Press Room

Opposition to Windpower Pollutes Climate Policy

eblume@renewwisconsin.org — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Commentary by Michael Vickerman, Executive Director

Almost two decades have elapsed since Dr. James Hansen, a scientist with NASA Goddard Space Institute, injected global climate change into the political bloodstream. “It’s time to stop waffling,” Hansen told a Congressional panel. “The greenhouse effect is here.”

Yet the United States is no closer to adopting an overarching policy to curb greenhouse gas emissions than it was in the summer of 1988. Much of this inaction can be attributed to the successful disinformation campaign underwritten by fossil energy interests like Exxon Mobil and the Western Fuels Association.

Aiding and abetting this campaign was a handful of contrarian scientists who publicly challenged the existence of a scientific consensus on global climate change.

Because these so-called “climate skeptics” possessed scientific credentials, reporters and commentators gave them equal time without performing any due diligence to ferret out the political agenda that lurked behind their public statements. Given nearly unlimited access to the media, climate skeptics successfully sowed doubt and confusion in the minds of decision-makers and ordinary citizens about the severity of the problem and the urgency for action.

While the climate change denial effort has lost steam in recent years, the disinformation tactics used in that campaign haven’t gone away. Instead, they are being retooled and redeployed to challenge the most visible manifestation of carbon reduction policies: windpower installations.

Wind generating capacity is increasing dramatically as more states adopt requirements on utilities to increase their supplies of renewable energy. But not everyone is welcoming this change, and those who don’t want to live near wind turbines are fighting back. In recent years, an Internet-based disinformation campaign has sprung up to both oppose individual wind projects and challenge windpower’s effectiveness in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

An example of this lamentable trend is the Industrial Wind Action Group (www.windaction.org), which serves as a bulletin board for antiwind commentary and articles highlighting grass-roots resistance to specific windpower proposals. Among the myths this web site and others like it propagate is the contention that, contrary to the prevailing wisdom, zero-emission energy sources like wind actually create more carbon dioxide when their impact on the electric grid is taken into account.

The argument goes like this: the wind doesn’t blow all the time, therefore utilities have to build new coal and gas plants to provide back-up power whenever demand for electricity is high and the turbines aren’t spinning.

This is pure mendacity, but it’s also easily disprovable mendacity. As anyone who works at a utility can testify, wind projects do not require dedicated back-up power sources. That’s because utilities are required for reliability purposes to have enough capacity on reserve to accommodate record-breaking levels of demand, even when large power stations are off-line. And in Wisconsin, the reserve margin today is 18% above the highest peak recorded.

That margin is more than sufficient to accommodate all the wind generation that will be built to satisfy Wisconsin’s renewable energy requirements through 2015. Put another way, there is enough reserve capacity to back up We Energies’ 88-turbine project in Fond du Lac County and 11 others of similar size without any effect on system reliability.

According to another oft-repeated Internet myth, wind turbines do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions even when they are producing at full power. This preposterous assertion assumes that grid operators have no control over their generating units, and are unable to redispatch their plants to respond to fluctuating output from wind turbines. In reality, whenever wind is available to displace a fossil generator, a grid operator will shut it down. To do otherwise would add unnecessary costs to the electric system.

Outfits like the Industrial Wind Action Group don’t care if their arguments can’t stand up to scrutiny from energy professionals. That’s because they understand that very few people in state legislatures, county boards, and media outlets know how an electric utility systems works. Lacking the specialized knowledge that would help them filter out fantasy from facts, these decision-makers and opinion-shapers tend to deal with their confusion by giving wind opponents equal time. And when they do, they give the antiwind groups a platform that allows them to pollute with impunity the public discourse on clean, renewable energy.

As Dr. Hansen went on to discover, successful disinformation campaigns are the price we pay for living in a country with a low energy IQ.

Michael Vickerman is the executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, an organization advocating for a sustainable energy future. Michael Vickerman’s commentaries also posted on RENEW’s web site, RENEW’s blog, and and the Madison Peak Oil Group’s blog.

RENEW Wisconsin

Beware of “Flex Fuel” Coal Plants

eblume@renewwisconsin.org — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Note: RENEW and Clean Wisconsin submitted the following response to an Alliant Energy commentary that highlighted the use of biomass in a proposed Cassville generation plant.

Beware of “Flex Fuel” Coal Plants by Michael Vickerman and Ryan Schryver
The year 2007 was not kind to the coal industry and 2008 appears to be more of the same steady stream of bad news for companies wishing to build new coal plants. Public opposition and financial problems have continued to plague projects in every corner of the country. Perhaps that explains Alliant Energy’s eagerness to greenwash its proposed coal plant in Cassville as a “flex fuel” or “biomass-ready” plant (in a guest column in the Wisconsin State Journal, March 18).

But of the 300 megawatts of new capacity that Alliant seeks to build, 90% of it would be dedicated entirely to coal, the dirtiest source of power available. The fuel flexibility would only apply to the remaining 10% of the plant, and even that is hypothetical. There is no guarantee that the plant would ever burn any other fuels besides coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming.

The inefficient design of Alliant’s plant ensures that only one-third of the energy in the coal and biomass is converted into electricity. The other two-thirds will go up the stack as exhaust heat and pollution. This new coal plant would be no more efficient than the existing Cassville plant built more than 40 years ago.

The “flex fuel” concept that Alliant is peddling is simply a smokescreen meant to distract us from the dirty reality of their old-technology coal plant. While the technology Alliant has chosen may allow them to burn small amounts of biomass, it also will have the highest rates of global warming pollution of any technology available. In fact, the technology Alliant proposes to use is so inefficient that the utility would have to burn nearly 25% biomass to have the same rates of global warming pollution as other coal plants burning 100% coal in Wisconsin today.

Burning 10% biomass at Alliant’s coal plant would be the equivalent of putting a 10% ethanol blend in a brand-new Hummer. It may be slightly better than a regular old Hummer, but you can say the same thing about an Edsel.

There are better ways to expand the use of bioenergy sources than through utility-scale generation. For instance, bioenergy projects located at dairy farms, cheese plants and sawmills can produce both heat to serve the host facility and electricity to sell to the energy grid. Because these applications don’t involve trucking fuels over long distances, their energy return is much higher than what could be obtained by burning them in an inefficient coal plant.

There are better options available to Alliant that could provide safe, clean and affordable renewable energy for its customers. Alliant should abandon this dubious flex-fuel charade and start making real investments in renewable energy that won’t perpetuate our dependence on dirty, out-of-state coal. -30-

Michael Vickerman is executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, a Madison-based renewable energy advocacy organization.

Ryan Schryver is a clean energy advocate for Clean Wisconsin, a statewide environmental advocacy organization.

RENEW Wisconsin

Walling Out Wind

eblume@renewwisconsin.org — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0600

Commentary
by Michael Vickerman
RENEW Wisconsin

What is it about living within sight of large wind turbines that spooks certain people to the point of irrationality?

Consider the example of Trempealeau County in western Wisconsin. At the urging of a local citizens group, the County Board there adopted an ordinance last month that requires wind turbines higher than 150 feet tall to be set back no less than one mile from neighboring residences, schools, churches and businesses. This is by far the longest setback distance on wind turbines imposed to date by a local government in our state.

