Wind Watch: 2026

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“Driving from one end of the country to the other, you see all sorts of strange things, but nothing as ominous as these wind farms that now crowd so many wide open spaces. Gesturing obscenely, they block the horizon, sneering at the very idea that a bit of sky could be sacred.” —Lafayette Lee, Sept. 25, 2024

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=183

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“In a nutshell: Perhaps renewables are not the answer.” —Eduardo Porter, The New York Times, Nov. 7, 2017

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=41

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“By embracing industrial wind, for example, Vermont is replacing corporate-controlled fossil fuels with corporate-controlled renewables. We’re allowing those corporations to exploit and profit from our ridgelines, while ignoring the loss of valuable non-monetized benefits that intact mountains provide. In the end, Vermont’s climate change response hasn’t really been about “saving the environment,” no matter how ardently that sentiment is expressed in press releases and annual reports: it’s about maintaining, as long as possible, the unsustainable way of life that created the problem in the first place.” —Steven Gorelick, “Renegotiating the Future”

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=40

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“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.

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=149

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“What the wind giveth, line loss taketh away.” —Carol A. Overland, Minn.

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=161

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“Wind power is an idea that is appealing to the imagination. It sounds like a ‘free’ source of energy that would be non-polluting and stable in cost. I am an optimist, and I love technology. If I thought for one moment that windmills would be a source of low cost energy, I would be building them. The reality is quite the contrary — wind power is wasteful of human and natural resources.” —Fergus Smith, Vt.

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=196

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“If people tell the public service commission they want all-renewable energy, then we’ll give them that, but not before we warn them that it’s going to cost an arm and a leg.” —Duane Schrader, Louisville Gas & Electric trading manager, “Power Switch,” Carleton College Voice, Fall 2018

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=58

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“At this point you may have asked yourself why it is that Vestas does not just make changes to the wind turbines so that they produce less noise? The simple answer is that at the moment it is not technically possible to do so ...” —Ditlev Engel, CEO, Vestas, June 29, 2011 letter to Environment Minister, Denmark

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=84

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“What we have all thought of as an industry of benefit, may not be of much benefit. They don’t provide any jobs and now they may not provide much revenue either! ” —Judge Laura Pryor, Gilliam County, Ore.

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=237

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“Faith in the redemptive power of wind energy is not a substitute for analysis of its actual record.” —Eric Rosenbloom, Vt.

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=151

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“The ecological footprint is large relative to the meager environmental benefits.” —R. Dwayne Elmore, Oklahoma Chapter, The Wildlife Society, and others, letter to Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, Jan. 3, 2008

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=131

Direct Testimony of Jerry Punch, Audiologist

Q: What is the purpose of your testimony? A: I intend to describe the critical weaknesses in Invenergy’s Badger Hollow Wind (BHW) application, particularly with regard to its “noise analysis.” That analysis is grossly insufficient in reflecting the actual health risks to humans, as it focuses exclusively and extensively on audible noise, while willfully ignoring the inaudible components of the acoustic energy that will be emitted from its proposed 6.2 MW industrial wind turbines (IWTs). These inaudible components are increasingly being . . .

https://www.wind-watch.org/documents/direct-testimony-of-jerry-punch-audiologist/

Direct Testimony of Richard Jinkins: Spiked Pressure Pulses #WI

Q: Has your ability to occupy and use your property been affected by wind turbines? A: Yes. Q. How? A: We have moved out of our home. And when we are at our home and wind turbines are operating, it ranges from unpleasant to insupportable. Some of the personal effects that I and other members of my family have experienced and that I associate with the wind turbines are nuisances that range from mild to significant. These are things like . . .

https://www.wind-watch.org/documents/direct-testimony-of-richard-jinkins-spiked-pressure-pulses/

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“Wind energy will undoubtedly create noise, which increases stress, which in turn increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer.” —Julia Gohlke, Sharon Hrynkow, and Christopher Portier, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health, Environmental Health Perspectives, June 2008

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=80

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“Industrial wind parks might be relatively new, but the international context in which they proliferate is a familiar one of “first” and “third” world hierarchies and persistent inequalities.” —Suzanne Simon

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=186

Problem with wind energy: vacated homes linked to wind turbine nuisance

I am a lawyer (please keep reading anyway) with a long history in energy law. I recently finished an intriguing case involving wind turbines. I am creating this – my first Substack Post – to share what I learned, because I was surprised. You may be too. Here’s the TL;DR: when operating exactly as designed and planned, modern, industrial-scale wind power plants will lead to people vacating their homes, and some of them are likely driven out by impacts to . . .

https://www.wind-watch.org/documents/problem-with-wind-energy-vacated-homes-linked-to-wind-turbine-nuisance/

