Opposition to Windpower Pollutes Climate Policy

by jboullion | Mar 31, 2008 | Uncategorized

by Michael Vickerman
March 31, 2008

Almost two decades have elapsed since Dr. James Hansen, a scientist with NASA Goddard Space Institute, injected global climate change into the political bloodstream. “It’s time to stop waffling,” Hansen told a Congressional panel. “The greenhouse effect is here.”

Yet the United States is no closer to adopting an overarching policy to curb greenhouse gas emissions than it was in the summer of 1988. Much of this inaction can be attributed to the successful disinformation campaign underwritten by fossil energy interests like Exxon Mobil and the Western Fuels Association.

Aiding and abetting this campaign was a handful of contrarian scientists who publicly challenged the existence of a scientific consensus on global climate change.
Because these so-called “climate skeptics” possessed scientific credentials, reporters and commentators gave them equal time without performing any due diligence to ferret out the political agenda that lurked behind their public statements. Given nearly unlimited access to the media, climate skeptics successfully sowed doubt and confusion in the minds of decision-makers and ordinary citizens about the severity of the problem and the urgency for action.

While the climate change denial effort has lost steam in recent years, the disinformation tactics used in that campaign haven’t gone away. Instead, they are being retooled and redeployed to challenge the most visible manifestation of carbon reduction policies: windpower installations.

Wind generating capacity is increasing dramatically as more states adopt requirements on utilities to increase their supplies of renewable energy. But not everyone is welcoming this change, and those who don’t want to live near wind turbines are fighting back. In recent years, an Internet-based disinformation campaign has sprung up to both oppose individual wind projects and challenge windpower’s effectiveness in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

An example of this lamentable trend is the Industrial Wind Action Group (www.windaction.org), which serves as a bulletin board for antiwind commentary and articles highlighting grass-roots resistance to specific windpower proposals. Among the myths this web site and others like it propagate is the contention that, contrary to the prevailing wisdom, zero-emission energy sources like wind actually create more carbon dioxide when their impact on the electric grid is taken into account.

The argument goes like this: the wind doesn’t blow all the time, therefore utilities have to build new coal and gas plants to provide back-up power whenever demand for electricity is high and the turbines aren’t spinning.

This is pure mendacity, but it’s also easily disprovable mendacity. As anyone who works at a utility can testify, today’s wind projects do not require dedicated back-up power sources. That’s because utilities are required for reliability purposes to have enough capacity in reserve to accommodate record-breaking levels of demand, even when large power stations are off-line. And in Wisconsin, the reserve margin today is 18% above the highest peak ever recorded.

That margin is more than sufficient to accommodate all the wind generation that will be built to satisfy Wisconsin’s renewable energy requirements through 2015. Put another way, there is enough reserve capacity to back up We Energies’ 88-turbine project in Fond du Lac County and 11 others of similar size without any effect on system reliability.

According to another oft-repeated Internet myth, wind turbines do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions even when they are producing at full power. This preposterous assertion assumes that grid operators have no control over their generating units, and are unable to redispatch their plants to respond to fluctuating output from wind turbines. In reality, whenever wind is available to displace a fossil generator, a grid operator will shut it down. To do otherwise would add unnecessary costs to the electric system.

Outfits like the Industrial Wind Action Group don’t care if their arguments can’t stand up to scrutiny from energy professionals. That’s because they understand that very few people in state legislatures, county boards, and media outlets know how an electric utility system works. Lacking the specialized knowledge that would help them filter out fantasy from facts, these decision-makers and opinion-shapers tend to deal with their confusion by giving wind opponents equal time. And when they do, they give the antiwind groups a platform that allows them to pollute with impunity the public discourse on clean, renewable energy.

As Dr. Hansen went on to discover, successful disinformation campaigns are the price we pay for living in a country with a low energy IQ.

Michael Vickerman is the executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, an organization advocating for a sustainable energy future. Michael Vickerman’s commentaries also posted on RENEW’s web site: http://www.renewwisconsin.org, RENEW’s blog: http://www.zmetro.com/community/us/wi/madison/renew and Madison Peak Oil Group’s blog: http://www.madisonpeakoil-blog.blogspot.com.

