The ridge lines may not be holy, but wind isn’t always green

By BILL CHAISSON
In a recent Vermont Public Radio debate before the primary on Aug. 14, incumbent governor Rick Scott and Republican challenger Keith Stern agreed on very few topics. But they were both against placing wind turbines on Vermont’s ridge lines. The moderator, apparently non plussed by this rare consensus, did not pursue the topic. He did not ask the candidates why this particular alternative energy technology should not be pursued in Vermont. Stern allowed that it was fine to put the turbines off shore, where no one had to look at them, but not in his backyard. For his part, Scott believed that it would be sufficient to pursue solar energy.

I have not heard what the Democratic candidates for Vermont governor think about this issue. In the debate held last Saturday, the Times Argus reported, “[Christine] Hallquist, a former executive director of Vermont Electric Company, said she would continue to support renewable energy projects to make Vermont 90 percent carbon-free by 2050.”

But it was easy to find an opinion poll that showed what Vermonters think. The Castleton State College (now University) poll is somewhat dated — it was conducted during winter 2013 — but it showed that 66 percent of Vermonters were in favor of placing turbines on ridge lines and 69 percent were in favor of erecting turbines in their own community. 

A more recent poll, conducted in October 2016 by Castleton University for Vermont Public Radio, asked the question, “Who should have the final say on where wind power generators are placed?” This poll of 650 people found that 39 percent believed that landowners should decide and 34 percent thought that the communities should decide. Only 12 percent thought the state Public Service Board should decide. In other words, they favored local control. Interestingly, 57 percent of voters polled who attested to “leaning Republican” believed that it should be up to the landowners as to where turbines are sited. In contrast, the 2013 Castleton poll found no demographic trends that united the pro-turbine group. The support cut across age, gender, political persuasion and anything else that was measured.

But VPR has quoted Mark Whitworth of the anti-industrial wind power group Energize Vermont, who pointed out that most of the population of the state is Chittenden County around Burlington, which will not be the site of large-scale wind farms. He notes that people in the Swanton, Windham, Grafton and the Northeast Kingdom are more critical of the states efforts to build up carbon-neutral energy sources.

In June 2017, Whitworth appeared before the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules in Montepelier. The committee was deciding whether the rule written by the Public Service Board, which codified noise limits and established setbacks at 10 times turbine height, was in the spirit of Act 174, established the year before. Whitworth pointed out the noise limits in the new rule were weaker than in the existing Vermont regulations for turbine noise. He urged the committee to follow the examples of Denmark and Germany, which have strict regulations and where wind power has been very successful.

The Green Mountain turbine farm doesn’t meet the usual definition of “industrial wind.” It is locally owned and consists of only four turbines. Furthermore, it is at the edge of Chittenden County, the most densely populated part of the state. The Sheffield turbine farm near Caledonia in the Northeast Kingdom, on the other hand, is owned by Sun Edison and consists 16 turbines. Sun Edison grew out of a part of the Monsanto Corporation that made silicon-wafer chips. It operates wind farms all over the country, the largest being a three-part behemoth in Utah with 187 turbines.

Although both Vermont sites draw criticism for their noise, it is the Sun Edison situation that should really make activists like Energize Vermont nervous. Their stated mission is to foster the development of sustainable, locally-controlled alternative energy projects. The corporate hijacking of the green movement has brought a huge infusion of capital to the alternative energy enterprise, but it has also brought along some of the downsides of corporate culture.

These include the insistence that bigger is better (because better = more profitable), the belief that regulations should be dialed back to a minimum, and that decision-making about where hardware should be located be guided by coldly scientific criteria and occur at some remote location, not locally.

Who can prevent the corporatization of alternative energy? Sadly, that is the job of the federal and state governments. I say ‘sadly’ because the government zeitgeist right now seems to be ease off on regulations, not tighten them. And government is the only entity that can reasonably set parameters on wind energy development. The alternatives, an army of lawyers or a gang of monkeywrenchers, are not appealing.

 

Bill Chaisson is the editor of the Eagle Times and lives in Unity. He can see the Lempster wind turbines from where he lives, but he can’t hear them.