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“Neighbors are far better acoustic analyzers for determining the quality of their life versus any acoustic instrument left unattended by an expert.” —Stephen Ambrose, Me., acoustical engineer

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=66

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“One thing is clear: The environmental community must view wind power projects as they would any other type of industrial development. ” —Martha Frey, Executive Director, Otsego (N.Y.) 2000

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=238

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“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 Statue of Liberty, taller than a football field is long.” —Lamar Alexander, U.S. Senate

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=222

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“Any time citizen participation or regulatory review is called too onerous, rest assured that the process is working as it should.” —Editorial, Baltimore (Md.) Sun, March 9, 2007

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=212

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“It’s like taking up smoking because you drink too much. And now you’re a smoker as well as a drinker.” —Frida Payle

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=105

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“If we waste our efforts on symbolic solutions instead of practical ones, we will create bigger problems.” —Andrew K. Gentile, “What’s the cost of banning fossil fuels?”, Vt. Digger, November 16, 2023

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=11

Under the Radar | Under Radaren #DNK

This report examines how the green transition is experienced at close range by citizens, including how planning processes are circumvented and how considerations of democracy, civil rights, nature and local communities are set aside. Research and the number of citizen groups (>200) indicate that this is a systemic problem – not isolated cases. Researchers describe it as a “system error” and characterize the resistance as “societal self-defence”. Under the Radar brings together five cases, examined in depth. They are stories . . .

https://www.wind-watch.org/documents/under-the-radar-under-radaren/

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“The wind, as a direct motive power, is wholly inapplicable to a system of machine labour, for during a calm season the whole business of the country would be thrown out of gear. Before the era of steam-engines, windmills were tried for draining mines; but though they were powerful machines, they were very irregular, so that in a long tract of calm weather the mines were drowned, and all the workmen thrown idle. ” —William Stanley Jevons, 1865

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=165

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“Anybody trying to justify subsidies on the basis of jobs created is talking nonsense. Wind farms are not labour intensive.” —Anonymous “owner of several wind farms”, Telegraph, June 15, 2013

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=33

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“A single 555-megawatt gas-fired power plant in California generates more electricity in a year than do all 13,000 of the state’s wind turbines. The gas-fired plant sits atop a mere 15 acres. The 300-foot-tall windmills impact over a hundred thousand acres to provide expensive, intermittent, insufficient energy.” —L. M. Schwartz

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=209

Direct Testimony of Jerry Punch, Audiologist

Direct Testimony of Richard Jinkins: Spiked Pressure Pulses #WI

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“Polls show most Scots unhappy with this heavily subsidised and only intermittent source of energy that causes huge damage to the environment.” —Tom Gallagher, The Atlantic, April 13, 2012

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=63

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“If you lease, chances are one or more of your neighbors is going to have to deal with eminent domain. Now these are private, wind development companies; however, once they sell that power to a power purchaser, they can go to the energy commission and as in Butler County (Kan.): in two weeks and a little bit of paperwork ... they had the power of eminent domain to go across adjacent landowners’ property with power lines, with trenches, with no public hearing.” —Rose Bacon

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=219

Direct Testimony of Jerry Punch, Audiologist

Direct Testimony of Richard Jinkins: Spiked Pressure Pulses #WI

Problem with wind energy: vacated homes linked to wind turbine nuisance

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“It’s very simple. They don’t work and never can. Here’s why: 1) no energy density; 2) not dispatchable; 3) not reliable; 4) can’t store electricity. And they are ruining the environment and making people very, very sick. It’s a mania driven by a torrent of tax subsidies. The developers are all opportunists who don’t give a damn. It’s a scourge.” —Eric Bibler, Maine

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=53

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“This will divide the town for 25 years.” —Jack Simons, planning commissioner, Sheffield, Vt.

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=248

Problem with wind energy: vacated homes linked to wind turbine nuisance

Economic Impacts of Utility-Scale Wind Turbines: What Rural Arkansas Counties Need to Know #AR

Across the U.S., roughly 97% of wind turbines are installed in rural areas. Considering this statistic, if utility-scale wind energy were to be introduced in Arkansas, rural communities would bear the direct impacts. This fact sheet contains projections of these impacts. The broad economic tradeoffs over time are listed below: Benefits of Wind Development County GDP increases by about 4%. Farmland values increase by 7%-8%. Costs of Wind Development Personal income falls by 0.5%-0.8%. Employment declines by about 1%. Population . . .

https://www.wind-watch.org/documents/economic-impacts-of-utility-scale-wind-turbines-what-rural-arkansas-counties-need-to-know/

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“They are ugly!” —T. Boone Pickens, The Guardian (U.K.), Apr. 14, 2008

