Wall Street Journal [CLICK HERE TO READ AT SOURCE]

A proposal to use federal stimulus dollars to finance a Chinese-backed wind project in Texas is under attack from some members of Congress, the latest sign of tension in Washington over foreign-owned firms' efforts to secure U.S. money for alternative-energy projects.   

In a letter Thursday to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) urged the department not to use any federal stimulus money to support a $1.5 billion wind project in Texas, unless the project relies on U.S.-built turbines and other components. The project -- which involves a Chinese manufacturer of wind turbines, Shenyang Power Group -- calls for the installation of 240 Chinese-made wind turbines across 36,000 acres in West Texas, in a partnership with Cielo Wind Power LP of Austin, Texas.

"The purpose of the Recovery Act was to jump-start the economy to create and save jobs—American jobs," Mr. Schumer wrote in his letter to Dr. Chu. Mr. Schumer added that he fears most of the jobs created by the project will be in China. "American taxpayer dollars should not be used to finance those Chinese jobs," he wrote.

Shortly after Mr. Schumer released his letter, Rep. Brad Sherman (D., Calif.) said in an interview that he intended to send a similar letter to the Obama administration. "We have a stimulus bill, and we seem to be oblivious as to whether we're stimulating our economy or" China's, Mr. Sherman said.

The lawmakers' jabs at the project come as President Barack Obama is preparing to travel with Dr. Chu to China this month for talks aimed partly at promoting cooperation on technology to fight climate change. It also comes just weeks after the U.S. helped persuade China to drop a 2007 law that required 70% of the technology used in local wind projects be Chinese made.

The U.S. Renewable Energy Group, a private-equity firm involved in the 600-megawatt Texas project, said last week that the partnership would seek tax credits and support from the federal stimulus package. The company said the project should create 300 U.S. construction jobs and 30 permanent maintenance jobs. The project also would support 800 jobs in China at a new factory built by Shenyang Power.

"This project will not take place without the planned benefits of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act," Cielo's president, Walt Hornaday, said Thursday. "Any characterization of this planned project as anything other than an economic development lifeline to the wind industry during tough economic times is just inaccurate."

Congressional Democrats have cited China's growing investment in wind projects as a reason for the U.S. government to redouble its efforts on the same front. Critics of proposals to control carbon emissions in the U.S. often point to China's role as a polluter, saying that Beijing must do more to promote renewable energy.

The Energy Department, in a statement responding to Mr. Schumer's letter, said the government hasn't received an application for a tax credit from the wind-project developers. But if the developers do apply, they are entitled to receive the credit if they meet the eligibility requirements, the department said.

China has been expanding its production of wind and solar equipment and, until recently, many experts in the U.S. assumed most equipment would be installed in China's fast-growing home market. But the move by five-month-old Shenyang, backed by Chinese-arranged financing, shakes that assumption.

"This is just the beginning," Lu Jinxiang, chief executive of A-Power Energy Generation Systems Ltd., which controls Shenyang, said in an interview last week. He said that the "the U.S. is an ideal target" for his sector.

"China and the U.S. enhancing cooperation on clean energy serves the common interests of the two countries, which is also significant for commonly facing and tackling the challenges posed by climate change," a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington said in response to Mr. Schumer's letter. "We hope that people in question will do more to help facilitate the joint effort other than the contrary."

Complaints about stimulus money flowing to foreign-owned companies have cropped up in several areas since Congress passed the $787 billion package. In August, after the Energy Department awarded $2.4 billion in stimulus grants to jump-start electric vehicles, some lawmakers complained that much of the money would benefit a significant number of foreign-owned companies, either directly or because they are joint-venture partners with the U.S.-based firms.

Many foreign turbine makers have built U.S. factories recently, focusing primarily on blades and towers. The federal government has offered $2.3 billion in tax credits to firms that build or expand their factories here. Oct. 16 was the deadline for application and no awards have yet been announced.

