Editor’s note: This commentary is by Leonard Duffy, of Hinesburg, who is a licensed architect in Vermont, a former member and chair of both the Hinesburg and Chittenden Regional planning commissions, as well as co-chair of a state study committee on Act 250 Criterion 8, Aesthetics. This statement is edited from testimony recently provided to the joint legislative hearing on solar energy siting.
[G]enerations of Vermonters have worked incredibly hard to protect our unique bucolic landscape.
Back in the 1930s, Vermonters rallied against a proposed parkway through our mountains. We’ve eliminated billboards. We’ve reduced trash on our roadsides. We’ve obscured junkyards and cell towers. We rally annually for Green Up Day. Local and state boards consistently require “screening” of every conceivable type of development, sometimes even dictating the color of peoples’ homes.
We’re in the national forefront for development controls: preserving farmland, eliminating strip development, and highlighting aesthetics. Act 250 protects aesthetic values and maintains our rural character. Planning throughout the past generation has focused on consolidating development and preserving farmland.
Vermont’s economically essential tourist industry is based on this preserved rural heritage — bringing visitors and investors from around the world. We even support a premier magazine promoting that agrarian picture. Our pristine agrarian landscape is truly our bread and butter, hard earned by the efforts of many.
Why then are we suddenly destroying all of this in the interest of unrestrained solar energy at any cost?
In just a few years, we have been inundated with the propagation of industrial scale power plants popping up on every roadside of the state, even along I-89. Where recently there were rolling pastures there are now acres of shiny panels. In my town, solar billboards, called “trackers,” line an entrance to our village — far more offensive than any imaginable advertising signs. These developments have already had a greater negative impact on the appearance of our state than all of the normal development of the past generation; all apparently for the primary benefit of out-of-state investors.
Just as we buy our oranges, our cars, and our solar panels from places that can produce those goods more efficiently, we can also purchase some of our electricity from outside renewable sources.
But these eyesores have yet to fully bloom. As any Vermont farmer can tell you, it will only be a few seasons before popple and invasive buckthorn take over. Nature abhors a vacuum, and what better place to grow than a fertile field of metal posts obstructing any possible maintenance, except prophylactic herbicide application. The trackers will gradually stop tracking, the glazed panels will become obscured by the weather and wind driven grit. Rust, frost action, snow and ice will gradually make them less and less efficient, and more and more of a blot on the landscape.
As solar technology continues to rapidly evolve, the economic incentive for maintaining a capital asset of declining value vastly diminishes. Since the only monetary rationale for building these factories comes from front-end loaded subsidies, it is highly unlikely that these installations will be maintained for even the 20 years that they were sold on. And then what? There is no escrow fund for decommissioning; nor any assurance, in a field of rapid turnover, that the businesses which started these projects will be around to honor their guarantees. These factories are not biodegradable, and the displaced farmers won’t be back in another generation to re-clear the fields for agriculture.
What have we gained?
How many individual Vermonters, paying mandated higher electric rates, have benefited from a single solar panel? Most of us are subsidizing those few who have, along with their out-of-state financiers and foreign manufacturers.
Some say we’re protecting the environment, but do we really prevent global warming by installing industrial scale power plants on every available productive farm field to produce a small portion of our electric load — at the expense of our tourist and agricultural industries? And our views? All the environmental groups that used to protect us from such phenomena have gone totally silent, apparently swayed by the lure of solar industry “donations.”
Solar is certainly a feasible alternative energy source, and there are many locations where it is appropriate: rooftops; parking lots; existing industrial sites; abandoned gravel pits; and well-screened landfills. But, only a small percentage of our energy needs will be produced even if we cover every available acre with industrial solar panels. Is it worth it?
Despite what the lobbyists may say, Vermont does not need to become totally self-sufficient in energy production. Just as we buy our oranges, our cars, and our solar panels from places that can produce those goods more efficiently, we can also purchase some of our electricity from outside renewable sources. Vermonters have incredible assets to provide to the world in exchange, including our (unsubsidized) ingenuity and work ethic — not the least of which is our world-renowned rural landscape and productive farmland.
Sunshine is NOT Vermont’s most abundant natural resource. What little that we have should be utilized to highlight our world-renowned working landscape, to enhance our ever important tourist industry, and to grow productive crops; not to squander on a short-lived experiment that requires permanently industrializing our most significant God-given asset that we have worked so hard to preserve.