Now, the population density of Trempealeau County (38 residents per square mile) is less than half of the statewide average of 103 residents per sq. mile. Even so, as one developer pointed out at the hearing, there is not one acre of land that can legally host a commercial wind generator under this ordinance.

Why would a local board effectively ban wind turbines within its jurisdiction? Those backing the ordinance say that the one-mile setback is necessary to protect the health and safety of its citizens. Turbines, they contend, may produce sounds and electrical currents that can cause illnesses, even though no peer-reviewed study documenting such a phenomenon exists.

In a recently published book examining the environmental impacts of wind energy projects,” the National Research Council wrote that wind turbines that are 1,000 feet away from a listener produce “relatively low noise or sound-pressure levels compared with other common sources such as a busy office, and with nighttime ambient noise levels in the countryside. While turbine noise increases with wind speed, ambient noises—for example, due to the rustling of tree leaves— increase at a higher rate and can mask the turbine noise.”

In other words, while wind turbines produce an aerodynamic sound that is audible at 1,000 feet, ambient sounds inside a residence (e.g., air-conditioners, fans, refrigerators) and outside (e.g., birds, crickets) will very often mask or muffle it, even at night.

Then there is the issue of the flickering shadows cast by the turbine’s spinning blades at certain times of the year under certain conditions. Though wind opponents commonly inflate this phenomenon into a health issue, the National Research Council believes otherwise. “Shadow flicker is not important at distant sites (for example, greater than 1,000 feet from a turbine) except during the morning and evening when shadows are long. However, sunlight intensity is also lower during the morning and evening; this tends to reduce the effects of shadows and shadow flicker.”

A house 1,000 feet from a wind turbine could experience as much as 20 hours of flickering shadows per year, assuming cloudless conditions and strong crosswinds during all 4,380 hours of daylight in a year. Even if Wisconsin had such a climate, which would make the state uninhabitable for obvious reasons, how does this even rise to the level of a nuisance, let alone a health risk?

But it doesn’t take much mental effort to come up with at least a half a dozen land uses more disruptive to neighbors a half mile away than commercial wind turbines would be from 1,000 feet. Some that might legitimately be considered nuisances are airports, quarries, landfills, auto and motorcycle racetracks, rail freight corridors, hog farms, food processing plants, central station power plants, highways, automobile dealerships that are lit up 24/7, and anyplace where trucks congregate. Yet I’m willing to bet that there’s not one local ordinance in Wisconsin that requires them to be at least one mile away from a residence.

Meanwhile, there are four fossil energy stations in the heart of Madison supplying heat and electricity to local businesses and residences. Classroom buildings surround the main heating plant serving University of Wisconsin’s Madison campus. Within 1,000 feet of Madison Gas and Electric’s downtown power plant, one can find restaurants, offices, apartment buildings, stores, a bike path, a day care center and over 50 residences.

Clearly, for thousands of Madisonians, living, working, teaching or taking classes in full view of these energy plants is no big deal. But to hear Trempealeau County’s wind opponents talk, living among wind turbines would devastate their quality of life. That’s a very harsh assessment of a form of electricity generation that neither pollutes the air or water nor depletes the energy resource it uses.

Trempealeau County’s antipathy toward local wind generation is symptomatic of areas that are completely dependent on the outside world to provide them with their energy. All of the motor fuel, heat and electricity consumed by the citizenry comes from somewhere else. The coal that generates electricity for that area is mined in Wyoming. The power plants that burn the fuel are located in other counties. There is not enough generating capacity in that county to power a single holiday light display, let alone a school or a church.

Indeed, apart from the distribution lines along the roadways, there are very few visual cues reminding Trempealeau County of the electrical apparatus that allows them to toast their bread or automatically open their garage doors. Should one be surprised that a population used to views without smokestacks, large transmission lines, substations, strip mines, and drilling pads would object to wind turbines in their midst? Saddened maybe, but not surprised.

Yet some communities are beginning to appreciate the liability of energy dependency in a time when oil costs $100 per barrel. In the Town of Springfield, a semirural part of Dane County 10 miles northwest of Madison, a group of farmers has banded together to host a six-turbine wind project. Though this installation would be visible from several dozen neighboring residences within a half-mile of it, not one of them has registered an objection to the proposed energy facility.

Indeed, this may be the only project in Wisconsin that has not triggered any opposition, even though the population density in Springfield is higher than in other areas of the state where restrictive ordinances have been adopted, including Trempealeau County. Evidently, the neighbors around the host farms have concluded that nearby wind turbines would not constitutes a health or safety hazard.

This begs the question: why is living in proximity to wind turbines acceptable in one part of Wisconsin and unacceptable in other areas? And what kind of world would come about if every jurisdiction followed Trempealeau County’s lead? These are questions worth wrestling over, even though such an effort would inexorably lead to a book-length response.

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Sources: Environmental Impacts of Wind Energy Projects, National Research Council, May 2007, The National Academies Press. http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11935

Michael Vickerman is the executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, a nonprofit organization that acts as a catalyst to advance a sustainable energy future through public policy and private sector initiatives. Michael Vickerman’s commentaries also posted on RENEW’s blog: http://www.renewwisconsin.org and the Madison Peak Oil Group’s blog: http://www.madisonpeakoil-blog.blogspot.com.

RENEW Wisconsin

State must eliminate roadblocks to wind energy

eblume@renewwisconsin.org — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0600

Guest column by Michael Vickerman, Executive Director RENEW Wisconsin

When FPL Energy’s windpower project in southwest Wisconsin was completed in 2001, it became the largest of its kind in the state. The 20 turbines visible from U.S. Highway 18 more than doubled Wisconsin’s wind generating capacity. Support for the Montfort project was rock-solid at every level, from local landowners to the Iowa County Board, and the windpower plant was approved without a dissenting vote.

Six years later Montfort still remains Wisconsin’s largest wind installation. While construction has started on two larger installations near Fond du Lac, local opponents slowed their progress with lawsuits. And, like a contagious disease, citizen litigiousness is spreading fast. In the last 18 months, lawsuits have been filed in Calumet and Manitowoc counties, each with the aim of stopping proposed windpower plants from being built.

In the face of local pressure, three counties"Manitowoc, Shawano and Door--adopted ordinances with setback requirements so stringent as to render commercial wind development impossible. The popular Montfort project, which continues to impress visitors who have never seen a wind farm before, could not be built in those jurisdictions now.

And the problem is spreading. A moratorium on wind turbines remains in effect in Trempealeau County while officials there finalize an arbitrarily restrictive set of rules that will effectively prevent turbines from being installed, including those designed for personal use.

In many areas in Wisconsin, it is now easier to obtain a permit for a large confined animal operation or a regional landfill than a commercial wind facility. Even community-scale efforts, like the three-turbine project proposed near Evansville, are running into opposition.

Where resistance to specific wind proposals springs up, local governments often buckle under the pressure. The result is delay, restrictive ordinances that effectively halt wind projects from proceeding, and litigation.

Why are these opposition groups so effective? In large part they capitalize on local government’s unfamiliarity with wind generators. How many county supervisors, planning officials and town board members have actually walked around Montfort’s turbines and listened to them up close? Clearly too few, because if they had, they would learn that the sound from these turbines is undetectable at a distance of 1,000 feet.