—Rebecca Smith contributed to this article.

WIND ENERGY STIMULUS DOLLARS SPENT OVERSEAS

by Edward Luce in Washington

Financial Times  www.ft.com

30 October 2009

 More than eight out of 10 US stimulus dollars spent on wind energy farms have gone to foreign companies, according to a report by the Washington-based Investigative Report Workshop, a non-profit journalist group.

Of the $1.05bn handed out in grants so far – the majority since August – 84 per cent has gone to European companies, with the US subsidiary of Iberdrola Renewables, the Spanish company, taking the largest share.

Officials in Barack Obama’s administration say the $22bn set aside in the $787bn stimulus for alternative energy funding is designed to create or retain jobs and stimulate economic activity. But the report, shared with the Financial Times, shows the majority of jobs are likely to have been created overseas.

The 11 US-based wind farms that received cash grants from the US Treasury have imported 695 of the 982 wind turbines that are to be installed. Since the manufacture of turbines is by far the largest employment generator in wind energy, it is estimated to have created 4,500 jobs overseas – far in excess of the jobs created in the US from these grants.

The IRW report comes amid a broader controversy over the jobs impact of the economic stimulus, with the White House today set to provide an estimate of how many jobs the stimulus has created or saved so far. On Wednesday, the White House strongly rejected claims by the Associated Press that the administration had overstated by a sixth the number of jobs created by the stimulus.

AP cited several examples, including that of a company working with the Federal Communications Commission, which the Obama administration said created 4,231 jobs, but that AP said had only resulted in 1,000 new positions. The White House said the agency had exaggerated its findings and had analysed only 2 per cent of stimulus spending. “This story draws misleading conclusions from a handful of examples,” said the White House.

The IRW’s findings on the results of stimulus spending on wind energy, which could exceed $3bn when the next round of grants are disbursed, highlights the weak condition of the private US alternative energy sector. The administration may face similar public relations problems when it announces awards to other sectors, including solar power, in the coming months. Even though US companies invented solar photovoltaic technology, the US accounts for only 10 per cent of the global solar component market.

During the election campaign, Mr Obama said that investments in alternative energy would create a new generation of green jobs.

But the IRW report, which can be found at investigativereportingworkshop.org, illustrates how difficult this may be to achieve. It also reveals the tensions with the stimulus which was designed primarily to create jobs and revive the US economy.

OVERSEAS FIRMS COLLECTING MOST GREEN ENERGY MONEY

By Russ Choma

American University School of Communication

CLICK HERE to read at source

Thursday, October 29th, 2009  

One of the major selling points of President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan was that it would put the economy back on track partly by investing in renewable energy industries, like wind and solar.

The president and many other advocates of alternative energy argue that an investment in green energy would lessen the nation’s reliance on foreign oil, cut greenhouse gases, and most importantly, create thousands of new job s for out-of-work Americans.

But of the $1.05 billion in clean-energy grants handed out by the government since Sept. 1, 84 percent – a total of $849 million – has gone to foreign wind companies. Spanish utility company, Iberdrola S.A., alone has collected $545 million through its American subsidiary.

 Even more striking is the fact that there are few restrictions on the how the grants can be used, according to a transcript of a Treasury Department briefing. In fact, more than $800 million has been given to firms for wind farms that were already producing electricity before they received the grants, according to a review of the records by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University.

"There are no restrictions on the use of the funds," Dan Tangherlini, an assistant secretary for management at the Department of Treasury, said, during a Sept. 1 conference call to announce the grants.

Could the money be used to pay shareholders?

"You know, that's possible," Tangherlini said, when a reporter asked that question during the call.

Foreign wind companies, however, say that their U.S. subsidiaries are creating jobs.

“This is a company that employs people all over the United States that builds projects all over the United States and is employing American companies to create American jobs,” said Paul Copleman, communications manager for Iberdrola Renewables, the American subsidiary of Iberdrola S.A..

