Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Dennis McMahon, a retired attorney who lives in Burlington.
In the Province of Ontario, just a few hours’ drive northwest of Vermont, we can see the future of industrial solar power. And for ratepayers, it doesn’t look good. Ontario has jumped onto the solar power “feed-in tariff” (FIT) bandwagon big-time. Here in Vermont, our toes are in the water – our FIT program is just a year old, and ratepayers are on the hook for “just” 30 cents per kilowatt/hour of solar power. Thirty cents is still more than seven times the four cents Vermont Yankee charges, but it is chump change compared to the 80 cents per kw/h the Power Authority of Ontario is charging ratepayers for electricity from selected solar power producers. If you think I’m “spinning”, go to www.fit.powerauthority.on.ca, it’s all there in black and white.
Think about what paying 80 cents means to you and me. Right now, utilities charge about 13 cents kilowatt-hour for power that costs them roughly 6 cents to buy or produce. So now imagine that your utility must pay thirteen times as much for its power. You and I would foot a stupendous monthly bill that would be – to use one of the solar power industry’s favorite words – “unsustainable”.
European countries now pay 50 to 60 cents for their feed in tariff power, and in recent months several have realized that the FIT bubble has popped, or will soon, and are scaling down their programs and reinvesting in nuclear power. Now the good news for Ontarians is that not all of their cheaper sources of power will go away, because as the saying goes, “renewable power needs a buddy.” It is intermittent, and needs a baseload power producer for when the sun won’t shine and the wind won’t blow. This is what opponents of Vermont Yankee never seem to understand: The high cost and intermittent generation of renewable power is unsustainable without available low-cost, baseload power. And unless we mortgage our energy future to a single power source, Hydro Quebec, we must use existing instate or regional generators that burn mostly fossil fuels. So which will we choose: fossil fuel power that loads jobs by the hundreds and dollars by the millions into a giant dumptruck and leaves them in southern New England, emitting noxious fumes all the way? Or, a safe, non-polluting, economically valuable instate generator like Vermont Yankee?
It is time to put aside the anti-nuclear emotional residue of the 60’s, and make fact-based choices that will benefit our future and our children’s. From the point of view of cost, proven reliability, employment, safety, and low impact on air pollution, Vermont Yankee is the best choice if we will just look at the facts. I’m open to alternatives that are low-cost, low-carbon, don’t pollute the air, provide Vermont jobs and state revenue, won’t destroy hundreds of acres of open Vermont land, and will be operational by 2012. Know of any?
The election is over; the next session of the Legislature is just around the corner. Entergy and our utilities must reach a comprehensive power offer that addresses concerns like decommissioning, but first and foremost spares us the economically unsustainable alternative energy future that is the energy present north of the border.
