WIND

promoted to primary 5/14 b/c of the amazing efforts to discredit it

see wind 2 1/16

eg bryce talk/book

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http://ecowatch.com/2016/02/04/offshore-wind-farm-hornsea  denmark 1 gig

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Scott Walker's Budget Includes $250,000 To Study 'Wind Energy System-Related Health Issues 2/15

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With Wind Energy Prices at All-Time Lows, DOE Is Cautiously Optimistic

Wind electricity costs have dropped to about 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour, a highly competitive price in some parts of the country.

With new wind power installations rebounding from last year's free fall, there's still a chance that wind could provide 20 percent of U.S. electricity by 2030, the Department of Energy projected on Monday.

But that will probably require a favorable mix of market developments, technology progress  and regulatory policies, suggested DOE's annual wind technologies market report.

Amid turmoil over tax incentives, barely 1,000 megawatts of new capacity were added in 2013, just 8 percent of the previous year's record-setting total. "All signals point to more robust growth in 2014 and 2015," the report said. But beyond that, things get murky again.

The most positive sign for the wind power industry in the 82-page report was that both the cost of wind turbines and the price of wind-powered electricity continue to fall.

Wind power prices, as measured in power purchase agreements (PPAs) for the nearly 30,000 megawatts of projects that have been built or soon will be, "have reached all-time lows," the report found.

After topping out at nearly $70 per megawatt hour in 2009, the national average levelized price of wind purchase agreements fell to around $25 last year, the report sad.

That means wind electricity costs about 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour, a highly competitive price in some parts of the country.

Back in 2009 and 2010, wind was being squeezed out of the competitive wholesale power price range, the report said. In 2011 and 2012, wind prices rejoined the upper end of the competitive range, but now wind is "back at the bottom of the range once again."

For the first time, this annual report also forecast wind PPA prices against the prices for natural gas, and it found wind looking favorable for the foreseeable future—"below even the low-end of gas price forecast for two decades."

But this kind of prediction depends on whether Congress restores the on-again off-again tax provisions that subsidized wind power through 2012. In 2013, Washington pulled the rug out from under the industry, then gave it a new lease on life this year and next, and has left its future uncertain after that.

Other policy considerations matter, too—notably the effects of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed crackdown on carbon emissions from the electric power industry.

"More stringent EPA environmental regulations on fossil plant retirement and energy costs may create new markets for wind energy," the report said.

"Regardless of future uncertainties, and despite the poor showing in 2013, wind power capacity additions in recent years have put the United States on an early trajectory that may lead to 20 percent of the nation's electricity demand coming from wind energy by 2030," the report said. "Nonetheless, annual wind additions in 2013 fell well short of the pathway...and projections for additions in 2014 through 2016 similarly fall short" of what would be needed to keep on track toward the 20 percent milestone.

"Achieving 20% wind energy by 2030 may require effort and investment that go beyond business as usual."

Makani Power was an Alameda, California-based company that developed airborne wind turbines with the support of Google and the U.S. Department of Energy office ofARPA-E. According to some experts in the field, Makani is currently the world leader in the development of airborne wind power extraction systems.^[1] According to other experts and analysts, the early selected method of high complexity has severe problems.^[2]

Makani was founded in 2006 by Saul Griffith, Don Montague, and Corwin Hardham.^[3] It received funding as part of Google.org's Renewable Energy cheaper than Coal (RE^[4] "Makani" is Hawaiian for "wind."^[5] One of the founders, Corwin Hardham, died in 2012 at age 38.^[6]

Mechanical progress for their kite system[edit]

In order to meet its goal of producing low-cost renewable energy, the Makani kite-energy system uses autonomous tethered wings which fly in a circular path and generate electricity via wind turbines mounted upon the main wing, a method already in public domain; expert Miles Loyd in 1980 analyzed that for large scale purposes flying the generators will be disfavored because of the need to fly the mass of the generators;^[7] many of Makani Power competitors have generators kept on the ground, like KiteGen, Italy.^[8] The electricity is transmitted to the ground via an electrical cable within the kite's tether.^[9] Several patent applications have been made; some have been granted.

On the 23 May 2013, Makani Power was acquired by Google and will be folded into Google X.^[10]

==

Google and Wind Energy: Acquisition of Makani Kite Power

It’s been a long time since we covered Makani Power, the company developing kite-like wind turbines. But the company didn’t float away (bad pun intended). In fact, it has just been bought by Google, for development under its Google[x] division.

Some quick history: Makani’s creators several years ago came up with the idea of essentially combining kites with wind turbines in order to capture the strong and steady wind energy high up in the sky — too high for conventional wind turbines to capture.

“The secret to the air turbine design lies in using a fraction of the material necessary for a standard wind turbine. A conventional 1-megawatt wind turbine can weigh more than 100 tons, but Makani’s airborne turbine only uses a carbon-fiber wing and lightweight rotors of their own creation,” Silvio wrote back in 2011. “The company says its 1-megawatt airborne turbine system will weigh a tenth as much and have an installed price half a normal turbine, but with the same rated power.”

“We expect the cost to be around 3 cents a kilowatt-hour,” said Corwin Hardham, Makani CEO. “That’s getting lower than a lot of coal-fired generation at the moment.”

Makani Power has received a number of awards and grants over the years, including a $3 million dollar grant from the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program, and $20 million in venture capital funding from Google.

Back in 2011, the aim was to reach commercial production by 2015.

Google’s purchase: Apparently, Google liked what it saw. And a critical development unveiled last week probably didn’t hurt. From the Makani Power website: “This formalizes a long and productive relationship between our two companies, and will provide Makani with the resources to accelerate our work to make wind energy cost competitive with fossil fuels. The timing couldn’t be better, as we completed the first ever autonomous all-modes flight with our Wing 7 prototype last week.”

“They’ve turned a technology that today involves hundreds of tons of steel and precious open space into a problem that can be solved with really intelligent software,” Google X Director Astro Teller said. ”We’re looking forward to bringing them into Google.”

What is Google[x]? Well, you won’t find a Google website about it (at least, I didn’t). But it is reportedly, “a secret facility run by Google thought to be located somewhere in the Bay Area of Northern California,” according to Wikipedia. ”Work at the lab is overseen by Sergey Brin, one of Google’s co-founders.” About 100 potentially groundbreaking projects are reportedly in some process of development there. Google’s driverless car technology (which I happened to get some video of last year, as well as pics, while on a short trip to the Bay Area) and Project Glass are probably the two most well known projects in Google[x].

We’ll see where Makani’s (er, Google’s) wind turbine kites goes next. Hopefully they do hit those 2015 commercialization and 3 cents per kilowatt-hour targets.

For now, here are a few videos highlighting the innovative, kite-like wind turbines:

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he political winds in the nation’s capitol shifted on Thursday in favor of wind energy.

A Senate committee passed a bill that would restore two key tax credits for the wind industry. Both credits have helped spur the sector’s rapid growth in recent years, but Congress allowed them to expire at the end of last year. Uncertainty over whether the incentives would be extended into 2014 was blamed for a startling decline in wind farm construction last year, when just 1 gigawatt of capacity was installed — down from 13 gigawatts the year before.

Thursday’s move by the Senate Finance Committee doesn’t guarantee that the full Senate will support resurrection of the credits, much less the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. But encouraging signs emerged after Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) tried to kill the credits. He argued that restoring them would amount to picking energy-industry winners and losers and forcing taxpayers to “subsidize inefficient, uncompetitive forms of energy.” (Meanwhile, taxpayers continue a century-long tradition of subsidizing fossil fuels.) CleanTechnica reports on the encouraging bipartisan response to Toomey’s effort:

The PTC [wind energy Production Tax Credit] and the alternate Investment Tax Credit were added overnight to a modified “Chairman’s mark,” after an earlier draft released Monday left them and several other provisions for further negotiation.