State law forbids local governments from restricting or blocking wind energy projects unless the condition serves to protect public health and safety. Unfortunately, the law leaves it up to local jurisdictions to establish the appropriate standards for setback distances and sound output. Needless to say, these standards vary widely from one local unit of government to another, even though turbine size and operating characteristics don’t change when crossing political boundaries.

While the Public Service Commission has developed reasonable standards for siting wind projects, they only apply to projects greater than 100 megawatts. However, the overwhelming majority of Wisconsin’s wind projects are smaller, and, under current law, the PSC has no say over their fate. This disconnect must not be allowed to persist.

This dynamic is unfortunate, in that town and county governments are predisposed to be more sensitive to local concerns than to state renewable energy requirements. There is no way Wisconsin utilities can comply with the state’s new renewable energy standard, let alone a potentially higher one, so long as the number of local jurisdictions adopting unreasonable siting standards continues to grow.

Wind energy is the only renewable resource that is both cost-effective and scalable to utility operating systems. Many public policy objectives, ranging from economic development to environmental protection, are compromised when opposition groups are effectively allowed to control when, where and how much windpower to build.

The state can remedy this situation in two ways. One, it can establish uniform siting standards applicable to all projects above a certain size, as was done with large livestock operations. Second, it should give commercial wind developers pursuing smaller proposals the option of applying to the PSC for approval.

To talk about increasing renewable energy requirements before fixing the problems confronting wind development here is to, as the hoary cliché goes, put the cart before the horse.

RENEW Wisconsin

Fossil Fuel Watch - Off the Beaten Path in Wind Country

eblume@renewwisconsin.org — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0600

Off the Beaten Path in Wind Country
by Michael Vickerman
RENEW Wisconsin
November 27, 2007

In late October I went on a nine-day, 2,500-mile-long road trip from Wisconsin to the East Coast. The pretext for this journey was the annual renewable energy marketing conference, held this year in Philadelphia. There, I was to give a talk on the State of Wisconsin’s plans to buy renewable electricity to offset part of its energy use.

There was also a conference in Ohio later that week that I wanted to attend. But the task of arranging this itinerary into a three-legged air journey turned out to be a logistical nightmare, so I decided to drive instead of fly.

Yes, it was a much slower trip, but more of the landscape is revealed traveling at 70 miles per hour on the ground instead of 370 mph at 30,000 feet. During the expedition I visited my brother in New Jersey and took photos of five wind energy projects: two in Illinois, two in Pennsylvania and one in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

I could not have picked a better day to view the Illinois projects, particularly Horizon Wind’s Twin Groves installation east of Bloomington. There, between the amber cornfields that stretched to the horizon and the azure sky above it stood 120 spinning wind turbines, efficiently converting 25 mph winds into enough electricity to energize all of Bloomington’s households that day.

Once inside the project zone, the turbines appeared to be everywhere, providing welcome movement and vertical relief against a backdrop consisting of two flat planes of color and the occasional farmhouse bracketed by trees.

Farther east loomed another 120 wind generators not yet activated, completely motionless in the brisk autumn wind. This group of turbines resembled an industrial-strength sculpture garden set down in the middle of the Corn Belt. When all 240 turbines are fully energized this December, Twin Groves will become the largest windpower plant in the eastern United States.

In most U.S. locations, the scale of Twin Groves would simply overwhelm the viewshed. But when the landscape has already been simplified into a monocultural expanse, it doesn’t matter how many turbines one can see from the back porch. Indeed, Twin Groves successfully marries commodity-based agriculture with commodity-scale renewable energy.

Bulk windpower may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it is the only renewable energy source that can be scaled up to displace meaningful volumes of airborne pollutants that come with generating electricity from fossil fuels. When fully operational, the 396 megawatt (MW) Twin Groves project will displace almost 1.5 million tons of carbon dioxide and 100 pounds of mercury each year.

Wind generation at this scale also yields an exceptionally high energy profit ratio compared with all other energy sources being produced, including new sources of crude oil and gasoline. Over its life Twin Groves should put out at least 30 units of energy for every unit put in, as compared with the energy profit from Canadian tar sands (about three to one) and corn-derived ethanol (about 1.4 to 1). A higher energy return, it should be remembered, frees up more wealth to support other socially useful institutions, such as schools, libraries, concerts, and day care centers.

Unlike coal, wind can be converted into useful energy at the same location without depleting the resource. Nowhere is the contrast between coal’s decline and wind’s advance greater than in the anthracite belt of east-central Pennsylvania. On my way to visit Iberdrola’s 26 MW Locust Ridge wind project, I drove through a community, Mahanoy City, that was once entirely supported by the coal industry.

Sixty years ago, the coal breaker located at the edge of town cleaned and processed 12,500 tons of coal a day, much of it stripped from nearby ridges. When the easy-to- remove anthracite began to peter out, the coal company shut down the old breaker, which was Mahanoy City’s primary employer, and built a new one farther from town. About the only jobs left in Mahanoy City involved reclaiming old mine sites.

After several decades of economic contraction and population loss, things are finally looking up for Mahanoy City. A healing layer of vegetation now covers the once-shorn hillsides, and a 13-turbine project now graces the northern ridgeline, injecting dollars into the community’s financial bloodstream and producing energy for the long haul.

While coal may still be king in Appalachia, it’s also a sunset commodity that cannot support a sustainable local economy. Unlike the old breaker plant in Mahanoy City, the wind turbines on Locust Ridge are staying put, because that’s where the resource is, day in and day out.

Michael Vickerman is the executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, an organization advocating for a sustainable energy future.

RENEW Wisconsin

Spitting into the Wind (Part 1)

eblume@renewwisconsin.org — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Cape Wind Commentary
by Michael Vickerman
August 31, 2007

When the news of a proposed windpower project in the waters off Cape Cod broke six years ago, the last thing developer Jim Gordon expected to create was a political tempest of such ferocity that it became the nation’s No. 1 energy hot spot, displacing Alaska’s North Slope in the process.

Clearly, Gordon miscalculated, and the battle royal that ensued—and continues to this day—is chronicled in absorbing fashion in Cape Wind, a new and valuable book that sheds light on the most privileged, if not powerful, opposition group the world has ever seen.

To be fair to Gordon, nobody knew back in the fall of 2001 how Cape Cod’s bluebloods would react to the idea of a wind project located nearby. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, it was reasonable to assume that Americans of all socioeconomic stripes would support energy production from domestic renewable resources like wind. Then again, no one before Gordon had the audacity to propose erecting wind turbines, 170 in total, a mere five and one-half miles from their seaside Xanadus.

As Gordon soon found out, the Cape and Island elites weren’t about to let this interloper turn their pleasuring grounds into New England’s largest source of clean energy without a fight. Abandoning uppercrust restraint for the kind of overheated language one expects from enraged Muslim clerics, the bluebloods closed ranks and issued a fatwa of sorts against the Cape Wind project. Gordon’s vision was described as “a monster project” that if built would irreparably sully “the hallowed ground” that is Nantucket Sound.

To conceal the NIMBY nature of their objections, the more well-heeled among them created an organization called the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. But few were fooled by this transparent attempt to spin a grassroots movement out of old money. Anyone hearing the words “save our sound” knew right away that it was the view, not the environment, that needed saving.

