2/19/2015

Big Wind destroys the environment while providing no net benefit

Sprawling Industrial Wind Factories Destroy the Environment, Community, Personal Health & Property Values - while providing NO Net Benefit

 
Considering the history of complete and utter civil discord created by Big Wind projects in rural New York State (NYS) communities over the past decade -- and the fact that industrial wind is a net economic and environmental loser -- Orleans & Niagra County residents should be alarmed by Apex’s proposed wind factory.  
 
The Industrial Wind industry was initiated in the U.S. under the pretense that it would significantly reduce CO2 emissions, and thereby help abate Global Warming. Yet, 30 years into subsidizing the building of wind factories off the backs of taxpayers and ratepayers has proven otherwise.
 
With approximately 250,000 industrial wind turbines installed worldwide today, CO2 emissions have NOT been significantly reduced, nor has a single conventional generation plant been decommissioned anywhere thanks to industrial wind.  As Manhattan Institute scholar Robert Bryce said: "Wind Turbines Are Climate-Change Scarecrows." 

Industrial wind provides NO Capacity Value (aka: Firm Capacity - specified amounts of power on demand). Thus, wind turbines need constant "shadow capacity" from our reliable, dispatchable baseload generators - that is, if you want to be sure the lights will come on when you flick the switch.  Thus, wind generation actually locks us into dependence on fossil fuels, and as Big Wind CEO, Patrick Jenevein candidly admitted, "Consumers end up paying twice for the same product."
 
Consider this reality:
 
ONE (1) 450 MW gas-fired Combined Cycle Generating Unit located at New York City (where the power is needed in NYS) - operating at 60% Capacity Factor, would provide more power than all of NYS's 16 installed wind factories combined, at 1/4 of the capital costs -- and would have significantly reduced CO2 emissions and created far more jobs than all those wind farms – without all the added costs (economic, environmental, and civil), and of all the transmission lines that must be added across the state to NYC.
 
Industrial Wind has proven to be effective only as a tax shelter generator for large corporations in search of increased bottom lines - just as it was originally intended to do by ENRON, the trailblazer for Big Wind in the U.S.  As Warren Buffett candidly  admitted, “We get tax credits if we build ‘windfarms.’  That’s the only reason to build them.  They don’t make sense otherwise.” 
 
Property values are significantly negatively-impacted, as are peoples’ personal health and quality of life by the noise (ie: infrasound), resonant ground vibrations, flashing red lights, shadow flicker, TV interference, etc., that is generated by these giant bird-and-bat-chopping machines. Just ask the citizens of Orangeville in Wyoming County, who are now suing Invenergy for $40 Million dollars!  Likewise, the Wisconsin Board of Health recently declared Duke Energy’s wind turbines a "Human Health Hazard." 
 
The fact that American citizens are being assaulted with their own taxpayer and ratepayer money (which is subsidizing the building of these wind factories to the tune of 80% of the total costs), in the name of the failed ‘green’ energy boondoggle of wind is shameful, and simply un-American. Save yourselves, and your community - JUST SAY "NO!" to Big Wind!
 
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Mary Kay Barton
 
 

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