They prevailed on a critical 18-6 vote during the committee markup late Thursday morning, on a motion by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) to strip them out. Five Republicans joined the committee’s Democrats in voting down that amendment: Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), John Thune (R-SD), Rob Portman (R-OH), Mike Crapo (R-ID), and John Cornyn (R-TX).  ...grist

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http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/19/3416006/native-american-tribe-renewable-energy/

Twenty-one tribal energy and mineral projects just got a boost from the Department of Interior, including multiple projects to advance renewable energy on tribal land.

On Friday, the Interior Department announced the 21 tribal projects that would share in $3.2 million worth of federal grants. The projects include 13 proposals for renewable energy, including wind, hydropower and biomass. The recipients also include two oil and gas extraction projects and six projects focused on extracting limestone and other minerals.

“These grants are about strengthening self-determination and self-governance by enabling tribal nations to evaluate and promote their energy and mineral assets, negotiate the best agreements with partners or investors and develop these resources for the social and economic benefit of their communities,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a release

Not all of the tribes know how much money they’ll receive yet, but renewable projects accounted for the largest chunk of grant money at $1,972,350 for the 13 proposals. One of the tribes to receive grant money is the Crow Creek Sioux tribe in South Dakota, which has plans to build a billion-dollar wind farm. Crow Creek leaders hope the farm will provide free electricity to the 2,000 tribe members that live on the reservation and also generate electricity that the tribe could sell to nearby towns. If the tribe gets enough funding to build the project, leaders say it could produce enough energy to power 100,000 to 400,000 homes.

“We never hardly hear good news,” tribe Chairman Brandon Sazue told the Rapid City Journalof the tribe’s grant. “This was one of the greatest pieces of news I have heard since being chairman for Crow Creek.”...

==

alternet: 5. Fox News: Wind Turbines May Cause "Devastating" Health Effects.

Fox News did not shy away from reporting on easily debunked allegations as if they were true, namely that clean energy was responsible for causing the dubiously named Wind Turbine Syndrome [15] among a handful of residents in a small Massachusetts town. In February, Fox News hyped [16] the "devastating" effects of wind turbines on a few residents in Falmouth, Mass. For all of Fox's reporting on the horrors of Wind Turbine Syndrome, the outlet failed to note that no evidence supports that this condition even exists, and multiple studies [17] have suggested that the array of health effects may simply be an effect of hypochondria. The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection even concluded[18] in 2012 that "There is no evidence for a set of health effects from exposure to wind turbines."

South Dakota is already a leader when it comes to harnessing wind energy. Nearly 500 large turbines spin over the state's windswept landscapes, with a collective capacity of 784 megawatts of power. The*Watertown Public Opinion* reports on an attempt to more than double that capacity:

THIS STORY CONTINUES

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As Congress dithers for the umpteenth time over extending a key subsidy for wind energy, the industry once again is up in the air. Called the

production tax credit (PTC), the subsidy helps level the playing field between wind and fossil fuels and has proven to be critical for financing new projects, helping to make wind one of the fastest growing electricity sources in the country. Given the planet needs to transition as quickly as possible away from coal and natural gas to carbon-free energy to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, who would be against renewing wind's tax credit?

The Koch brothers, that's who.

Charles G. and David H. Koch -- the billionaire owners of the coal, oil and gas Koch Industries conglomerate -- have enlisted their extensive network of think tanks, advocacy groups and friends on Capitol Hill to spearhead a campaign to pull the plug on the PTC. Never mind the fact that the oil and gas industry has averaged four times what the wind tax credit is worth in federal tax breaks and subsidies annually for the last 95 years.

The Koch network is fighting the wind industry on a number of fronts. Last month, Koch-funded CongressmanMike Pompeo (R-Kansas) sent a letter signed by 52 House members to the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, urging him to let the PTC expire.Meanwhile, a coalition of some 100 national and local groups organized by the Koch-founded Americans for Prosperity sent a letter to each member of Congress asking them to do the same. And earlier this month, the Koch-funded Institute for Energy Research launched an anti-PTC ad campaign and released a report claiming that only a handful of states actually benefit from the subsidy.

Malcolm Gladwell didn't include this battle in his new book David and Goliath because, given the odds, it's more like Bambi versus Godzilla.

The Kochs' Man in Congress

The fact that Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo is the Kochs' point man to scuttle the PTC in the House is a bit ironic given his state is a wind energy leader. Kansas has the second highest wind potential in the country, it has already attracted more than $5 billion in wind industry investment, and last year wind generated 11.4 percent of its electricity. With stats like that, the industry has broad bipartisan support. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and Sens. Jerry Moran and Pat Roberts -- all Republicans -- are big fans.

Pompeo, who has been in Congress since only 2011, would argue that he's against all energy tax credits. For the second year in a row, he has introduced a bill that would eliminate tax breaks that benefit oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, electric vehicles, alternative fuels, solar and wind, including the PTC, which gives wind developers a tax credit of 2.3 cents for each kilowatt-hour of electricity they produce.

But there's a catch. Although it appears evenhanded, Pompeo's bill would severely hamper wind and solar but preserve a number of oil, gas and coal subsidies, including the percentage depletion allowance, the ability to expense the costs of exploration, and the accelerated depreciation of certain kinds of "geologic property." These and other tax breaks he left out of his bill would be worth about $12.5 billion to the oil and gas industry from 2011 through 2015, according to a March 2012 Congressional Research Service report.

Why is Pompeo so down on wind? Perhaps it's because Koch Industries is headquartered in Wichita, smack-dab in the middle of his district -- and the fact that the company is by far and away his biggest campaign contributor. Since 2010, Koch Industries has given him $200,000, more than four times what his second highest contributor kicked in. Besides Koch Industries, three other oil companies are among Pompeo's top five contributors -- McCoy Petroleum, Mull Drilling and Richie Exploration -- and they're also based in Wichita.

What about the other 51 House members who signed Pompeo's letter? As it turns out, 65 percent of them received contributions from Koch Industries during the last two or three campaign cycles, according to Federal Election Commission data compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. A quarter of them, meanwhile, cashed checks from ExxonMobil. And except for two congressmen who didn't take any energy industry money, the signatories received sizable contributions from a number of other corporations that compete with wind, including coal barons Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources; oil and gas giants Chesapeake Energy, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Valero Energy; and Exelon, which owns the most nuclear reactors in the country.

Americans for (Koch) Prosperity Weighs In

Pompeo's letter came on the heels of a letter from the Kochs' flagship advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity, calling for Congress to kill the PTC. AFP's letter, which was signed by 102 organizations, claims that "the wind industry has very little to show after 20 years of preferential tax treatment" and declares that "Americans deserve energy solutions that can make it on their own in the marketplace -- not ones that need to be propped up by government indefinitely."

Is that right? Little to show? Preferential tax treatment?

In fact, until Congress left the wind industry hanging late last year, it had been doing quite well. Even with a deep recession and slow recovery, over the previous five years -- with the help of the PTC, stimulus spending and state renewable electricity standards -- the industry doubled its electricity output, employment and private investment. In 2012, domestic manufacturers produced roughly 72 percent of the wind turbine equipment erected across the country -- nearly triple the percentage in 2006 -- and more than 13,000 megawatts of new wind generation capacity was installed. By the end of last year, there were enough wind turbines to power 15 million typical American homes -- without toxic pollutants or carbon emissions.