As to the advancing tidewrack of malls and trophy homes cluttering the land itself—Cape Cod’s other backyard—these self-described environmentalists have uttered nary a disapproving word.

The plutocratic nature of the Alliance was nicely embodied by its first leader, Doug Yearley, who had recently stepped down from his day job as CEO of Phelps Dodge, the global mining giant, to spend more quality time with his 7,700-square-foot house overlooking Nantucket Sound. Yearley organized the official “coming out” of the Alliance, held at the local yachting club in June 2002, which drew many of his neighbors from Cape Cod’s southern shore. This occasion may mark the only time in human history in which a “grassroots” environmental organization succeeded in raising $4 million before lunch. It was enough of an ante to support several full-time staffers, hire a number of outside consultants, and retain a Washington law firm with a rich history of representing corporate polluters, including Phelps Dodge.

The financial firepower that this opposition group wields is certainly impressive. It has raised and spent $20 million over its six-year history to keep Jim Gordon’s wind turbines out of a body of water Alliance members have come to regard as their own property. But a more powerful weapon than a limitless treasury is political connections, and the Alliance is well stocked with wealthy contributors who have no trouble reaching the most powerful politicians in the land with one well-placed phone call.

Indeed, Cape Wind provides a glimpse into a world few of us know. It is the story of a group of people who believe that their privileged status entitles them to have veto power over a renewable energy project of national significance. This enclave of wealth is the closest thing we have to an aristocracy in this country. The opponents are behaving the same way a duke or duchess would if they perceived any encroachment on their power to control their visual environment. What Jim Gordon found out is that they view Nantucket Sound as an extension of their own domain.

The book nicely captures the class warfare dynamics in this confrontation. Among the most active and generous opponents one finds oil company executives, a Listerine heiress, the top contributor to the Massachusetts Republican Party, and the former owner of Reebok. Not one dime raised by the Alliance came from a fortune connected to renewable energy development.

To the opposition, Gordon’s wind turbines are more than just large mechanical devices viewable from their gated sanctuaries; they are signifiers of new money and ideas muscling in on their territory. Situating something as new-fangled as wind turbines in Nantucket Sound might actually compel the Tom and Daisy Buchanans of Cape Cod into an aesthetic contemplation they neither understand nor desire, to paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald’s words in The Great Gatsby.

As far as these wannabe aristocrats are concerned, they got theirs, and the rest of the world be damned. And they are used to getting their way.

Considering how many buttons the Alliance has already pushed to have this project disposed of, Cape Wind is lucky to be alive. The next installment in this series will ruminate on the project’s near-death experience in Congress, orchestrated by Sens. Ted Kennedy, whose family vacation compound overlooks Nantucket Sound, and John Warner, who became a Cape Cod blueblood by marrying into the Mellon family. If that episode doesn’t convince you that “all politics is local,” even on the floor of the U.S. Senate, nothing else will.

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Sources: Williams, Wendy and Whitcomb, Robert, Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Class, Politics, and the battle for Our Energy Future on Nantucket Sound, 2007, Public Affairs, New York.

Michael Vickerman is the executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, a Madison-based nonprofit organization that acts as a catalyst to advance a sustainable energy future through public policy and private sector initiatives.

RENEW Wisconsin

Spitting into the Wind (Part 2)

eblume@renewwisconsin.org — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Cape Wind Commentary
by Michael Vickerman
September 13, 2007

This is the second installment in a series of Michael Vickerman's commentaries inspired by Wendy Williams’ and Robert Whitcomb’s absorbing new book Cape Wind, which chronicles the political clashes triggered by a proposal to build America’s first offshore windpower project. The Cape Wind proposal envisions 130 turbines in the Horseshoe Shoal area of Nantucket Sound, a shallow stretch of water equidistant from Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Island.

When the Cape Wind proposal came to light in the fall of 2001, almost everyone in the Massachusetts political establishment reacted as though the turbines themselves were radioactive. Democrats and Republicans alike backpedaled from this ambitious scheme and dove for cover faster than you can say Senator Larry Craig.

Only a handful of brave souls were willing to buck the prevailing political currents. One of them was Matt Patrick, the state representative from the affected area. With his background in energy conservation, Patrick understood that a large wind installation in Nantucket Sound could dramatically reduce emissions from the aging oil-fired generator that serves the Cape and Islands region.

From time to time Patrick would publicly urge his constituents to consider Cape Wind’s merits before leaping to negative conclusions. This tactic did not endear himself to the ultrarich project opponents who had formed the faux grassroots group Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. Neither did a facetious essay he and his son composed that poked fun at his constituents’ reasons for opposing Cape Wind. Among them were:

• The wind turbines won’t match the color of the new drapes in the boathouse we just redecorated; and
• The turbulence from the wind wake caused by the stupid windmills will take the wind out of our sails.

This bit of cheek sent Alliance members reaching for their independent thought alarms and their wallets. In 2002 the group recruited Larry Wheatley, a relative unknown, to challenge Patrick and transform this electoral race into a referendum on the Cape Wind project. Flush with bundled contributions from Alliance members, the challenger came within 15 votes of unseating Patrick in what the authors of Cape Wind call “one of the most expensive state representative campaigns in Massachusetts history.”

Wheatley’s chief benefactor was Richard J. Egan, a wealthy contributor to the Republican Party, whose $13 million Cape Cod mansion commands a view of the water. Egan also helped engineer and finance Mitt Romney’s successful gubernatorial campaign that year. Romney repaid the favor by declaring his administration’s opposition to Cape Wind.

Romney’s desire to ingratiate himself with the Alliance reached its zenith in December 2004, when he appeared at a public hearing in Cape Cod to criticize the project. This may have been the only time in history that a sitting governor testified in person at an Army Corps of Engineers hearing.

In articulating his reasons for opposing Cape Wind, Romney gave little indication that he had read the draft Environmental Impact Statement. “I support renewable energy, “the governor said. “I’ve seen wind farms. They are not pretty.” Romney added that although wind development might be acceptable in the Berkshire Mountains or elsewhere along the seacoast, it does not belong in “a national treasure” like Nantucket Sound.

Romney’s contribution to NIMBY rhetoric raises two important questions: one about his fitness for the presidency and the other about the definition of a national treasure. About the first, here is a governor who decided to let his opposition to Cape Wind define his administration’s energy policy. Either Romney was blind to the nation’s interest in displacing an imported fuel like bunker oil with locally produced renewable electricity—a benefit Cape Wind can deliver but a similar project in the Berkshires cannot—or else he was willing to sacrifice that environmental gain just to curry favor with his backers.

Whatever the explanation, Romney’s hostility toward Cape Wind, and his administration’s repeated attempts to kill the project, are the workings of a man who is manifestly unfit to lead a nation that has no choice but to cut back its consumption of energy and expand its use of renewables.

As for the “treasure” that is Nantucket Sound, suffice it to say that its popularity as a summertime pleasuring grounds, not to mention all the ferryboats and barges bearing fuel oil cruising off Cape Cod’s coast, is ample proof that while it may be beautiful, it is also a heavily used waterway. According to Richard Elrick, a ferryboat captain with 25 year’s experience, the ferryboats skimming the waters often discharge raw sewage into Nantucket Sound, which is perfectly legal if done at least three nautical miles from shore. Pristine it is not.

