There are ironies everywhere if you notice them. Like the Dutch windmills on June MacDonald’s yellow tablecloth. MacDonald, a 64-year-old retired school teacher with twinkling eyes and good-humoured determination, has been fighting for more than a year against the installation of windmills near her home in Baileys Brook, Pictou County. But they’re nothing like the squat, old-fashioned ones on her kitchen table.
The modern industrial windmills that worry MacDonald and her husband, Rod, tower 121 metres to the topmost blade. That’s almost one-and-a-half times the height of Purdy’s Wharf Tower 2 on the Halifax waterfront. The tips of their 41-metre-long blades can sweep through the air at over 300 kilometres an hour, cleaving a swath of sky that covers 5,281 square metres, almost the same area as an American football field.
“The wind turbines won’t be tiny, they’ll be huge. They’ll dominate that ridge line from end all the way down to end,” says neighbour Kristen Overmyer as he stands in June MacDonald’s living room, pointing across the cow pasture to Brown’s Mountain, the imposing, weathered ridge that shelters the tiny community of Baileys Brook at its foot, but which is buffeted by strong westerly winds at its peak. “When you look at this beautiful setting here, your attention is going to be immediately drawn to these machines, so the character of this entire valley is going to be changed forever.”
Another irony: Overmyer and his artist-wife, Susan, moved here seven years ago from the US after seeing pictures of Pictou County on American TV. They fell in love with the area’s quiet beauty, but now find themselves trying to defend it against a big industrial project.
“I have a master’s in mechanical engineering and three years ago, when I was first looking at these machines, yes, I could see a certain aesthetic appreciation for the design of them,” says Overmyer, a tall, soft-spoken man whose neat appearance matches his meticulous research methods. “But when you take a setting like this and you transform it into an industrial power-generating plant, with not just one of these machines or three of these machines, but 30 of them in the first phase alone, then that’s a very different story.”
“I started off being pro-windmills until I learned a little more,” says June MacDonald, who notes she’ll likely see 18 turbines about 1,400 metres from her home. “However, we really have no guarantee of that because all we’ve seen so far is a map with dots on it.”
The map with dots on it can be found in documents that Shear Wind Inc. submitted to provincial officials in August 2008.1 The Bedford-based company, which has since sold a controlling interest to Spanish billionaire Manuel Jove, president of Inveravante, a privately held Spanish utility conglomerate,2 was seeking environmental approval for Phase 1 of its Glen Dhu power project.3 The $170 million first phase consists of 30 wind turbines, each generating two megawatts of electricity. It was originally scheduled to be up and running by December 2009, but was postponed until the end of this year. Now, the company is promising to have it in full operation by early 2011. If a second phase is eventually approved, it could bring the total number of turbines to 100 or more, spread over 10,000 acres.4
Bitter lessons from Maine
Last year, the Overmyers, the MacDonalds and several of their neighbours established a non-profit group called the Eco Awareness Society to gather research and forge alliances in the fight against the Glen Dhu project.5 As part of their efforts, they began following events in Mars Hill, a town in northern Maine close to the New Brunswick border where 17 families have filed lawsuits against a wind company, two construction firms and the town itself over the installation of 28 one-and-a-half megawatt wind turbines.6 The Mars Hill turbines were erected along the top of a ridge similar in height to Brown’s Mountain. And according to people who live within a kilometre of them, life has been hell since the first turbines started turning in December 2006.7
“I have never felt the rage that I feel when I go out to put chicken on my grill and it’s so damn loud I don’t want to stand out there and cook it,” says Carol Cowperthwaite, a 68-year-old retired teacher who lives with her husband Merle on land facing Mars Hill Mountain. “I’ve never felt that kind of rage. It’s like a rage where I could kill somebody. That’s how it affects me.”
The Cowperthwaites are among the families who have launched lawsuits seeking compensation for loss in property values as well as for the adverse health and environmental effects they say the wind turbines are causing. Carol Cowperthwaite says a municipal official assured them before they bought their property that the turbines wouldn’t affect them. “The town manager told us three times, three different times he told us, that we wouldn’t even see them, much less hear them because they were going on the front side of the mountain. That was a huge lie.”
The Cowperthwaites participated in a study of turbine effects conducted by Michael Nissenbaum, a radiologist who practises at the Northern Maine Medical Center. Nissenbaum interviewed 22 of about 30 adults living within a kilometre of the turbines. He found 18 reported chronic sleep deprivation, nine said they were experiencing severe headaches, including migraines, 13 reported stress, 17 persistent anger and more than a third had new or worsened depression. Residents also reported dizziness and nausea due to the flickering light and shadows cast by fast-turning turbine blades.
When Nissenbaum compared those results with 27 interviews he conducted among people who lived nearly five kilometres away, he found that the greater distance reduced turbine health effects to zero. He presented his findings to the Maine Medical Association, which passed a resolution last September calling for more public education about the effects of wind turbines, as well as further research. “It is not a matter of not having wind turbines,” Nissenbaum’s study concludes. “It is a matter of putting them where they will not affect people’s health.”8
Glen Dhu worries
Last January, The Coast began asking Ian Tillard, Shear Wind’s chief operating officer, for an interview about the Glen Dhu project in Pictou County. Tillard agreed to talk, but repeatedly postponed interview dates set up in February and March. In April, he said he didn’t see the need for an interview after all, and referred us to company newsletters and other public documents. Those documents say that the closest homes will be 1.12 kilometres away from the turbines. These are properties whose owners are leasing land to the company. The Overmyers, MacDonalds and other residents around Baileys Brook, who are not leasing land, will be at least 1.44 kilometres from the turbines.