Walling Out Wind

by jboullion | Jan 4, 2008 | Uncategorized

Michael Vickerman, RENEW Wisconsin
January 4, 2008

What is it about living within sight of large wind turbines that spooks certain people to the point of irrationality?

Consider the example of Trempealeau County in western Wisconsin. At the urging of a local citizens group, the County Board there adopted an ordinance last month that requires wind turbines higher than 150 feet tall to be set back no less than one mile from neighboring residences, schools, churches and businesses. This is by far the longest setback distance on wind turbines imposed to date by a local government in our state.

Now, the population density of Trempealeau County (38 residents per square mile) is less than half of the statewide average of 103 residents per sq. mile. Even so, as one developer pointed out at the hearing, there is not one acre of land that can legally host a commercial wind generator under this ordinance.

Why would a local board effectively ban wind turbines within its jurisdiction? Those backing the ordinance say that the one-mile setback is necessary to protect the health and safety of its citizens. Turbines, they contend, may produce sounds and electrical currents that can cause illnesses, even though no peer-reviewed study documenting such a phenomenon exists.

In a recently published book examining the environmental impacts of wind energy projects,” the National Research Council wrote that wind turbines that are 1,000 feet away from a listener produce “relatively low noise or sound-pressure levels compared with other common sources such as a busy office, and with nighttime ambient noise levels in the countryside. While turbine noise increases with wind speed, ambient noises—for example, due to the rustling of tree leaves— increase at a higher rate and can mask the turbine noise.”

In other words, while wind turbines produce an aerodynamic sound that is audible at 1,000 feet, ambient sounds inside a residence (e.g., air-conditioners, fans, refrigerators) and outside (e.g., birds, crickets) will very often mask or muffle it, even at night.

Then there is the issue of the flickering shadows cast by the turbine’s spinning blades at certain times of the year under certain conditions. Though wind opponents commonly inflate this phenomenon into a health issue, the National Research Council believes otherwise. “Shadow flicker is not important at distant sites (for example, greater than 1,000 feet from a turbine) except during the morning and evening when shadows are long. However, sunlight intensity is also lower during the morning and evening; this tends to reduce the effects of shadows and shadow flicker.”
A house 1,000 feet from a wind turbine could experience as much as 20 hours of flickering shadows per year, assuming cloudless conditions and strong crosswinds during all 4,380 hours of daylight in a year. Even if Wisconsin had such a climate, which would make the state uninhabitable for obvious reasons, how does this even rise to the level of a nuisance, let alone a health risk?

But it doesn’t take much mental effort to come up with at least a half a dozen land uses more disruptive to neighbors a half mile away than commercial wind turbines would be from 1,000 feet. Some that might legitimately be considered nuisances are airports, quarries, landfills, auto and motorcycle racetracks, rail freight corridors, hog farms, food processing plants, central station power plants, highways, automobile dealerships that are lit up 24/7, and anyplace where trucks congregate. Yet I’m willing to bet that there’s not one local ordinance in Wisconsin that requires them to be at least one mile away from a residence.

Meanwhile, there are four fossil energy stations in the heart of Madison supplying heat and electricity to local businesses and residences. Classroom buildings surround the main heating plant serving University of Wisconsin’s Madison campus. Within 1,000 feet of Madison Gas and Electric’s downtown power plant, one can find restaurants, offices, apartment buildings, stores, a bike path, a day care center and over 50 residences.

Clearly, for thousands of Madisonians, living, working, teaching or taking classes in full view of these energy plants is no big deal. But to hear Trempealeau County’s wind opponents talk, living among wind turbines would devastate their quality of life. That’s a very harsh assessment of a form of electricity generation that neither pollutes the air or water nor depletes the energy resource it uses.

Trempealeau County’s antipathy toward local wind generation is symptomatic of areas that are completely dependent on the outside world to provide them with their energy. All of the motor fuel, heat and electricity consumed by the citizenry comes from somewhere else. The coal that generates electricity for that area is mined in Wyoming. The power plants that burn the fuel are located in other counties. There is not enough generating capacity in that county to power a single holiday light display, let alone a school or a church.

Indeed, apart from the distribution lines along the roadways, there are very few visual cues reminding Trempealeau County of the electrical apparatus that allows them to toast their bread or automatically open their garage doors. Should one be surprised that a population used to views without smokestacks, large transmission lines, substations, strip mines, and drilling pads would object to wind turbines in their midst? Saddened maybe, but not surprised.

