Thursday, September 11, 2014

More publicity about Wisconsin's energy backwardness

It's not exactly an 'On, Wisconsin' feature, like "How Wisconsin Gave The World Aldo Leopold."  

More along the lines of, 'You Won't Believe What's Going On There Now.'

And the anti-environmental subject this time? Killing Amtrak? More phosphorous in the water? Mining the rice-growing, water rich Penokee Hills? Shooting leg-trapped wolves in the head?

Nope: Cancelled wind power projects, a story good enough for the Seattle Times (and reprinted locally), where in Wisconsin proves it's not Iowa or Texas, either, when it comes to clean energy:
Wisconsin once was swept up in the wind-power boom. But it’s now an example of how a state, even with federal incentives in place, can put the brakes on turbines…
“Wind turbines have proved to be an expensive, inefficient source of electricity, and thus any future construction of turbines simply is not a policy goal or object that should be pursued further,” Gov. Scott Walker wrote in a 2010 campaign memo obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 
Walker, once in office, backed a legislative effort to increase setbacks for turbines by increasing the distance they must be located from a neighbor, and measuring that setback from the neighbor’s house rather than property line. That 2011 effort failed.
But a legislative committee voted to suspend the state’s wind-siting rule to study the health effects of wind turbines.
By the time the rule was reinstated a year later, five Wisconsin wind projects had been suspended or canceled, according to Clean Wisconsin, a wind-advocacy group. New installations of turbines plummeted in the state.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mission accomplished!

Anonymous said...

To show that Walker is a complete idiot when it comes to energy and jobs ......Broadwind Energy in Manitowoc manufactures wind towers. Because of the strong demand from wind energy has orders that fill 3/4 of their production capacity already for 2015. Only 5 of their towers are sited in Wisconsin near Denmark. Not hard to see that the dirty energy Koch brothers are pulling Walker's puppet strings.