Source: No Frakking Consensus

by Donna Laframboise

Mining the iron ore needed to build wind farms entails ripping mountains and valleys “to shreds.”

Andrea Jennetta is the publisher of Fuel Cycle Week – a newsletter for nuclear industry insiders. A yearly subscription costs US $2,750.

She also writes the I Dig U[ranium] Mining blog. One of her recent posts is titled Wind Turbines and ‘Dirty’ Mines – Hypocrisy at its Finest. It is accompanied by a large photo of an iron ore mine with the words “This is where wind turbines come from” superimposed over it. You can see that photo here.

In her blog post, Jennetta says “anti-industrial activists” like to “show people how sausage is made” so that hopefully they’ll never eat the stuff again. And they’ll fight tooth-and-nail to block any sausage factory from ever being built anywhere near where they live. (more…)

Source:  Bishop Hill 

Source:  Master Resource

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/scriptingnews/with/3503448168/

Source:  SPPI Blog

by Paul Driessen

Unprecedented! As bills to extend seemingly perpetual wind energy subsidies were again introduced by industry lobbyists late last year, taxpayers finally decided they’d had enough.

Informed and inspired by a loose but growing national coalition of groups opposed to more giveaways with no scientifically proven net benefits, thousands of citizens called their senators and representatives – and rounded up enough Nay votes to run four different bills aground. For once, democracy worked.

A shocked American Wind Energy Association and its allies began even more aggressive recruiting of well-connected Democrat and Republican political operatives and cosponsors – and introducing more proposals like HR 3307 to extend the Production Tax Credit (PTC). Parallel efforts were launched in state legislatures, to maintain mandates, subsidies, feed-in tariffs, renewable energy credits, and other “temporary” ratepayer and taxpayer obligations. (more…)

Source:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-sorry-lessons-of-green-power-subsidies/article2417284/

A recent study, co-authored by Fraser Institute energy economist Gerry Angevine, found that Ontario residents will pay an average of $285-million more for electricity each year for the next 20 years as a result of subsidies to renewable energy companies.

By the end of 2013, Ontario household power rates will be the second-highest in North America (after PEI), and they will continue to accelerate while they level off in most other jurisdictions. Even more alarming for Ontario’s economic competitiveness, businesses and industrial customers will be hit by almost $12-billion in additional costs over the same period.

Such is the legacy of the provincial government’s 2009 decision to establish feed-in rates, ranging from 44.5 cents to 80.2 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for solar power, and 13.5 cents/kWh for wind power. These solar feed-in rates average 11 times the 5.6 cents/kWh paid for nuclear-generated power, and 18 times the 3.5 cents/kWh for hydro-generated power. The wind-power rates are more than twice as high as nuclear, and four times those of hydro. (more…)

Source: The Global Warming Policy Foundation

CCNet –  17 January 2012

Obama Discovers Shale Gas

 A re-election campaign is a terrible thing to waste, and this year’s race is already producing miraculous changes at the Obama White House: The latest example of a bear walking on its hind legs is the President’s new embrace of … natural gas from shale. The catch is that this endorsement runs against every energy policy pursued by the Obama Administration for three years. It’s certainly smart politics for Mr. Obama to distance himself from the anti-fossil fuels obsessives, and no doubt his political advisers are hoping it helps this fall in the likes of Ohio and Pennsylvania. On the other hand, this could be a one-year wonder, and if he wins Mr. Obama might revert to form in 2013. –- Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 17 January 2012 (more…)

Source:  Reuters

The Texas power grid operator has scrambled this week to meet soaring electricity demand in the face of a brutal heat wave, and residents of the second most populous U.S. state are one power plant shut-down away from rolling blackouts.

Power demand for Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Inc, or ERCOT, which runs the power grid for most of the state, hit three consecutive records this week as Texans cranked up air conditioners to escape one of the hottest summers on record.

The grid operator on Thursday cut power to some big industrial users, and businesses and households face a repeat of the rolling blackouts they faced in February, when a bitter cold snap interrupted power supplies. (more…)

Source: Cincinnati.com

by Marlo Lewis

A study funded by the National Science Foundation finds that global warming (which we all know is turning our planet upside down) will not change the wind patterns targeted for “investment” by wind energy developers and their political patrons.

Verily, Gaia is great. She not only whips up violent storms to punish our sins of emission, she also insulates the wind from our corrupting influence so that green job creators can begin the process of planetary healing.

Or maybe there’s a simpler explanation. Congress funds the NSF and the NSF funds studies that “justify” both climate alarm and Soviet-style production quota like wind energy mandates.

I blog on this topic today at GlobalWarming.Org. As always, your comments are welcome. (more…)

Source:  TownHall

by Paul Driessen

America is running out of natural gas. Prices will soar, making imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) and T Boone Pickens’ wind farm plan practical, affordable and inevitable. That was then.

Barely two years later, America (and the world) are tapping vast, previously undreamed-of energy riches – as drillers discover how to produce gas from shale, coal and tight sandstone formations, at reasonable cost. They do it by pumping a water, sand and proprietary chemical mixture into rocks under very high pressure, fracturing or “fracking” the formations, and keeping the cracks open, to yield trapped methane. (more…)

Source: UK Mail

The failure of Britain’s wind farms to produce electricity in the extreme cold will cost billions of pounds, create an economic crisis and lead to blackouts, leading industrialists have warned.

To cover up the ineffectiveness of wind farms the Government will be forced to build emergency back-up power plants, the cost of which will be paid by industry and consumers.

Jeremy Nicholson, director of the Energy Intensive Users Group, which represents major companies employing hundreds of thousands of workers in the steel, glass, pottery, paper and chemical industries, said the failure of wind power had profound implications.

He was speaking after new figures showed that during the latest cold snap wind turbines produced less than two per cent of the nation’s electricity.

Now Mr Nicholson predicts that the Government will encourage power companies to build billions of pounds worth of standby power stations in case of further prolonged wind failures.Last updated at 1:20 AM on 9th January 2011

And the cost of the standby generation will be paid for by industry and households through higher bills – which could double by 2020. (more…)