But AFP's complaint that the wind industry has been on the dole far too long is even more galling. What about the oil and gas industry? It's been feeding at the federal trough since 1918! On average, the industry has benefited from $4.86 billion in tax breaks and subsidies in today's dollars every year since then, according to a 2011 study by DBL Investors, a venture capital firm. Renewable energy technologies, meanwhile, averaged only $370 million a year in subsidies between 1994 and 2009. The 2009 stimulus package did provide $21 billion for wind, solar and other renewables, but that support barely begins to balance the scales that have tilted toward nuclear power for more than 50 years, oil and gas for 95 years, and coal for more than two centuries.

So who signed the AFP letter? About half of the signatories are local tea party affiliates and anti-wind NIMBY groups of indeterminate size and funding. The other half are, for the most part, relatively obscure national groups, but there are a few that have attractedattention over the years for their contrarian views on climate science and renewable energy. Like AFP, those groups are awash in petrodollars. The American Energy Alliance (and its parent, the Institute for Energy Research), Competitive Enterprise Institute, Freedom Works, Frontiers of Freedom and Heritage Action (and its parent, the Heritage Foundation) collectively have received millions of dollars from Koch family foundations, ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry's premier trade association.

The Institute for Energy Research's Questionable Research

On December 3, the Institute for Energy Research and its political arm, the American Energy Alliance, sponsored what they dubbed the "wind welfare" summit in Washington, D.C., featuring IER founder and CEO Robert Bradley Jr., a Koch network veteran. AEA announced it would spend $40,000 on print and digital ads calling for an end to the PTC and is flying in anti-PTC advocates for meetings on Capitol Hill.

Bradley presumably highlighted the findings of a report IER released the day before claiming that a small number of states with wind resources -- Iowa, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Texas -- are reaping the benefits of the PTC while 30 states and the District of Columbia are "losing millions" to fund it.

The report's findings, however, don't hold up to scrutiny. Mike Jacobs, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, pointed out in a recent blog that IER ignored the fact that a number of the states it identified as "net payers" are home to wind industry manufacturing facilities. There are 62 companies in Ohio making turbine components, for example, 40 in Michigan and 21 in California. Jacobs also discovered that IER downplayed the fact that "the PTC benefits consumers where wind-generated electricity adds to the supply and lowers the price of electricity, landowners who receive lease payments from the wind turbines, and local communities that collect tax payments on installed wind farms."

Jeff Spross, blogging on the Center for American Progress' ThinkProgress website, alsochided IER, pointing out that most industries are not equally distributed across the country. "The oil and gas industries, for instance, benefit from a wealth of federal tax carve-outs," he wrote, "but the economic activity they generate is concentrated in just a few key states."

In other words, it's disingenuous to single out the wind industry.

Twisting in the Wind

While Congress has generously provided the fossil-fuel and nuclear-energy industries a number of permanent subsidies, it has typically granted the wind industry the PTC on a short-term basis and then wavered over renewing it. Last year the PTC expired on December 31, but as part of the "fiscal cliff" budget deal the next day, Congress extended it for the seventh time since it debuted in 1992 -- for only one year.

This uncertainty over the PTC's status has put wind developers at a distinct disadvantage, making it difficult to attract investors and plan ahead. Last year's cliffhanger, for example, definitely did a number on the industry. Wind farm construction has fallen off dramatically compared with 2012: Only one utility-scale wind turbine was installed in the first six months of this year. Business picked up somewhat in the third quarter, with 68.3 megawatts installed, according to the American Wind Energy Association, but that's far below the average of more than 1,000 megawatts that the industry constructed in most quarters in recent years.

Given that it takes years to plan, finance and construct a wind farm, Congress is again undermining the industry's potential by slow-walking the PTC extension this year. And that potential is tremendous. Wind currently generates about 4 percent of U.S. electricity, but by 2030 it could produce more than 20 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory also is bullish on wind and renewables writ large. Last year, it published a report that concluded today's commercially available renewable technologies could easily generate 80 percent of U.S. electricity by 2050, with nearly half coming from wind. If the Koch brothers and their allies have their way, however, it likely will take a lot longer to get there -- and it will cost a hell of a lot more.

Elliott Negin is the director of news and commentary at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elliott-negin/the-koch-brothers-are-sti_b_4396033.html

Several organizations supported by Internet giant Google are calling on Congress to let the wind production tax credit to expire. A full-page advertisement from the Koch brothers' organization Americans for Prosperity states that the "undersigned organizations and the millions of Americans we represent stand opposed to extending the production tax credit (PTC)" because the "wind industry has very little to show after 20 years of preferential tax treatment."

"Americans deserve energy solutions that can make it on their own in the marketplace -- not ones that need to be propped up by government indefinitely," the letter concludes.

Signatories of the letter who are Google-supported organizations, according to Google's public policy transparency page, include:

• American Conservative Union
• Competitive Enterprise Institute
• Heritage Action For America
• National Taxpayers Union
• R Street Institute

Google's public policy division, which chose to support the above groups, is run by former Republican Congresswoman Susan Molinari.

In addition to Americans for Prosperity, other signatories notorious for promoting climate-change denial and attacks on climate scientists include the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), Cornwall Alliance, Freedom Works, Independent Women's Forum, Club for Growth, and the American Energy Alliance.

The listed organizations are not the only Google-supported opponents of wind power. This year, Google joined the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), whose energy agenda is driven by Koch Industries and other fossil-fuel companies. ALEC's vigorous campaign against state-level renewable energy standards led to the resignation of the American Wind Energy Association and the Solar Energy Industries Association, who had been members in ALEC until this year.

Google is a major beneficiary of the wind PTC, as the company has the stated goal of "100 percent renewable energy" power for its operations, which include energy-intensive data centers across the nation. Google currently is the sole customer of the entire output of three different wind farms -- NextEra's 114-megawatt Story County II wind farm in Iowa, NextEra's 100.8MW Minco II wind farm in Oklahoma, and Chermac Energy's planned 239.2 MW Happy Hereford wind farm in Amarillo, Tex. Breaking Energy's Glenn Schleede has estimated that Google will receive a $370 to $417 million benefit from the PTC over ten years if it is continued.

If the PTC expires, Google shareholders will suffer, as will the nation's growing wind industry. The effort to meet the challenge of eliminating greenhouse pollution will be stalled, as the fossil-fuel industry enjoys the benefits of not having to pay for the costs of its civilization-threatening pollution -- with Google's help. Climate accountability group, Forecast the Facts, has called on Google to end its support for politicians and groups that reject the threat of climate change and oppose clean-energy policy. Their petition to Google can be found here.

Google has not responded to requests for comment.

Follow Brad Johnson on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/climatebrad**

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byrd had turbine at lil am

Va. Power Watching First U.S. Offshore Wind Lease Sale :{(Richmond Times-Dispatch):(style="font-weight:normal"):}:

Gov. Scott Walker (R) has pushed legislation that would hamper wind developments, and some state lawmakers and local officials have also tried to throw roadblocks in front of the wind industry.

http://grist.org/news/wisconsin-left-way-way-behind-in-wind-energy-boom/

http://grist.org/news/maryland-pushing-ahead-on-offshore-wind-farm/

{{Event|Wind power is poised to kick nuclear’s ass  | 3/15|In 2012, wind energy became the fastest-growing source of new electricity generation in the U.S., providing 42 percent of new generation capacity, according to the American Wind Energy Association.�� Wind power is becoming so cheap and so commonplace that it appears poised to help blow up the country's nuclear power sector, according to a recent Bloomberg article (which you really should read in full). [http://grist.org/news/wind-power-is-poised-to-kick-nuclears-ass/ More]}}

reason fdn bs: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/sep/26/myth-wind-turbines-carbon-emissions

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rentamob  http://grist.org/news/cool-job-posting-earn-20-pretending-to-hate-wind-energy/

see c8 wiki. big progress but subsidies expire:

Wind developers around the country are racing to get their wind farms tested and running before the federal wind production tax credit expires Tuesday, a shot to the industry that will leave the nation's wind farm construction projects at a standstill.

