[ In Vermont, everyone loves clean energy—when it comes from
someplace else] [[link removed]]

THE NIMBY THREAT TO RENEWABLE ENERGY  
[[link removed]]

 

Jim Motavalli
September 20, 2021
Sierra
[[link removed].]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
* [[link removed]]

_ In Vermont, everyone loves clean energy—when it comes from
someplace else _

The Searsburg Wind Energy Facility., Photos by Tara Wray

 

THE WIND IS TOO FIERCE to hike any farther up the wooded ridge to the
15 wind turbines that make up the Deerfield Wind Farm. That, after
all, is why they're here. Fifteen years in the planning, the
30-megawatt Deerfield now produces enough energy to power 14,000
Vermont households in the nearby towns of Searsburg and Readsboro,
which also share $6.8 million a year in direct payments from the
project. "Those are wicked gusts," observes my guide, Justin Lindholm,
who in his black-and-green plaid jacket and rubber boots looks to be
every inch what he actually is, a native Vermonter.

[Twelve strips of undulating solar panels lie on the ground.]Solar
installations like this community array in South Royalton provide
about 10 percent of Vermont's electricity. 

This would strike many as an iconic scene in the crunchier-than-thou
home state of Senator Bernie Sanders, environmental author and
activist Bill McKibben, and the ice cream company Ben & Jerry's. With
its rolling hills, organic farms, roadside maple syrup stands, and
white clapboard churches on quaint town squares, Vermont looks as
picture-perfect as its renewable energy portfolio: Of the electricity
generated in-state, 99.9 percent is from renewable sources, "a larger
share than in any other state," according to the US Energy Information
Administration. Most is from hydropower, about 20 percent from
biomass, and 18 percent from Vermont's five wind farms—a larger
share than in 80 percent of the other states.

Yet to Lindholm, a dedicated, lifetime outdoorsman with a deep love
for his state, the slowly spinning turbines are an abomination. "I am
totally against ridgeline wind," he says. "It destroys some of the
most fragile features of these mountains. They blast to build roads
and bring the blades up—a million pounds of explosives in some
cases. 'Wind' is a four-letter word in Vermont." Lindholm also hates
the noise generated by turbines, claiming that it keeps residents up
at night. "Some have had to be bought out," he says. "They're keeping
the agreements quiet." On this blustery day, you can't hear much of
anything from the turbines. Maybe the wind is blowing in the wrong
direction.

Lindholm isn't much happier with the 20-megawatt solar
farm—Vermont's largest—in Ludlow, 50 miles to the north. It's not
what you'd call imposing, with rows of panels on a gentle hillside
across the road from an aging farm displaying rusty agricultural
implements and a big Trump sign. But Lindholm complains that 60 of its
100 acres were once farmland. "We have such rocky soil, prime
agricultural land is rare," he says.

Ask Lindholm how we can save the planet without utility-scale
renewables and he'll give you a fatalistic, Malthusian answer: We
won't. "I figured out years ago that human population growth is
unstoppable," he says.

"We might dress it up in flannel in Vermont, but NIMBYism is NIMBYism.
I think we are dangerously close to letting the perfect be the enemy
of a livable planet."

No polling data is available on how many other Vermonters have given
up on humanity, but there are enough to stymie any major new renewable
energy projects in the state. In 2012, Vermont had at least a dozen
wind projects in development. Today, there are none. No
industrial-scale wind or solar projects are underway anywhere in the
state. "I love Vermont dearly and admire its conservation ethic," Bill
McKibben told _Sierra_. "But there are moments, faced with a global
crisis, when it feels like the state motto should be 'Don't change a
thing until I die.' I very much look forward to the day when there's a
big wind turbine up on top of Middlebury Gap above my home."

VERMONT LIVES UP TO ITS image in many ways. There actually are crusty
but lovable natives who speak their piece at town meetings. The state
has embraced small-scale solar, and unobtrusive installations dot the
roadsides. All told, Vermont produces 245 megawatts from the sun,
which accounted for 11 percent of its electricity in 2018. But while
Vermont has been called the nation's greenest state, that reputation
may no longer be deserved. Since the 604-megawatt Vermont Yankee
nuclear plant shut down in 2014, the state has generated only
two-fifths of the electricity it uses. The rest is imported from other
states and Canada, with gas and hydro (plus New Hampshire nuclear) in
the mix. Says James Moore, co-president of SunCommon, the state's
largest solar installer, "We've exported a lot of our environmental
impact."

[A man wearing jeans and a face mask sweeps the sidewalk outside a
brick building housing a bookshop and a clothing store.]Vermonters'
small-town ethos goes hand in hand with resistance to renewable energy
development.