“I would say the people in Nova Scotia have reason to be worried,” says Richard James, an acoustics engineer based in Michigan. He notes that as in Mars Hill, Maine, the Shear Wind turbines will be installed on ridge tops. “Wind speeds on top of the ridge will generally be much, much higher than they are in the valley at the foot of the ridge.” James says. “This leads to a very common condition where during the night there’s absolutely no sound in the community at the foot of the ridge. It would be so quiet you could hear a clock ticking and the turbines will be running full blast and that will lead to complaints.”
James, who has worked since 2006 on wind turbine issues with community groups in the eastern US and Ontario,9 says that large turbines on ridge tops should be at least three kilometres from the nearest homes. He explains that the low frequency noise generated by turbines can carry long distances. “If you can imagine a thunder storm when it’s at a great distance you hear a rumble,” James says. “It’s essentially a low vibratory rumble that goes right through people’s homes. Windows open, windows closed, doesn’t matter.”
He adds that under moderate wind conditions, the turbines produce a “whoosh, whoosh, whoosh,” while higher winds generate thumping sounds. “It can actually turn into thumps that are palpable in a person’s chest,” he explains. “I’ve experienced that personally and I’m not particularly sensitive to low frequency sound. I know other acousticians who are more sensitive to low frequency and they have a difficulty even being near the wind turbines.”
James is familiar with the situation in Lower West Pubnico, where Daniel d’Entremont, his wife Carolyn and their six children abandoned their home in 2006 about a year after the installation of 17 wind turbines, some as close as 300 metres and all within 1.6 kilometres. The d’Entremonts suffered a wide range of effects including ringing in their ears, blurred vision and problems concentrating on school work. “I get this pulsating feeling in my chest—a feeling I don’t like, but I can’t get rid of,” Daniel d’Entremont told the Halifax Daily News. “I can’t shake it off, unless I get away from the turbines.”10
Ward and Mae Brubacher know the feeling. The Brubachers, a couple in their 50s who live 750 metres from two Shear Wind turbines on remote Fitzpatrick Mountain in Pictou County,11 compare the noise vibrations to the booming of car stereo speakers. “Many times we have laid awake in bed with all the windows shut in the house listening to the whompf, whompf, whompf,” says Ward Brubacher. “You get up, you read, you wait until you’re exhausted so you can sleep through it.”
“There are times when I’ve been working on my flowerbeds and I have to get into the car and go into town for a break from the noise,” says Mae Brubacher. “Sometimes it’s four to five days in a row when it’s really loud. You’re losing sleep and there are certain days when you’re stressed to the limit.” In another of life’s ironies, the Brubachers generate electricity from a solar panel and live completely off the grid. They describe themselves as “tree huggers” who have nothing against “green” energy, but add that people who haven’t experienced wind turbines have no idea what they’re like.
“The general public is quite excited about wind power and have been brainwashed to think wherever they see a wind farm that’s great, Nova Scotia is becoming a leader in green energy,” Ward says. “People are brainwashed to think that. That’s what we’re up against.”
Citizens groups fighting the installation of wind turbines are now active all over the world including in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada. In April, the Japanese government responded to persistent citizens’ complaints about headaches, insomnia, dizziness and buzzing in the ears by setting up a four-year health study.12 Meanwhile, in Ontario, a coalition of 44 citizens’ groups called Wind Concerns Ontario has helped persuade more than 60 municipalities to pass resolutions calling for more local control over wind projects, and in some cases, a moratorium on new ones.13 The coalition is also supporting a lawsuit to be heard in September that, if successful, could stop any new projects until independent medical studies are completed.14
Nova Scotia opposition
So far in Nova Scotia, public officials from the premier on down seem singularly unconcerned about the potential health effects of wind turbines. Darrell Dexter told us in late April that although numerous scientific studies have been conducted, none has found any connection between turbines and health—a statement contradicted by Allison Denning, a senior official at the federal health department. In August 2009, Denning sent a letter to provincial environment officials listing a number of peer-reviewed scientific studies which suggest that wind turbines may have adverse health effects.15
Official indifference and company secrecy have made opposition to the Glen Dhu project an exercise in frustration. When residents around Baileys Brook tried to find out how close the wind turbines would be to their homes, Shear Wind refused to release site maps. Instead, the company assured residents they had nothing to worry about. Kristen Overmyer says that at a public meeting on August 30, 2007, Shear Wind president and CEO Mike Magnus claimed the closest turbines would be at least two kilometres away. Overmyer says Magnus went even further during a public meeting on April 2, 2008. When homeowner Bob Bennett of Merigomish expressed concerns that turbines would be installed near his home, the New Glasgow News quoted Magnus as saying, “From what we can gather, 95 percent of the turbines are located three to four kilometers away from the closest residence.”16
Overmyer says residents finally discovered the truth when the company filed for environmental approval in August 2008. “Instead of the turbines being far back in the highlands as described, there was a phalanx of turbines pressed hard against the escarpment’s edge and looming over the valley,” Overmyer wrote in an email to The Coast. “The sheer magnitude of the deceit first shocked, then galvanized our group.”