But there is one part of the sound that is relatively free from barges, ferryboats, yachts, and motorboats: a shallow zone called Horseshoe Shoal. With water depths ranging from two to 50 feet at mean tide, Horseshoe Shoal is hazardous to commercial shipping but accommodating to windpower development. It is certainly one of the best locations to situate a wind project anywhere along the Atlantic coast.

As the Cape Wind controversy spilled over into 2005, the Alliance came to the realization that the public relations tides were moving against them. For a while the opposition kept environmental groups out of the fray by deploying the one opponent with impeccable environmentalist credentials, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to decry the project’s presumed impacts on aquatic life as well as the recreational industry.

But when people who can afford summer homes on the seacoast, like the Kennedy family, begin equating the views out their living room windows with the splendor of Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks, the environmental argument recedes in the face of such obvious self-interest.

As the younger Kennedy’s credibility on this controversy melted away, the Alliance shifted gears and decided to engage its No. 1 political asset: Ted Kennedy, the senior senator from Massachusetts. Senator Kennedy was no less hostile toward the Cape Wind proposal than his nephew—indeed, he has steadfastly refused to meet the developer, Jim Gordon. But initially, Kennedy was content to bide his time.

Stepping into the Cape Wind fracas was a politically ticklish matter for Sen. Kennedy, whose record on environmental protection was among the very best in Congress. He had earned the lasting gratitude of national environmental groups for organizing filibusters against energy bills that would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas extraction. Becoming ensnared in an offshore wind controversy near his family’s vacation retreat was the last thing Kennedy needed so long as ANWR’s fate hung in the balance.

The omnibus energy legislation adopted in August 2005 was free and clear of any provisions authorizing drilling in that part of Alaska. With ANWR and energy security issues off the Congressional radar screen, the moment had come for Kennedy to engineer Cape Wind’s demise, one that would be carried out by others in Congress, leaving his own hands clean.

Phase 1 of Kennedy’s ambush came in the form of a U.S. Coast Guard authorization bill. The committee chairman, Alaska Representative Don Young, inserted an amendment prohibiting the placement of wind turbines within 1.5 miles of a ferry route. This provision was snuck in without any public hearing or discussion, and it was done presumably at Kennedy’s request. If it remained in the larger bill, the Cape Wind project would have been a goner.

With great urgency Gordon patched together a team of allies to organize a highly public campaign to save Cape Wind from death by Congressional knavery. Project defenders pounced on a Dear Colleague letter penned by Young that repeatedly singled out Cape Wind as a navigational hazard. No other projects were listed.

With this letter Gordon had proof that Young had cooked up a new national policy, which ostensibly would apply to all U.S. waters, to stop just one project: his. The press responded with editorials denouncing Young’s sneak attack, and the Coast Guard authorization foundered in a House-Senate conference committee.

No doubt the result of Kennedy’s behind-the-scenes prodding, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, a member of that conference committee, took out Young’s language and substituted a new amendment which he described as a compromise. The new language prohibited the construction of an offshore windpower plant in Nantucket Sound if a governor of neighboring state (e.g., Massachusetts) opposes the project. With that language, all pretense of these machinations being anything other than a hit job on Cape Wind evaporated.

From Kennedy’s perspective, this new wrinkle was an improvement, because it would delegate the dirty work to Gov. Romney, whose opposition to Cape Wind was a matter of public record. But the counteroffensive waged by Gordon and his allies was finding traction in Congress. The heads of the Senate Energy Committee took offense at this unwarranted intrusion into their turf, which they considered a breach of courtesy. In a reference to President Bush’s State of the Union Address in 2006, Sen. Pete Domenici, the committee chair wrote, “It would be folly for us in Congress to talk about breaking our addiction to foreign oil and, at the same time, pass laws that stymie our own production of clean and renewable energies here at home.”

Greenpeace, a strong supporter of offshore wind development, ratcheted up the pressure. Its staff composed a television commercial featuring a cartoon version of Sen. Kennedy playing Whack-a-Mole on several wind turbines standing in the water. “I might see them from my mansion on the Cape,” the Kennedy look-a-like explained. With that commercial Greenpeace struck PR gold, because the advertisement snowballed into a news story that was aired repeatedly, so juicy was this new rift between the Kennedys and environmental groups.

As the attacks from Gordon’s right-left coalition intensified, Sen. Kennedy and his co-conspirators ran out of maneuvering room. In June 2006 the amendment that held up the Coast Guard authorization bill for six months was dropped, and the bill sailed out of conference committee. But Kennedy couldn’t resist taking one last swipe at the project on the Senate floor. There he showed the world a side of him that conflicted with an image carefully cultivated over a senatorial career dating back to 1962.

Clearly oblivious to the contents of the Energy Policy Act adopted nine months earlier, the senator declared that Cape Wind would be “exempt from all the [environmental] protections.” That law, which Kennedy voted for, created a regulatory framework for permitting offshore windpower plants under the purview of the Mineral Management Service, which also has jurisdiction over offshore oil and gas operations. Where Kennedy’s whopper came from no one knows, but like most NIMBY utterances it was completely without foundation.

That the proposed Cape Wind installation managed to escape serious harm while stuck for six months in Kennedy’s clutches is a testament to Jim Gordon’s tenacity. Most people would have surrendered at the sight of all those Congressional daggers arrayed against him. But Gordon simply refused to knuckle under, and in the end it was Kennedy who conceded.

Any honest appraisal of Kennedy’s senatorial career must take into account this grotesque display of senatorial pique. By placing a higher priority on his own interest and those of his yachting buddies than on Cape Cod’s air quality and America’s energy future, Kennedy managed to fritter away, in one prolonged burst of pettiness, the conservationist credentials he had accumulated in his 44 years on Capitol Hill.

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Sources: Williams, Wendy and Whitcomb, Robert, Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Class, Politics, and the Battle for Our Energy Future on Nantucket Sound, 2007, Public Affairs, New York.

“Nantucket Sound - Beautiful but not Pristine,” Elrick, Richard. September 4, 2007. Clean Power Now.

Michael Vickerman (mvickerman@renewwisconsin.org) is the executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, a Madison-based nonprofit organization that acts as a catalyst to advance a sustainable energy future through public policy and private sector initiatives. These commentaries also posted on RENEW’s blog and Madison Peak Oil Group’s blog.

RENEW Wisconsin

RENEW finds problems with Calument County wind ordinance

eblume@renewwisconsin.org — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0500

July 31, 2007

Ms. Julie Heuvelman
Calumet County Planning Department
206 Court Street
Chilton, WI 53014-1198

Dear Ms. Heuvelman;

On behalf of RENEW Wisconsin, an independent nonprofit organization with over 275 members statewide (including several in Calumet County), I would like to provide our perspective on two motions that appear on the August 2nd meeting agenda for the County Planning and Zoning Committee. The two motions, listed under the heading “Old Business,” would amend the County’s wind energy ordinance (Chapter 79). The first would require the preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for large turbine installations. The second would require the developer to have executed a Power Purchase Agreement with a utility as part of its application.

