From Australia

WHAT YOU CAN'T HEAR CAN HURT YOU

Graham Lloyd, Environment editor

Via The Australian, www.theaustralian.com.au

January 25, 2012

When American noise expert Robert Rand turned up to work in Maine, in the US northeast, in April to investigate the impact of wind turbines on nearby residents he was literally blown away.

Not only did Rand’s readings confirm many fears in the community, he claims to have become an unwitting victim himself.

A member of the Institute of Noise Control Engineering and a technician with 30 years’ experience, Rand was working for a philanthropic donor wanting to investigate why wind turbines were causing so much concern.

Rand told The Australian yesterday his experience had been unexpected. He had measured the noise from wind turbines on many previous occasions without difficulty but, in testimony to the State of Maine Board of Environmental Protection in July, Rand said the turbines had delivered “a miserable and unnerving experience”.

When indoors, Rand and long-time colleague Stephen Ambrose, also a Member of INCE, experienced “nausea, loss of appetite, headache, vertigo, dizziness, inability to concentrate, an overwhelming desire to get outside and anxiety, over a two-night period from Sunday, April 17 to Tuesday, April 19″.

“I know personally and viscerally what people have been complaining about,” he says. “Adverse health effects from wind turbines are real and can be debilitating.

“The fieldwork points directly to wind turbine low-frequency noise pulsations, especially indoors, as a causative factor.”

Anti-wind farm campaigners across the world have jumped on Rand’s testimony and his report as confirmation of a series of key issues of concern. They are:

• That infrasound and low frequency noise from wind turbines is being measured inside the homes of affected people and correlates with wind turbine activity.

• That turbine activity and measured infrasound correlate with the onset/occurrence of symptoms.

• That decibel sound levels do not correlate with people’s symptoms and are therefore useless at predicting or identifying problems.

• That infrasound energy is amplified inside the home.

Rand’s testimony shows that, when it comes to wind turbines, what you can’t hear can hurt you.

It puts the spotlight on whether governments and the wind industry are hiding behind the reality that you won’t find what you don’t look for.

It is difficult to reconcile Rand’s experience with confidential briefings reportedly given by NSW Health to politicians who claim health impacts from wind turbines are “not scientifically valid”.

The Clean Energy Council, an industry body representing wind companies, also rejects claims of health impacts.

“This whole infrasound stuff is completely out of the park,” says CEC spokesman Mark Bretherton. “I don’t think there is any sort of issues with infrasound whatsoever. I think they are barking up the wrong tree completely.

“If anything it boils down to standards and audible noise.

“It is a case of if you can hear something and it is disturbing your sleep then you will not be sleeping so well, which will lead to stress and pretty much all the reported symptoms,” Bretherton says.

Danish wind industry heavyweight Vestas is certainly aware of the infrasound generated by its wind turbines and keen to ensure that any restrictions are minimal.

Last year, the company successfully lobbied the Danish government to weaken proposed infrasound restrictions, fearing they would hurt the company’s business globally.

In a letter dated June 11, Vestas chief executive officer Ditlev Engel wrote to Danish environment minister Karen Ellemann claiming the proposed infrasound regulations would hit the company’s three-megawatt turbines hardest.

Engel said it was “not technically possible” to meet the proposed infrasound limits of 20 decibels 24 hours a day.

What is missing is rigorous analysis of what impact, if any, infrasound from wind turbines has on human health. In the absence of proper research, testimony such as Rand’s is dismissed by wind industry supporters and proponents as anecdotal.

The lack of evidence works in the wind industry’s favour. A position paper issued by a national coalition of healthcare groups, the Climate and Health Alliance, yesterday rejected the claims of anti-wind groups that wind power poses a threat to health.

“There is no credible peer-reviewed scientific evidence that demonstrates a link between wind turbines and direct adverse health impacts in people living in proximity to them,” CAHA convenor Fiona Armstrong said.

The alliance is made up of a range of organisations, including the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine, the Australian Council of Social Service, the Royal Australian College of Physicians, the Women’s Health Network and World Vision.