Overmyer and his neighbours gathered thousands of pages of technical evidence documenting the potential adverse effects of wind turbines on human health, on wildlife such as birds and bats and on possible disruptions to fragile ecosystems during construction and maintenance. In the fall of 2008, about 18 people sent letters outlining their evidence to provincial officials who were considering Shear Wind’s application for environmental approval of its Glen Dhu project.
In October 2008, then-environment minister Mark Parent responded to citizens’ complaints when he sent a letter to Shear Wind asking the company for more information about noise levels and the proximity of the turbines to homes.17 However, in a cabinet shuffle three months later, David Morse replaced Parent as environment minister and in February 2009, Morse approved the Glen Dhu project.
When the Eco Awareness Society wrote to the Minister of Health Promotion and Protection last April asking for a halt to any further wind projects until independent health studies had been conducted, Maureen MacDonald responded that her department did not have the power to intervene since wind projects are regulated by the Department of the Environment. Her letter arrived after the province announced that Nova Scotia would more than double renewable electricity generation by 2015 and quadruple it by 2020.18 The renewable electricity plan relies on the expansion of industrial wind projects and, since less than three percent of Nova Scotia’s electricity now comes from wind, scores of new wind turbines may have to be installed across the rural landscape in an attempt to meet the government’s targets.
Is wind really “green”?
And that brings us to another irony: In the end, wind power may not make that much of a difference in the actual volume of Nova Scotia’s greenhouse gas emissions. To be sure, this is a hotly contested issue, but critics of wind power point out that adding large amounts of industrial wind power to the electricity grid is not as simple or problem-free as it seems. That’s because wind is an intermittent and variable power source. It may or may not be blowing at optimum speeds when needed most. In fact, on average, wind turbines produce a maximum of only about 30 percent of their rated capacity over a given year, often when electricity demand is low.
The intermittency and variability of wind means it must be backed up by a more reliable source, and Nova Scotia Power is planning to use natural gas generators to do the job. That means that for every megawatt of intermittent wind power, NSPI must be able to generate a megawatt of power using natural gas turbines that can be turned up and down rapidly as winds rise and fall. Rapid powering up and down means the gas turbines run less efficiently, burning more fuel to generate each unit of electricity. And, as John Barwis, a retired petroleum geologist points out, “at some level of efficiency loss, the extra fossil fuel consumed becomes greater than the fuel saved from using wind turbines.”19
In the end, all those extra single-cycle gas generators ever at the ready to back up intermittent wind turbines may emit enough greenhouse gases to cancel out most, if not all, of the emissions benefits of wind.20 21
Supporters of wind power, such as Professor Yves Gagnon at the University of Moncton,22 say that backing up intermittent wind would be easier if Nova Scotia expanded its grid connections with New Brunswick. When the wind isn’t blowing in northern Nova Scotia, Gagnon says, we could import wind power from northern New Brunswick.
But critics say Maritime weather patterns are often regional and therefore it’s not guaranteed that winds will be high in one province when they’re low in the other. And although Nova Scotia Power is planning to expand its grid connections with New Brunswick,23 it will likely take five to 10 years to complete, the same period in which renewable power generation is supposed to quadruple.
So why is Nova Scotia uncritically embracing wind power? “Short answer: politics and money,” says Kristen Overmyer who notes that governments set renewable energy targets creating the economic climate for the wind industry to make money, even if the greenhouse gas reductions the industry promises are questionable.
“People look at a wind turbine; it’s a very visible sign that you’re doing something for the environment. So the politicians can put up something very visible. What is sexy or visible about improving the efficiency of a power plant? Nothing.”
Footnotes:
1 http://www.gov.ns.ca/nse/ea/glen.dhu.wind.farm/glen.dhu.wind.farm_VolumeI_Registration.Document_Sections1-4.pdf
2 http://www.ngnews.ca/Natural-resources/2009-11-13/article-800882/Cash-infusion-for-Shear-Wind/1
3 http://www.shearwind.com/projects/nova_scotia/glendhu.html
4 http://www.gov.ns.ca/nse/ea/glen.dhu.wind.farm.asp
5 http://www.ecoawarenesssociety.ca/default.html
6 http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/mars-hill-residents-suit-against-first-wind-et-al/
7 http://www.mpbn.net/Home/tabid/36/ctl/ViewItem/mid/3478/ItemId/8549/Default.aspx
8 http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wind-turbines-health-ridgelines-and-valleys/
9 http://www.windvigilance.com/bio_James.aspx
10 http://pugwashwindfarm.blogspot.com/2007/09/todays-halifax-daily-news.html
11 http://wardmae.wordpress.com/2009/01/31/our-work/
12 http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201001180410.html
13 http://windconcernsontario.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/township-fights-back-calls-for-moratorium-and-health-study/
14 http://windconcernsontario.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/ian-hanna-lawsuit-donation-form-07-20101.pdf
15 http://windconcernsontario.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/health_canada_nova_scotia.pdf
16 http://www.ngnews.ca/Business/Natural-resources/2008-04-03/article-330472/Another-windfarm-blowing-into-Pictou-County/1
17 http://pugwashwindfarm.blogspot.com/2008/10/ns-wants-more-info-on-shear-wind-farm.html
18 https://www.gov.ns.ca/energy/resources/EM/renewable/renewable-electricity-plan.pdf
19 http://www.hollandsentinel.com/opinions/x1740779088/COMMUNITY-ADVISORY-BAORD-No-green-purpose
