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wind farms

Do Wind Farms Harm the Climate?

Wind energy has been a fast growing sector of the overall energy market. It is renewable energy that can be produced on an industrial scale that can rival the older established energy sources of coal, gas, oil, hydro, and nuclear.

Now, it accounts for only two percent of the whole energy market, but government officials expect wind to produce one fifth of the total electricity supply in the United States by 2030. Proponents claim wind power can reduce the threat of global warming.

However, a recent study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has found that the opposite is true. Mass produced wind farms can actually affect climate in a negative way.

04/06/2010 5 comments

Renewable Energy

China’s Wind Energy Sector Expands Offshore

written by Yale Environment 360

China’s surging wind power industry will increasingly move offshore, experts say, as the nation’s first offshore wind farm reaches full power this month and government officials push several additional projects.

The 102-megawatt Shanghai wind farm is the first of several offshore wind projects planned by China, which last month opened bids for three to four large-scale offshore wind farms that officials say could generate 1,000 megawatts of electricity.

Beijing-based energy consultants Azure International predict that by 2020 China will have invested $100 billion to install 30,000 megawatts of capacity off the Chinese coast.

04/05/2010 0 comment

Renewable Energy

Record Wind Generation Tests Texas’s Transmission System

written by Yale Environment 360

Wind power generation in Texas is growing so quickly that it is testing the limits of the state’s electrical grid.

The state set a record on March 5 when wind turbines generated 6,272 megawatts of energy, or about 19 percent of the electricity on the state’s main power grid.

That peak far exceeded the 6.2 percent average for wind power in Texas, whose 9,410 megawatts of total wind capacity make it the nation’s wind power leader.

But wind power’s growth poses a critical challenge for the state’s booming wind industry, which includes a 180-megawatt wind farm completed last fall near Corpus Christi in South Texas.

03/09/2010 0 comment

Renewable Energy

Do Wind Farms Pose Health Threat to Neighbors?

written by Yale Environment 360

Living near wind farms does not pose adverse health effects, according to a new study.

The research, conducted by a seven-member panel of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other institutions, was funded by the American and Canadian wind industry associations.

The 85-page report says there is no medical basis for concerns that the audible or “subaudible” sounds of spinning wind turbines cause physiological harm to people who live nearby.

12/17/2009 0 comment

Renewable Energy

T. Boone Pickens – greedy capitalist or caring environmentalist?

written by Tina Ngo

What would you do if you were worth $3 billion? T. Boone Pickens? Propose to build one of the largest wind farms in Texas, of course!

T. Boone Pickens, American financier and Chairman of BP Capital Management, ironically grew his wealth initially through mergers and acquisitions of oil and gas companies. From there, Pickens expanded his company, Mesa Petroleum, to be one of the largest independent oil companies in the world by 1981.

With his continued success came much criticism. During his peak, Pickens has been accused of being a “corporate raider” – investors who essentially direct or execute a hostile takeover of a company, often with the agenda of breaking up and selling various assets of the company to gain large profits. Though most of his attempts at corporate raiding failed, his endeavors drove the targeted company’s stock up, making Pickens and other investors millions of dollars.

07/10/2009 11 comments

Renewable Energy

China Trumps T. Boone Pickens’ Wind Power Project With 20 Gigawatt Farm

written by Ceylan Thomson

China will break ground this month on a gigantic, $17 billion wind power farm in the northwestern part of the country that will produce 5 gigawatts of power by next year and 20 gigawatts by 2020, according to the official Xinhua news service. The installation in Gansu Province is known as the “Three Gorges of Wind Power” after the gigantic Three Gorges hydroelectric dam on the Yangtze River. As the Wall Street Journal notes, the Gansu wind power installation is scheduled by 2020 to produce five times the power of T. Boone Pickens’ proposed wind power project on the U.S. Great Plains.

07/06/2009 2 comments

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