On Oct. 20, Iberdrola Renewables, announced a $247.4 million profit through the first nine months of 2009 and said the company, which employs 800 people in the U.S., understands it will receive at least $30 million more from the U.S. government. The money received from the government will be reinvested in this country, the company’s press release said.

European companies see a 'gold rush'

Money distributed through the stimulus needs to have oversight and accountability to make sure the dollars are actually returned to the American economy in a way that creates American jobs, said Stephen Ellis, vice-president of Taxpayers for Common Sense , a non-partisan budget watchdog group.

“Funds under this program have virtually no strings attached,” he told the Investigative Reporting Workshop. “These stimulus dollars could just pad the bottom line of companies and the majority of the funding is going to the subsidiaries of foreign firms. Simply paying shareholders is not going to bring the multiple benefit bang-for-the-buck that sold the stimulus. And overseas firms raking in precious taxpayer cash is not going to have the big returns domestically that we were promised.”

The reliance on foreign companies for development of wind energy appears to be at least partially tied to the U.S. government’s resistance to subsidize a home-grown wind energy industry until now. With so few U.S. companies in the business, the door was open for foreign companies to walk away with the bulk of the grants. European companies, in particular, are well positioned to collect stimulus benefits for clean energy.

Photo by Joel Page
A crane loads a section of tower for a wind turbine onto a truck in Searsport, Maine. The turbine parts, which were transported this past summer, were bound for the Kirby Mountain Wind Farm in western Maine. The farm is being developed by TransCanada, a utility company based in Calgary, Alberta, in Canada.

 “Europe was light years ahead of us, in terms of developing these alternative resources,” said Gregory Jenner, a tax attorney and former acting and deputy assistant secretary of the treasury for tax policy, who co-authored a guide for energy companies hoping to collect stimulus money. “The fact that a lot of the European companies are coming over to the U.S., they just see this as an untapped market. Now that the incentives are starting to work out ... it's going to be just like a gold rush for them.”

While the U.S. has dithered with temporary tax incentives for producers, European governments have awarded permanent tax breaks and large subsidies to wind energy companies and poured vast sums into research and technology.

Even as billions in stimulus dollars for clean energy are starting to flow, Congress is still hammering out an agreement to mandate that up to 20 percent of the nation’s energy come from renewable sources by 2020 (a Senate proposal currently calls for 15 percent.) Denmark, by comparison, has already achieved that goal – and in the process became the most dominant wind turbine manufacturer in the world.

The U.S. currently has the most installed wind power capacity (25,369 MW at the end of 2008, less than 2 percent of the nation’s energy supply, passing Germany with 23,902 MW), but is far from a leader in the manufacturing of turbines and other components worldwide. European turbine-manufacturers have dominated the world market and continue to do so in the U.S. Indian-manufactured turbines are swiftly moving into the U.S. market as well, complementing Japanese manufacturers who have long been here.

A promise of American jobs

Obama has consistently made the creation of green jobs a priority for his administration.

At a gathering of the AFL-CIO on Sept. 15, he pledged to create a “clean energy economy that will free America from the grip of foreign oil and create millions of new green jobs that can't be outsourced.” The president pledged to make ‘made in America’ not just a slogan but “a reality.” (Transcript .)

Obama is well aware of America’s role as an energy innovator slipping while foreign competitors have taken the lead. At a campaign event in Portsmouth, N.H. in October 2007, the president noted that technologies invented in America – like wind turbines, solar panels, and compact fluorescent bulbs – are being developed overseas and sold back to American consumers.

“This will change when I am president,” he said .

The U.S. has supported the wind industry in the past by offering a small tax credit for each kilowatt hour (kw/h) of energy produced. The most recent iteration offers a credit of 2.1 cents per kw/h, which in effect makes generating wind power under optimal conditions competitive with coal and other carbon-based fuel sources.