20 See, for example, a report by Peter Lang, a retired Australian engineer with 40 years experience with a variety of energy/electricity projects. In a report entitled, “Cost and Quantity of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Avoided by Wind Generation”, http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/wind-power.pdf Lang concludes that: “1. Wind power does not avoid significant amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. 2. Wind power is a very high cost way to avoid greenhouse gas emissions. 3. Wind power, even with high capacity penetration, can not make a significant contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”
21 Also see results of UK study commissioned by the Renewable Energy Foundation: http://www.4ecotips.com/eco/article_show.php?aid=1789&id=279 The full study can be found at: http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/oswald-energy-policy-2008.pdf
22 A report by Yves Gagnon can be found at: http://eco-efficiency.management.dal.ca/Files/NSREC/NSREC_-_Synthesis_Paper_Final_Yves_Gagnon_-_December_2009.pdf
23 http://www.wind-watch.org/news/2010/07/21/new-brunswick-nova-scotia-to-improve-grid/
Bruce Wark adds: It is interesting what Shear Wind has to say about the Glen Dhu project resulting in GHG emissions reductions. At Shear Wind’s open house that I attended last January in Antigonish County, the company had a display board listing “Local Benefits of the Glen Dhu Wind Farm”. The final point on the board read: “Environmentally Sustainable project that plays a significant part in Nova Scotia’s goal to reduce greenhouse gas.” The company also made the following statement in a newsletter it circulated to households in Baileys Brook in the fall of 2008: “At the local level, by hosting a wind farm, the local communities around the proposed Shear Wind farm will be making their own essential contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.” But when the Eco Awareness Society asked Shear Wind to explain specifically how its project would reduce GHG emissions in Nova Scotia and to quantify the reductions that could be reasonably expected, the company gave this written response in its December 2009—January 2010 newsletter: “Wind energy is recognized as a part of Nova Scotia government’s goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). This is cited in both the Nova Scotia 2009 Energy Strategy and the ‘interim report to stakeholders’ (Dec, 2009) led by David Wheeler. Shear Wind is proud to be a significant contributor to Nova Scotia’s Wind energy plan. Metrics are available from other studies.” In one of the documents it submitted to the environmental assessment process, the company said that since Nova Scotia Power has sole discretion over the use of wind power on the grid, GHG emissions reductions were outside the scope of Shear Wind’s responsibility. In other words, the company seems happy to claim that the Glen Dhu project will contribute significantly to GHG emissions reductions, but it has consistently refused to support that statement with any facts or projections.
This article appears in Aug 5-11, 2010.
I will have them in my back yard anyday. How much of the health risk is simply mental health due to the fact that people just don’t want them? The mind is a powerful tool to waste on things you can not change. If you don’t want the turbines, then you are going to have to give up various things in your life style. YOU have screwed up the earth, now deal with it people. I find it amusing that the ages of the opposition are the same ages that enjoyed the energy boom and conversion of life to easier things. You did this to your kids, put up with the solution in your final years, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Maybe the health detriments are an expression of what hell has prepared for your future.
I tend to agree with Prof.Kelley. Call me skeptical, but what I get from the self-reporting of the “victims” is that they wouldn’t want wind farms nearby even if they were dead-quiet. The “aesthetics” of the “machines” are objectionable, so to speak. Some of these folks also sound like refugees from civilization; perfectly happy to have the civilized parts they cannot do without, so long as it’s least an hour’s drive away. People like this – and I’ve encountered quite a few back in the boonies over the decades – are not my cup of tea. They’re almost always from “away”: from the city or the suburbs, and they want a perfect idyll in the place they’ve chosen. If they weren’t moaning about wind towers they’d be moaning about clearcuts (in “their” valley), or new roads, or way too many neighbours on that cottage-country lake nearby, or the natural-gas pipeline going through, or hunters and anglers, or ATVs. They’ll dress up their concerns – human health, effects on the environment, even pretend that they give a damn about other areas outside their own – but when all is said and done they are unreasonable.
I’m sure there is a setback that needs to be established, and I’m also sure that wind-power companies are inclined to minimize that setback. But I’m not prepared to believe that these particular folks cited in the article are impartial judges of what reasonable setbacks ought to be. I’ll wager hard cash that some of them would require that they not be able to hear those wind turbines at all.
On a related note, one of the main cited technical objections to wind turbines is simply a matter of scale of deployment. If you have enough of them, situated in a wide variety of wind regimes, with efficient distribution and effective storage mechanisms, then the variability problem is minimized.
This is a zoning issue, plain and simple. Nobody wants to live near industrial parks, coal power plants, prisons, sewer treatment plants, etc, but we need them. I’ve been near large windmills in New Brunswick, and they are unnerving if you’re directly underneath them. However, if you’re more than a mile away, you’re fine. The power developers should buy out the property owners, or find better locations for the windmills.
Of course, all these people want the benefits of modern society, but don’t want to see how their power is produced. Would they prefer that Nova Scotia continue to spew mercury and coal ash into the air for the foreseeable future?