To assess health impacts, most people have relied on a “rapid review” statement issued by the National Health and Medical Research Council published in 2010 that says “there is no published scientific evidence to support adverse effects of wind turbines on health”. But in evidence to a federal senate inquiry into the impacts of wind farm developments on rural communities in March last year, NHMRC chief executive officer Warwick Anderson said: “We certainly do not believe that this question has been settled.

“The absence of evidence does not mean that there might not be evidence in the future; it is just that, at the stage when the review was done, it was not there,” he said.

At a conference last June, the NHMRC agreed to “undertake a systematic approach to reviewing the literature and use the results to inform any update of the public statement”.

Anderson said the review would focus on possible health impacts of audible noise and infrasound. “Depending on the result of this review, a targeted call for research in this area (would) be considered,” he said.

For anti-wind campaigners the question is whether that review will come soon enough.

High-profile campaigner Sarah Laurie says the NHMRC’s progress has been “glacial at best”.

“They seem to have no concept of a public health disaster which is about to exponentially increase, and which they could help to prevent,” she says.

“Professor Anderson clearly understands there is a problem from his comments in his oral evidence to the Senate inquiry, but has done little since to expedite either a better review of the literature or to actively encourage medical researchers.”

Equally slow has been any practical response to the Senate inquiry recommendation that the commonwealth government initiate as a matter of priority “thorough, adequately resourced epidemiological and laboratory studies of the possible effects of wind farms on human health”.

In stark contrast, there has been a steady stream of reports from industry and social groups rejecting concerns about wind turbines.

A CSIRO report released this month said there was stronger community support for developing wind farms than might be assumed from media coverage.

Another report, from wind developer Pacific Hydro, said 83 per cent of people support wind, with only 14 per cent opposed.

The onslaught of pro-wind surveys and literature is a happy coincidence for the wind industry, which considers itself to be one push away from rolling out billions of dollars of new wind farm investment to meet the government’s 2020 renewable energy target.

Australia has 1188 wind turbines and 57 operating wind farms, including one located in the Australian Antarctic Territory.

The wind industry is expected to triple by 2020, with an additional 6.9GW of wind power and between 2000 and 2500 turbines.

The industry has faced a backlash from some state governments responding to community concerns about how close wind turbines are built to houses.

Victoria’s Baillieu government last year gave landholders an effective right of veto over any wind turbine within 2km of their houses.

Proposed new laws for NSW, now out for public comment, are less strict. Under the proposed guidelines, if a wind farm developer is unable to get written permission from all landholders within 2km, it can apply for a site compatibility certificate.

The application should focus on visual amenity issues and noise, including low-frequency noise, at any houses within 2km.

Bretherton says the wind industry hopes the NSW proposals will be better than those in Victoria. “The gateway process could go either way,” he says. “It could work well or it could be unworkable.”

He says wind farm protests present a unique challenge for the industry. “The history of the protest movement is a typically left-wing thing with people agitating for change. Now you have got older people agitating for the status quo,” Bretherton says.

But for former ABC chairman, Maurice Newman, it is a simple issue of individual rights and government arrogance.

“The harmful health effects, despite peer-reviewed and anecdotal evidence, are dismissed as being unconfirmed, psychosomatic or the politics of envy.

“It’s true not everyone who lives near wind turbines experiences adverse health effects,” Newman says. “But then, not everyone who smokes contracts lung cancer.”

There is, he says, an imbalance when cash-poor residents face governments and corporations.

“Politicians are lending their support to oligopolistic insiders and, in so doing, are destroying the property rights of the very people they have pledged to protect.”

Renewables hit headwind

THE ill wind blowing in renewable energy has also cast a cloud over the global solar industry.

The price of solar panel companies has plummeted in recent days after Germany announced plans to accelerate the wind-back of feed-in tariff subsidies.

High subsidies have made Germany the world’s largest solar energy market but at an estimated cost to energy users and taxpayers of E100 billion. The cost blow-out is considered to be a threat to the German economy.

Despite the International Energy Agency’s positive outlook for renewable energy, assuming the continuation of subsidies, the German decision was enough to crash the global solar market.

German manufacturers have already been struggling in the face of low-cost solar manufacturing in China. Chinese imports have prompted a bitter trade war initiated by German solar makers in the US. In a unanimous decision in November, the International Trade Commission ruled Chinese solar panel and cell imports were harming the US solar manufacturing industry. The US Department of Commerce will soon rule on preliminary tariffs and “critical circumstances” that may mean importers will have to pay retrospective duties on these products.