The tax credit, however, has only been approved for short periods and every time Congress allows it to lapse the industry takes a nose dive. The stimulus package included a long-term extension of the production tax credit – through 2012, but at a tough time. Many wind companies lacked the income that made a tax credit worthwhile, and after last year’s financial collapse, many of the financial firms who traditionally invested in wind projects to collect the tax credit were no longer looking for places to put their money..

The stimulus package does offer more help for domestic production. It will allow wind companies to collect a tax credit on actual investment, not just production. The credit can be taken in the form of a cash grant – up to 30 percent of a facility’s development cost if it is brought online in 2009 or 2010.

"Particularly when you only had the (production tax credit), people used to go through all sorts of gyrations to get investors with tax liability to come in," Jenner said. "But what happened at the end of 2008, as the recession hit in full force -- that pool of capital, those investors just went away, for the most part. So there was a real shortage of tax equity, investors who had tax lliabliity and were willing to invest in these projects.

"And so, what the grant in lieu of the ITC does is it eliminates the need for tax liability," Jenner told the Workshop. "It just gives you cash."

The White House referred inquiries on the program to the Department of Treasury. A spokesperson did not return multiple phone calls and emails on the subject.

Spanish company dominates

 Companies began applying for the grants, outlined in Section 1603 of the stimulus bill, at the end of July. The Energy Department and the Treasury Department, who are jointly administering the program, began announcing grant winners on Sept. 1.

In the first round , $502 million was awarded with $499.9 million going to wind developers. Of that, $342.6 million went to two foreign companies – the renewable energy subsidiary of Spanish utility Iberdrola ($294.8 million) and the American subsidiary of Portugese utility EDP Renováveis ($47.7 million). On Aug. 26, six days before the first grants were given, British private equity firm Terra Firma bought Everpower Wind Holdings, one of two American companies that would receive grants on Sept. 1. The newly British-owned company received $42.2 million in cash.

In the second round , announced Sept. 22, an additional $550 million was awarded with $464.2 million dedicated to wind. All of it went to the subsidiaries of foreign companies – Iberdrola ($250.9 million), Japanese utility Eurus Energy's American subsidiary ($91.3 million) and German utility E.on Climate and Renewables ' American subsidiary ($121.9 million).

The government says $3 billion has been set aside for the program, but there is no cap – if it is deemed a success, more money can be allocated.

All told, the 11 wind farms that received grants have the capacity to generate 1.5 gigawatts of electricity – theoretically enough to power roughly 450,000 American homes. As required by the law, all started operating after Jan. 1, 2009 but before the grants were made.

The most important figure, however, may be the number of turbines that were installed by these four companies. According to Iberdrola Renewables, the company only employs 800 people in all of their U.S. operations. It’s the production of turbines that matters most economically. In fact, as much as 70 percent of the economic activity generated by investing in wind comes from the manufacture of the modern, highly sophisticated turbines – but this is where foreign companies actually have their strongest grip on the market.

In the case of these 11 wind farms, according to data provided by the companies themselves in regulatory filings and collected by the American Wind Energy Association, 982 turbines were installed – 695 of them were manufactured by a foreign company.

A study by the Renewable Energy Policy Project , a think-tank that advocates renewable energy technology research, estimates that for every 1,000 megawatts of wind energy that is developed, 4,300 jobs are created: 600 for operation and maintenance of the wind farms; 700 for the installation of new turbines; and 3,000 for manufacturing.

The cash grants were given for the installation of 1,763 megawatts of capacity – 1,566 installed by foreign companies. Using the Renewable Energy Policy Project’s own numbers, as many as 4,500 manufacturing jobs may have been created overseas

Turbine Manufacturing Dominated by Foreign Competitors

It is hoped the Recovery Act will encourage investment in the U.S. wind industry and develop a new carbon-neutral energy source. But even some of the strongest supporters of American renewable energy have pointed out that unless U.S. manufacturing is supported more specifically, the country might cede the good, permanent jobs to foreign competitors.

