Over-run by these things, faced with thousand of furious neighbours demanding an end to the onslaught, and spiralling power costs, Poland has mounted an enormous about face: where wind power was the flavour of the month for a year or two, it’s about to be targeted with an outright ban.
WARNING: in following this piece you’ll need to turn your volume down – the howling from the wind industry’s parasites and the eco-fascist cheer squad, Greenpeace soon becomes deafening.
Poland’s New Right-Wing Rulers Want To Effectively Ban Wind Power
Fastcoexist
Charlie Sorrel
21 April 2016
Last year, Poland was the second-biggest installer of wind power in Europe—but a new proposal could halt this progress.
Poland, the eighth-biggest consumer of coal in the world, may outlaw wind power. New draft legislation from the right-wing government doesn’t ban wind turbines outright, but as you’ll see, its terms make building new turbines almost impossible.
The law would prohibit new turbines from being built within two miles of any buildings or forests, which in densely-populated Europe means pretty much everywhere.
Even if you can find a spot to erect a turbine, you’ll need to get a permit, a process so tied up in red tape that it appears to be deliberately designed to make it impossible.
The permits then only last for two years. And if you need to do maintenance on existing turbines, you need permission to do that, too. There are also service fees and inspections to deal with. “Non-compliance with any of these processes could result in a hefty fine or even imprisonment of up to two years,” says the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA).
“The draft law proposed is deeply troubling,” says EWEA CEO Giles Dickson. “It will tie new projects up in red tape and make life hard for existing wind turbines that do not meet the legal demands.”
Last year, Poland was the second-biggest installer of wind power in Europe, after Germany. Its industry generates around $160 million per year, and—says the EWEA—supports more than 8,000 jobs.
Poland is currently ruled by the right-wing Law and Justice Party, which is skeptical on climate change and has already started to dismantle the country’s democratic process, and taken control of public TV and radio.
“This draft law is a detailed plan to shackle the industry’s prospects in Poland,” said EWEA spokesperson Oliver Joy. “It has been designed to stop deployment and will likely damage investor confidence. It is a very concerning development, particularly for a country that was one of Europe’s strongest performers last year.”
It’s hard to see this as anything other than an extreme right-wing government using its power to protect the fossil-fuel industry. The Law and Justice Party also wanted to ban Russian coal imports before it came to power, to boost domestic production.
Greenpeace agrees, calling Poland a “prisoner of the coal industry.” The country’s possibly illegal support for the coal industry has already gotten it into trouble with the European Union, and that’s likely to get worse.
Fastcoexist
Poland a “prisoner of the coal industry”?!? What utter bollocks.
Poland is more like a prisoner of common sense and energy economics.
Its formerly restive neighbour, Germany has, no doubt, provided it with plenty of insight as to what comes next, when you attempt to run a first world economy on occasionally favourable breezes and sunshine.
And nice to see the usual suspects using the same hackneyed and desperate pitch about wind power being the only hope of saving us all from imminent global incineration (although we note they’re using the phrase ‘climate change‘ – whatever that’s supposed to mean on a planet that’s climate has been in a constant state of flux for 4.6 billion years?).
No-one gifted with our good friends logic and reason connects wind power with global warming (or ‘climate change’) any more, if they ever did.
Wind power doesn’t displace conventional generation and will never replace it.
The wind industry’s claims of being ‘competitive’ are so much infantile nonsense. By definition, ‘competition’ occurs when all likely contenders line up at the starting gate together – around 70% of the time wind power can’t be bothered to line up at all – and it can only ever ‘compete’ when the wind speeds up to 6m/s and never goes beyond 25m/s.
As wind power can only ever be delivered (if at all) at crazy, random intervals it will never amount to a meaningful power source and will always require 100% of its capacity to be backed up 100% of the time with fossil fuel generation sources; in places like Australia and Poland, principally coal-fired plant.
Wind power doesn’t pose any threat to the coal industry – every component in a turbine and its 400m3 steel-reinforced concrete base is a product of hundreds of tonnes of coal.
Coal-fired plant run constantly, 24 x 365 to keep the grid from collapsing, with thermal and spinning reserve available to cover total and totally unpredictable wind power output collapses.
And that unassailable fact means that wind power increases CO2 emissions, instead of reducing them – as Greenpeace’s manifesto demands: no country that’s attempting to rely on wind power has shown decreasing emissions – just the opposite, as in Germany’s case. The Germans built a raft of new coal-fired plant and recommissioned old plant in order to account for its surfeit of wholly weather dependent renewables; and now China is hoping to come to its rescue with more coal-fired power, exported over ultra-high voltage lines, for the same reason.
