April 2017 Blog Posts (71)

Energy Secretary Rick Perry has ordered 60-day study of the U.S. power grid, which will examine whether policies that favor wind and solar energy are accelerating the retirement of coal and nuclear plants critical to ensuring steady, reliable power supplies......Perry asked his chief of staff, Brian McCormack, to develop a plan for evaluating to what extent regulatory burdens, subsidies, and tax policies “are responsible for forcing the premature retirement of baseload power…

“It’s a bad deal for America,” Pruitt continued. “It was an America second, third, or fourth kind of approach. China and India had no obligations under the agreement until 2030. We front-loaded all of our costs.”........

The Trump administration has previously said it is currently reviewing its position on climate change and energy policy and remains noncommittal, for now, on whether it will follow through on the president’s campaign pledge to “cancel” the 2015 Paris climate…

Lawmakers will consider two bills that seek to address deficiencies in the Renewable Portfolio Standard, which even advocates admit isn't working as intended......These facts also add context to an often-cited statistic: Maine gets 40 percent of its electricity from renewables, a larger share than any state in the country.......…

US Senator Susan Collins essentially also advocated for a setback (hers was 20 miles) for offshore wind turbines. Do these pols not think inland people vote as well?

According to the transcript published in the Legislative Gazette, in his Jan. 10 State of the State address at Farmingdale State College, Mr. Cuomo stated the following: “I’m calling on LIPA [Long Island Power Authority] to approve a 90 megawatt wind farm. It’s enough to…

Big, big questions for ABC birds:

Will ABC's day in court be just another dance to nowhere???????????

When and where has ABC benefited birds and raptors by stopping any major wind projects?  

Will this court case lead to a big cash settlement that sells out all these bird species????? This is what took place with Audubon at Altamont and now more eagle carcasses are being found around the Altamont turbines than ever…

Parts I and II

Part I

The reality is that non-dispatchable generation technologies, (wind and solar) cannot be directly compared with dispatchable generation technologies (coal, natural gas, nuclear, biomass, and generally speaking, hydro). This is a common mistake. The DOE/EIA cautions about this in levelized costs for generation technologies[2], and the same considerations apply to other generation characteristics such as capacity and electricity…

A seven-year battle over the Northern Pass transmission project takes a critical step forward Thursday when a hearing at the New Hampshire Site Evaluation Committee begins on the $1.6 billion plan to bring power from Canada to markets mostly in southern New England.…

This is a list of met towers from the Land Use Planning Commission (LUPC) as of December 2016. Met towers outside of their jurisdiction (the UT), would be in municipalities and thus likely under local planning board jurisdiction.

From FMM:

FMM%20LIST%20of%20Met%20Towers%20December%202016%20-%20Copy.pdf

Masschusetts DEP Faulted For Torturous Wind Turbine Noise

https://patch.com/massachusetts/falmouth/masschusetts-dep-faulted-torturous-wind-turbine-noise…

McLean’s bill isn’t the only proposal to re-imagine Maine’s highway funding. A proposal from Sen. Ronald Collins, R-Wells, L.D. 1226, would impose a $250 annual registration fee on hybrid vehicles and a $350 fee on all-electric vehicles.......…

Cities like Georgetown, Texas claiming to have gone totally renewable are lying, given the inefficiency of wind and solar power sources.

A story out of the Dallas Morning News on 03/14/2017 claiming that the city of Georgetown, with a population of around 60,000, just outside of Austin, Texas has gone totally renewable and no longer relies…

Does anyone have an updated met tower list?

But for wind energy to be successful, a way past the grid bottlenecks that have stymied development in the US north-east will be key.

There are a number of transmission projects on the books designed to bring wind output from projects in northern Maine and upper New York state to market, But with large hydro in play, the Massachusetts RFP could also open up opportunities for wind energy exports from Canada.…

A bill now awaiting a hearing in the Legislature would ban any offshore wind energy project within 10 nautical miles of the Monhegan Lobster Conservation Area. The wind project site is located at the southern edge of the lobster zone.......responsible for the crisis by changing the scope of the project. What started in 2009 as a scaled-down, temporary experiment has grown to a 20-year, full-scale project with blades that would reach 576 feet above the waterline and an undersea cable to…

The governor cited talking points from the Natural Resources Council of Maine. NRCM maintains that Maine does not produce enough energy from renewable resources. LePage countered that claim by saying that while Maine uses only about 10 percent of the electricity in New England, we produce nearly half of the total renewable resource-generated energy in New England. Seventy percent of the electricity produced in Maine, according to the governor, comes from renewable…

Massachusetts on Friday issued a massive request for clean power proposals that could help the state meet its goal of reducing its electrical system’s impact on global warming. By 2020, the state aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation to 25 percent below 1990 levels.

The long-expected solicitation has wind opponents in Maine again gearing up for a fight, as Maine is host to the vast majority of pending land-based wind power projects in New…

Mass Officials Frustrated By Wind Turbine Court Havoc They Created…