These are good days for supporters of wind power in Vermont. In February, the state Supreme Court turned down a challenge to the Public Service Board’s approval of the proposed wind towers in Sheffield, removing the last major obstacle to development of that  16-turbine, 40-megawatt, wind generation facility.

At about the same time, officials of Vermont Electric Cooperative began talks with the owner of land on Lowell Mountain about buying power from a 17-tower wind generating plant he’d like to put up on his mountaintop. A new company called Kingdom Community Wind said it plans to apply for a Certificate of Public Good for the project late this year.

Lawmakers are cooperating, too. A state law that went into effect last year encourages electric utility companies to get more power from renewable sources. The federal “stimulus” plan includes “provisions to benefit the wind industry, including a grant program for renewable energy developers and a loan guarantee program for developers and manufacturers,” in the words of the web site of the American Wind Energy Association.

Even Gov. Jim Douglas, while not reversing his stated opposition to large, “industrial” wind facilities, has ignored the issue of late, perhaps aware that the top energy officials in his own administration seem not to share his concerns.

In fact, except for the people who live right near where the towers are slated to be built – with their blades extending 420 feet into the air and emanating a constant  hum –  almost nobody opposes wind power.

And those opponents, of course, can be dismissed as NIMBYs (“Not in My Backyard)  rather than public-spirited citizens trying to protect the state’s mountain vistas and environmental integrity.

Especially because the environmentalists are gung-ho for wind power. The Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation, generally considered the most uncompromising environmental group active in Vermont, features on its web site a “climate change call to action for New England  (which) defines five steps our region must take in five years to confront the climate threat,” including: “Build 2,000 megawatts of new wind power.”

The Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG), challenges the state to “build renewable power like wind, solar and biomass to keep the lights on and create good-paying jobs(rather than) stay dependent on dirty and dangerous sources like Vermont Yankee and fossil fuels.”

The Vermont Natural Resources Council (VNRC) is somewhat less enthusiastic. Still, Executive Director Elizabeth Courtney said, “we are pro-wind.”

Green-group endorsement helps explain why the general public seems to be on the side of building the wind towers. Though they should probably be viewed with some skepticism, such polls as have been taken on the matter show that most Vermonters favor developing wind power.

Nor is there any big mystery about why environmentalists are for more wind power. They are convinced that the greatest threat facing the world today is anthropogenic (that’s the fancy way of saying “human-created”) global warming. Humans create this warming primarily by burning fossil fuels – coal, oil, natural gas (though that last one isn’t as bad) in their cars, their factories, and to generate electricity.

So the more electricity that is produced without burning those fossil fuels, the less fossil fuel will be burned, putting less greenhouse-creating goop in the air and therefore easing (or at least not exacerbating) global warming. Right?

No. Wrong.

Or at least doubtful.

Unless the expansion of wind, solar, and other renewable power sources is accompanied by some mechanism to reduce the demand for – and therefore the production of – electricity from coal and oil.

The reason, according to many experts (and not refuted by any) is that the human demand – or at least the American human demand – for electricity is effectively infinite. The more that is produced, the more that will be consumed, as our technological and innovative (and somewhat hedonistic) society creates more electronic gadgets.

“Residential energy use has increased 23 percent over the past decade, as efficiency improvements have been more than offset by increase in air conditioning use and the introduction of new applications” said the most recent report of the Energy Information Administration.  By 2030, the report said, “total electricity use in the residential sector increases by 20 percent from 2007…”

So even if, as envisioned in the bill passed by the U.S. House earlier this week, non-fossil fuel power were to make up 25 percent of the total electricity used in 2025, the U.S. will still burn more greenhouse gas-producing coal and oil than it does now.

Unless, that is, the increase in solar and wind power is accompanied by something to raise the price of fossil fuel-generated power. In that case, wind power might well replace power produced from coal and oil instead of just supplementing it.

“I think that’s what cap and trade is aiming at,” said VNRC’s Courtney. ” If we can cap the amount of dirty carbon fuel that we produce, we can force ourselves into finding other sources.”

Cap and trade, in which the government sets a limit on the amount of carbon that can be emitted, and electric utilities have to buy permits to emit their share, is central to President Barack Obama’s  his energy policy. Right now, though, that proposal faces tough sledding in Congress, where almost all Republicans and some Democrats view it is a de facto tax increase.

It is, though probably not the $3,100-a-year per household tax hike that House Republican leader John Boehner proclaimed it to be yesterday. MIT Professor John Reilly, one of the authors of the study Boehner cited, said the actual per-household increase would probably be about $340 a year.

But it is a tax increase, and a reminder that there is probably no way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without paying for it. Without, in fact everyone paying for it.

In Vermont, there is a mandatory cap and trade regime in effect. It even has a name – Reggie – which is not a guy, but the an acronym for the Regional Greenhouse  Gas Initiative, in which the New England states, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York limit emissions from electric power plants.

But that’s not enough to raise the price of fossil fuel-produced power.

“It’s  really a very narrow program that only applies to electric generating units,” said Dick Valentinetti, the Director of the Agency of Natural Resources Center for Climate Change. It’s not economy wide. Until you get into an economy-wide program you’re not going to be able to see a substantial increase in the credits for greenhouse gases.”

None of this means there is no case to be made for wind power. It’s (potentially) inexpensive. It’s clean. It’s produced locally. It provides tax revenues for towns, generous rental income for land-owners and profits for developers (if  more from tax breaks than from actually selling electric power). But it is nether economically nor environmentally benign. The towers are unsightly to many, and could discourage tourism. Building and maintaining them requires cutting roads through wetlands, across steep slopes, and through delicate wildlife habitat.

All of which might be a worthwhile price to pay. But without some mechanism to reduce consumption of fossil fuel-based power, it will not help in the fight against global warming. Environmentalists who campaign for wind power in the hope that it will combat climate change run the risk of supporting environmental degradation in return for nothing.

Some environmentalists know that. “We don’t want to be trading one environmental value for another,” said Courtney, adding that being in favor of wind towers does not require being in favor of every wind tower proposal.

In its application for a Certificate of Public Good from the Public Service Board, First Wind, the company planning to build the Sheffield project, did not argue that the wind towers would reduce global warming. The industry is not making that claim. It is letting others do the job for  it.

There is, of course, another way to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases produced by power generation: use less power.

That does not require slower economic growth, as demonstrated in one state – this one. According to the Energy Information Administration, the average annual increase in Vermont electricity consumption between 1980 and 2005 (while the state’s economy was growing at a healthy clip) was 1.5 percent, substantially below the national figure of 2.1 percent.

This didn’t just happen. One reason for Vermont’s success in holding down electricity use, Valentinetti said, is the state’s energy efficiency apparatus, Efficiency Vermont, run by the Vermont Energy Investment Corporation (VEIC).

Common sense, then, would indicate that the public and private sector in the state would be united in strengthening this non-profit corporation so that it could continue to reduce the amount of electricity Vermonters use without diminishing their comfort or prosperity.

Apparently not. Instead, VEIC is at the center of a political quarrel between Gov. Douglas and the Legislature. Something to examine at a later date.

Tags: global warming, wind power

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 12:15 am and is filed under Business & Economy, Energy & Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.