Editor’s note: This commentary is by Harold Bailey, who was a representative for Hyde Park and Wolcott in the Vermont Legislature in 2002-04.
I can only conclude that our state’s leaders, and many other Vermonters too, are pleased that we get most of our electricity from out of state, fossil-fuel burning power plants. Because more and more, that is where it’s coming from.
And for now many people haven’t noticed because burning natural gas is so cheap that monthly power bills haven’t changed much. But the environmental harm comes from the many different kinds of emissions from fossil fuel combustion, and the economic harm happens when hundreds of very good jobs and millions in taxes are sent out of state. We feel these pains right now. And soon we will feel a third pain, when natural gas wholesale prices rise (the experts say it will) and our monthly power bills go up with them.
If you doubt that Vermont is the state of “No New Energy,” consider this: right here in Lamoille County, the state is trying to, in effect, cut almost in half the power production of Morrisville’s hydro dam. The state wants us to do more for the fishes. But in doing so we would do less for the recreational users of the Green River Reservoir and, of course, for the users of this clean, low-cost power dam that Morrisville just a few years ago was upgraded at a cost of millions. In neighboring Eden, a proposed wind tower lacks support, if a straw poll taken is any indicator.
A few thousand more solar installations, built by people with enough southern exposure and subsidized by those who don’t, might produce a small fraction of Vermont’s total electricity needs.
Outside Lamoille County, we see the same trends. Wind farm projects in the Northeast Kingdom and Rutland have been scuttled in the face of opposition. The Vermont Public Service Board rejected a wood-chip burning plant in Springfield that would have employed hundreds of workers and foresters while making 25 megawatts, equal to about 12 of Vermont’s biggest solar wind farms. And don’t get me started on our elected officials’ persecution of Vermont Yankee, for decades the source of the cheapest, cleanest power around and payor of millions in local and state taxes. I can only hope the same PSB that rejected the wood chip plant gives a permit to let Vermont Yankee through 2014, because without it that golden, multi-million dollar “master settlement” package supported by Gov. Shumlin will go away, leaving Vermont with a dying Windham County economy and millions more in legal bills to come.
The only truly government-sanctioned form of new power seems to be installing tiny and expensive solar collectors on our rooftops and in our back yards. A few thousand more of these, built by people with enough southern exposure and subsidized by those who don’t, might produce a small fraction of Vermont’s total electricity needs.
I have nothing against people choosing rooftop solar, but it does bother me that the state of Vermont seems to think that if we just build enough solar, our power problems will be solved.
I give Vermont Gas kudos for trying to extend a pipeline to heat more Vermont homes and businesses. That is using natural gas locally and for its best economic and environmental use: heat. But heat is just what they are taking from the folks who have nothing else workable to offer in its place.
Until Vermont can make tough choices – like keeping and/or building big clean power generators or expanding access to Quebec hydro power – we will just keep paying whatever the market demands for that out-of-state fossil fuel electricity. And that is not planning, it is just letting a bad status quo remain the same and probably get worse.
