Shawmut, Montana Wind Farm: Sen. Max Baucus Says Goldwind Expresses Interest In Project

BILLINGS, Mont. -- U.S. Sen. Max Baucus says a global wind energy company headquartered in China plans to build a 20-megawatt wind farm in central Montana.

Baucus says that the wind farm is for proposed for a site near Shawmut, a small community about 75 miles northwest of Billings along the Musselshell River.

It would be built by Goldwind USA, whose Chinese parent company, Goldwind, bills itself as one of the largest wind turbine manufacturers in the world.

Baucus says he met with executives from the company during a 2010 trip to Beijing and urged them to do business in the state.

Goldwind says it hopes to complete construction on the project and begin generating power at the Shawmut site by the end of the year.

Comments

[Genders]

10:16 PM on 01/29/2012

No. Offshore near the 90% of the big cities is the place for wind. Duh.

[larrykat]

12:32 PM on 01/20/2012

20 Megawatts?? What is that, 11 turbines? Gotta be a mis-statement or something.

[sheila]

12:02 PM on 01/20/2012

One more nail in the coffins of our beloved and hugely hugely important bat population:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/nearly-7-million-bats-may-have-died-from-white-nose-fungus-officials-say/2012/01/17/gIQAyixH6P_story.html

We need a moratorium on Big Wind until white nose is eradicated and bat populations have recovered. It is completely insane to kill more bats just to enrich a Chinese Big Energy company!! Have people lost their marbles? Not to mention that Big Wind means Big Gas means Big Fracking. ugh.

Baucus - implement a system of feed in tariffs and PACE loans and sit back and watch while every structure in your district retrofits for efficiency (there goes 50% of your power needs) and installs rooftop solar or ground-mounted backyard systems (there goes 50% of what's left), and ALL THE PROSPERITY FLOWS TO REGULAR AMERICAN PEOPLE NOT OVERSEAS CORPORATIONS.

The mind boggles at how desperate our legislators are to prevent us from enjoying the first phase of energy independence. We will not be silenced!

[Saijanai]

02:32 PM on 01/21/2012

Check out the discussion on what wind is, according to some American Indian tribes, in the context of wind farms:

Saturday afternoon replay, 130 minutes in:

http://www.americanindiansustainableconference.org/webcast/replay.html

[ThinkCreeps]

01:51 AM on 01/20/2012

A 20MW wind farm? Even Baucus-the-unwise must realize that a 20MW windfarm is only a handful of big turbines.

[Kenz300]

11:53 PM on 01/19/2012

Wind, solar, wave energy, geothermal and second generation biofuels made from algae, cellulose and waste are the future.

The price of oil and coal keep rising while the price of wind and solar have dropped by 40% in the last 5 years.

[Linus521]

12:48 AM on 01/20/2012

A thing is right when it tends to protect and save the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community or Earth's ecosystems, the eco-nomy of all life. It is wrong otherwise.

Killing the surface of the natural Earth, the planet's life creating and sustaining physical body or ecosystems, for any agent, any reason kills the Earth and all life supporting cycles, functions and systems -- regardless if the planet is slathered over with dead, planet butchering giant swords, dead solar panel fields, oil rigs or massive oil spills -- death to the Earth, death to all the reasons man breathes. Green as the surface of Mars.

Solar panels and wind incorporated where people actually live, like in cities, buildings, and reinventing old infrastructures into the new technologies, can be green; however killing ecosystems and the biotic community spells death to oxygen releasing, the atmosphere, the climate, the sequestration of the heat trapping gases [which will be released back into the atmosphere when the soil is disturbed and the plant biological diversity sliced away, thus saturating the atmosphere], the nitrogen cycle, the hydrological system, the very biosphere/ecosphere [life itself] and a long list of ecosystems' life creating and sustaining services. In wildness is the salvation...

[JScott]

10:19 AM on 01/20/2012

And yet the US seems to lag behind all this, that it's a Chinese company is not lost on me.
And the RWNM's response is silence. Nothing about 'creating jobs' here in the US etc.

[lilpeg]

10:48 AM on 01/20/2012

V. appalling, given Baucus' involvement. Are there not US companies bidding for this work. Should we not be giving Americans these jobs. I wonder what the Goldwind bid was? Or was this project just given away and not open for bid? Are there not Montanans who could do this?
As below, shouldn't we be building these farms in a more de-centralized fashion, closer to existing distribution grids?

[artleads]

07:20 PM on 01/19/2012

So I guess for the foreseeable future it's wind farms owned by big corporations and the resulting destruction of wilderness, because we refuse to control the powerful elites who wish to enslave the 99% with their big, centralized energy "solutions."

[Saijanai]

08:08 PM on 01/19/2012

Check out what the Transcendental Meditation organization is trying to do in conjunction with various American Indian tribes, vis a vis wind farms. There's a lot of potential there for the tribes to become energy self-sustaining and even sell excess back to the grid.

http://www.americanindiansustainableconference.org/

[artleads]

11:36 PM on 01/19/2012

I clicked on the link and got the home page. Where do I go to next?

[rodjard]

01:29 AM on 01/20/2012

There are people in garages, basements and backyards
worldwide who are intent on resolving home energy needs
organized as open source amateur scientists. They will
provide many diverse sulutions to these problems. They
cannot all be silenced. Many answers will spring up
simultaniously as wellsprings of information. These are
the peoples patriots of today's world. They do not seek
patents or riches. They seek answers to thwart energy cartels.
There is a need also for larger energy distribution from
sun, wind and water on a grand scale. We need it all.
Think man think. Maybe you have a solution. If you do
share it with the world.

[artleads]

10:51 AM on 01/20/2012

OK, but it's not me so much who needs to think more.