For Eddy Huffman, who's worked assembling wind turbine controls at a General Electrics plant in Salem, Va., for more than a decade, it's deja vu.

"Every time the tax credit expires, some of us have layoffs," said Huffman, 62, who lives with his wife in Roanoke County. "We don't have layoffs here locally this time, but that's just our plant."

Congress has failed to extend the so-called production tax credit beyond the end of the year, and the stakes for developers are clear. Wind turbines in service before Jan. 1 are entitled to a 2.2 cent tax credit per kilowatt-hour generated in their first 10 years, a perk that saves an estimated $1 million for a big turbine. Those that connect to the grid after midnight on New Year's Eve won't qualify for the subsidy....

Last renewed in 2009 as part of the fiscal stimulus package, the production tax credit would cost $12.1 billion over 10 years, a sum opponents argue is too costly for an electricity source that is intermittent and hard to integrate into the power grid.

Advocates counter it would stimulate economic activity with manufacturing and construction jobs, be taxed at the federal, state and local levels, and be advantageous environmentally.

Some legislators, including wind state Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), have proposed that the credit be renewed this year but gradually phased out over time. The proposal that passed in the Senate earlier this year called simply for a one-year extension.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/28/wind-tax-credit-obama-fiscal-cliff_n_2377654.html?ir=Green&ref=topbar

koch funded beacon hill bogus paper

nat'l rev/manhat inst::{ http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/334102/backlash-against-big-wind-continues-:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{robert-bryce:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{?utm_source=scribol.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=scribol.com#:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}:

Some of the strongest opposition to Cape Wind has come from grassroots community groups like Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound.

[bd:* Jaci Barton

* George Bassett

* Barbara Birdsey

* Ron Borjeson

* David Crawford

* Greg Egan

* Mike Egan

* Alan Granby

* Bob Jones

* William I. Koch

* Wayne Kurker

* Richard Largay

* Francis Lowell Jr.

* John McMillian

* Christy Mihos

* Dr. John Osmond

* Audra Parker

* Howard Penn

* Isaac Rosen]

The Alliance opposes the project because of how it might impact the views of those who live along the shore. (The image above demonstrates that impact. If you enlarge it, you’ll notice some white specks along the horizon.)

One of the reasons the Alliance has gotten so much attention is that one of its sponsors has a last name that acts as a media magnet: Koch. William Koch, brother to the more-famous Charles and David, has invested heavily in stopping Cape Wind. In part, it’s because he’s a local resident. And, in part, it’s because he is rich because of the fossil fuel industry.

Bill Koch is also**a major contributor to getting Mitt Romney elected president**, so far ponying up $2 million to a pro-Romney political action committee. The two became acquainted when Romney ran Bain Capital, and the relationship lasted through Romney’s tenure as governor. In that role, Romney **:{publicly opposed Cape Win:(style="background-color:#ed1c24"):}:d**, though he**supported other regional wind initiatives**.

Recently, Romney expanded his opposition to growth in the wind industry. As we’ve discussed previously, a vital renewable energy tax credit for wind is due to expire at the end of the year. Expiration of the credit could substantially curtail investment in wind energy, meaning, by one estimate, the loss of 37,000 jobs across the country �� and a slowdown in an industry that is set to reach kilowatt-hour cost equivalence with fossil-fuel electricity within five years. Earlier this week, Romney campaign staff indicated that the candidate opposes the credit — though it’s not clear if he supports a short-term renewal. As ThinkProgress notes, Romney staunchly defends tax breaks for fossil fuel companies.

The wind industry has recently (and belatedly) started donating more heavily to Republican members of Congress. The CEO of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) gave $2,500 to the Romney campaign in the first quarter of 2012 — a mere $1,997,500 shy of Koch’s contribution to the pro-Romney PAC. Since Romney’s campaign announced its opposition to the tax credit after this donation, it appears that AWEA still has some work to do.

Meanwhile, Cape Wind is stalled, waiting for the FAA to reevaluate its impact. The Obama FAA initially signed off. It’s not clear what a Romney FAA would do, but we suspect we can guess. After all, Charles Koch seems pretty adamant that his view not include any wind turbines. grist

==

As Congress lets wind tax credit die, the wind industry struggles to finish key projects http://grist.org/news/as-congress-lets-wind-tax-credit-die-the-wind-industry-struggles-to-finish-key-projects/

Romney calls for an end to key wind energy credit

By Philip Bump

Mitt Romney, a gentleman who is running for president of these United States, finally formalized his opposition to extending a key tax credit for the wind industry. The production tax credit, or PTC, provides incentives for growth in the wind industry and is due to expire at the end of the year. While his staff had previously suggested that the candidate opposed it, a spokesperson was direct yesterday: let it die. From *The Des Moines Register*:

Shawn McCoy, a spokesman for Romney’s Iowa campaign, told The Des Moines Register, “He will allow the wind credit to expire, end the stimulus boondoggles, and create a level playing field on which all sources of energy can compete on their merits.”

The statement makes very clear what the game is here: politics. “Stimulus boondoggles” and “level playing field” are code words, shorthand for “corruption” and “fossil fuels come first” that need no explanation from the Fox News set. Romney��s argument isn’t that the return on wind investments doesn’t pay off or that he has a better strategy for increasing the use of renewable energy to achieve the goal of energy independence. It’s talking points.

Fine. We get it. We’ve got fewer than 100 days until the election. But here’s what spiking the wind energy credit means for Iowa, according to the Register:

Iowa has five major manufacturers: Acciona in West Branch, Clipper in Cedar Rapids, Siemens in Fort Madison and TPI and Trinity in Newton. Together they employ around 2,300 people. Counting suppliers and other wind-related smaller businesses, the job count is 6,000 to 7,000, industry representatives said.

The uncertainty of the wind tax credit’s fate has already caused orders for turbine production for next year to drop steeply. When Congress delayed extension of the tax break twice in the past, wind projects faltered and workers were laid off. Clipper laid off 90 people in 2009 when projected orders for turbines fell from 450 to about 200.

Nationally, an expiration of the tax credit could cost 37,000 jobs

But if Romney wants to play politics, let’s play politics. The offered rationale for these losses — “Boondoggles!” “Level playing field!” — aren’t going to play well in Iowa. A poll done by the not-without-bias American Wind Energy Association suggests that 57 percent of Iowa voters (including 59 percent of independents) would be less likely to vote for an opponent of wind generation [PDF]. Eighty-five percent believe that wind generation has been a boon for the state. So Romney’s anti-wind stance certainly won’t help in the state (though it’s not a death blow). And Iowa is already leaning Obama, according to the polling gurus at FiveThirtyEight. But the Romney campaign clearly hopes this position will help elsewhere.

Instead of talking points, I’d be more interested in seeing an economic analysis provided by the campaign that makes the case for why ending the tax credit is good for the country, the government, and local communities. It seems unlikely to happen, since evidence points to the contrary — that the credit has broad benefits to everyone except the easily spooked fossil fuel industy.

A final note. Romney’s position is further to the right than even some of the Republican party’s more excited partisans. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a regular opponent of rationality, wrote the bill that created the PTC and told the Register that he supported an extension. (And, then, a phaseout. He’s not that far outside the orthodoxy.)

Most telling of all: Mitt Romney is now more conservative on renewable energy than Karl Rove.

bs www cited by ATI

http://www.windaction.org/lisa_linowes

Lisa Linowes and the Disinformation of Industrial Wind Action Group (alec defector?]

August 12, 2011 1 Comment

Lisa Linowes is the Founder and Executive Director of Industrial Wind Action Group, a group dedicated to “counteract misleading information” and provide “residents, as well as government officials, the information to make informed decisions” about wind energy projects.