Contrary to the anti-fossil fuel squad’s ranting, there isn’t a ‘choice’ between wind power and fossil fuel power generation: there’s a ‘choice’ between wind power (with fossil fuel powered back-up equal to 100% of its capacity) and relying on wind power alone. If you’re ready to ‘pick’ the latter, expect to be sitting freezing (or boiling) in the dark more than 60% of the time.
Wind power isn’t a ‘system’, it’s ‘chaos’.
The Poles have worked it out: more (reliable, secure and affordable) power to them.
STOP THESE THINGS 
Notice how the industry always, always, always tries to downplay the visual & noise impacts and frame any dissent as anti-progress. Broken record, broken record, broken record….
We all know that the wind industry is corrupt and that we will see the the environment destroyed until the money stops.
According to a German Information, Poland also set the minimum distance to 10 times x height, that counts up to 2000m, with the actual maximum height of Turbines
Link: http://www.iwr.de/news.php?id=30838
By the way, did you realize, that in Bavaria, our minister pushed a regulation of 10H [10 times the height] – distance for new planned wind monsters, what is nowadays about 2000m.
All the wind Industrie an Profiteurs, claim, that this would be the death of wind power and it may end the Energiewende, because there are only a few areas left, where this distance is possible.
The most embarrassing is that the church leaders(!) and the Bund Naturschutz (ngo for enviroment protection) are also claiming that 10H is a fatal regulation!
Best regards to down under
Andy
++++++++++
I was on duty, and did not find time for an earlier reply.
Reblogged this on Climatism.
A must read.
Profitable for the builders, at the expense of the government, the public and those who can least afford it.
In summary, wind power is profitable to build, but wasteful and ugly to live with.
Profitable? you mean to say heavily subsidized.
Yes, That is the only way it is profitable to build…
I sure wish that our Premier and Minister of Energy and Minister of the Environment and Climate Change would read these articles regularly. Even if we send links or copies of these articles to them, someone in their office probably sorts through their emails and letters and files them away. We receive a canned response from their offices saying, “Thank you for…..We value your input…..” They live in such a ‘bubble’ that our Premier can stand up at Queens Park and say she was not informed that the OPP and the racketeering squad are investigating her office. We’re having real communication problems here in Ontario.
THE ALIENS HAVE LANDED.
Imposing in there hundreds,
Such an army on display,
Those alien grey metal monsters
I saw while on my way.
Aliens on our shores have landed,
So tall, backs straight and true,
At night they watch through flashing eyes
Of red, at me and you.
Some have scaled the mountains,
Others near schools and homes,
Of one thing I am certain,
Those aliens have no souls.
No “whispering” from their ranks at all,
An unearthly sound they make,
It envelops each and everyone,
No more can humans take.
Three giant arms revolving,
Enveloping all around,
They’re here to ‘save the planet’,
The biggest “con” I have found.
Such hideous tall grey monsters,
Invade green and pleasant lands,
To stay for generations,
Unless the people make a stand.
These aliens feed on power and wind,
Without either, they will die,
They’re NOT environmental friendly,
They’re for profit, (at a cost), that’s WHY.
Reblogged this on UPPER SONACHAN WIND FARM and commented:
Good to see that at least one country has woken up…..
Poland is now one country whose leaders have worked out the truth about ‘wind power’ and shown leadership in saying ‘no more’ — being ‘right wing’, ‘fascist’ or ‘left wing’ or ‘communist’ does not prohibit a decision based on the ‘truth’ of the total technological failure of ‘wind power’ to deliver electricity that allows the functioning of any modern society. The problem is getting leaders of any persuasion to take the time to learn the ‘facts’ rather than being swept away by fantasies supplied by proponents of wind farms.
Another excellent piece, STT.
This is how we’ve shared it to WEA.
STT are on a roll today, reporting on Poland where the draft setback legislation would bring about a Wipe Out Weasel scenario.
STT: ‘WARNING: in following this piece you’ll need to turn your volume down – the howling from the wind industry’s parasites and the eco-fascist cheer squad, Greenpeace soon becomes deafening.’
‘Poland a “prisoner of the coal industry”?!? What utter bollocks.; (Greenpeace said that)
Poland is more like a prisoner of common sense and energy economics.’
We checked back to our last post on Poland, in March – the one where we said we hoped that Poland would tell the EWEA delegation to ‘get on their bikes’.
This is also what we said, referring to what Polish Greenpeace said in 2012:
‘Greenpeace takes the view that wind farms should be built where they do not disturb people or endanger the environment, and in particular at locations where construction of them serves the Planet without becoming yet another source of division among people’
Well, wind power disturbs people, endangers the environment and wildlife and is always a source of division, GP, so you lot, on your bikes as well.