Clamps, I agree with most of what you said, but if you think about your statement “The power developers should … find better locations for the windmills”, that’s the crux of the problem. With all factors taken into account, the locations that we are talking about now, the locations that these folks are objecting to, these *are* the best locations for the turbines.
Part of the problem lies in the fact that people live practically everywhere. If there’s an existing road then there’s houses on it somewhere. If the power developers located a good spot in some currently isolated area and built access roads to it for construction, give it a few years and people will build houses on those too. And the problem is exacerbated by the fact that some of those people who locate in the boonies want the boonies to stay the boonies: peace and quiet for them and a few other like-minded neighbours, but others need not apply, and no serious trappings of civilization allowed.
We don’t need them! Not once you understand the whole picture and how the grid works.
Spawned, then supported, by government welfare measures at considerable public expense, wind produces no meaningful product or service yet provides enormous profit to a few wealthy investors, primarily multinational energy companies in search of increased bottom lines through tax avoidance. Wind does reap what it sows, masquerading as a power source to hide its real identity as an Enronesque tax shelter generator
Nuclear is the only way to go… but of course that will never happen here. Oh well, modern technology and industry are over rated, right Nova Scotia?
Great article, Bruce! I would caution, however, about putting too much faith in the words of the Eco-Awareness Society and the information that you are sourcing from windwatch.org, who exhibit a clear bias against wind power. The underlying and unreported theme of the debate about wind turbines is the historical shift in lifestyle that our reckless behaviour on this earth has necessitated. One manifestation of this is the industrialization of the countryside, which is necessary if our society wants to continue on its current path of overconsumption and natural resource depletion. If only the Eco Awareness Society was deserving of it’s self-appointed name… if only their goal was to make the public aware that consumerism, consumption, economic growth, capitalism, and our whole civilization is incompatible with the fragile ecosystem that it is rooted in.
No amount of “green” capitalism is going to solve our ecological global crisis, whether it takes the form of wind turbines being built by spanish billionaires, or a multinational forestry company hoping to burn Nova Scotian forests for electricity. The amount of time and energy that the Eco Awareness Society puts into denouncing this project would be better spent forming alliances with anti-capitalism, anti-globalization, anarchist, permaculturalist, and post-civilization groups.
Only a revolution can solve these problems.
The Turbine Peddlers Represent Green Fraud………..Message from a Wildlife Biologist
There is growing worldwide opposition the deadly propeller style wind turbine for good reason. There has been a corporate/government cover-up for over 25 years concerning the extreme danger they pose to birds and bats. For those that have not seen it, take a look at the YouTube video “fatal accident with vulture on a windmill”. A Griffon Vulture gets smashed out of the sky by the innocent looking blades of a propeller style wind turbine. The wind turbine in the video is spinning at just 12 rpm or about half speed. After seeing this you will understand what is coming to the local and migratory bird populations, all over the world.
In Canada, a recent study of bird and bat mortality at Wolfe Island’s 82-turbine wind farm found 600 birds and more than a thousand bats were killed by the windmill blades in a six-month period.
None of this should come as a surprise. Over the last 25 years in Altamont Pass, more than 2,000 golden eagles have been killed by the blades of the propeller-style wind turbine. The corrupt wind/oil industry (they are one in the same) paid experts to say it was just an aberration and that Altamont was unique. It is a lie.
The corrupt U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is part of this green fraud. They deliberately looked the other way while wind farms were built in the habitat of the condor and whooping crane. They chose not to prosecute many thousands of wind industry violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. They even helped write and pass the “No Surprises” clause into federal law, which gives this industry a free pass for killing endangered species. There is no difference between them and the corrupt MMS
The most insidious impact from the use of propeller style wind turbines, is the slaughter of migratory Birds. The negative footprint from wind energy is far greater than the obvious. A perfect example is the Whooping Crane that travels 2500 miles only to be chopped up in the thousands of spinning blades along their migration route. The critically endangered Egyptian Vulture is another migratory victim of these turbines.
Paid off experts fraudulently cite collisions with power lines as being the primary reason. This same fraudulent excuse was given for missing Condors in California. Now the condor is regularly fed at feeding stations far away from the turbines to keep them alive.
Remember this………when the propeller style wind turbine is introduced into their habitats, it becomes the number one cause of death for rare and endangered bird species. Despite deflective statements from the wind industry, cats, cars, windows, buildings, etc. are not the problem. These mortality factors did not kill off the Red Kite populations that have disappeared from Germany and Italy. The prop wind turbines have killed them off.
At the current rate of wind farm development, dozens of bird species will soon face extinction from this diabolical source of energy. The truth is no bird or bat is safe around a propeller-style wind turbine and the cumulative impacts devastating.
Regardless of how many are built, energy from the inefficient propeller style wind turbine will NEVER even come close to solving North America’s energy needs. Communities need to be told this before they embrace these killers.
Communities also need to be told that the day is coming when far superior wind turbines, without the flawed deadly propeller design, will be implemented across the world. How long this will take depends on how long the bird/bat mortality lie is perpetuated the wind industry.