Unfortunately, I will be unable to attend this meeting in person. However, I would ask Planning and Zoning Committee members to consider RENEW Wisconsin’s comments which appear below as they deliberate on these two motions. To facilitate their consideration I ask the Planning Department to distribute this statement to Committee members prior to their August 2nd meeting.

Requiring an Environmental Impact Statement.

While RENEW recognizes that an Environmental Impact Statement can be an appropriate vehicle for examining issues relevant to public health and safety, we oppose this motion on the following grounds:

1. There appears to be no minimum capacity threshold triggering the applicability of this requirement. Without a lower boundary, this requirement could conceivably apply to single-turbine installations as well as larger groupings of turbines. Presumably, the applicant of a 10 megawatts (MW) project would have to examine the same set of impacts as would a developer proposing to erect 80 MW. The smaller the project the more costly this requirement becomes, and is likely to encourage developers to add turbines to the proposal as a way of reducing the per kilowatt-hour cost of the EIS.

2. Under Wisconsin law, a full-blown EIS requires the applicant to identify and characterize a similar development at an alternative site. As applied to nonutility applicants, this requirement makes little sense in a jurisdiction as small as Calumet County. The County is already aware of the specific areas within its boundaries that developers would consider attractive for development. Little useful information will be gained from reviewing a second development scenario a few miles up the road from the developer’s preferred location.

3. It is not clear how an EIS prepared by a county would be guided by state energy policy, especially the Energy Policy Law, which expressly favors renewables over conventional energy sources. Moreover, it is an open question as to whether a developer could appeal an unfavorable County decision to the Public Service Commission, which, unlike county governments, has the legal authority to implement and enforce Wisconsin renewable energy law.

A requirement like this, imposed on every installation in Calumet County regardless of project capacity and location, presumes that wind energy is an inherently harmful technology with negative environmental impacts. We disagree with that presumption, and so does the state of Wisconsin. Wisconsin energy policy explicitly favors the use of noncombustible renewable energy resources like wind and solar. Renewable energy resources like windpower serve the public interest by:

1)Securing adequate supplies of energy from nondepleting sources;
2)Protecting ratepayers from rising fossil fuel prices;
3)Reducing the discharge of CO2 and other hazardous air pollutants from generation sources;
4)Preserving working farms and pasture land;
5)Reducing the flow of capital out of Wisconsin for energy purchases.

To expand their contribution to the electric resource mix, the Legislature last year passed 2005 Act 141, which requires utilities to derive, by 2015, 10% of the energy they sell from renewable resources. RENEW estimates that wind energy will account for about 90% of the new renewable energy leveraged by this law. But the proposed requirement, if adopted, will clearly complicate if not outright defeat efforts on the part of utilities and independent power producers alike to provide the state with a valuable renewable energy source in accordance with state policy.

If the County adopts this particular amendment, you can be certain that developers will respond by expanding the size of their project above 100 MW. Under the power plant siting law, the PSC is required to perform an environmental assessment of the proposed installation. The presumption going into any project review is that wind generation is an environmentally benign technology compared with other energy resources, and that the purpose of an environmental assessment is to identify any factors specific to the project site that might offset the emissions reduction benefits that wind energy always provides. When the PSC reviewed Invenergy’s application to build the Forward Wind Center, it determined that, given the potential for undesirable wildlife impacts due to the project’s proximity to the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge, a more rigorous environmental review was in order. However, when the PSC reviewed We Energies’ application to build Blue Sky Green Field, the agency could not identify a potentially problematic environmental impact at the site We Energies had proposed for development. For that reason, the PSC did not require the preparation of an EIS.

Given that history, an EIS requirement will motivate wind project developers with active prospects in Calumet County to supersize their proposals in excess of the 100 MW threshold. Wind developers will seek Commission review of their proposals for three practical reasons. First, if they can demonstrate that the developing that site poses no unique threats to the environment, the Commission might not require the preparation of an EIS as part of the proceeding. Second, unlike the PSC, Calumet County has no experience reviewing power plant proposals. Third, Calumet County is under no legal requirement to decide on a windpower application in a specified period of time, in contrast to the PSC, which is required by law to issue a decision no more than 180 days from the date the project application was deemed to be complete.

Requiring the Developer to Include an Executed Power Purchase Agreement as Part of the Application

RENEW opposes this motion for a variety of reasons. First, a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) has no bearing on the County’s ability to protect health and safety of its constituents. In our view a local jurisdiction that adopts such a requirement is exceeding its regulatory authority defined in Section 66.0401 of the state’s statutes. We are not aware of any PPA that addresses setbacks, sound output, shadows, groundwater protection or other element of a permit or ordinance that relates to public health and safety.

Second, the requirement is wholly impractical. An independent wind energy developer cannot enter into a PPA with a utility without having control of the project site. Until a permit is issued, the developer can only estimate electricity production, based on the number of turbines, the project layout, and the turbine type described in the application. But the conditions of a siting permit may result in a different number of wind turbines than what was proposed in the application. The developer may also have no choice but to select a different turbine to compensate for any reduction in approved turbine locations resulting from permit conditions. A change in project size, turbine layout or turbine type would assuredly have an impact on project revenues. For that reason, developers cannot obtain financing for a wind project unless such important details as project size, turbine configuration, and turbine type are fixed. And a project developer simply cannot enter into a PPA without having fixed the project’s financing terms, a necessary element in determining the sale price of the power produced. It would appear, then, that this requirement is intended to act as a “poison pill” against the development of independently owned wind projects in Calumet County.

Third, this requirement, if adopted would be discriminatory, because while it would render independently owned windpower projects unfinanceable, it would have no effect on utility-owned projects. The reason is clear: utilities are retail providers of electricity, and would simply fix the project’s construction costs in their revenue requirements. No PPA is required. Even though Section 79 is silent on the issue of wind project ownership, this requirement would have the practical effect of limiting wind development in Calumet County to just utility-owned projects. We don’t believe Calumet County has the legal authority to restrict wind development on the basis of ownership.

A final point: we at RENEW believe that local jurisdictions have an obligation to support windpower developments that will enable the state’s utilities to meet their renewable energy requirements in a cost-effective manner. We are not opposed to local jurisdictions scrutinizing individual wind projects on the basis of their likely impact on public health and safety. But we have seen a number of local jurisdictions load up their ordinances with requirements that have an ulterior purpose: to make wind development within their borders as uneconomic and unpleasant as possible. This is done to placate a loud minority of residents who want the wind turbines to go someplace where they can’t see them. The motions pending before the County Planning and Zoning Committee are designed to keep wind turbines out of Calumet County, and force them on another jurisdiction. But there are only a few counties where wind development is economically attractive, and Calumet County is one of them. Therefore, when considering these motions, we ask that you keep the following question in mind: what would happen if every county adopted these requirements? Because if every county did, then there would be no place in Wisconsin where wind generation could be built, and Wisconsin would become more abjectly dependent on imported CO2–emitting fossil fuels than it is now. Is that the direction Wisconsin should pursue?

