Editor’s note: Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s political columnist.
That was some letter Jeff Wolfe, the head honcho of groSolar (another of the many firms that misspells its name into something other than English), wrote to Senate President John Campbell the other day, and though Campbell probably didn’t appreciate it, the rest of Vermont should appreciate Wolfe’s candor and the lesson he has provided.
It is a very valuable lesson on the local, the national, and perhaps even the cosmic levels. It demonstrates how the American economic system really works.
Not the way they teach it in Economics 101. It also reveals something about how people in the renewable energy industry go about their business in Vermont. A good case can be made that their industry is in the public interest. But that only deepens the mystery of why they are so bitter about the slightest hint of opposition.
Here is what the folks in the news business used to call the “nut graf” of Wolfe’s letter:
“John, I’ve supported you for a lot of races. But if you support this bill, not only does that support end, but I will help recruit and support opposition to you in the next election, and will put my money where my mouth is.”
And he put that in writing?
Didn’t anybody ever tell Mr. Wolfe that this is precisely the kind of threat to be delivered in person, at the corner table in the very back of the saloon, and even then sotto voce?
That way one can deny that one effectively said, “I’ve been bribing you because you’ve supported the state subsidies and protections of my business. If you threaten to reduce those subsidies and protections by even the tiniest increment, I will find someone more reliably subservient to me and finance his or her campaign against you.”
Make no mistake. That’s what Wolfe effectively said. His business is subsidized and protected by the state not via any actual appropriation of taxpayer money (though perhaps a search would find one) but because he is in the “renewable energy” dodge. Vermont subsidizes “renewable energy” (essentially wind and solar power) by requiring the state’s utilities to buy it (which requires everyone to pay for it) even though it costs more.
The specific benefits for groSolar (really, Mr. Wolfe. It’s the first letter that should be capitalized) are impossible to determine because specifically what groSolar does is impossible to determine. Its website informs that it “provides turnkey engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) solar photovoltaic (PV) projects for developers, financial, commercial, government, utility, and other institutional clients.”
Whatever that means, the firm is in the solar energy business, protected and subsidized by both the state and federal governments. Wolfe apparently likes it that way.
Why shouldn’t he? Because the real lesson here is that his business isn’t all that different from the others, especially not the others in the energy sector. Among the weakest arguments of the anti-wind energy forces (wind being more contentious than solar in Vermont) is that the wind projects are economically viable only because governments protect and subsidize them.
That’s true of all energy. Oil prices were artificially inflated for years because the Texas Railroad Commission limited domestic production as the oil companies acted on their own to limit foreign production. Nuclear power is probably the most government-nurtured industry in the history of the universe. Coal companies do not pay the price for the pollution and illness their product creates. The taxpayers do. Or nobody does and people put up with dirtier air and more sickness, another kind of “payment.”
But in a broader sense, all businesses are subsidized and protected by government. Among the virtues of Wolfe’s letter is the absence of any pretense that ours is a “free market” economy in which the private sector does not depend on government. He was fighting the status quo which provides advantages to his segment of the economy. And he was refreshingly unapologetic about it.
He was also apoplectic about it, perhaps more than the facts warranted. First of all, the bill against which he was fulminating (S.30) is not at all likely to pass. If it does make it through the Senate, it faces substantial opposition in the House and a likely veto from Gov. Peter Shumlin.
Furthermore, it would hardly spell the end of solar and wind energy projects in Vermont. By making them subject to the criteria of Act 250 and giving municipalities a greater say over the permitting process, it might complicate or perhaps even scuttle a project here and there. The more likely impact, though, would be simply to make the permitting process more difficult for wind and solar developers.
That’s ample reason for them to be against it. But to threaten a legislative leader with well-financed opposition and to hint none too subtly that businesses would flee the state even if just one house passes the bill? That seems heavy-handed.
But heavy-handed is the default position of Vermont’s wind and solar forces. Obviously convinced that their position is good public policy (possibly true) and that the public backs them (definitely true according to the polls), theirs is a take-no-prisoners approach. Just consider:
• The harsh penalties sought against the six people who protested against the Lowell Mountain wind project.
• Green Mountain Power Co. urging law enforcement officials to arrest Barton Chronicle publisher Chris Braithwaite as he was covering that protest (charges were dropped, and GMP was forced to pay Braithwaite’s legal fees).
• The turnabout by the developer of the Seneca Mountain project in the Northeast Kingdom, who first said he would not try to force the project on a town that opposed it, then when Newark voters clearly opposed it said he would not be bound by their views.
Now a leading renewable energy business executive openly threatens the Senate President Pro Tem for supporting a bill that, in the unlikely event that it became law, would modestly complicate life for the business.
Vermonters should thank Jeff Wolfe for letting it all hang out.
