Vermont: doing their part to save the planet, one scoured mountain top at a time.

h/t Michael

All tremble before the awesome power of Gore, God Of Blunder;

New research finds that wind farms actually warm up the surface of the land underneath them during the night, a phenomena that could put a damper on efforts to expand wind energy as a green energy solution.
Researchers used satellite data from 2003 to 2011 to examine surface temperatures across as wide swath of west Texas, which has built four of the world’s largest wind farms. The data showed a direct correlation between night-time temperatures increases of 0.72 degrees C (1.3 degrees F) and the placement of the farms.
“Given the present installed capacity and the projected growth in installation of wind farms across the world, I feel that wind farms, if spatially large enough, might have noticeable impacts on local to regional meteorology,”
[…]
Zhou and his colleagues found that turbulence behind the wind turbine blades stirs up a layer of cooler air that usually settles on the ground at night, and mixes in warm air that is on top.
That layering effect is usually reversed during the daytime, with warm air on the surface and cooler air higher up.”The year-to-year land surface temperature over wind farms shows a persistent upward trend from 2003 to 2011, consistent with the increasing number of operational wind turbines with time,” Zhou said.

h/t John

Spiegel;

In 2006, solar-panel manufacturer Conergy moved into the never-used computer chip factory, joining Odersun, already headquartered in the city. In 2007, the United States solar giant First Solar opened a factory as well, followed by a second one last year.
Now, though, the future suddenly looks decidedly dark. Odersun declared bankruptcy in March and Conergy, while pledging to return to profit this year, has seen its share price lose 99.6 percent of its value in the last five years. Many doubt the company will survive. Worst of all, however, was the announcement earlier this month that First Solar was closing both of its factories in Frankfurt an der Oder; 1,200 people will soon be jobless as a result.
“We saw the solar industry as a chance to reindustrialize the region and invested significantly in incentives,” Frankfurt an der Oder Mayor Martin Wilke told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “This is a serious setback. It is a very difficult situation.”

And that’s just for starters.
h/t Maz2

Via Planet Gore;

China’s leaders are finding it’s a lot tougher to create a world-beating electric car industry than they hoped.
In 2009, they announced bold plans to cash in on demand for clean vehicles by making China a global power in electric car manufacturing. They pledged billions of dollars for research and called for annual sales of 500,000 cars by 2015.
Today, Beijing is scaling back its ambitions, chastened by technological hurdles and lack of buyer interest. Developers have yet to achieve breakthroughs and will be lucky to sell 2,000 cars this year, mostly taxis. The government has hedged its bets by broadening the industry’s official goals to include cleaner gasoline engines.

Telegraph;

Sources said ministers are prepared to block major developments of onshore wind turbines under the new Localism Act that came into force last month.
They are also ready to reduce the £400 million per year in funding that goes to wind farms under the Renewable Obligation Certificate subsidy.
The moves would be popular with the dozens Conservative MPs fighting against new wind developments in their constituencies.
In the letter sent to Downing Street in February, more than 101 MPs sais they have become “more and more concerned” about government “support for onshore wind energy production”.

via Quixote’s Last Stand

Newsbusters;

Jon Meacham asked, “Has there been a moment in the last 40 years when you thought the government was helping” when it comes to energy production?
“I don’t know of any place,” Pickens replied.
Meacham followed by asking if the upcoming election matters. Pickens responded, “Obama, his hands are tied. He’s got the greenies and the Left, but nobody accuses me of not being green. I’m in the wind business…I’ve lost my ass in the business.”
Host Joe Scarborough said laughing, “You’ve invested more in alternative energy than anybody else.”

If only Texas weren’t so far away. There must be some way to get news of these many wind energy failures to our own Saskatchewan Party government before it’s too late!

A123 Systems – the taxpayer-funded electric vehicle battery manufacturer that famously shipped duds to Fisker Automotive, which caused one of its luxurious Karma EVs to shut down just before a Consumer Reports test – is now the defendant in an investor class action lawsuit and its stock has tanked to below $1.

National Center for Public Policy Research;

“Shareholders have a right to know if Gore is using his board position at Apple to bail out his personal investments in alternative energy and green technology. Renewable energy technology companies are proving to be bad investments, with a number of companies experiencing financial difficulties, including bankruptcies. Gore should be taking the financial risks with his personal investments, not Apple shareholders,” added Dr. Borelli.

Popular Mechanics;

Fully charged on a brisk March morning, the all-electric Mitsubishi i’s range meter estimated that the battery pack had enough energy to travel 56 miles. That’s plenty, I thought, for the several-stop route I planned to a neighboring town and back. But as I pulled out into traffic, I flicked on the heat and watched the range meter recalibrate, dropping the estimated range down to 37. I did a quick mental calibration: A few miles to the first stop, 12 miles on the highway, 12 to return, another five to the next location, and so on. I then had a choice to make: Either shiver in the car or risk getting stranded.