And in Britain, a new cross-party campaign group is demanding the government drop its support for thousands more wind farms.

WAUBRA RESIDENT TELLS COURT OF WIND FARM "HELL"

SOURCE The Courier, www.thecourier.com.au

January 18 2011

Former Waubra resident Trish Godfrey yesterday told an Adelaide court how her dream home became “hell on earth” after wind farm turbines were turned on.

Ms Godfrey said she suffered sleep deprivation, headaches and nausea before moving out in April 2010 when Acciona purchased her property.

“It was like you had a hat on that’s too tight and you have a pain that just gets worse and worse, and you can’t take it off,” Ms Godfrey said. “There was pain most of the time.”

Ms Godfrey broke down in tears as she gave evidence at the Environment Resources and Development Court.

Dairy farmer Richard Paltridge is appealing a decision to grant Acciona approval to build a 46-turbine wind farm near his property, south of Mt Gambier.

Ms Godfrey said her symptoms began about a month after turbines were turned on, then got progressively worse.

“I said to my husband I’m not sick but I don’t feel well,” she said.

“It felt like I had a cold coming on all the time.

“My sleep patterns were changing. I was waking up two, three, four times a night. I couldn’t explain it. I couldn’t get my head around what was going on.

“You put it down to everything but what it is.”

Ms Godfrey said she and her husband Victor, a dental surgeon, went on holiday to Darwin and the symptoms stopped, then resumed when she returned home.

“You get back and it starts all over again,” she said. “It all came back with gusto.”

Under questioning by George Manos for Mr Paltridge, Ms Godfrey said the 10-acre property was her “dream” home, where she and her husband intended to retire.

She said she planted 750 to 1000 boundary trees, about 30 fruit trees and 17 vegetable beds in the 10 years they lived there.

Ms Godfrey said she had been led into a false sense of security in a meeting with David Shapiro of Wind Power, the company that set up the Waubra project and sold it to Acciona.

“He told us there would be a couple of turbines on Quoin Hill, a couple on Big Hill and a few behind us,” Ms Godfrey said.

“He said there would be no lights, no wires and no noise.”

Ms Godfrey said 63 turbines could be seen from her property and it became “hell” to live there.

She said the noise “pressed in” on their home. “It was anywhere from a low whooshing sound, a sweeping swoosh some days, and when the wind was coming from the north it was like a jumbo jet in the back paddock,” she said.

Former Waubra resident Carl Stepnell told the court yesterday he and his wife’s symptoms of chest pains, heart palpitations and sleep deprivation ceased after the couple moved away from the family farm to Ballarat in November.

“We feel as though we’ve got our health back,” Mr Stepnell said.

Mt Stepnell said his wife also suffered depression while living close to the turbines.

“Her whole appearance … it was scary to see how bad she was,” he said. “She was really down, depressed … shocking.”

Mr Stepnell said his five-year-old son attended Waubra Primary School until the family moved.

“I see a big difference in his behaviour,” he said.

“He is nowhere near as emotional … he was pale. (Now) he’s like a normal five-year-old.”

SECOND FEATURE

PERCEPTION VS REALITY

SOURCE: he Republican-American, www.rep-am.com

January 16,  2011

By Bill Gregware,

Wise people (and politicians) often say perception is more important than reality. Take the case of wind energy in Connecticut. What are the perceptions and what are the realities? With the proposed wind projects in Colebrook and Prospect currently being so hotly debated, perhaps it’s timely to consider a few points.

Wind power will lower the cost of electricity. The promoters of wind power frequently start their pitch by saying Connecticut has the highest rates for electricity within the continental United States. That is true, and the target audience often comes away with the impression more wind power will mean a decrease in electricity costs.

The reality is electricity generated from wind is much more expensive than that produced from traditional sources. It’s often stated wind-generated electricity costs 15 percent to 20 percent more than does that generated by coal, but the actual cost may be even more. It is difficult to calculate because of the variables involved. Only in rare cases is it lower than 15 percent more than coal-generated electricity. And with wind power, consumers not only pay higher prices for electricity, they are, as taxpayers, also paying for the generous subsidies this industry is receiving. Without subsidies there is simply no way wind power can compete economically.