Below is factual information covered up by the wind industry and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for over 25 years. This came from a report put together by Ornithologists in Poland. The link for this report is on Poland’s Wind Energy web site. To my knowledge it is the only example of the true bird mortality impact ever made public by the wind Industry.
http://www.psew.pl/en/guidelines_for_asses…
4. Development of wind projects is likely to cause:
a. Bird mortality caused by collisions with operating turbines and/or elements
of auxiliary infrastructure, in particular overhead power lines;
b. Decrease in population due to loss and fragmentation of habitats caused
by deterring effect of the wind turbines and/or development of
communication and energy infrastructure related to operations of the wind
turbines,
c. Disturbance to populations, in particular to short- and long – range bird
migrations (the barrier effect).
5. Mortality caused by collisions and loss of habitats are key in terms of likely
adverse effects on birds populations.
6. The extent of effects on bird population is diversified, depending mainly upon
the location of the wind turbines – from almost no or negligible effects on life
expectancy of bird population, to significant effects with significant loss of
habitats and high mortality caused by collisions.
Most people are not aware that Europe has sustained large declines in both local and migratory bird populations over the last 20 years. These declines coincide with the installation of tens of thousands of propeller style wind turbines.
Nice article, but clearly biased against wind power. I agree with several other comments here: we’ve made our bed, now we have to lie in it. There is dispute over the health effects of windmills, but there is NO dispute over the various health effects (asthma, cancer, and a host of other diseases) caused by our addiction to fossil fuels. Do the MacDonalds drive a car? Bet they do… What about the aesthetic blight of the Tuft’s Cove generating station and the Dartmouth refinery on Halifax harbour? Doesn’t matter because “it’s the city”, not the precious countryside, no doubt.
If the problem is deceitful and greedy corporations, then be sure to lay the blame on them — don’t blame the technology for the faults of the implementers.
As for the bird/bat problem, and the single infamous vulture youtube video… commenter Weigand himself says he can provide only one study to back up his claims… so where did the “chopping up cranes” and “25 bald eagles” come from? I don’t believe it.
Back to the article: are there studies reporting health risks, or not? You seem content to pit one politician’s word against another. Do a little investigation! Can you find these studies? Have they been peer-reviewed and accepted by the medical community?
Finally, the “wind variability” problem. Now that’s a real stretch — your article claims that it may (just MAY) require more fossil fuels than it saves to operate standby generating plants, that the solution is to link the power grid up with New Brunswick, and that this won’t happen for 5-10 years… precisely when a big roll-out of windmills will occur. Does this not seem like a non-problem to you? It certainly does to me!
I’ve stood at the base of a full-size windmill and listened to the gentle “whoomp” sound it made as the blades passed my head — no birds in sight. I am extremely doubtful about severe long-term health effects. I agree that the effects are probably all in their heads (psychosomatic). Still, requiring the companies to provide accurate and timely information to residents, and establishing a minimum distance of 2-3km from habitation would be a good idea. Pity we humans have infested every last scrap of land available… using fossil fuels to do it.
I am truly disappointed that the Coast would publish such a poorly researched and biased hatchet job. After the previous piece in which Mr Wark trotted out the same misinformation, I had hoped that, by now he would have a) bothered to look at the need for moving to renewable energy and b) to actually research the wind turbine issue. It appears that he still totally fails to understand that we have no choice but to move on from fossil fuel consumption and he continues to ignore the catastrophic impact that the combination of population growth and uncontrolled energy consumption is having on every aspect of the environment.
As it stands, Nova Scotia is held hostage to importing ever more expensive fossil fuels while ignoring the health impacts that result from burning coal. The Dexter govenment has just excused the power company from complying with overdue reduction of toxic requirements to try and hold electricity cost stable. Previous governments, both liberal and conservative chose to squander our offshore natural gas supply with no thought to the future so we are running out of options if we are to have any measure of energy security.
Focusing on a vocal lobby group pursueing a nimby action does not address either the process of choosing sites for wind turbines nor does it look at the need to develope renewable energy. These people are normally happy to let someone else breath the emmissions from the power stations while expecting endless cheap electricity from an out of site and mind source.
If you had actually wanted to take a serious look at the government role in all of this, you would have bothered to investigate the Trenton Daewoo deal in which the premier has invested 60 million dollars. The government did no due diligence and is investing in a company previously noted for one of the largest bankrupcy ever and now heavily involved in the criminal support of the Myanmar regime. If the money spent was put into actually dealing with energy solutions including where to put wind turbines, it would have been well invested.
As it stands this article is one for the climate change deniers file, not one that helps deal with the issues.
Why are we not talking about helical turbines? They are smaller, low noise, no “thumping”, and can run in hurricane force winds. Is it because they are not as well suited to megaprojects for which governments can claim credit?
Is there any empirical evidence about the health risks of helical turbines?
come on everyone, sure you don’t agree with it – I don’t agree with it, but that doesn’t make it a terrible article.
I agree that wind power is a way forward, and I am also suspect of the health data and the ridiculous bird fatality data posted on a comment earlier.
But the efficiency argument is real. wind power has a big problem catching peak usage hours and a lot of research is going into this. The project in Cape Breton that was outlined in the coast last year highlighted the hydraulic head method, where the turbines used their surplus energy to pump water to a reservoir and used a damn system to recover that energy. Other systems use the energy to separate hydrogen from water, and store the hydrogen cells underground. Energy storage has always been a problem for big wind farms, and there is truth in that this could get pushed through despite that due to political pressure
IF the turbines do not have a back up system, or partnered system (like solar), then we still need a big shiny new fossil fuel power station designed to take 100% of the load in case neither are available. Tuft’s cove’s life span was up in the late 90’s. I know they painted those stacks but that just hides the fact that it’s on borrowed time.
by the way, is D. Morrison Dawn?