Sincerely,

Michael Vickerman
Executive Director
RENEW Wisconsin

RENEW Wisconsin

Fossil Fuel Watch - A Federal Energy Policy: Can It Happen Here?

eblume@renewwisconsin.org — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Petroleum and Natural Gas Watch
by Michael Vickerman, RENEW Wisconsin
July 27, 2007, Vol. 6, Number 9

Of all the issue areas that Congress dives into from time to time, none reveals the inability of our legislative branch to fashion an internally consistent national policy quite like energy. The usual items in an energy bill--tax credit extensions, fuel subsidies, fresh regulatory requirements (and loopholes), new rules on offshore drilling, etc.—are designed to reward specific industries and influential constituencies. This year’s energy bill promises to follow that timeworn path left by Congresses of yesteryear.

But an energy bill has to be more than the sum of its subsidies to constitute effective policy. This is especially true as we enter a time of growing resource and environmental limits that threaten to bite us in the collective behind if we don’t curb our profligate consumption of energy.

Now is not the time to continue subsidizing every form of energy that can be produced in the United States, as the current Congress seems intent on doing. In previous bills, Congress has taken great pains to make sure that every energy constituency—coal, oil, nuclear or renewables--gets its fair share of the federal pie, regardless of need or environmental impact. This is the cheap energy paradigm at work—promoting economic growth by artificially lowering energy prices.

But while this paradigm may have been defensible before U.S. oil output reached its maximum in 1970, it has no place in today’s energy-constrained world. Artificially lowering the cost of all energy sources will not only encourage waste and overconsumption, it will hasten the arrival of that traumatic day when the flow of cheap oil and natural gas cannot meet the demands of a hypermobile society.

It’s no secret that Congress lacks the stomach for offending powerful energy lobbies like Big Coal. But it’s simply not possible to institute policy changes, especially those intended to reduce carbon dioxide discharges into the atmosphere, without picking a fight with the coal industry, the electric utilities, and what’s left of the U.S. automotive industry. Therefore, if Big Coal pronounces itself satisfied with the energy bill’s contents when it is passed, you can be certain that Congress declined to incorporate any provisions that would cause coal’s share of the energy pie to shrink, such as a carbon tax or renewable feed-in tariffs.

What makes the United States singularly incapable of producing a coherent energy policy aimed at cutting energy consumption and using low-carbon alternatives to fossil fuels? I believe there are three factors explaining this lamentable state of affairs. The first is that your average American citizen has the energy IQ of beach sand, and, in this regard, your average Member of Congress is the mirror image of his or her constituents. For proof, I would direct your attention to Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, who regularly appears on news programs to suggest that gasoline is overpriced at $3.00 per gallon and that motorists are being fleeced by dastardly oil companies.

Actually, at that price gasoline is a steal, and it would be so even at $4.00—the amount Canadians pay--or $5.00. Packing 125,000 Btu’s of energy, a gallon of gas will power the average car 25 miles, yet it costs less on a volumetric basis than milk, apple juice, Evian, coffee from Starbucks, Mountain Dew, Listerine, and Red Bull. Try getting that performance with a gallon of Gatorade in your tank. It will set you back $10 and you still wouldn’t be able to back your car out of the garage.

It should be noted that retail gasoline prices in Germany are the equivalent of $7.00 per gallon, yet its economy remains healthy. Why is that? Because Germany, unlike the underachieving U.S., has a national energy policy designed to transition the nation smoothly into a post-fossil fuel energy environment. By taxing fossil energy and providing long-term price support for wind and solar electricity production, the Germans are plowing today’s wealth into building up a sustainable energy system that can withstand the future economic dislocations resulting from Peak Oil and climate change.

Indeed, no other country has made as much progress as Germany in building up a renewable energy infrastructure for delivering low-carbon electricity to homes, businesses, and rail networks. But other countries that lack domestic supplies of fossil energy, like Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark, are also moving aggressively to harness their renewable resource base. They too are light years ahead of the United States in this regard.

A second problem confronting policymakers is the unequal distribution of energy resources across this vast country of ours. A handful of coal-producing states—West Virginia and Wyoming come to mind--are net fossil energy exporters, and will view with hostility any policy proposal that will place limits on energy extraction within their borders. Their power is magnified by the markets they serve, which include large swaths of the Midwest and South.

On the other side of the coin are the West Coast states, Florida and New England, which are populous regions that which have no domestic coal interests to protect. Nor does the automotive industry have a big presence in these states. Not having to appease Big Coal or Big Auto enables state governments in these regions to plot a more aggressive course toward achieving emissions reductions and fuel diversity goals, as is being done in California and Florida.

One would expect members of Congress to promote the principal energy industries in their region. This predisposes them to enter into strategic alliances with other members representing different energy interests, usually of the “I’ll watch your back if you’ll watch mine” variety. Though these alliances are necessary for lubricating the deal-cutting and building support for the entire package, often it comes at the expense of public policy objectives.

Indeed Congress is institutionally incapable to pass a comprehensive energy bill that attempts to diversify the nation’s energy resource base and scale back its carbon footprint unless it contains elements that work in the opposite direction (e.g., gasifying coal and expanding offshore drilling).

Further complicating matters is the very nature of the U.S. Senate itself, a body organized to magnify the power of individual states to block “national interest” initiatives from changing the status quo. Each state is equally represented in the Senate, no matter how populous. And Senate tradition grants committee chairpersons enormous deference to bottle up or water down legislation that might impose unwanted changes on the states they represent.

Another Senate tradition, the right of unlimited debate, is enforced by a rule that expressly allows a minority of senators to thwart the will of the majority. To shut off debate on a measure, especially one in which powerful economic forces and regional interests are pitted against each other, bill proponents have to line up not 51 but 60 votes. Under the rule, debate continues even if 59 senators vote in favor of ending it and only one votes against the motion.

The energy bill passed by the Senate in June came tantalizingly close to incorporating a 10-year tax package that would have raised $29 billion, mostly from oil and gas companies and redirected it toward renewable energy development. The tax package was designed to be self-supporting; that is, it would not have trigged additional borrowing to underwrite the pro-renewable energy incentives.

Would such a tax package raise prices at the pump? A little. But remember too that $29 billion equates to about nine months’ profit for Exxon Mobil alone. And, from a social equity perspective, it’s always better to base energy subsidies and incentives on a real-time transfer of wealth than to saddle future taxpayers with even greater levels of indebtedness.

Nonetheless, the oil and gas companies objected to the closing of their favored tax loopholes, and they called upon their senatorial friends in the Oil Patch states to kill off this measure. To accomplish this, these senators made common cause with their counterparts from the Southeast and Rocky Mountain states, where Big Coal is very strong. Thought this minority bloc was outvoted 57-36, they managed to prevent the tax package from being attached to the larger energy package. In any other legislative venue, losing a vote by a margin of 21 would be considered a stinging defeat, but on the floor of the U.S. Senate, it counts as a win.

In his most recent installment of Lyndon Johnson’s biography, author Robert Caro points out that there have been only a few periods in the nation’s history where the Senate lowered the floodgates and allowed legislation reflecting the popular will to come washing through its portals. Those rare instances resulted from significant political realignments that put one party with an activist agenda firmly in power.

The closest the United States came to a coherent national energy policy was during the mid-to-late 1970’s. During that period there was a prevailing sense of anxiety over the nation’s energy security, and both the legislative and the executive branches responded to the national mood with decisive actions. In a five-year period Congress passed laws creating automobile fuel efficiency standards, prohibiting new gas-fired power plants, and requiring utilities to purchase electricity generated by independent entities. By the debased standards of current governance, those were amazingly productive years.