However, the organization routinely promotes discredited problems and messengers instead of credible sources.  On their website, the Industrial Wind Action Group links to articles and information from sources whose work is unscientific or has been linked to the fossil fuel industry ��� rather than objective sources that could help residents and government officials make informed decisions.  According to our investigative research, the Industrial Wind Action Group continues to hype anti-wind rhetoric above reality.

Promotes Discredited “Problems”

“Experts” tied to the Fossil Fuel Industry

Not Fulfilling The Mission

The Industrial Wind Action Group states its mission is to “counteract misleading information” and to “provid[e] residents, as well as government officials, the information to make informed decisions.”  Unfortunately, the sources routinely cited on www.windaction.org spread misleading information and promote fossil fuel talking points through purportedly neutral third party sources.

sierra:

May 09, 2012

Anti-Wind Farm "Subversion"

At present, most Americans would look at the picture of a windfarm in California's Tehachapi Mountains and think "Cool! About time we were getting more power from the wind."

If right-wing anti-wind activists get their way, soon you'll be thinking, "Eeewww! Corporate welfare!" As detailed in a memoobtained by the Checks and Balances and posted by ClimateProgress, the wheels are turning to

Cause subversion  in message of industry so that it effectively becomes so bad no one wants to admit in public they are for it (much like wind has done to coal, by turning green to black and clean to dirty).

In February, John Droz, Jr., a fellow at the super-right-wing American Tradition Institute, and Illinois anti-wind lawyer Rich Porter convened a meeting of wind hatersfrom around the country to plot a nationwide PR campaign. Among the tactics considered was forming an alliance with right-wing outfits like the Competitive Enterprise, Manhattan, and Cato institutes, as well as Heartland, the Koch Brothers-financed "thinktank" that put up the short-lived billboardin Chicago the other day with a picture of the Unabomber and the text "I still believe in global warming. Do you?"

More suggested tactics:

Setup a dummy business that will go into communities considering wind development, proposing to build 400 foot billboards. [The idea, apparently, is to cast wind farms as visual blight.]

Take zoning boards to court to rezone as industrial land to create chilling effect on signing contracts.

The [group's anti-wind] message is also repeated in Wash[ington] Times, WSJ, Fox and other sources.

To all of which I say: Good luck with that. Wind energy already enjoys vast public support; a March pollby Pew found that an astonishing 78 percent of the public supports increased funding for wind and other forms of alternative energy. It's hard to imagine a campaign as described in this memo making a serious dent in that support. The real game now is before Congress, which needs to pass the Production Tax Credit to provide tax incentives to wind companies, to level the field with heavily subsidized fossil fuels. But if you do hear in coming months an effort to rechristen wind energy as "puff power" (I'm not making this up) you'll know where it comes from.

PAUL RAUBERis a senior editor at Sierra. He is the author, with Carl Pope, of the happily outdatedStrategic Ignorance: Why the Bush Administration Is Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress. Otherwise he is a cyclist, cook, and father of two. Follow him on Twitter @paulrauber.

===

Marian Lyman Kirst | May 14, 2012 05:00 AM

Back in February, I wrote on the Goat blog about "sWINDle", an anti-wind energy billboard campaign in Idaho that was developed by the Energy Integrity Project, an obscure nonprofit that fancies itself a grass-roots watchdog.  The group believes that wind energy projects in Idaho -- specifically those near EIP members' houses -- are not based on "genuine" science and that they threaten the economy, taxpayers, and the environment.

The Energy Integrity Project is one of a growing number of "grass-roots" groups around the country that aggressively lobby against regional wind development projects and renewable energy policies.  And while most are small, NIMBY-type outfits, documents recently obtained by the Checks & Balances Project -- a government and industry watchdog organization -- suggest that these local groups are more coordinated in funding and strategy than the average citizen-run non-profit. With the help of prominent conservative think tanks -- a number of which have ties to the fossil fuel industry -- these smaller groups are working to combine their small gusts of regional anti-wind rhetoric into a national gale aimed at subverting the renewable energy industry.

In a press release issued this week, the Checks & Balances Project, whose watchdog work to date has largely focused on exposing the fossil fuel industry's influence on energy issues -- says that a network of anti-wind activists, including the members of several high-profile conservative organizations with funding ties to the oil and gas industry, gathered in the nation's capital in February 2011 to "confirm plans for a coordinated national disinformation campaign against wind energy."

The plans were detailed in a confidential public relations campaign proposal that Gabe Elsner, co-director for The Checks & Balances Project, found (along with a number of related documents) via a Google search. The proposal was edited and presented to participants at the February gathering -- dubbed the D.C. Energy Advocates Conference -- by John Droz, Jr., a longtime opponent of commercial wind energy and the conference's organizer. From The Checks & Balances Project:

The document details a series of wind energy attacks ranging from "counter intelligence," setting up a "dummy business" and steering kids away from science projects on wind because "it doesn’t meet the criteria we set up." The document also notes that the groups should coordinate national messaging but make sure the same message "appears to come from as many as a dozen separate sources."

While Droz and other participants describe the conference as a gathering of concerned citizens opposed to government support for the wind energy industry, which Droz says has failed to "justify its existence," environmental groups and clean-energy advocates feel the gathering is "evidence of a concerted effort on the part of fossil fuel companies to squash a sector that could someday threaten their business interests," reports E&E News (subscription only).

Indeed, in addition to Droz's strategy memo, Checks & Balances' Elsner also found a list of conference participants, some of whom have ties to the oil and gas industry or are associated with groups that receive significant funding from fossil fuel interests.

For example, Droz is a senior Fellow at the American Tradition Institute, a conservative think tank that, Elsner says, receives 75 percent of its funding from Doug Lair, founder of Lair Petroleum, a business that billionaire oilman William Koch bought from Lair back in 1989. Paul Driessen, a Senior Policy Analyst at conservative free-market policy institute the Committee For a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) was also in attendance. CFACT received $577,000 from ExxonMobil between 2000 and 2007, according to the company's tax records and giving reports, but Driessen maintains that he was at the conference representing only himself. Marita Noon, Executive Director of the Citizens' Alliance for Responsible Energy (CARE) -- a New Mexico-based anti-wind lobby -- also participated. CARE is funded in part by New Mexico oil and gas producers.

This brings us back to the Idaho-based Energy Integrity Project. According to that list of conference participants, Tauna Christensen -- the president of the EIP -- was there as well.

The EIP incorporated only recently and so it's unclear as yet who funds the group. Christensen claims the EIP is paid for by concerned citizens "out of their own pockets." But, like the other supposedly self-supported anti-wind groups at the conference, notes Elsner, the EIP is -- in its "sWINDle" campaign – running what appears to be a very well-funded effort against local wind energy projects and policies. In fact, Elsner looked into how much it costs to advertise via billboard in Idaho: A quote he got from a Boise billboard company said 14 billboards would run $13,000 a month. So buying anti-wind billboards is a pricey endeavor for a group that Christensen says has only 4 active members.

For its part, The Checks & Balances Project, is not exactly a disinterested party in the wind energy debate: "We are pro-clean energy", says Elsner. But, unlike the EIP and other clean-energy-bashing groups, The Checks & Balances Project believes in transparency and is open about its funding sources: Renew American Prosperity (RAP) and the New Venture Fund.  RAP supports Elsner's work, and it, in turn, is funded by clean technology attorney Mike Danaher.

If groups like the EIP are going to embark on subversive local and national campaigns of disinformation about wind energy -- an industry they claim is non-viable despite the fact that electricity generation from wind increased from 6 billion kilowatt-hours in 2000 to about 95 billion kilowatt-hours in 2010 and that, since 1998, wind capacity has grown by an average of more than 25 percent per year -- then the least they could do is show us the money.

