Quotes about industrial wind…
It's well past time to stop considering what wind might do and to examine what it has done. It has not reduced fossil fuel use or emissions. It has only ruined a lot of landscapes and communities, fragmented habitat, and killed birds and bats.
— Eric Rosenbloom, Vt.
Because wind turbines cannot be counted on to produce when electricity demand reaches its highest levels, they have virtually no "capacity value" to grid managers. Therefore, areas experiencing significant electricity demand growth will have to add reliable, dispatchable generating units whether or not they add wind turbines.
— Glenn Schleede, Va.
If I were an investor and wanted to keep my green image intact, I would be deeply concerned about building turbines on forested ridgetops.
— Merlin Tuttle, Director, Bat Conservation International
The cumulative impacts on bat populations from proposed and/or constructed wind farm developments, especially in the eastern United States, may lead to further population declines, placing multiple bat populations at serious risk of extinction.
— Thomas Kunz, Director, Center for Ecology and Conservation Biology, Boston University
Wind power does not respond to demand. It may or may not be there when needed. ... We will therefore need as much other electricity sources with wind as we would without. ... It is not just unnecessary but offensive to entertain industrial-scale development of the ridgelines, with strobe lights and noise and ecological degradation that far surpasses anything now on the mountains, for such obvious nonsense.
— Eric Rosenbloom, Vt.
I don't believe it is in the state's interest to industrialize our ridge lines.
— Jim Douglas, Governor, Vt.
Wind turbines don't make good neighbors.
— John Zimmerman (Northeast U.S. Representative, Enxco)
Throughout my experience, I could not substantiate a single claim developers made for industrial wind energy, including the one justifying its existence: that massive wind installations would meaningfully reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
— Jon Boone, Md.
Federal tax benefits pay as much as 65% of the capital cost of wind power projects in the United States.
— Keith Martin, Chadbourne and Parke, LLP, Financing Wind Power conference, Dec. 3-5, 2003, New York, N.Y.
The closer you get to the facts about wind energy, the worse wind power appears.
— Scott Darling, wildlife biologist, Vt. Dept. of Fish & Wildlife, Oct. 4, 2007, Middlebury, Vt. (comments after talk)
People thought they'd get their electric bill reduced, but ours went up and we're getting nothing. I can't understand what anybody thought they'd get out of this. This company [FPL] came in, destroyed the top of the mountain, and left us with it.
— Rose Marie Derk, Waymart, Pa.
The idea of windmills conjures up pleasant images — of Holland and tulips, of rural America with windmill blades slowly turning, pumping water at the farm well ... But the windmills we are talking about today are not your grandmother's windmills. Each one is typically 100 yards tall, two stories taller than the Stature of Liberty, taller than a football field is long.
— Lamar Alexander, U.S. Senate
These people are not as much [wind] developers as they are salesmen. Their product sounds good — and green — in theory, but it is a wolf in sheep's clothing.
— Shirley Nelson, Burlington (Vt.) Free Press, Dec. 12, 2005
It is a waste of money because it is ineffective. And because it is ineffective its negative impacts are unacceptable.
— Eric Rosenbloom, VT