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=142

Winterbourne Wind Farm Noise Assessment – Peer Review #AUS

L Huson & Associates Pty Ltd has been commissioned by the Voice for Walcha to peer review the Winterbourne Wind Farm Noise and Vibration Assessment (NVA), report reference S6207C14 dated October 2022 that was prepared by Sonus Pty Ltd. The NVA is included in the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) dated 27 October 2022 as Appendix H that was prepared by Environmental Resources Management Australia Pty Ltd. Section 6.2 of the EIS summarises the NVA. This peer review considers the assessment . . .

https://www.wind-watch.org/documents/winterbourne-wind-farm-noise-assessment-peer-review/

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“A dose-response relationship between calculated A-weighted sound pressure levels, and reported perception and annoyance was found. Wind turbine noise was more annoying than transportation noise or industrial noise at comparable levels, possibly due to specific sound properties such as a “swishing” quality, temporal variability, and lack of nighttime abatement.” —Eja Pederson et al., Response to noise from modern wind farms in The Netherlands, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, August 2009

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=76

Unheard but Not Harmless: Public Health & Wind Energy Infrasound #BEL #EUR #DEU #SWE

24th March 2026 10:00-12:00 Spinelli 6G306, European Parliament Key note speaker Professor Ken Mattsson expert in scientific computing and numerical analysis at Uppsala University Additional intervention by Dr. Ursula Bellut-Staeck physician-scientist and internationally recognized expert in microcirculation With MEPs Fernand Kartheiser & Virginie Joron

https://www.wind-watch.org/alerts/2026/03/10/unheard-but-not-harmless-public-health-wind-energy-infrasound/

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“[D]ie Wartungs- und Reparaturkosten von Offshore-Windkraftanlagen können sich im Laufe der Jahre zum Hundertfachen der Neubaukosten summieren. ([T]he maintenance and repair costs of offshore wind turbines can add up over the years to one hundred times the costs for new construction.)” —Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, press release, Feb. 1, 2016

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=136

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“There should be a presumption against wind farms in the countryside where their scale, siting or cumulative effect would have a significant adverse impact on landscape quality and recreational enjoyment thereof.” —Countryside Commission, U.K.

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=227

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“The mountains and moors, the wild uplands, are to be staked out like vampires in the sun, their chests pierced with rows of five-hundred-foot wind turbines and associated access roads, masts, pylons, and wires.” —Paul Kingsnorth, Orion, Jan./Feb. 2012

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=27

Under the Radar | Under Radaren #DNK

Solar and wind aren’t real power sources, they’re intermittent fuel-savers #USA

As a recent week of winter weather illustrated, solar and wind don’t replace reliable power sources—they just save them fuel, usually at great expense. We’re bombarded with supposed examples of solar/wind rapidly and cheaply replacing fossil fuel power: rapid rises in solar/wind “capacity” or “generation”; solar/wind credited for supplying most of a day’s electricity; stats claiming solar/wind is now cheaper than fossil fuels. Advocates of solar and wind replacing fossil fuel power downplay the obvious, glaring problem that the grid . . .

https://www.wind-watch.org/documents/solar-and-wind-arent-real-power-sources-theyre-intermittent-fuel-savers/

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“Not being an alternative themselves, it is quite simply spurious to ask for an alternative to replace them.” —Mark Duchamp, Executive Director, European Platform Against Windfarms

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=64

‘Death of Baseload’ and Similar Grid Tropes

Anyone who has spent any amount of time in or near people who are really interested in energy policies will have heard proclamations such as that ‘baseload is dead’ and the sorting of energy sources by parameters like their levelized cost of energy (LCoE) and merit order. Another thing that one may have noticed here is that this is also an area where debates and arguments can get pretty heated. The confusing thing is that depending on where you look, . . .

https://www.wind-watch.org/documents/death-of-baseload-and-similar-grid-tropes/

Cumulative hydrodynamic impacts of offshore wind farms on North Sea currents and surface temperatures #ENG #DEU #NLD

Abstract. Offshore wind farms are increasingly shaping coastal ocean dynamics, yet their cumulative physical impacts remain poorly quantified. Using decade-long, high-resolution simulations of the North Sea, we show that large-scale offshore wind development can reduce current velocities by up to 20% and reshape local tidal energy distributions. Wind and tidal wakes exert distinct but interacting influences on ocean physics: wind speed anomalies drive far-field hydrodynamic impacts, while structure-induced drag intensifies local turbulence and mixing. Turbine spacing emerges as a key . . .

https://www.wind-watch.org/documents/cumulative-hydrodynamic-impacts-of-offshore-wind-farms-on-north-sea-currents-and-surface-temperatures/

Industrial Wind Energy Quote

“Increased development of wind turbines does not reduce Danish carbon dioxide emissions.” —Flemming Nissen, Head of Development, Elsam, Denmark

https://www.wind-watch.org/quotes.php?t=197