England, it will have to negotiate with NB Power or Quebec.

That could throw a monkey wrench into the province’s current search for private wind energy developers who want to export, said Environment Minister Richard Brown.

“It’s going to hamper our tender for wind development on P.E.I.,” he said. “If the developers can’t get their energy to the market, then we’re not going to get many bids.”

Opposition energy critic Mike Currie says Brown should have known this was going to happen long ago.

Currie has been asking questions about this issue for some time in the legislature. As a former development minister, he said he knew there was no room for the kind of transmission capacity needed to move the large amounts of power proposed by the province for export.

“The first thing that came into my mind when they first made their announcement was how are you going to get the power from western P.E.I., across the bridge and through New Brunswick,” Currie said.

“It looks like there was never a deal and that (Premier Robert) Ghiz jumped out front on this and now he got caught.”

Brown said the province did consult with NB Power and NS Power before the plan was put together and both utilities saw no issues at that time.

But now he, too, is being told New Brunswick currently has no room for P.E.I.’s energy on its transmission lines.

“The markets have changed. Wind production and energy production is fast moving,” Brown explained.

http://www.ngnews.ca/index.cfm?sid=281107&sc=286

Digby wind project approved

Province OKs 17 of 20 proposed turbines
By BRIAN MEDEL Yarmouth Bureau
Wed. Aug 26 - 4:46 AM

Environment Minister Sterling Belliveau has approved a wind turbine project for Digby Neck, saying he’s confident any problems can be overcome.

Scotian WindFields Inc., a Dartmouth company, and its partner, SkyPower Corp. of Toronto, will build and operate the Digby Wind Park.

"I am convinced that any adverse effects or significant environmental effects of the undertaking can be adequately mitigated through compliance with the attached terms and conditions," Mr. Belliveau said in a one-page letter to Charmaine Thompson, SkyPower’s vice-president of project management.

The letter of approval, dated Monday, was sent to SkyPower’s headquarters in Ontario.

The accompanying terms and conditions deal with items including noise monitoring and regular inspections of the turbines and the sites they occupy.

The proponents must also develop a complaint resolution plan, according to a three-page document outlining terms and conditions.

Nova Scotia Power will buy all the electricity from the facility. The provincial power utility gave the wind producers a 20-year contract last year.

The 1,100-hectare wind park will be located on leased, private land, and is designed to produce enough clean energy to power about 10,000 homes annually.

The Digby Wind Park will install new General Electric wind turbines and be running in less than a year, said Scotian WindFields president Barry Zwicker.

Each machine will produce 1.5 megawatts and be installed in the Rossway-Gullivers Cove area of Digby Neck, about 12 kilometres west of Digby.

Government is allowing 17 of the 20 proposed turbines to be built. Three units were not allowed in their proposed locations, presumably because of their proximity to houses. Relocating those turbines will require more government consultation.

"We’re looking at a plan to relocate those," Mr. Zwicker said Tuesday.

The company will soon resubmit a bid to place those three turbines elsewhere. He said the three turbines that must be repositioned were within 600 to 700 metres of homes. The next closest turbine will be about 750 metres from a dwelling, Mr. Zwicker said.

When the project was announced last year, SkyPower president Kerry Adler said the Digby Neck wind park would be worth about $80 million in construction and related costs.

Earlier this month, SkyPower announced it was filing for protection from its creditors to allow it to restructure under the Companies" Creditors Arrangement Act.

Mr. Zwicker said the Digby project is definitely going ahead and, with government approval, financing the project will now be easier to conclude.

Road development may begin soon, he said.

"We just couldn’t do anything on the site until we received this approval," said Mr. Zwicker.

Waterford resident Nora Peach said at least one of the turbines will be as close as 750 metres to a home, and some are within 1,000 metres.

"Down at the end of Gullivers Cove Road, some of those houses would be 800 or . . . 975"" metres from a turbine, she said.

"They don’t have room really . . . on such a narrow strip of land to go back any further."

Some residents had asked that the turbines be kept at least two kilometres away.

Ms. Peach said the new provincial government has joined the proponent in ignoring concerns about possible effects on property values, ecotourism and migratory birds.

