Wind opponents have succeeded in getting introduced to the Vermont House a bill, H.677, that if passed would virtually preclude installing wind turbines in the state.
There is no outright ban, but rather a series of requirements that would make siting and construction of turbines a half-megawatt or larger practically impossible. These include restrictions on sound, setbacks from buildings, setbacks from roads, from power lines and so on. Power lines? Yes, power lines.
In defining setbacks, the bill reads:
"Sec. 1. 30 V.S.A. § 8008 is added to read:
4 § 8008 c.(4) One-third of a mile from any public highway or right-of-way and from any above-ground utility line or facility. However, this subdivision shall not apply to an electric line that directly connects a wind turbine to a substation or other utility facility."
It is hard to imagine what harm it would do to have a wind turbine within a third of a mile of a power line, which is not affected by noise or shadow flicker. However, such lines define areas where the natural environment is already affected by manmade intrusions, so the bill would force turbines into the most remote patches of wilderness where it will be easier to argue against them on environmental grounds. H.677 is full of such innocuous little poison pills for the wind power industry. These include a sound limit of 35 decibels (a level the National Institutes of Health defines as "whispering") within 30 yards of any occupied building. So not only do you have to be able to sleep indoors without hearing the wind turbines, you have to be able to not hear them outside.
In fact, the restrictions are so numerous and so onerous that the Legislature could waive many of them in a "compromise" and still effectively ban wind development.
If the sponsoring legislators, several of whom voted in favor of the renewable energy bill last year, want to ban commercial wind turbines, why don't they just introduce a bill saying so? Clearly, one reason is that would lose them support from the state's powerful environmental lobby, so instead they couch the ban in a relatively obscure argument over levels of sound waves.
The big difference is scale. Last year's renewable energy bill supported construction of wind plants rated under half a megawatt, or "Vermont scale" wind, which has a crunchy, Vermont-y feel to it.
The problem with "Vermont scale" is, well, scale. Vermont Yankee, which the state's powerful environmental lobby also strongly opposes, produces 650 megawatts of steady always-on baseload power. As wind's actual output is a fraction of its rated maximum, it would take not two but perhaps 20 turbines rated at .49 megawatts to equal one megawatt of nuclear power, or something over 13,000 of them to even approach the power the state may be taking offline in Vernon in 2012. And that's if the turbines are optimally sited on ridgelines where the wind is steadiest, which would require tens of thousands of miles of power lines to connect them to the valley floors where the demand is. Otherwise, tucking them out of sight tucks them out of the wind as well, where they might never produce as much energy as it would take to build them.
Simply put, "Vermont scale" wind doesn't make a dent in Vermont's need for electricity.
The state has identified an energy portfolio with a substantial portion coming from renewables as a priority. If we're going to have wind power in a renewable portfolio, we cannot get there without putting some big turbines up on ridgelines.
If we're not going to put up wind turbines, let's make that decision publicly and move on to finding homes for solar panels and biomass. In Germany, with comparable weather to Vermont, a 40MW solar facility opened on about 540 acres. Even if we want to get one-quarter of Yankee's capacity from solar, we need to find about 2,000 acres to start, with attendant neighbors' concerns about power lines, substations, sightlines and the like.
If we're not willing to site and host renewable energy plants, we need to buy our energy on the open market, where "green" electricity is at a premium. Paying that premium, abandoning renewables as a goal or letting developers build where it makes economical sense, are our options.
We might want to get going honestly on that conversation, instead of debating a stealth measure like H.677.
H-677.pdf
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