Farmers enouraged to cash in on the scramble for wind - Telegraph

One farmer in Northumberland has reported receiving 12 separate offers from developers to build turbines on his land.

A single, 400ft-high turbine can earn a farmer as much as £60,000 a year - far more than the average farmer's income of just over £47,000.
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"In the next decade the government is offering approximately £35bn of subsidy to renewable generators, reaching £6bn a year in 2020, with the whole scheme costing up £100bn in subsidy alone from 2002 to 2030.

"With this sort of money on the table investors and developers are feverish with excitement. The question is whether consumers will be willing or able to shoulder such cost premiums."

Flashback: Wind Energy's Ghosts

Bankrupt Europe has a lesson for Congress about wind power.

Wiwo...wiwo...wiwo.
...The mysterious sounds are "Na leo o Kamaoa"-- the disembodied voices of 37 skeletal wind turbines abandoned to rust on the hundred-acre site of the former Kamaoa Wind Farm.
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The ghosts of Kamaoa are not alone in warning us. Five other abandoned wind sites dot the Hawaiian Isles -- but it is in California where the impact of past mandates and subsidies is felt most strongly. Thousands of abandoned wind turbines littered the landscape of wind energy's California "big three" locations -- Altamont Pass, Tehachapi, and San Gorgonio -- considered among the world's best wind sites.
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In the best wind spots on earth, over 14,000 turbines were simply abandoned. Spinning, post-industrial junk which generates nothing but bird kills.
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After the collapse, wind promoters had a solution to their public image problem. Hide the derelict turbines.
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Altamont's turbines have since 2008 been tethered four months of every year in an effort to protect migrating birds after environmentalists filed suit. According to the Golden Gate Audubon Society, 75 to 110 Golden Eagles, 380 Burrowing Owls, 300 Red-tailed Hawks, and 333 American Kestrels (falcons) are killed by Altamont turbines annually...Developers often set malfunctioning turbines to "virtual" mode -- blades spinning without generating electricity -- in order to keep oil circulating inside the turbine drive. Of course this habit also gives passing drivers an illusion of productivity.