Wind Energy & the Environment
Wind energy works, is increasingly cost-effective, has a net positive environmental impact, and is compatible with most existing land uses. The links below touch on the topic of wind’s environmental benefits and impacts.
Climate scientists: concept of net zero is a dangerous trap
By
External Source
The time has come to voice our fears and be honest with wider society. Current net zero policies will not keep warming to within 1.5°C because they were never intended to. They were and still are driven by a need to protect business as usual, not the climate. If we want to keep people safe then large and sustained cuts to carbon emissions need to happen now. That is the very simple acid test that must be applied to all climate policies. The time for wishful thinking is over.
Greenwashing & Wind Energy: What is it and Who Does it
By
Paul Gipe
Recently I was approached about an article I’d written in 2013 where I accused The Nature Conservancy of greenwashing. (See …
RFK Jr.’s ‘Sad’ Slide From Environmental Hero to Outcast
By
External Source
Opposition to offshore wind by the third-party presidential candidate turned Trump supporter began decades ago in the waters off Cape Cod. Project proponents say the fierce opposition by Kennedy, a presidential candidate who recently suspended his campaign but remains on the ballot in nearly three dozen states, had a long-lasting impact on the U.S. offshore wind industry and laid the seeds for opposition that continues today. “It set back offshore wind over 20 years in the United States,” said Jim Gordon, the former CEO of Cape Wind, the company that tried to build the Nantucket Sound project. Gordon said Kennedy was often the loudest, most combative voice of the well-funded opposition. “You have to understand that they created such a brouhaha and so much fear over the technology and the impacts, which have proven to be unfounded.”
Learning to love monsters: Windmills were once just machines on the land but now seem delightfully bucolic. Could wind turbines win us over too?
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External Source
Yet perceptions of windmills have not been uniformly idyllic. Since they first appeared on the landscape of medieval Europe, windmills represented an imposition of the technological on the pastoral. They were, in the phrase of the wind energy author Paul Gipe, ‘machines in the garden’, straddling the boundary of the agrarian and mechanical.
Glossary of Wind Energy Terminology
By
Paul Gipe
This 30,000 word glossary was written by Paul Gipe and Bill Canter in the late-1990s. I’ve added the glossary to my web site for both its historical content—many of the terms were in use during the 1980s and 1990s—and as a reference for the thousands of newcomers to the wind industry since it was first published.
California condors continue decades-long return from annihilation
By
External Source
A dozen more condors are sailing Kern skies as part of a yearslong conservation effort that has recently included local clean energy companies to save the endangered bird. In a May 1 announcement, energy company Avangrid announced it exceeded conditions set in a conservation plan it created with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2021 to fund the raising of a dozen California condors at the Oregon Zoo.