Marian Lyman Kirst is an editorial Fellow for High Country News

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/25/471248/donald-trump-monstrous-wind-turbines-will-make-scotland-go-broke/ ��blocks view of golf course

John Droz Jr. identifies himself as "a physicist who has also been an environmental activist for some 25 years." He runs a website called Wind Power Facts that argues "we do have serious energy (and environmental) problems, and we should insist on Sound Scientific Solutions for such matters." The website does not mention that he is also a fellow of the :{American Tradition Institute:(style="color:#ed1c24"):}:.

Droz is a longtime opponent of wind farms, arguing that the technology has not yet been proven and that wind technology should not receive government support. He claims 10,000 subscribers to his anti-wind-power email newsletter.^[1]

Facing South notes that Droz "spent most of his career in real estate as an investor and a broker, according to his resume. He owns two properties in coastal Carteret County, N.C. together valued at over $900,000, according to county tax records; the state approved a wind farm for Carteret County in 2008." He serves as a member of the board of directors and a scientific advisor to NC-20, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that brings together local governments, businesses and individuals to fight restrictions on development in coastal North Carolina.^[2]

Subverting wind power memo

On May 8, 2012, the Guardian posted a confidential memo prepared by senior fellow John Droz of the American Tradition Institute (ATI) that advises how to build a national movement of wind farm protesters. Among its main recommendations, the proposal calls for a national PR campaign aimed at causing "subversion in message of [wind] industry so that it effectively becomes so bad that no one wants to admit in public they are for it." It suggests setting up "dummy businesses" to buy anti-wind billboards, and creating a "counter-intelligence branch" to track the wind energy industry. It also calls for spending $750,000 to create an organisation with paid staff and tax-exempt status dedicated to building public opposition to state and federal government policies encouraging the wind energy industry.

The proposal was discussed at a meeting ofself-styled 'wind warriors' from across the country in Washington DC in February 2012. Participants included members of conservative groups such as Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and Tea Party Patriots.

The proposal was reviewed by Droz for discussion at the Washington meeting, which he also organized. ATI's executive director, Tom Tanton, told the Guardian that Droz had acted alone on the memo, although he remains a fellow at ATI. Droz said the Washington strategy session was his own initiative, and that neither he nor any of the participants had been paid for attending the session.^[3]

In a phone interview with The Guardian, Droz confirmed that he enlisted support for his anti-wind power effort from FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity (AFP).^[2]

Wind power presentations

In December 2011, Facing South reported that representatives of the American Legislative Exchange Council, American Tradition Institute and the John Locke Foundation were holding forums in the North Carolina coastal communities of Wilmington and Morehead City titled, "The Truth About Wind Power on the Coasts of North Carolina". One of the presenters was John Droz. N. C. Senate Bill 3, a law that passed in 2007, made the state the first in the Southeast to adopt a minimum requirement for the use of renewable energy sources by investor-owned electric utilities: 12.5 percent by 2025. The groups dismissed the law as an energy tax on the poor. The John Locke Foundation is calling for repealing it entirely, as well as abandoning all state efforts to address global warming.^[4]

Articles and resources

References

1. ↑ Suzanne Goldberg, "Conservative thinktanks step up attacks against Obama's clean energy strategy: Confidential memo seen by Guardian calls for climate change sceptics to turn American public against solar and wind power," The Guardian, May 8, 2012.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} Sue Sturgis, "NC anti-wind power crusader behind plot to subvert renewable energy industry" Facing South, May 11, 2012.
3. ↑ Suzanne Goldberg, "Conservative thinktanks step up attacks against Obama's clean energy strategy: Confidential memo seen by Guardian calls for climate change sceptics to turn American public against solar and wind power," The Guardian, May 8, 2012.
4. ↑ Sue Sturgis, "Climate-science deniers join forces against NC renewable-energy program" Facing South, December 9, 2011.

Related SourceWatch articles

• American Tradition Institute
• Western Tradition Partnership

External resources

American Tradition Institute website (http://www.atinstitute.org/ - not to be confused with the American Tradition Partnership website at http://www.americantradition.org/ )

External articles

• Sue Sturgis, "SPECIAL INVESTIGATION: Who's behind the 'information attacks' on climate scientists?" Facing South, Oct. 31, 2011

Categories: Renewable energy | Think tanks | Front groups

Anti-wind activists want to create fake grassroots campaign against industry

By Stephen Lacey

A version of this post originally appeared on Climate Progress.

Last February, a group of anti-wind activists gathered in Washington, D.C. Their goal: establish a coordinated, nationwide program of “wind warriors” who could be dispatched to fight the industry anywhere, anytime.

The organization would combine efforts and create “what should appear as a ‘groundswell’ among grass roots” to counter legislation supporting wind energy on the federal, state, and local levels.

The leader of the group was John Droz, Jr., a longtime wind opponent and a senior fellow at the ultra-conservative American Tradition Institute (ATI). ATI calls itself an “environmental” think tank. The organization, known best for suing climate scientist Michael Mann, is devoted to spreading doubt about climate change, opposing state-level renewable energy targets, and stripping away environmental regulations.

ATI is so extreme that it was denounced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science for contributing to an “environment that inhibits the free exchange of scientific findings and ideas.”

According to a memo just obtained by the Checks and Balances Project and reviewed by Climate Progress, Droz has also been focused on crafting a fake grassroots campaign to fight renewable energy projects — specifically wind — in legislatures, zoning boards, and town halls across the country.

In a poorly timed suggestion, Droz contemplated joining with the Heartland Institute (because there is “substantial commonality”) and launching a fake billboard campaign to derail wind developers. What could go wrong with that?

The memo shows that Droz brought together these wind opponents from all over the country last year to “cause subversion in message of [the wind] industry so that it effectively becomes so bad no one wants to admit they are for it.

   The minimum national PR campaign goal is to constructively influence national and state wind energy policies. A broader possible goal is to constructively influence national and state energy and environmental policies.

   The goal will be realized by coordination of a focused message along many channels and with multiple voices. The intent is to target three audiences with consistent messaging to create the change. Public opinion must begin to change in what should appear as a “groundswell” among grass roots.

By “constructively influence,” the authors really mean “disrupt” any piece of legislation supporting wind energy — and likely other forms of renewable energy as collateral damage.

The document, authored by Illinois anti-wind attorney Rich Porter and edited by Droz, outlines in great detail how a national PR campaign would function. The group’s campaign efforts would include outreach to a who’s who of conservative media outlets and think tanks already working to discredit renewable energy: Fox News, The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Heartland Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and Americans for Prosperity.

The memo outlines more than 20 ideas for undertaking a national campaign, including teaching anti-wind curriculum in schools and creating “dummy” companies to trip up wind developers attempting to build projects. Below is a list of some of the ideas:

   Youth Outreach will create program for public school coordination as well as college coordination. This will include community activity and participation with sponsorships for science fairs, school activity, etc., with preset parameters that cause students to steer away from wind because they discover it doesn’t meet the criteria we set up (poster contest, essays, etc).

   Set up a dummy business that will go into communities considering wind development, proposing to build 400-foot billboards.

 Create a "think-tank” subgroup to produce and disseminate white paper reports and scientific quotes and papers that back up the message.

   Employ a well-known spokesman with star credibility. (Find one to volunteer?)

   Create counterintelligence branch (responsible for communicating current industry tactics and strategies as feedback to this organization).

   Write exposé book on the industry, showing government waste, harm to communities, and other negative impacts on people and the environment.

A team investigates links to any organization supporting wind in order to expose that support.