It seems that there is always somebody against something but no one for anything.What are we to do–revert back to the pre-electric times?
Cars kill birds [and people] so do we outlaw cars.
Trains kill animals,so do we outlaw trains?
People drown,so do we outlaw swimming?
Airplanes cause noise so—?You get the idea.
We have to accept the minimum inconvenience for the maximum good and forget the “experts” who concur with whoever is paying the shot.
Go nuclear if we can afford it
In almost none of Bruce Wark’s liberal uses of the word “irony” can I detect anything which obviously contradicts the expected outcome, or which is opposite of the said or stated realities about wind power. Instead I see evidenced an individual who knows very little about wind power coming up to speed for himself on what most 5th graders already know.
I find it amusing that in both of Mr. Wark’s cherry picked articles, he decries the fact that wind power is unreliable, generating roughly 30% of the stated power rating, as if he is blowing a breaking story wide open. I regret to inform Mr. Wark that wind capacity is now a household term, and the fact that wind power isn’t predictable is obvious to anyone who ever stepped outside their front door. Hardly a breaking story, the unreliability of wind is a rubric that engineers and communities the world over are finding ways to solve.
Various types of energy storage, including using networks of plugged in electric cars as a reservoir, as well as smart devices which turn off when demand is high (or production low) are just a few tried and tested components of a smart grid, both of which decrease the need for spinning gas turbines in reserve.
I recently had the good fortune to sail the coast of Brittany, in France, as was surprised to see banks of windmills on almost every ridge. I say surprised because French, the ultimate aesthetes, are a cultural of visual conservativism, and a people who deeply appreciate their landscapes. And yet they have adopted wind turbines, and done so quite extensively. I had the opportunity to walk around a field (within 100 meters from the nearest) spinning in strong 30 knot winds, and heard a swish swish swish that I personally did not find upsetting, and certainly was no louder than the hush of cars driving by me on the road.
Rather than decry the known limits of wind power, and suggest that Nova Scotia’s typically “last on the scene” approach to adaptive technologies is the most viable option for Nova Scotians , I suggest Mr Wark research grid technology and look into some of the very interesting solutions the world is finding to these already obvious issues. Or we could just continue burning coal and oil and play a painful game of catch-up later.
For anybody interested in additional facts about the energy-related considerations on various power expenditures and sources including wind, a fantastic resource is an online book (also published by Cambridge UIT), “Sustainable Energy– without the Hot Air” by David Mackay:
http://www.withouthotair.com/
It shows the reader how to compare the average (expected) energy obtained per person from sustainable resources (e.g. wind, solar, wave, etc) with the average energy expended per person (e.g. cars, planes, the food chain, technogadgets, heating, etc).
It’s written by a physicist and all units are converted into kWh per person per day (ie. energy per day per person), so clear comparisons are unavoidable. No generalized rhetoric, just clear facts and lucid writing about the subject of the book (energy). Environmental concerns are seriously acknowledged, but the book does not attempt or claim to cover them.
For example, average car use alone in Britain is estimated to be 40kWh/d per person, and the maximum energy that could be drawn from wind power (generously assuming covering 10% of the country with windmills, etc) is on the order of 20kWh/d per person. All assumptions are outlined clearly, and data are substantiated with exhaustive references. For those who don’t really know what is meant by a “kilowatt”, intuitive explanations are given, and for those who enjoy the details of the physics, there are appendices with nice derivations.
Incidentally, the book is dedicated “to those who will not have the benefit of two billion years’ accumulated energy reserves”.
Wind power is ridiculous once you understand the numbers. A medium sized natural gas plants creates 1000 MW of power constantly, 24/7. It has a tiny environmental footprint. It takes 2,000, yes two thousand of these wind monsters, to equal the yearly output of that one 1000 MW natural gas or coal plant.
2000MW times 2 MW times time 25% output(that is the average, NOT 30%) = 1000 MW.
This laptop is powered by a nuclear plant that has a 2400 MW output, 24/7 365 days per year some years. It takes 5,000 2 MW turbines at 24% output to equal that.
Also regarding coal pollution. Check the air quality for your local state or Provence, OUTSIDE the cities, in the countryside where they are located, there is NO POLLUTION. Real pollution is found only in very large metropolitan area where >1 million people live.
See for yourself. Click on Pennsylvania,
http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/where.html
which has a high amount of coal plants, and is down wind from Illinois, Indiana and Ohio where they also burn coal.
Sure coal mines are environmentally destructive, I grew up in a coal region. But one single coal mine can produce enough coal to replace thousands and thousands of wind turbines.
Of course the environmentalists are against nuclear which truly makes the most sense, they are only for inefficient and expensive wind energy.
Cost of wind is another factor. Understand that we are mortgaging our future to construct wind turbines, because it is only with enormous government debt that these monsters are constructed. No one in their right mind would ever build a turbine, only a Gov’t would be dumb enough to do it, or smart enough if you understand they are stealing your money.
Also, most of the energy wind produces is at night and during the spring/fall when our energy needs are the least.
Oh there are so many reasons why Wind Don’t Work, but you won’t find it out by watching TV, so many don’t understand. It is so Sad what has happened.