The manufacturing market is thoroughly dominated by foreign companies – mainly European, but more recently Asian manufacturers as well. The U.S. market for wind turbines and components is growing rapidly, but the import/export numbers offer a grim picture of who is winning the battle.

According to U.S. Customs data for 2008 and the U.S. Trade Commission, the U.S. imported $2.5 billion worth of wind turbines last year – up from $365 million in 2003.  

According to information compiled by the American Wind Energy Association, 2008 was actually a banner year for American turbine manufacturers. They accounted for an all-time high of 49.6 percent of installed capacity.

But the American market is narrow – GE Energy accounted for 42.7 percent alone; Clipper Wind is a distant second among American companies with just 6.9 percent.

GE and Clipper’s market share of installed capacity so far this year has slipped to a combined 43 percent. The prospects for the market share improving, at least this year, are not good. There is at least 5,200 megawatts of wind power capacity currently under development – only 32.6 percent is currently planned to be American made.

Photo by Joel Page
A truck carrying a turbine blade manufactured by Danish company Vestas, weaves its way through the town of Searsport, Maine this summer. Part of a 3-megawatt turbine unit sold by Vestas, the blade is 132 feet long.

The complex nature and sheer size of turbine components encourages manufacturers to try and build near where the turbines will be installed, which would seem to give the American companies an advantage, but foreign owned manufacturers are making the strongest inroads.

Vestas Americas , a unit of a Danish company, is the largest foreign-owned competitor to U.S. manufacturers, responsible for roughly 16.3 percent of the turbines under construction.

Company spokesman Roby Roberts, estimates the company has invested $1 billion in developing U.S. facilities over the past two years. This includes opening several plants in Colorado to build wind blades and plans to open more plants that will manufacture towers and the nacelles which house thousands of components that control the generation.

By the end of 2010, the company hopes to employ 4,000 people in America – including sales, service and manufacturing. A smaller Danish company that supplies Vestas recently announced plans to open shop near the turbine maker’s Colorado facilities and eventually employ 100 to 150 American workers.

“Our idea is by 2011 to have the ability to manufacture a complete North American-manufactured turbine,” Roberts said.

For now, Vestas continues to import all of the nacelles for its turbines and many of the blades.

The cash grants that were handed out in September theoretically will trickle down to American workers when the market demands locally built turbines – but that’s not guaranteed to happen.

“There is a larger concern that turbines might be coming from China,” said Xihou Zhou, an analyst at IHS Cambridge, a global energy advisory firm, pointing to other industries where cheaper costs have allowed Chinese manufactured goods to replace American-made products.

Although Vestas Americas said it plans to establish an American supply chain, other manufacturers, even American-owned ones, have begun building supply chains in countries with cheaper labor costs to provide the thousands of parts that may finally be assembled in the United States. Zhou cited three facilities GE owns in China to produce turbine components, and the company recently began work on a wind turbine components factory in Vietnam that will employ 500 local workers and export 10,000 tons of components to GE Energy assembly plants around the world.

Job creation will be major factor in debate over climate and energy bill

In the coming weeks the discussion of how to best support a domestic wind industry – as  a carbon-free alternative to foreign oil and an economic engine – returns to Capitol Hill as the Senate takes up a climate and energy bill. Once again, the administration and wind backers are chiming in with a familiar refrain

In a speech Tuesday, President Obama once again acknowledged the United States is not the global leader in clean energy that it once was. But, he said, a comprehensive climate and energy bill will restore America to its rightful place.

“That's going to finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America,” he said noting that the Senate’s Environment and Public Works committee began hearings on a bill (S. 1733 Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act ). “The creation of a clean energy economy has to be made as swiftly and carefully as possible, to ensure that what it takes to grow this economy in the short, medium, and long term is no longer delayed.”

Testifying in support of a climate bill before the Senate committee, Energy Secretary Steven Chu was more direct.