The release of this memo follows public statements from highly influential conservative groups like ALEC and Americans for Tax Reform about their plans to eliminate targets for renewable energy in states around the country. The Droz anti-wind plan is more proof that these organizations are stepping up their political campaigns against the industry.

Stephen Lacey is a reporter with Climate Progress covering clean energy issues. He formerly worked as a producer/editor at RenewableEnergyWorld.com.

http://grist.org/wind-power/anti-wind-activists-want-to-create-fake-grassroots-campaign-against-industry/

 facing so:

Climate-science deniers join forces against NC renewable-energy program

Climate-science deniers with ties to the fossil-fuel industry have joined forces in an assault on North Carolina's renewable energy program and particularly wind power, which has been making big gains in the U.S. in recent years.

Representatives of the American Legislative Exchange Council, American Tradition Institute and the John Locke Foundation held forums this week in the N.C. coastal communities of Wilmington and Morehead City titled "The Truth About Wind Power on the Coasts of North Carolina." Facing South attended the Wilmington presentation, which was heavy on emotion and shaky on the facts.

"The picking and choosing of information and the way it was presented was misleading and troublesome," said N.C. Sierra Club communications chief Dustin Chicurel-Bayard, who also attended the Wilmington event. The Sierra Club has taken a nuanced position on wind power in North Carolina; it has generally supported the industry's development but joined other environmental groups in fighting one commercial wind farm proposed for the northeastern corner of the state over concerns about wildlife impacts.

The speakers at this week's forums included Daren Bakst (right in photo), director of legal and regulatory studies for theJohn Locke Foundation,a free-market think tank that has been the leading voice of climate-science denial in North Carolina public-policy circles. JLF gets most of its funding from the family foundation of Art Pope -- a discount-retail mogul, conservative benefactor and one of four national directors of Americans for Prosperity, a tea party group founded and funded by the billionaire Koch brothers who own and operate the Koch Industries oil conglomerate.

Bakst also chairs the energy and natural resources subcommittee of the American Legislative Exchange Council, an unusually powerful corporate interest group that works to discredit state-level efforts to cut global-warming pollution. ALEC has received over $1.4 million from ExxonMobil since 1998 as well as extensive funding from Koch Industries and the Koch family foundations, according to a PR Watch investigation. Additionally, Bakst chairs the energy and natural resources subcommittee of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization that's dismissed the scientific consensus around global warming as "nothing more than an educated guess" while receiving over $165,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.

Another presenter was David Schnare(middle in photo), a former government lawyer and scientist who directs the environmental law center at the American Tradition Institute, a conservative think tank that's part of a family of advocacy groups founded and funded by energy interests active in Western politics and that has been actively working to kill state renewable energy programs. ATI is currently involved in a controversial Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the University of Virginia that aims to obtain the emails of Michael Mann, a former professor at the school who's a leading scholar of climate change. Paul Chesser, ATI's former executive director and now its director of communications and research, previously worked for the John Locke Foundation and led its climate-science denial efforts.

Also speaking was John Droz (left in photo), who recently became a fellow with ATI. While Droz identifies himself as a physicist and holds a master's in solid-state science from Syracuse University, he retired from industry in 1979 and has worked in real estate for the past 30 years, according to his resume. A New York native, he splits his time between homes in that state and in Morehead City. The forums were moderated by Roy Cordato, an economist who serves as JLF's vice president for research.

'Manipulating the data'

Bakst opened the Dec. 5 forum at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington with a broadside attack on Senate Bill 3, a North Carolina law passed in 2007 that made the state the first in the Southeast to adopt a minimum requirement for the use of renewable energy sources by investor-owned electric utilities. The law requires that 12.5 percent of all electricity sold in the state by 2025 come from renewable sources such as wind and solar or from improved energy efficiency. Bakst dismissed the law as an "energy tax."

"Who gets hurt the most when energy prices are very high? I'll tell you who gets hurt the most -- the poor get hurt the most," he said, ignoring the fact that low-income communities are disproportionately impacted by coal power and climate disruption, and that North Carolina utilities are seeking substantial rate hikes to pay for coal and nuclear plants.

Though North Carolina's renewable energy standard is modest compared to some other states, such as California's 33 percent by 2020, the John Locke Foundation is calling for repealing it entirely, as well as abandoning all state efforts to address global warming.

As Bakst spoke, a group of UNCW students stepped in front of the panel and unfurled a banner that said, "This program brought to you by the fossil fuel industry." The students stood silently for a moment while some in the audience of about 50 booed, then they filed out of the room to applause. Brady Bradshaw, one of the students who participated in the protest, told Facing South that his environmental activism was spurred by his own struggles with asthma, an increasingly common health problem in the U.S. that can be triggered by power-plant pollution.

Next up was Droz, who presented a slide show that's available online.

"My main concern is that our energy and environmental policies are not being dictated to us by science," he said -- before going on to give a presentation marred by errors of fact.

For example, in Slide 34 Droz purports to compare annual federal subsidies for various types of electric power. His stated source for the information is a controversial July 2011 report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But the numbers on the slide don't appear in the referenced report.

Brian O'Hara, president of the N.C. Offshore Wind Coalition, an industry group, suspects Droz calculated the figures from other numbers in the report -- but said that by doing so Droz "is just manipulating the data in order to support a story he's trying to tell." O'Hara pointed out that a large portion of the subsidies the EIA report identified for wind energy is from the Treasury Department's 1603 program that provides some cost reimbursements for renewables. Droz attributed the entire amount of the credit to just the energy produced in 2010 rather than over the life of the project, thus overstating the subsidy for wind by a factor of anywhere from 30 to 300.

Droz drew on the same report for Slide 35, again using EIA data in a misleading way. At the top of the slide, to his credit, Droz states that he is comparing only "some" annual federal subsidies. But he doesn't disclose in his slide presentation -- nor did he mention in his accompanying narrative in Wilmington -- that the EIA takes pains to point out that the report does not look at all of the subsidies that impact the energy sector. In fact, the EIA report has a two-page sidebar detailing the subsidies excluded from the analysis, such as accelerated depreciation, which is commonly used by oil and gas companies; potentially inadequate coverage by energy-related trust funds such as the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund and Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund; and liability limits for nuclear plants created by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and the Price-Anderson Act.

Among the other incorrect claims Droz made is that wind "takes well over a thousand times the amount of area" as nuclear power to generate the same amount of electricity (Slide 29), which wrongly assumes that no other activity goes on in between turbines at a wind farm. In that same slide, he claims that the windiest U.S. sites are far from where power is needed, ignoring the fact that offshore wind can be located close to some of the biggest demand centers.

Droz said he's no fan of coal; instead he promotes underground mini-nuclear reactors, with his slide show specifically mentioning uranium-fueled reactors being developed by NuScale and lithium reactors developed by Toshiba. But Schnare used his presentation -- punctuated with images of burning and broken wind turbines (photo above) -- to mount a defense of coal-fired power plants as just not that polluting.

"Don't tell me these coal plants … are causing a problem," he said -- ignoring the fact that last year alone the nation's 100 top-polluting coal plants reported releasing over 194 million pounds of toxic chemicals to the air and another 2 million pounds to surface waters, and that fossil-fuel plants are the leading source of U.S. carbon emissions. And though Schnare holds a master's in public health from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, he didn't acknowledge any of coal's well-documented public health impacts. He also dismissed concerns about mountaintop removal, saying mining companies leave the sites in good condition -- when in fact scientific studies have found that mountaintop removal causes severe environmental damages that are "pervasive and irreversible."

During the question-and-answer period that followed the Wilmington presentations, the first query was who ATI was and where it got its funding from.

Schnare responded that since he and Droz work for the American Tradition Institute pro bono, it "doesn't matter where the money comes from." Droz added that he had no idea who funds the organization, while Cordato said he believes questions about money are "beside the point." In response to a second question about the groups' finances, Cordato stated, "I don't know where we get our funding."

