Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Avram Patt, general manager of Washington Electric Cooperative, which serves over 10,500 member households and businesses in 41 Vermont communities.
Vermont has been discussing commercial-scale wind development for about 10 years. In 2005, Washington Electric Co-op announced our support of First Wind’s project in Sheffield and committed to purchasing a portion of the electricity.
We stuck our neck out on behalf of that project. We attended meetings and hearings in the Sheffield area, and wrote about it in our newsletter and elsewhere and discussed it at our member meetings. Members of WEC’s board of directors visited wind farms in other states and countries, talked to local people, and assessed for themselves what these projects looked like and how people felt about them. The majority of WEC members have supported our involvement, but we’ve also heard from some who don’t.
There has been a lot of misunderstanding and also misinformation about wind projects generally in Vermont. So I am writing to discuss not just the Sheffield project, but utility-scale wind development in general.
Let’s start by agreeing that wind towers are huge. In Vermont they must be located on certain ridgelines because that is where the wind resources are. There is no question that they are very visible and they change the landscape in their vicinity. They can be heard from some locations. Building a project is also a major construction event. It requires the clearing of some land and the building of narrow roads. As with any major construction, including a renewable-energy project, there is environmental impact.
With that said, here is what we also need to understand: By developing commercial-scale wind, we make a real difference for the planet. Intermittent sources like wind and solar cannot at this point supply all the power we need on the grid, but they can supply a whole lot more than we have now. Every kilowatt-hour generated by a wind tower is one that does not need to come from other sources. That is real progress, and wind can be major part of our future.
We can’t just do the small stuff. Vermonters are, in fact, generating their own power at their homes and businesses in increasing numbers, mostly with solar but also some wind. And small-scale commercial projects (2.2 megawatts or less) are being built around the state because of financial incentives created by our Legislature.
But we need to understand some equivalents: One wind turbine on a 400-foot tower at Sheffield has a capacity of 2.5 megawatts. There are 16 such turbines at Sheffield and that project will generate enough power for the equivalent of 16,000 homes. (The Lowell Mountain project now under construction is somewhat larger.) To generate as much power as just one of those large turbines, we would need to put up well over a thousand home-scale turbines, each on its own 100-foot tower. That’s around 20,000 100-foot towers to generate as much as the whole Sheffield project. Generating the same amount of kilowatt hours from a commercial solar energy project would take at least 400 acres of photovoltaic panels. That’s the reality, although it is very hard to imagine those numbers on Vermont’s landscape.
In coming years, we are likely to begin seeing a real move away from liquid fossil fuels, especially for transportation. While that’s a good thing for the environment, it could eventually increase Vermont’s demand for electricity by as much as 30 percent. If we truly want to move to cleaner energy sources, we need to do the small stuff, but we have to do some big projects too.
Mountains are not being blasted apart. Yes, there is blasting and land clearing during construction, whether it’s a wind farm or new development up the sides of mountains in our ski resort communities.
However, when all is said and done, a wind farm has a relatively small physical footprint. The 16-turbine Sheffield project involved the clearing of approximately 63 acres for all the turbines and the roads combined, of which about 39 acres are now being left to re-vegetate (this was already occurring when I was at the site in the fall). Much of the land has been used for logging and other purposes in generations past, and some of the new 16-foot-wide roads follow old logging roads. Wildlife returns after construction, as it has at Sheffield.
There have been planning and siting discussions about wind development for more than 10 years now. While it is understandable that Vermonters who only recently started considering this issue might think there is no planning involved, there was in fact a Wind Siting Consensus Building Project sponsored by the Department of Public Service in 2002. The final report, detailed descriptions of the sessions that were conducted under the auspices of the Woodbury Dispute Resolution Center, and other papers are all available on the department’s website under “Renewables.”
The process included people from regional planning commissions, several hiking clubs, environmental and forest advocacy groups, utilities, developers, and state officials. Vermonters should take a look at the maps the participants reviewed. They show exactly where the best wind resources in the state are, just based on meteorological data. When one eliminates any sites on land where such development is legally prohibited, there are fewer potential sites. After then eliminating locations that are not reasonably close to existing transmission lines, very few feasible sites are left.
These are the maps developers start with, and they have been publicly available for all to see for 10 years. Although full consensus on this issue is unlikely, the few locations where wind projects might be feasible are also no secret.
We have been debating wind in Vermont for years. The discussion has involved genuine public processes in addition to the years of public regulatory proceedings for specific projects. Wind projects are large, even the relatively small ones being built or considered in Vermont. We can call them “industrial” or not, but in my job I am confronted by the urgency of our planet’s condition and by our limited options. WEC moved away from nuclear power years ago. Although we buy power from Hydro Quebec, I am very aware of the impact of those massive dams and the hundreds and hundreds of miles of giant transmission towers that are needed to bring Vermont’s share to the border. As I said, our options and our time are limited.
So I am not afraid to say that, in addition to far-greater efficiency in our energy use, and in addition to a lot more small-scale solar, wind, and other renewable projects becoming highly visible all across our landscape, we are in need of some serious industrial solutions as well, and soon. That’s the harsh reality.
We can no longer afford not to look at where our power comes from. We do need to accept wind into a few selected places in our landscape and to understand what it actually does for us. We have accepted ski areas on some of our most prominent mountains and everything that comes with that. We have, in the past, accepted logging roads throughout our hills and forests almost everywhere, including at what are now wind sites. We should insist that any projects be developed to the highest environmental standards and have the least-possible impact. But we have to put the benefit on the scale of impacts as well, otherwise this is not an honest conversation.
We are going to have to change the face of the planet in small ways in order to stop the damage we have done and are continuing to do in our ever-more-desperate attempts to get at the Earth’s fossil fuels. The alternatives all have consequences, too, but I would rather live with those consequences.