“When the starting gun sounded on the clean energy race, the United States stumbled,” he said in his written testimony (pdf ), urging the passage of the bill. “But I remain confident that we can make up the ground. When we gear up our research and production of clean energy technologies, we can still surpass any other country.”

A recent report shows the number of birds killed by Altamont wind turbines is increasing, prompting a grassroots group to go to court to stop it.

By Robert Gammon

East Bay Express

www.eastbayexpress.com

29 September 2009

The dirty little secret about the windmill farm at Altamont Pass is that it slaughters thousands of birds every year while politicians turn a blind eye.

Four years ago, environmental groups filed suit after the Alameda County Board of Supervisors effectively allowed the farm’s several owners to keep killing birds despite evidence that the deaths could be greatly lessened.

A resulting legal settlement was supposed to cut in half the number of annual deaths. But according to a recent scientific report, Altamont wind turbines are shredding raptors at an increasing rate. The total number of birds killed each year may now top 5,000.

The report, authored by Shawn Smallwood, a respected scientist who has been studying bird deaths east of Livermore since the late 1990s, shows that the number of overall bird deaths in 2005 to 2007 jumped 23 percent compared to the last major study, which looked at bird mortality from 1998 to 2003.

The fatality rate for large raptors, including golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, American kestrel falcons, and burrowing owls, has increased 10 percent. Overall, the report estimates that the number of birds killed each year by Altamont wind turbines is between 1,072 and 5,125. The report was published earlier this year in the peer-reviewed Journal of Wildlife Management.

The Smallwood report and the lack of progress in slowing the slaughter has prompted one of the groups that sued the companies and the county in 2005 to head back to court. Californians for Renewable Energy, a Santa Cruz-based grassroots group, is asking a judge to order the wind farm to close on October 1. The request also asks that it remain shuttered until the county completes an environmental impact report and the wind companies start abiding by the previous legal settlement. “They didn’t remove the old, derelict turbines, the lethal turbines,” said Michael Boyd, president of the group. “So the birds are still getting slaughtered.”

Altamont is ground zero for bird deaths because it’s one of the world’s oldest large wind farms. Built in the 1980s with what is now inferior technology, the farm is covered with small turbines that have blades that rotate too close to the ground. These turbines are lethal for low-flying birds, especially raptors hunting for prey. Newer, taller turbines, by contrast, are not only safer, but more energy efficient. “There are bird kills at other wind farms, but none to the degree of Altamont,” explained Jeff Miller of the Center for Biological Diversity, who has closely followed the problem for the past decade.

So why don’t the wind companies just replace their old turbines? For one, state-of-the-art turbines are expensive, so it’s more profitable to let the old machines keep spinning, even if they’re less efficient. And second, little political pressure is applied to the wind companies because they generate tax revenues for the county and because wind power is considered “green.” The wind companies have benefitted from a double standard. Imagine the public outcry if Chevron was slaughtering more than 5,000 birds a year, including nearly 100 federally protected golden eagles.

In fact, the Center for Biological Diversity took a beating in the press several years ago for criticizing the companies and suing them and the county. As a result, Miller was reluctant to speak about the issue. But the center appears to have been right all along. It opposed the settlement reached by Boyd’s organization and by Audubon, the bird conservation group, which also had sued. Back then, the center argued that the settlement included no mechanisms to make the wind companies replace the old turbines with new ones, and so a 50 percent reduction in deaths would likely never be reached.

But Boyd argues that the problem wouldn’t be so bad now if the wind companies and the county had lived up to the agreement. “The lesson here is settlements don’t always work out,” he said. He also alleged that Audubon has undermined the agreement by not taking a stronger stance. “They’ve been more pro-wind than pro-birds as far as I can tell,” he said.

William Yeates, an attorney for Audubon, said that while the group has been “disappointed” in the number of deaths and “dissatisfied” with the wind companies settlement compliance, it plans to neither support nor oppose Boyd’s request for a shutdown. Audubon, he said, is waiting for a new report based on updated data from Smallwood, which will show whether the companies have made progress since 2007. “If they haven’t reduced the bird fatalities by 50 percent, then they’ll have to do more,” he said.