He added, "To suggest people's views are being bought I think impugns their integrity."

Changing the ground rules

Droz faced no tough questions about his funding or integrity in the anti-wind energy presentation he gave to members of the N.C. General Assembly at the invitation of the Republican leadership on Nov. 28 during a special short session called to repeal a law guarding against racially discriminatory application of the death penalty. About 20 lawmakers attended the presentation, all of them Republicans, according to environmental advocates who attended and spoke with Facing South.

The presentation Droz gave to lawmakers contained the same misleading information about energy subsidies. It also criticized La Capra Associates, an independent consulting firm hired by the N.C. legislature in 2006 to study the state's potential for renewable energy, as unqualified to conduct such a study. Why? Because if they found that renewables were not a good idea, Droz claimed, "their NC employers would not be happy" and "they would never again get renewables consulting business."

So who did he say was qualified to offer assistance? The John Locke Foundation.

Environmentalists who viewed Droz's legislative presentation called it "wacky" and "bizarre." But such out-of-the-scientific-mainstream views are gaining greater traction in a legislature now controlled -- thanks in no small part to Art Pope's money -- by a Republican Party that increasingly refuses to recognize mounting scientific evidence that human activity is disrupting the climatic balance.

The same week that Droz gave his presentation to the North Carolina legislature, the noted environmental journalist and activist Bill McKibben spoke a few miles away at Raleigh's Community United Church of Christ. He began by detailing the worsening climate crisis, noting that oceans are now 30 percent more acidic than they were just decades ago, 2010 was the warmest year on record, and growing numbers of people around the world are suffering through unprecedented droughts and floods.

Science has provided good information about the nature of the climate problem and engineering has provided good solutions, McKibben said, but "the political method has failed completely" because the fossil-fuel industry has too much power and wants to continue to use earth's atmosphere as an open sewer in which to dump its waste.

Despite recent victories enjoyed by the climate-justice movement -- such as last month's successful effort to get President Obama to delay a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline transporting heavily polluting tar sands oil from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries -- McKibben observed that addressing the climate crisis one problem at a time simply isn't going to work.

"We're going to have to change in certain ways the ground rules of this game," he said. "We're going to have to figure out ways to rein in corporate power."

But there were no members of the state legislature there to hear McKibben's message: The only elected officials in the room were Raleigh City Councilor Russ Stephenson and Sammy Slade, an environmental organizer who also serves as an alderman for the town of Carrboro, N.C. Both communities have taken steps in recent years to reduce their own carbon emissions.

Whether the John Locke Foundation, American Tradition Institute and their climate-science-denying ilk will manage to build enough support to kill North Carolina's renewable energy program is uncertain, especially given that the state's politically powerful utilities oppose the idea because it disrupts their long-range planning. But their efforts to discredit renewables will make it that much more difficult for environmental advocates to win political support to strengthen the state's clean-energy initiatives.

Meanwhile, the news coming out of the international climate negotiations taking place this week in Durban, South Africa was not good: 2011 has tied for the 10th hottest year on record, Arctic Ice has melted to record lows, and the U.S. set a new record for billion-dollar weather disasters -- serious problems that the climate-science deniers conveniently ignored.

 ---

Wind farms DO NOT cause climate change

By Sarah Laskow

A study that just came out in *Nature Climate Change* found that wind farms can impact local temperatures, particularly at night. Basically, the turbines mix warmer air from high up with colder air closer the ground. Hence, warmer air overall, in these very local spots.

So, of course, Fox News is telling people that “New research shows wind farms cause global warming.” Not to be out-crazied, the Telegraph is going with “Wind farms can cause climate change.” Gizmodo at least uses the word “local” in its headline. But unfortunately such restraint hasn’t stopped the internet from deciding, as this apparently very patriotic gentleman on Twitter demonstrates, that “Wind farms = worse for local climate change than 100 years of pollution (0.6 degree F).”

Which, FINE, the scientist report that the temperature changes they’ve documented “if spatially large enough, may have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate.” That impact, however, is different than what we normally mean by climate change. We’re talking about the increase of global average temperatures, which — funny how averages work — is a much bigger deal than local temperature increases.

http://grist.org/list/wind-farms-do-not-cause-climate-change/

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2x?

Lisa Linowes and the Disinformation of Industrial Wind Action Group

AUGUST 12, 2011 BY CHECKS AND BALANCES PROJECT 1 COMMENT

Lisa Linowes is the Founder and Executive Director of Industrial Wind Action Group, a group dedicated to “counteract misleading information” and provide “residents, as well as government officials, the information to make informed decisions” about wind energy projects.

However, the organization routinely promotes discredited problems and messengers instead of credible sources.  On their website, the Industrial Wind Action Group links to articles and information from sources whose work is unscientific or has been linked to the fossil fuel industry – rather than objective sources that could help residents and government officials make informed decisions.  According to our investigative research, the Industrial Wind Action Group continues to hype anti-wind rhetoric above reality.

Promotes Discredited “Problems”

“Experts” tied to the Fossil Fuel Industry

Not Fulfilling The Mission

The Industrial Wind Action Group states its mission is to “counteract misleading information” and to “provid[e] residents, as well as government officials, the information to make informed decisions.”  Unfortunately, the sources routinely cited on www.windaction.org spread misleading information and promote fossil fuel talking points through purportedly neutral third party sources.

The Industrial Wind Action Group proclaims that it is "dedicated to providing information on industrial wind energy to enable communities and government officials to make informed decisions."

While the homepage of its website implies it is neutral on whether wind power is a good idea or not, elsewhere on its website it is more explicit that it opposes windpower. The group was formed, it states, "to counteract the misleading information promulgated by the wind energy industry and various environmental groups. Support for this effort comes from a large and diversified group of environmentalists, energy experts, and ordinary citizens." ^[1] However, no specific individuals or organizations are listed anywhere on the website.

The website was registered on May 31, 2006 by the Parkerhill Technology Group LLC of 286 Parker Hill Road, Lyman, New Hampshire. ^[2] Parkerhill Technology Group are also listed as the address for contributions to be sent to. ^[3] The group provides no office address, contact names or contact numbers on its website, only a page to sent an email to the group. ^[4]

Parkerhill Technology Group was founded by Jonathan S. Linowes, a self-proclaimed Tea Party activist and climate change denier.^[5]

According to the Wisconsin Gazette, the group "routinely quotes as 'experts' affiliates of various front groups supported by Koch Industries, Charles Koch and the Koch family."^[6]

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1 Personnel
• 2 Contact details
• 3 Resources
  • 3.1 References

• 4 External links

Personnel

• Lisa Linowes ^[7]

Contact details

C/- Parkerhill Technology Group

286 Parker Hill Road

Lyman, New Hamdpsire 03585

Phone: 603 838-6588

Website: http://www.windaction.org

Resources

References

1. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Industrial Wind Action Group, "About Industrial Wind Action Group", accessed November 2007.
2. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ "Windaction.org", Whois, accessed November 2007.
3. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Industrial Wind Action Group, Donations Help, accessed November 2007.
4. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Industrial Wind Action Group, Contact and Feedback, accessed November 2007.
5. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Rita Farrell, "A different face of the tea party," DFM News, November 1, 2010.
6. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Louis Weisberg, "Why Scott Walker killed wind energy jobs in Wisconsin" Wisconsin Gazette, Dec 14, 2011.
7. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Joanna Kakissis, "Debating the Merits of Energy From Air", New York Times, November 25, 2007.

External links

• "Lisa Linowes and the Disinformation of Industrial Wind Action Group" The Checks and Balances Project, August 12, 2011.