A home for wind
Toolbox
Published: October 3, 2005
President Bush is asking us to carpool. Nonprofit agencies are bracing themselves for a long, hard winter helping Vermonters in need. With a possible tripling of home heating oil prices, the dilemma for many Vermonters may come down to a choice between staying warm, having enough to eat or paying for life-saving medicine.
Congress is being urged to appropriate millions more for the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. It won't be enough, but at this point, people will take whatever help they can get.
Which is why it is mind-boggling there isn't more public support for alternative energy projects here in Vermont and across the United States.
Gov. Douglas is among those governors calling for additional LIHEAP funding, but he's taking a sidelines approach during this, wind energy month. His proclamation, expected this week, is but a tepid endorsement of a future of renewable, stable energy sources. And Douglas' trademark cautious approach isn't right this time, not on this topic.
If alternative energy is to have a foothold in the future, it needs champions in the form of leaders who will take a stand on making solar, wind and biomass energy a viable mix of Vermont's total energy picture.
Douglas, who used the promise of a wind energy proclamation to stake out a popular stand on renewables, is doing face time and dodging the inevitable shrewdness of developing clean energy resources.
Opponents of large wind turbines, the kind proposed in the Northeast Kingdom and southern Vermont, say the 400-foot windmills are inefficient and won't keep with the "Vermont scale" by being a blight to our ridgelines.
Yet only a half-dozen or so sites in Vermont are appropriate for these industrial-sized wind energy projects and that leaves a plethora of pristine ridgelines. In fighting these few sites, opponents, and perhaps the governor, are missing the inescapable fact of the future: The rules of the energy game have changed.
Maybe it will be the citizenry who will lead their leaders to renewable energy. One by one, people are turning to biodiesel to fuel their cars. Or, like the 30 or so people who took the Green Buildings Tour in Windsor County Saturday, they saw how Julia Lloyd Wright used solar power to heat her water last year, cutting her electric bill in half.
Likewise, lawmakers from both parties can help by appropriating more money for the Vermont Solar and Small Wind Incentive Program that was created in 2003. The $1.6 million program that helped businesses and homeowners buy-in to renewable energy systems was sold out after nine months.
Vermont has always led the way for social change, from opposing slavery to our firsts in civil unions to campaign finance reform and a novel approach to federal Medicaid spending. We should be able to expect as much when it comes to the state's future energy needs.
Renewable energy isn't ever likely to be the one-stop source for Vermont, but it is appropriate for the mix — now.
25