However, once the price oil dropped in the 1980’s, the urgency of the previous decade evaporated, and successive administrations began dismantling the policy initiatives adopted in the Ford and Carter years. When the Reagan Administration lowered fuel efficiency standards in 1986, Chrysler Corporation chairman Lee Iacocca said: “We are about to put up a tombstone ‘Here lies America’s energy policy.’”

It would take nothing short of a sea change to overcome Congressional inertia and recover the ground lost in the last 25 years or so. But though the prospects for a truly coherent national energy policy are improving -- and the need has never been greater -- both the citizenry and the current Congress are far too complacent to entertain changes that might involve belt-tightening and discipline. Given the current political dynamic, it would be unrealistic to expect this Congress, with its narrow majorities, to be the one that jump-starts the federal government into meaningful action.

Yes, we will see some progress on the energy front this year and next, but they will represent the sum of state government initiatives undertaken to counter the policy vacuum that persists at the federal level.

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Sources:
Caro, Robert A., Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, 2002, Alfred A. Knopf Inc., New York.

National Environmental Trust: History of Fuel Standards, One Decade of Innovation, Two Decades of Inaction. URL: http://www.net.org/documents/cafe_history.pdf

RENEW Wisconsin is a nonprofit organization that acts as a catalyst to advance a sustainable energy future through public policy and private sector initiatives. Michael Vickerman’s commentaries also posted on RENEW’s Web site, RENEW’s blog, and Madison Peak Oil Group’s blog.

RENEW Wisconsin

Fossil Fuel Watch: Random Thoughts from this Year’s Renewable Energy Fair

eblume@renewwisconsin.org — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Petroleum and Natural Gas Watch
by Michael Vickerman, RENEW Wisconsin
June 26, 2007, Volume 6, Number 8

For some turnout is the measure of success at the annual Midwest Renewable Energy and Sustainable Living Fair, held each year in central Wisconsin over the summer solstice weekend. But the presenters and exhibitors at this three-day expo have their own yardstick for gauging a good fair: jaw muscle fatigue.

While I have no idea how many people attended this year’s edition, the ache in my jaws on Sunday afternoon told me that I had exceeded my personal quota of answering questions and giving advice on how to use the naturally occurring and non-depleting energy around us to prepare for the coming energy squeeze.

The barrage of questions at the RENEW Wisconsin table was nonstop. Examples: “If I put up solar panels, can I sell the power I don’t need to my utility?” “How do I know I live in a windy area?” “When will solar energy become cheaper than utility power?” “Why do I have to pay the utilities extra for renewable energy?” “Can I put a wind generator on my house?” “Can you put a wind generator on your property and sell the electricity to your neighbors?” And, of course, this hardy perennial: “How do I persuade my rural electric co-op to provide rebates for wind and solar?”

The fair attracts a diverse group of people that belies the event’s countercultural roots: yuppies, entrepreneurs, energy geeks, the voluntary simplicity crowd, inventors and tinkerers, propagandists of many stripes, active and retired farmers, suburban do-it-yourselfers, the idly curious, and that classic American specimen, the get-rich-quick schemers who see in renewable energy the most promising pathway to early retirement.

As for the pot-of-gold chasers, their unbaked plans invariably involve jumping into the wind development racket. This year, at least a dozen people asked me about the economics of erecting utility-scale wind turbines and generating electricity for sale to utilities, as if that idea hadn’t occurred beforehand to virtually every independent power company in the world. It is amusing to watch their romantic visions implode when they hear that one large turbine would cost a mere $3.5 million to install and gross a maximum of only $200,000 a year assuming all goes well and Murphy’s Law stays out of the picture. “How do you like that payback period?” I ask.

Another subset of visitors harbors dreams of moving out in the country and building a new residence there. Often, they mention their desire to go off the grid entirely or become a producer of energy, and sell the surplus to their utility. At some point in the conversation, however, it becomes clear that these new “homesteaders” are not looking to recreate Thoreau’s Walden Pond experience, far from it. Instead, they’re looking to accessorize their dream retreats with symbols of sustainability, and these days, nothing does the trick more conspicuously than rooftop photovoltaic (PV) panels. Fortunately, the fair is full of vendors who can be counted on to puncture their visions of PV-powered plasma TV’s and central air-conditioners when they total up the cost of such a vanity installation.

On a more serious note, these conversations reveal the public’s propensity to embrace renewable energy with greater enthusiasm than it does energy conservation and efficiency. This tendency flows from the simple fact that while renewables contribute to energy supply, conservation and efficiency are strategies for modifying demand, to which we in America have a serious aversion. Here, few people get upset if demand for energy lags behind what’s available. But when energy supply fails to keep up with demand, the situation is presented as an unnatural occurrence, one that makes no sense given our collective wealth and almost-childlike belief in the efficiency of markets.

We are conditioned to believe that energy supply shortages are the result of external malefactors like Hugo Chavez and nefarious forces like oil companies. But in whatever public forum the problem is discussed, it is never framed as the inevitable consequence of steadily rising consumption. In fact we lack the vocabulary to frame it as such. As the eco-philosopher Garrett Hardin pointed out, we experience supply shortages all the time, but never are they referred to as a “longage of demand.”

For that reason renewable energy fits better with our “have-it-all” notions of the good life than conservation and efficiency, strategies that presuppose resource limits and endorse behavioral restraints. Perhaps too we are fooled by the notion that because sunlight and flowing air are “free resources,” converting them to heat or electricity must be a trivial expense.

Yet the more we reduce our energy consumption up front, the easier time we’ll have in shifting our reliance from concentrated yet finite energy sources like coal, petroleum and natural gas to more diffuse, self-replenishing sources like solar, wind, and wood. Reducing one’s energy overhead costs relatively little and produces a revenue stream that appreciates over time. Replacing one’s energy infrastructure with on-site renewable systems, in contrast, will require a sizable up-front financial commitment relative to what it will produce over time. But when demand reduction and renewable supply options are pursued in tandem, the odds of being able to afford a PV system or a small wind turbine improve measurably.

Though Focus on Energy has long articulated that message in its marketing materials and in one-on-one consultations with prospective customers, it has not been a factor in the design of its renewable energy installation incentives—until now. Starting in July, the program will increase its solar incentive levels by $500 to those customers who adopt at least one household efficiency measure before buying panels. Because I was already committed to a PV system on my roof, I decided to take Focus on Energy up on its offer. Last week, a contractor air-sealed our leaky 85-year-old house, which should reduce infiltration rates by more than 40%. Next month, the same contractor will return to improve the insulation level in my attic from R-30 to R-50.

I’m counting on these two measures to slice our household natural gas usage by at least one-third. The savings will then be applied to “finance” the more expensive solar installation, resulting in a package that should still earn a return on investment above 10%, a very nice yield considering how safe this investment is. If I follow through with that approach, then PV becomes a luxury that even middle-income fair-goers can afford.

RENEW Wisconsin is a nonprofit organization that acts as a catalyst to advance a sustainable energy future through public policy and private sector initiatives. Michael Vickerman’s commentaries also posted on RENEW’s Web site, RENEW’s blog, and Madison Peak Oil Group’s blog.

RENEW Wisconsin