 Oil imports will be reduced. A misleading perception is that more wind turbines will reduce our dependence on foreign oil imports. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) says, “Unlike the dirty energy from fossil fuels, wind energy does not cause … dependence on unfriendly foreign regimes.”

In reality, wind energy may not cause the dependence but does nothing to reduce it. The majority of the electricity produced in the United States is derived from domestic sources: coal, about 45 percent; natural gas, 25 percent; nuclear, 20 percent; and hydroelectric, 6 percent, not from burning fossil fuels imported from other nations.

The danger in promoting such claims is that it leads the public into thinking something positive is being done to curb oil imports and this very serious problem is being solved. People are then less apt to support the implementation of projects that could improve the environment and reduce imports of oil, such as increasing emphasis on efficiency and conservation.

 Environmentalists support wind power. The promoters of wind power make every attempt to show “true environmentalists” support wind power while opponents are anti-green. The truth is growing numbers of hard-core environmentalists are becoming disillusioned with wind power.

In his book “The Wind Farm Scam,” Dr. John Etherington, a highly esteemed UK ecologist and beyond doubt an avid environmentalist, wrote: “The specter of climate change is being used as a scare tactic to get people to buy wind power. This is the old quack-doctor trick — scare them to death and they’ll buy anything. It (wind power) will certainly be seen by history as a swindle supported by untruths and half truths.”

 Property values are unaffected by wind turbines. The wind industry has taken a hard-line approach to the property-value question. It often presents detailed reports by “experts” that indicate property values do not decrease in the vicinity of wind turbines. Most of these reports are written by wind advocates using flawed data and reaching invalid conclusions.

The answer to the property-value question is found in common-sense reasoning. Who, given a choice, would want to live near these devices? How many potential buyers would seek homes in the vicinity of a wind turbine? For that matter, how many executives of the wind industry live near turbines?

Numerous anecdotal stories tell of folks being unable to sell their homes and abandoning them because they could no longer tolerate the noise or other characteristics of turbines.

Wind power will replace dirty power plants. “U.S. winds contain enough energy to provide over 10 times our total electricity, and to fuel a large portion of our auto fleet with electricity as well,” says the AWEA, giving the perception we can eliminate existing conventionally powered plants.

Think of that! All we have to do is to cover our countrysides with wind turbines and the dirty old coal plants can be shut down, with enough electricity will be left over to fuel electric cars. The problem is the intermittent nature of wind means it must have backup. Wind turbines have never replaced a traditional power plant.

Wind power means jobs. Jobs are created by the wind industry, but that can be said of any industry. The perception the promoters try to depict is that wind power means a great many new jobs for local workers. However, most of the work is in the manufacture of the turbines, which is done far away from the site, perhaps even in a foreign land. And once they are in place, turbines require little manpower except for once a year or so routine maintenance.

Why does the wind industry work so hard hawking half truths and hyperbole to create false perceptions that wind power is so wonderful, even in relatively low-wind areas like Connecticut?

It’s because a bad idea is difficult to sell. The reality is that wind power is not about “going green.” It’s all about money.

Bill Gregware (gregwarebill@hotmail.com) of Goshen is a retired oil company geologist/exploration manager. He is also an avid environmentalist and freelance writer who specializes in writing about nature and energy. Further, he is a party to those fighting the proposal by Optiwind to build a turbine in Goshen.

THIRD FEATURE

SOURCE: WindAction Editorial

Denise Bode, Head of AWEAAWEA has a tantrum -- again

(Posted January 16, 2011)

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What's this about 'clean' wind energy's toxic footprint?

Last week it was reported that China - which has a global monopoly on the production of rare-earth metals - is now threatening to cut off vital supplies to the West. A shortage would jeopardise the manufacturing and development of green technologies such as wind turbines and low-energy lightbulbs.Last week it was reported that China - which has a global monopoly on the production of rare-earth metals - is now threatening to cut off vital supplies to the West. A shortage would jeopardise the manufacturing and development of green technologies such as wind turbines and low-energy lightbulbs.