For immediate release
July 13, 2011
Contact
Dorothy Schnure, Green Mountain Power
(802) 655-8418
Lowell, VT – Green Mountain Power (GMP) hosted the first of two Jobs Fairs in the Kingdom last evening at the Lowell Fire Department in conjunction with the Kingdom Community Wind (KCW) project. About 60 people from the area came to learn about job openings. GMP’s General Contractor, Reed & Reed, along with three newly hired, Vermont-based contractors were on site to speak with attendees.
Three Vermont-based contractors were recently selected to provide services for the construction phase of Kingdom Community Wind. J.A. McDonald of Lyndon Center has been selected for the site preparation and road work and is seeking equipment operators and laborers. Bates & Murray Electrical Contractors of Barre will be doing the underground electrical work on the project and is taking applications as well. Maine Drilling & Blasting, which has an office in Barre, has also been selected to work on the KCW project and is looking for driller trainees and laborers.
“As we get closer to construction, we are excited to begin talking with local residents about the job opportunities available as a result of the renewable wind project in Lowell,” said Rebecca Towne, Administration Manager at Green Mountain Power. “We are committed to employing as many Vermonters and Vermont companies as possible, including those who have already been hired.”
“Supporting local jobs is one of the many benefits that Kingdom Community Wind brings to Orleans County and throughout northern Vermont. Local property taxes, the Good Neighbor Fund, Education tax payments, and renewable energy at a great price are others, ” added Towne.
Green Mountain Power and Reed & Reed will host a second Jobs Fair at North Country Union High School on Tuesday, July 19 from 1:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
About Kingdom Community Wind
Kingdom Community Wind is a local renewable wind energy project in Lowell, Vermont. It will produce 63 MW of electricity for customers of Green Mountain Power and Vermont Electric Cooperative members. The project received a certificate of public good from the Vermont Public Service Board in late May and construction is expected to commence in August of this year. GMP expects KCW to be operational by the end of 2012.
About Green Mountain Power
Green Mountain Power (www.greenmountainpower.com) generates, transmits, distributes and sells electricity in the State of Vermont. It serves more than 175,000 people and businesses.
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The Lowell wind turbine facility has nothing to do with community-scale wind, everything with utility-scale wind (blatant PR to soft-soap the people). It is a capital intensive ($2,500,000/MW), highly visual (400-ft tall wind turbines), noisy wind turbine facility that is proposed to be built on environmentally-sensitive ridge lines.
The Lowell wind turbine facility will produce just a little of expensive, unreliable, intermittent, variable wind energy that has little dispatch value to the grid; at least 10 percent of the year, the wind speeds are too low to produce any wind energy and most of the wind energy is produced at night during the winter.
The Lowell wind turbine facility job creation is largely a mirage. The facility will temporarily employ a number of people during the construction phase for about a year. During the next 20 years, just a few people will be permanently employed to perform operations and maintenance.
An enormous waste of capital to create just a few permanent jobs, as shown by this Vermont Department of Public Service study.
http://publicservice.vermont.gov/planning/DPS%20White%20Paper%20Feed%20in%20Tariff.pdf
The project would not be built if there were no subsidies equivalent to at least 50% of the capital cost. Without subsidies, the wind energy produced would be at least $0.15/kWh delivered to the grid.
The project has nothing to do with reducing CO2 emissions or generating wind energy. Most of the CO2 emissions wind energy was meant to reduce is offset by the increased CO2 emissions of the inefficient operation of the balancing plants, as the below study shows.
http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/57905/wind-power-and-co2-emissions
The project has everything to do with grabbing as much federal subsidies as possible and “coursing” them through Vermont’s economy for the short-term benefit of the well-connected few (including high-income, non-Vermonters and foreign companies supplying wind turbines), at the long-term expense (higher electric rates) of the many.
Over the past 10 years, the subsidies for wind turbine facility owners have become so excessive that facilities are built in marginal wind areas, as on most Vermont ridge lines, or before facilities are built to transmit the wind energy to population centers, as in the Texas Panhandle, just to cash in on the lucrative subsidies. Here is a partial list of subsidies:
- Federal grant for 30% of the total project cost which also applies to Spanish, Danish, German and Chinese wind turbines thus creating jobs in those nations instead of the US. These nations would not dream to have such a measure benefitting US wind turbine companies.
- Federal accelerated depreciation allowing the entire project to be written off in five years which is particularly beneficial to wealthy, high-income people looking for additional tax shelters.
- Federal production credit of $0.022/kWh of wind energy produced.
- Owners of wind turbine facilities receive Renewable Energy Certificates which they can sell on the open market. The RECs are subsequently bought by polluting companies that find it less expensive to buy the RECs than clean up their pollution.
- Federal government and State legislatures are pressured to provide increasingly greater state subsidies to politically well-connected renewables vendors, developers, financial entities (Goldman Sachs on Wall Street) and their high-income clients who use them for tax shelters.
- State legislatures and state government agencies are pressured to pave the regulatory ways to essentially circumvent state environmental and quality of life laws. Pro-forma hearings, usually required by law, are held to create a semblance of democratic process but effectively are rubber-stamp approvals of pre-ordained decisions.