Editor’s note: Tom Evslin is a former member of the Clean Energy Development Fund board, and the former chief technology officer for the Douglas administration. This op-ed was first published on his blog, Fractals of Change.
This is the video from an interview with Darren Perron on WCAX news last week. As always on TV, there wasn’t enough time to say everything I’d have like to have said. So two additional points here:
Vermont can have an economically bright and CO2-light energy future if it becomes an energy corridor for Quebec Hydro and buys more from that source, expands its use of natural gas now abundantly available from the nearby Marcellus shale, takes advantage of the coming statewide SmartGrid to pass through the very low price of off peak electricity, allows the Public Service Board to examine Vermont Yankee relicensing on its nonpolitical merits, and spends state energy dollars on projects with a real return like solar hot water, geothermal, and natural gas vehicles.
Even though the economics of Lowell Mountain Wind are inferior to other available clean sources of electricity, the project has had its day in court before the Public Service Board and other regulators and has been approved. I disapprove of the tactics of protestors trying to slow the project and think they ought to be liable for any extra expense they cause. In this case the extra expense to ratepayers could be considerable if project completion is delayed beyond the end of 2012 because that is the deadline for being eligible for a 2.2 cents/kwh federal subsidy (although this IS an expense we will bear as taxpayers).