The problem with “green” energy, is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

A massive reduction in solar subsidies enacted by the German Parliament last week will all but shut down the photovoltaic market in that country starting next year, Citigroup analysts said in a research note.
One of the first victims was Q-Cells, once the world’s largest solar-cell maker, which filed for insolvency yesterday after a German court’s ruling cast doubt on its efforts to negotiate with its creditors…

More here.

Las Vegas Sun;

In a startling example, the city of Reno’s wind turbines — for which the city received more than $150,000 in rate-payer funded rebates — produced dramatically less electricity than the manufacturers of its turbines promised.
“These manufacturers, when they gave us the turbines, they said they were designed to be mounted on a parapet at this height, and that’s what we did,” said Jason Geddes, who runs the city of Reno’s renewable energy program. “But when we started getting actual wind flow patterns, we realized their claims were wrong.”
As first reported by the Reno Gazette-Journal, one turbine that cost the city $21,000 to install saved the city $4 on its energy bill. Overall, $416,000 worth of turbines have netted the city $2,800 in energy savings.

Washington Examiner;

Senior officials in Obama’s administration had very high hopes for the Blythe project. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar attended the groundbreaking ceremony, which he described as “a historic moment in America’s new energy frontier” and “another important step in making America’s clean energy future a reality.” Chu trumpeted at the time that Solar Trust would prove that “when we rev up the great American innovation machine, we can out-compete any other nation.”

More – …while one could say that the company’s epic collapse is more a function of alternative energy politics in Germany, where its 70% parent Solar Millennium AG filed for bankruptcy last December, what is relevant is that last April STA was the proud recipient of a $2.1 billion conditional loan from the Department of Energy, incidentally the second largest loan ever handed out by the DOE’s Stephen Chu.

You can’t make this stuff up. GM replacing almost all Chevrolet Volt power cords

Smitherman elephant herd grows;

We have an excess of electricity. You can’t store it, so the only way to get rid of it is to spill water that could be used to generate electricity for two cents a kilowatt-hour at Niagara.
Instead, until now we paid more than 80 cents a kw/h for solar and 13.5 cents for wind. Bentley announced Thursday those prices are going down–to 54.9 cents for solar and 11.5 for wind.

Heh.

Don Surber;

“The big news yesterday was that Energy Secretary Steven Chu does not own a car. But his wife owns a 2002 BMW 325i, which gets 21 MPG, according to the Daily Caller. Why did Chu not get her to trade in the Beamer for a Chevy Volt? Also, as a Cabinet secretary, he gets a security detail that drives him around in an SUV, most likely a Cadillac Escalade. We can mince around with words over whether he owns a car or not, but he is not taking public transportation, walking or riding a bicycle to get everywhere.”

Via Instapundit

….as the bird carcasses pile up—two more dead golden eagles were recently found at the Pine Tree wind project in Southern California’s Kern County, bringing the number of eagle carcasses at that site to eight—the wind industry’s unofficial license to kill wildlife is finally getting some serious scrutiny.
Some 77 organizations—led by the American Bird Conservancy, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Endangered Species Coalition and numerous chapters of the Audubon Society—are petitioning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to toughen the rules for the siting, permitting and operation of large-scale wind projects.
It’s about time. Over the past two decades, the federal government has prosecuted hundreds of cases against oil and gas producers and electricity producers for violating some of America’s oldest wildlife-protection laws: the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and Eagle Protection Act.
But the Obama administration—like the Bush administration before it—has never prosecuted the wind industry despite myriad examples of widespread, unpermitted bird kills by turbines. A violation of either law can result in a fine of up to $250,000 and imprisonment for two years.

h/t Ed S.

Ric Morano;

‘One of Fisker primary financial backers is venture captital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, of which Gore is a partner. Fisker received a $528.7 million conditional loan from Dept. of Energy’s…That’s a LOT of money to produce only 200-300 thus far, some of which seem to be lemons. This is the same company that caught flak because after it secured US govt financing, started assembling their cars in – Finland. Fisker Automotive seems headed for the same fate as Solyndra’

More at Consumer Reports. Via Drudge.

SDA gets results!

General Motors Co. announced the temporary suspension of Chevrolet Volt production and the layoffs of 1300 employees, as the company is cutting Volt manufacturing to meet lower-than-expected demand for the electric cars.

h/t Adrian

Low-Voltage sales. Lots more here.