Yet some communities are beginning to appreciate the liability of energy dependency in a time when oil costs $100 per barrel. In the Town of Springfield, a semirural part of Dane County 10 miles northwest of Madison, a group of farmers has banded together to host a six-turbine wind project. Though this installation would be visible from several dozen neighboring residences within a half-mile of it, not one of them has registered an objection to the proposed energy facility.

Indeed, this may be the only project in Wisconsin that has not triggered any opposition, even though the population density in Springfield is higher than in other areas of the state where restrictive ordinances have been adopted, including Trempealeau County. Evidently, the neighbors around the host farms have concluded that nearby wind turbines would not constitutes a health or safety hazard.

This begs the question: why is living in proximity to wind turbines acceptable in one part of Wisconsin and unacceptable in other areas? And what kind of world would come about if every jurisdiction followed Trempealeau County’s lead? These are questions worth wrestling over, even though such an effort would inexorably lead to a book-length response.

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Sources: Environmental Impacts of Wind Energy Projects, National Research Council, May 2007, The National Academies Press.

Michael Vickerman is the executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, a nonprofit organization that acts as a catalyst to advance a sustainable energy future through public policy and private sector initiatives. Michael Vickerman’s commentaries also posted on RENEW’s web site: http://www.renewwisconsin.org, RENEW’s blog: http://www.renew-energy-blog.org and Madison Peak Oil Group’s blog: http://www.madisonpeakoil-blog.blogspot.com.

Trempealeau County sharply limits wind energy

by jboullion | Dec 18, 2007 | Uncategorized

Immediate release
December 18, 2007

More information
RENEW Wisconsin
Ed Blume
608.819.0748

Clean Wisconsin
Ryan Schryver
608.251.7020, ext. 25

Trempealeau County sharply limits wind energy
Calling it an effective ban on commercial wind generators, Wisconsin clean energy advocates blasted Trempealeau County’s new wind ordinance, which was adopted Monday night on a vote of ten to six.

The county’s wind ordinance requires developers to place wind turbines at least one mile from neighboring residences, schools, hospitals, and businesses. This is the longest set back distance imposed to date by a local government in Wisconsin.

Speaking to the county board, RENEW Wisconsin Executive Director Michael Vickerman said that the ordinance “steers Trempealeau County toward a head-on collision with state energy policies, which designate wind power as a preferred energy source.”

RENEW Wisconsin, a statewide nonprofit organization, advocates for public policies and private initiatives to support renewable energy.
State policy favors wind power, because “it has shown itself to be a clean, safe and affordable energy option that helps reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and reduce global warming emissions,” according to Ryan Schryver of Clean Wisconsin, an advocacy organization for clean water, air, and energy.

“Local governments, as well as the state, should be looking at ways to eliminate the barriers to renewable energy production instead of creating new obstacles for siting wind developments, as this ordinance does,” continued Schryber.

“This ordinance – all 16 pages of it – could have been boiled down to one sentence: No wind energy system greater than 150 feet in height will be permitted in Trempealeau County,” Vickerman told the county board.

“If every county were to adopt a wind ordinance as arbitrarily restrictive as the one before you, renewable energy development in Wisconsin would slow to a stand still,” Vickerman added.

Presenting an oversized map of Trempealeau County, Jim Naleid, representing Holmen-based AgWind Energy Partners, said that “There is not one square inch of land where a commercial wind turbine can be legally sited under this ordinance.”
AgWind Energy Partners, a wind farm developer, recently installed a meteorological tower in the county to measure wind speeds.
END
Clean Wisconsin, an environmental advocacy organization, protects Wisconsin’s clean water and air and advocates for clean energy by being an effective voice in the state legislature and by holding elected officials and corporations accountable. Founded in 1970 as Wisconsin’s Environmental Decade, Clean Wisconsin exposes corporate polluters, makes sure existing environmental laws are enforced, and educates citizens and businesses. Phone: 608-251-7020, Fax: 608-251-1655, Email: info@cleanwisconsin.org, Website: www.cleanwisconsin.org.

RENEW Wisconsin is an independent, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that acts as a catalyst to advance a sustainable energy future through public policy and private sector initiatives. More information on RENEW’s Web site at www.renewwisconsin.org.