"It’s quite a wall of turbines,"" she said. ""It’s probably not good for birds."

The company must monitor and report all bird deaths resulting from collisions with turbine blades or towers for a period of two years.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1139433.html

As of noon August 27th, at this Herald link there are 106 comments coming from all kinds of directions. Worth viewing.

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Some of the signs to be seen around Digby:

Wind Concerns Ontario

The website http://windconcernsontario.wordpress.com/ is not even a year old but has burgeoned into an excellent resource for anyone anywhere who has concerns about wind energy.

This is from their "about us" page:

Wind Concerns Ontario is a province-wide coalition which promotes awareness of the true impacts of industrial wind power facilities on our health, environment, economy and quality of life.

Wind Concerns Ontario provides a strong, unified voice of opposition to the unchecked rush to locate over six hundred forty massive industrial wind turbines across the province in the last 5 years without the benefit of full environmental assessment. Plans to locate thousands more at an accelerated schedule, with even less oversight are tearing apart the very fabric of rural Ontario. Along with their transformers, transmission lines, overhead distribution wires and substations these industrial wind turbines threaten people and the environment in serene, historic, rural communities, on prime agricultural land, migratory bird paths, close to sensitive wetlands, designated wildlife areas and pristine shorelines.

Wind Concerns Ontario is in favour of environmentally sound solutions to our energy demands and environmental challenges. However hundreds of published reports from scientists, engineers, physicians and environmentalists refute misleading claims by wind power developers that industrial wind technology will be either effective or harmless.

Wind Concerns Ontario is committed to informing the people of Ontario as to the whole truth about industrial wind power.

Digby wind project ‘going forward’

Scotian Windfields’ Ontario partner filing for creditor protection
By TOM PETERS Business Reporter
Fri. Aug 14 - 4:46 AM

Scotian Windfields is confident and committed to its Digby Neck wind turbine park project despite the fact its Ontario partner in the development is seeking protection from its creditors.

"The project is still solid in terms of going forward," Scotian president Barry Zwicker said Thursday.

Mr. Zwicker said he was aware of Skypower Corp.’s creditor protection filing before it hit the news and said it is a concern, "but ultimately our concern is for the success of the project."

Skypower announced on Wednesday that it was filing for protection to allow it to restructure under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act. In a news release, Skypower, a company whose major shareholder is the financially troubled Lehman Brothers, said the filing was to facilitate the transition of the company through a sale process.

Skypower is a developer of renewable energy projects with projects under way across Canada and other parts of the world.

Scott Brownrigg, a Skypower spokesman, said Thursday that, "The CAA process should have no bearing on the evaluation of Skypower’s environmental assessment or approvals with either the Digby or other projects we have going on. It’s business as usual."

Skypower president and CEO Kerry Adler said in the release that several potential bidders have expressed an interest in purchasing the company’s assets.

"We expect a vibrant process to maximize value for our stakeholders and preserve the business as a going concern for the employees, customers and suppliers," he said.

As part of the restructuring, Skypower said it has a commitment for US$15 million that will allow it to transition the business through a quick and efficient competitive sales process.

Scotian Windfields of Dartmouth, and Skypower have proposed a 30-megawatt wind farm on Digby Neck. It would be comprised of 20 wind turbines each generating 1.5 megawatts of power.

Mr. Zwicker said, "We have been reassured that the project in Digby, in particular, has got Skypower’s share of funding set aside and quite honestly everything we have seen in terms of the continued involvement of our Skypower partners has been nothing but solid."

He concedes that there is "an issue" but "I don’t think it is a direct issue right now as far as the Digby project is concerned."

In June the provincial Environment Department informed the developers that additional information was required in their application for environmental approval.

Mr. Zwicker said that information has been compiled and is now before the minister, who has 50 days to review the material and make a decision. The 30 days for public review of the project has also been completed.

The plan was to have a project start up in September. Mr. Zwicker still hopes to keep that time line although he admits construction may not begin until late September.

"We are looking to bring this project online during the summer and fall of 2010, so we have got to get started fairly soon," he said.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Business/1137423.html