A representative from one of the companies declined to be interviewed, saying it does not comment on pending litigation. But Alameda County Counsel Richard Winnie said the county will oppose Boyd’s motion, which is scheduled for a hearing on September 30, because he believes it’s premature.

Smallwood and the scientific review committee met last week at a three-day workshop to sift through his latest data and attempt to determine whether the measures taken by the wind companies have had any affect. One of the measures included a county-required three-month shut-down of the wind turbines during the winter, when more raptors are in the Altamont area. Smallwood had recommended a four-month shutdown, but the companies resisted. During a break in the workshop, Smallwood told Eco Watch that it was too early to tell whether any of the wind companies’ efforts had worked. He said it could be several months before the committee’s report is done.

He and a team of researchers estimate bird deaths at Altamont by scouring the wind farm for avian carcasses. The researchers, however, can’t be sure that they have found all of the dead birds, because many will be eaten or carried off by scavengers. So they multiply the actual number of carcasses they find by a factor that estimates how many they missed. Historically, the wind companies have contended that Smallwood and his research team overestimate the missed-bird factor, even though his method has been accepted by peer-reviewed scientific journals and the California Energy Commission.

Wind developers continue to insist that flying within wind farm boundries does not present a hazard. Emergency medical helicopter pilots tell us differently

Turbine proposal prompts concern by CareFlight pilot, OSP commander

“How do I determine a turbine from a tower?” [CareFlight pilot] Herbert asked. “Towers are lit at the top and don’t move or create turbulence; turbines are lit 100 feet or more below the actual top and have rotating blades that cannot be seen in a wide area. We are a 12-hour-a-day minimum facility with many 24-hour days, often with flights in the dark. With too many altitude restrictions and too many (turbines) in a small area, where do you go?”

Herbert said the prospect of turbines worries him and other air ambulance pilots.

“Bottom line, helicopter operations in Champaign County will be limited and this could delay critical care needed in assisting victims of accidents to Level 1 trauma centers in Dayton and Columbus,” he said.

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THE Victorian Government will examine claims that Waubra's 128-turbine wind farm is harming the health of nearby residents.

Finance, WorkCover and Transport Accident Commission Minister, Tim Holding, wrote to Western Victoria MLC Peter Kavanagh earlier this week to confirm that three government departments would examine "potential hazards" caused by sub-audible noise emitted by the turbines.

Mr Kavanagh raised the issue in parliament on September 2, after meeting with several Waubra residents who claim the towers have caused headaches, nausea and sleep deprivation since they began operating in June.

"I did a tour of Waubra in late August and people there are very upset about the wind farm," Mr Kavanagh said.

"Most off them were fairly happy to go along with the turbines before they were installed, but now I know of one family who won't live in their house.

"It certainly isn't an isolated incident."

WorkSafe Victoria, the Environmental Protection Authority and the Department of Human Services will work with local government to examine the issue raised by Mr Kavanagh.

But a WorkSafe spokesman denied the move was a formal investigation.

"It's not an investigation. We are looking at specific claims made by a few local residents," he said.

"Questions have been asked of the minister and by getting other relevant departments involved we are trying to answer the questions asked.

"It's in its very early stages and where it goes we don't know."

A spokesman for Acciona Energy, the Spanish company behind the wind farm, said extensive studies of wind farms worldwide were yet to provide conclusive proof that they were harmful.

"Acciona Energy is not aware of any investigation but would willingly participate with confidence, knowing there is no clear, consistent scientific data, nor a peer-reviewed scientific consensus, to confirm a connection between modern wind turbines and health concerns," he said.

"The Waubra wind farm meets the stringent noise levels required by government."

The spokesman said the farm reached full generation capacity for the first time two weeks ago.