Vermont loves renewable energy, except when it arrives

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MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Getting energy from the sun, wind
and forests fits with Vermont’s sense of itself as clean, green and
independent. But when it comes time to build and live with the projects
that make it possible, things can get complicated.
The state’s own
comprehensive energy plan contemplates a future of electric cars and
renewable sources providing 90 percent of its energy needs. And Vermont
was recently rated No. 1 in solar industry jobs per capita.
But
strong opposition from citizens’ groups to a wind-power project in
Lowell, the recent vote by property owners to reject a proposed wind
farm in northeastern Vermont,
and a ruling by state regulators against a
proposed wood-burning power plant in southern Vermont have some
questioning the state’s willingness to turn talk into action.
"It’s
time for Vermont to grow up and get real on the future, and the future
is renewables," said David Blittersdorf, co-owner of another wind-power
project, Georgia Mountain Community Wind.
Vermont is not alone in
its ambivalence. Cape Wind has been battling legal challenges and the
Massachusetts permit process for more than a decade as it looks to build
the nation’s first off-shore wind farm in Nantucket Sound. It now
appears on track and announced a $600 million tentative financing deal
this past week.
The giant Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating
System, in the Mohave Desert near the Nevada-California border, opened
this past month, but only after years of legal tangles, including a
fight over the fate of a species of desert tortoise.
Vermont has not always been friendly to more traditional energy sources, either.
The
state’s lone nuclear plant is to close at the end of the year. Vermont
Yankee owner Entergy Corp. says it is doing so for economic reasons. But
Gov. Peter Shumlin, state lawmakers and vocal anti-nuclear groups had
been trying to close the plant for years.
The Vermont Public
Interest Research Group, a large and powerful consumer and environmental
lobby, is fighting a plan to extend a natural gas pipeline that now
serves just northwestern Vermont. It complains that using natural gas
causes the carbon emissions blamed for climate change, and that the gas
is being extracted in Canada with environmentally damaging hydraulic
fracturing, or fracking, a practice banned within Vermont’s borders.
But
if big energy installations have drawn fights, renewables — long
described as "alternative" energy sources — haven’t had a free ride,
either. Even some solar installations have come under fire, despite
their lack of carbon emissions and their apparent immunity from the
charge levied at wind turbines that they kill birds and bats.
When
developers proposed an array of solar panels on a south-facing field in
Charlotte, south of Burlington, 75 people turned up at a public
hearing. Eighteen spoke — all in opposition.
The state Public
Service Board eventually approved the project, ruling 13 months ago that
its economic and environmental benefits outweighed what some neighbors
called a visual blight on a stunning rural landscape.
The board
ruled the other way last month on a plan to use wood cut from Vermont’s
forests to fuel an electrical generating station in North Springfield,
saying wood is inefficient as a generation fuel and that heavy truck
traffic would disrupt the surrounding neighborhood.
And some want
to toughen the regulatory review process further. Legislation has been
working its way through the Vermont Senate that could strengthen the
hand of local residents and regional planners in reviewing new energy
projects. Its prospects look dim in the House, however.
Annette
Smith, founder of the group Vermonters for a Clean Environment and an
outspoken critic of many energy projects, argued for a collaborative,
community-based process, in which residents of a community or region
gather to discuss their energy needs and how to meet them.
"It’s
merchant developers coming in and saying, ‘We’re going to do this
project whether you want it or not, and we’ve got the bucks," she said.
Gabrielle
Stebbins, executive director of the industry group Renewable Energy
Vermont, said the money is what is missing from Smith’s idea.
"No
one expects that they should be able, within our current capitalistic
structure, to own a nuclear plant.
But people seem frustrated if there
is a large renewable energy project that is built and they don’t own
it," Stebbins said.
Industry officials e agreed, though, that
smart developers make sure community residents are informed early in the
development process and that their concerns are taken seriously.
"Critical
to a successful project is working with communities to develop a
project that not only creates cheap, clean energy but also benefits the
local community," Christy Omohundro, director of eastern state policy
for the American Wind Energy Association, said in an email.
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