While the US wind power sector is currently facing challenges from the ongoing economic crisis and political uncertainty over whether politicians will extend the industry’s largest tax incentive, it received some more positive news recently: the nation’s first proposed offshore wind farm does not pose a threat to aviation.
Last week’s announcement by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is thought to clear the last federal, state and local regulatory obstacle holding up development of Cape Wind, a controversial 130-turbine wind farm to be built off Cape Cod in Nantucket Sound.
“The proposed wind turbines do not exceed obstruction standards and do not have a physical or electromagnetic radiation effect on the operation of air navigation facilities,” the FAA ruling concluded.
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The blistering heat wave that broke a number of temperature records in Europe recently may be somewhat expected for August but a growing amount of evidence suggests human activity associated with climate change also likely contributed to the extreme weather.
Nobel Laureate Mario Molina said on Monday in Philadelphia that new scientific analysis strengthens the view that record-breaking summer heat, crop-withering drought and other extreme weather events in recent years do result from global warming.
“People may not be aware that important changes have occurred in the scientific understanding of the extreme weather events that are in the headlines,” Molina was quoted as saying in an American Chemical Society (ACS) press release.
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A good newspaper is “a nation talking to itself”, playwright Arthur Miller once said. If so, then the conversation being played out on the pages of the agenda-setting Irish Times shows a nation that has not made up its mind on its energy future.
Irish wind energy recently made the headlines with the announcement that a 5000MW wind farm was planned for the midlands of the country, with the UK market in mind. ‘Ireland to the rescue – Plan to flow 3GW of Irish onshore wind power to the UK via consented grid connection can help Britain reach its 2020 targets’ said the cover story of energy magazine Recharge.
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Much of the emphasis on green living today is all about scaling down: own a bike and not a SUV, for example. But when it comes to wind turbines a new study has found that the reverse is true: bigger turbines are better for the environment.
Since the founding of EWEA some 30 years ago (read more about our 30th anniversary here and look out for a special edition of Wind Directions magazine in September) turbine technology has been transformed. In 1982, turbine manufacturers were building 55kW turbines; today typical onshore turbines are around 3 MW, with the largest onshore turbines reaching a powerful 7 MW.
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With the US national election only three months away, the country’s largest grassroots environmental organisation has come out with a report that states fossil fuel interests are spending large amounts of money attacking clean energies like wind and solar power.
Published last week, the Sierra Club’s 20-page report “Clean Energy Under Seige” said renewable energy’s strong growth and success over the past decade has made the green sector a target for unprecedented new attacks from oil, coal, and gas interests.
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