Try on this article from Straight Goods for a real alternative and systemic analysis of energy politics. Bruce go back to the drawing board and come back when you’ve done your homework. http://www.straightgoods.ca/2010/ViewArtic…
In response to the comment by NoFreeWind, some interesting points are raised.
Sadly, wind power alone might indeed be ridiculous, or at least just a drop in the bucket, *in comparison* to the total amount of energy we currently consume.
But then, even more ridiculous than that, is itself the total amount of energy we consume, in relation to the amount of sustainable & unsustainable resources that we likely have left.
Sure, burning coal today is giving us way more energy than wind, but the previous post does not seem to acknowledge the impending likely depletion of fossil fuels, which raises a warning flag of a lack of objectivity (ie. it is probably based on biases than rational considerations).
Nuclear is an interesting option, and my understanding is that we don’t know how viable it is or not. Maybe it will let us keep living like kings when the fossil fuels peter out. However, given that many thinking scientists and engineers are themselves unsure of its viability (by unsure, I mean maybe it’s great, maybe it’s awful, we just *don’t know*), there is no indication that the author of the previous post is in any way more qualified to know, so the overconfidence in that regard is also a little ridiculous.
I am pro-wind power and would like to see more of these generators erected. If I ever lived in a location that was ideal for setting up my own windmills, I would do so.
We need energy, we need it bad. Wind power is one of the many pieces to the larger energy picture. This may or may not be another case of NIMBY. Either way, I have no problem, and I will fight against those who oppose these projects.
Funny how the Digby wind turbine project (20 towers) wasn’t mentioned. Another blatant example of the Coast’s biased disregard against those on the West Coast. (he he, just kidding, but seriously, why not mention Digby?)
So how many windmills to power Halifax? Where does the land come from? Do I see clearcutting in the future? At what cost?
Here’s a solution. Perhaps Docstonge could make a purchase offer on the McDonalds’ or Overmyers’ homes. He could get them at fire-sale prices and enjoy the ambience of near-turbine living. The flip-side of NIMBYism is AOK in YBY.
This article is very biased and misleading.
The science of sound is confused with the subjectiveness of aesthetics
Any potential health effects of wind energy needs to be compared to the health affects of fossil fuels
Wind Energy DOES offset fossil fuel consumption, and GHG emissions, despite its variable nature.
For a more detailed response, see http://bit.ly/d1XKUQ
Dan Roscoe
COO of Scotian WindFields Inc
@Luther There’s a problem with your suggestion, the McDonalds’ and Overmyers would have a hard time selling their house anyway, with or without the windmills. The Merigomish community’s population has been in decline for the past two decades. I’m not sure if you know or not, but rural Nova Scotia is dying. No one is moving to these areas. Maybe that’s why they’re building wind sites there. I don’t want to move there, not because there are windmills, because it’s in the middle of nowhere. Barney’s River Station? No thank you.
Anyway, a lot of people think that we’re the two Iraq wars were because of oil. I’m not here to discuss that, but a lot of people think that a lot of crap has been caused to keep oil secure (South America, Africa). Why worry about 30 people that have a bad nights sleep when you can argue that tens of thousands have died for oil. Where do you want YOUR energy to come from?
An interesting story about using flywheel storage to decrease the need for additional generators to be running. http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20013005… Power storage is a necessary part of the wind and solar puzzle.
This one plant will take up 10% of all of New York State’s needs in terms of redundancy.
Nova Scotia, do we really need to sit around whining like this? Or can we handle these challenges and move forward? The world is in the midst of a transition. Can we be leaders in it?
How can we solve the issues Bruce Wark brings up? I mean, how can *we Nova Scotians* help solve these issues? How can we be first on the scene? Someone will solve these issues. And create an industry in the process. Why can’t it be us?
This is a easy answer just put all the Windmills far out in the sea and have a connection to the mainland. This is what they do in the Netherlands and it seem to work for them.
The people who are complaining are full of it. I dare anyone who is used to a little background noise to go near a windmill and say its loud! All it does is woosh. Its far quieter than living next to a highway. These people need to get over themselves.
I gigawatt of electricity requires 250 sq miles of windmills.
A few windmills dotting our landscape is just a way of pretending we are doing the ‘right’ thing.
The ROR (rate of return) to windmill investors should be regulated by the URB in the same manner as NSP.
In addition we need a life cycle costing of all alternative electricity sources before we go off throwing money at the ‘booster’ crowd.
Read Stewart Brand as a starter and move on from there.
I think Bruce is way off-base and stubbornly one-sided in this article, recycling old complaints and misinformation about wind that have been refuted ad-nauseum.
Nova Scotia needs a renewable energy strategy to wean itself off fossil fuels. This is simply a question of survival in the face of a clear decline in the availability of fossil fuels and the serious health impacts of their use (which the article glaringly fails to mention).
Wind and solar are really the only viable renewable energy options. Neither are without their problems, but we need to work to make the technology and policies better so that we can solve them. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater leaves us with no plan at all – is that what you want Bruce?
For those touting nuclear, I ask you how we will build new nuclear plants in the future when the energy inputs to build them are so enormous ? And how do you ensure that you store the resultant radioactive waste safely forever? You can’t – sooner or later there will be a leak or failure and you eliminate vast swathes of life as a result.
Imagine my disappointment this was about windmills…