Major court defeat for the wind industry
The wind industry is going through hard times.
Dr. Peter F. Mayer, tkp.at (German)
Operators such as Siemens Energy have been making losses with their wind business. Now a US judge, in a dispute with a large Italian wind farm developer, has sided with a Native American tribe and dealt the wind power industry a heavy defeat at the end of 2023.
Jennifer Choe-Groves, a judge at the U.S. Court of International Trade, ordered that Enel, a large Italian green electricity company based in Rome with a presence in America, must tear down a huge wind farm it had built in Osage County, Oklahoma. The lawsuit was brought by the Osage tribe, which lives in the area, as the Tulsa World reports. The ruling is a major victory for the Osage tribe, which opposed the project because of its location near burial sites and the ecological damage the massive turbines do to eagles, and a bitter defeat for Enel, which must now expect hundreds of millions of dollars in decommissioning costs.
The wind farm was the subject of a lengthy legal dispute between the Osage Nation and the project developer that dated back to 2011. At that time the tribe filed a lawsuit in a US court alleging that the project illegally deprived the tribe of access to the mineral deposits beneath the project site, according to the Tulsa World. The project comprised 84 turbines plus the necessary facilities, such as transmission lines and meteorological towers, spread over 8,400 hectares of land which, in Choe-Groves’ view, was leased illegally and to the detriment of the tribe’s sovereignty.
According to the Tulsa World, Choe-Groves’ ruling will be followed by a trial on damages.
Enel states on its website that the company shows “an unparalleled commitment to sustainability and a just and inclusive energy transition for all”. Paolo Romanacci, head of Enel Green Power North America, is also a director of the American Clean Power Association, a green energy trade group which, according to Open Secrets, has spent millions of dollars lobbying the federal government to represent the interests of the green energy industry.
According to Robert Bryce, an energy sector expert who also tracks local rejections of large renewable energy projects across the country, the ordered removal of 84 wind turbines is “unprecedented”. Bryce estimates that the company received tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies for the project – a dynamic that, in his view, is at least partly responsible for the company insisting on building and operating the project despite the tribe’s persistent objections.
“I hope no other tribe has to do what we had to do,” Everett Waller, chairman of the Osage Minerals Council, told the Tulsa World, referring to the tribe’s long legal battle against the project. “This is not just a victory for the Osage Minerals Council, it’s a victory for all of Indian Country. There are a lot of smaller tribes that couldn’t have fought this long, but that’s why we’re Osages. We’re here, this is our homeland, and we will protect it at any cost.”
In Austria, a citizens’ initiative is fighting the clearing of forest for a huge wind farm in the Waldviertel (German).
Original article on tkp.at (German)
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