GREEN?: Vermont’s updated energy plan offers a pathway to becoming the nation’s first renewable energy economy. While the plan could turn Vermont into the Solar Panel State, the plan’s policy director says the state’s green makeover won’t have any impact on global warming.
LYNDONVILLE, Vt. — In the first public hearing for Vermont’s updated energy plan, audience members criticized the siting of wind and solar projects, and the plan’s policy expert told Vermont Watchdog going completely green will have no impact on global warming.
The Vermont Public Service Department on Wednesday held the first of five public hearings on the state’s 2015 Comprehensive Energy Plan. The 380-page draft details a path to reaching Vermont’s goal of operating on 90 percent renewable energy by 2050.
The plan’s targets include reaching 25 percent renewable power by 2025, up from 16 percent in 2015. Targets also include a 15 percent reduction in Vermonters’ energy use by 2025 and a one-third reduction by mid-century.
Also by 2025, planners expect to attain 10 percent renewable transportation and 30 percent renewable in buildings. A full 67 percent of electric power will be generated by renewable sources.
“We’re after energy security and after bringing energy sources local and under our own control,” said Asa Hopkins, director of energy policy and planning at the Vermont Public Service Department.
NO IMPACT: Asa Hopkins, the director of energy policy and planning at the Public Service Department, says global climate is so large an issue that no single state — or nation — can do anything about it.
“We want to meet the state’s greenhouse gas reduction goals. We want to keep more of our energy dollars local and be buying energy from each other rather than sending billions of dollars out of state every year to buy energy that’s imported.”
According to environmentalists not associated with the department, the goals could require wind turbines on one-third of Vermont’s mountain ridgelines or solar panels across 90,000 acres. One prominent developer, David Blittersdorf, predicts Vermonters may have to abandon cars in favor of electric mass transit.
The hearing’s public comment period drew stern warnings about coercive siting of solar and wind projects, which has sparked backlash in towns across the state.
“Anybody who has ever been involved in an energy proceeding before the Vermont Public Service Board knows that communities have no authority to influence the siting of electrical power plants. The Public Service Department has opposed every attempt to grant a more meaningful role to our cities and towns in electricity siting,” said Mark Whitworth of Newark.
He said the Board’s rubber-stamping of renewable projects has produced a sort of Wild West in which developers are set loose to cut down Vermont’s forests, compromise wetlands, ignore zoning regulations, encroach on neighboring properties and “bully neighbors.”
In support of his claims, Whitworth submitted an “energy rebellion” map in which 67 Vermont towns are highlighted for mounting resistance to coercive siting — whether through resolutions or town votes against projects. Last week in Irasburg, voters delivered a spectacular 274-9 rejection of developer David Blittersdorf’s 500-foot wind turbines on Kidder Hill.
Other commenters expressed equal frustration.
AN EMBARRASSMENT: Kim Fried of East Burke said his two-year struggle with the Vermont Public Service Board was ‘an embarrassment’ and insulting.
“I have found my experience, which was nearly two years with the Public Service Board, to be an embarrassment. I felt insulted, and I felt the Public Service Board is incompetent in this modern age of renewable energy siting,” said Kim Fried of East Burke.
Fried counted up votes on industrial ridgeline wind projects in Irasburg, Brighton, Newark, and Unified Towns and Gores. The final tally was 1,219 against and 396 in favor, he said.
Noticeably absent from the plan are state targets for alleviating global warming.
Hopkins told Vermont Watchdog global warming targets aren’t in the plan because Vermont’s efforts won’t affect climate change.
“Climate change is a classic tragedy-of-the-commons problem where no one person’s actions, no one state, or even one country’s actions is attributable to even more than maybe a few percent of the global challenge. So I haven’t calculated out what Vermont’s impacts would be,” Hopkins said.
Some environmentalists argue Vermont’s role is not to affect climate change, but to offer green-energy leadership that other states will follow. Asked if the draft had targets for states or nations following Vermont’s lead, Hopkins replied, “No.”
“We are focused on trying to take a path forward that works for Vermont. We’re not taking action … in hopes of inspiring action elsewhere.”
Hopkins did say the plan’s goals are consistent with 2030 goals set forth by the regional New England governors and Eastern Canadian premieres and also Under 2 MOU, which Vermont and other sub-national jurisdictions have signed on to. Those agreements call for an 80 percent plus reduction of CO2 by 2050.
GREENWASHING: Noreen Hession, a resident of Newark, urged full transparency in the sale of renewable energy credits, a practice that lets fossil fuel states buy credits from Vermont utilities and claim to be green.
Noreen Hession, a resident of Newark, blasted the sale of renewable energy credits, a controversial practice in which utilities and developers sell renewable power certificates to non-green states to offset the higher cost of wind and solar. High CO2-generating states buy Vermont RECs as a way to meet their own renewable energy mandates.
“By selling RECs, Vermont allows other states to meet their requirements while still burning fossil fuels. Vermont wind projects are not creating renewable energy for Vermont.” Hession said. “Claiming that the industrial wind turbines on top of Lowell Mountain are generating renewable energy for Vermont while simultaneously selling those RECs out of state, that’s double counting.”
Closing out the evening was state Sen. Joseph Benning, R-Caledonia, who offered his comments for the plan.
“We want to reach for these goals — that is important. But we shouldn’t become so blind to what is happening at the industrial level, with profiteers who are coming here to take advantage for their own purposes at the expense of what we have worked so hard to protect,” he said.
Four additional hearings are scheduled for Oct. 13 in Essex; Oct. 21 in Montpelier; Oct. 26 in Bellows Falls; and Oct. 29 in Rutland.
Contact Bruce Parker at bparker@watchdog.org