Some opposition to renewable energy projects is based on legitimate
concerns about protecting natural spaces. But a good portion of the
resistance is due to NIMBYism—the "not in my backyard" syndrome.
Both anti-development gadflies and wealthy communities with big
bankrolls have become adept at stopping needed projects. In
Vermont—as elsewhere in the nation—you can't underestimate the
power of people not wanting to look at something and having the means
to make the problem go away.

"It's people with good intentions not wanting to see change in their
little piece of the world," Moore says. "We might dress it up in
flannel in Vermont, but NIMBYism is NIMBYism. I think we are
dangerously close to letting the perfect be the enemy of a livable
planet."

The headquarters of Vermont's opposition to utility-scale renewable
power is Annette Smith's rustic, off-the-grid farm in rural Danby.
Smith is the founder and director of Vermonters for a Clean
Environment, the group she uses as a cudgel against clean energy
developers, and not just the large ones—she is just as likely to
organize state residents to fight one- or two-turbine installations in
the remote counties of the isolated Northeast Kingdom.

"Wind is not a happy scene in Vermont," says Smith, after guiding a
tour of her property, which includes three cows, a lone goose, and
solar panels. "It's the same in every community," she says, sitting in
a chair she made herself. "The developers go where land is cheap and
people are poor. Searsburg is an example of that. We've seen so much
done wrong here, and that's why there's a backlash against renewable
energy. It's turned Democrats into Republicans."

"'Wind' is a four-letter word in Vermont."

Smith is not a political ideologue. She grew up in Sarasota, Florida,
played the violin, and graduated from Vassar with a degree in history.
She built harpsichords with her husband, Bill, and once, she posed
nude for a painting on the lid of one (a depiction of _Leda and the
Swan_). Her transition to activist was gradual, starting with a fight
against a fracked-gas pipeline and two gas-fired power plants. But
what she thought would be a brief interruption in a determinedly
out-of-the-mainstream life became a highly successful personal
crusade.

"My motivation was the scale and inappropriateness of a certain kind
of development, rather than [opposition to] renewable energy," she
says. "Do I take credit for stopping the pipeline and those plants?
Definitely, yes. The _Bennington Banner_ called me a 'one-woman
wrecking crew.'"

What about offshore wind projects—with no noise issues or close
neighbors? Smith admits to some ambivalence ("I don't know what to
make of it") but suggests objections: poor durability in salt air and
weather, underwater transmission lines, threats to whales.

"How much of the planet are we prepared to sacrifice to meet
humanity's need for energy?" she asks. "Why can't we meet our needs
without digging, drilling, undergrounding, and building yet more
technology that requires massive impacts on the earth?" She says she
likes renewable energy when it's small in scale, like the solar panels
in her backyard, and she walks her talk. "Every save-the-planet
environmentalist you interviewed has a heavier carbon footprint than
Annette Smith," says Lindholm, who embraces the same lifestyle; he
hasn't been on a jet airplane in this century.

[A black bear stands in a meadow surrounded by trees.]Critics complain
that solar installations take too much land away from wildlife and
agriculture.

That _Whole Earth Catalog_ ethos may be the secret to Smith and
Lindholm's successful brand of NIMBYism: For famously self-reliant
Vermonters, it reframes energy from a societal problem to an
individual choice. If everyone lived a simple, back-to-the-land
lifestyle, there would be no need for giant wind turbines.

Olivia Campbell Andersen, executive director of Renewable Energy
Vermont, isn't buying it. "In Vermont, wind power is the most
renewable, cost-effective, and affordable energy available," she says.
"It saves ratepayers money and has enabled many towns to have better
schools and firehouses." She sees "a lot of hypocrisy" in those who
oppose renewable energy projects but don't object to using energy
generated from coal. In response to Smith's contention that it's poor
Vermonters who are victimized, Andersen argues that those who are most
united in opposition are "wealthier people who may have second homes."

Attempting to span this gulf are Vermont's progressive icons, who
strongly support renewable energy but are reluctant to label its
opponents. Since 2019, for instance, Ben & Jerry's has partnered with
the Sierra Club's Ready for 100 campaign "to advance the goal of
powering the US with 100 percent clean and renewable energy." The
company (now owned by Unilever) campaigns mostly on the national
level, but its foundation gave $16,000 to the McKibben-linked
350Vermont in 2020, and the company itself pledges to use 100 percent
renewable energy in its operations by 2025.

[In an overgrown area, a rusty metal gate has a sign saying "Wanted
Woman/Partner/Call Jim Day/Log Cabin Building/Must Be Honest/Must Not
Drink." Behind it is a dilapidated wooden structure.]Annette Smith
says developers "go where land is cheap and people are poor," like
rural Searsburg.

"I don't think of what's happening in Vermont as NIMBYism," says Jerry
Greenfield (the Jerry to Ben). "I see it as people with honest,
genuine concerns, and I respect that. But we need to look at the big
picture and see where our energy is coming from. The alternatives are
way worse." Vermont, he says, "is seen as this environmentally forward
place, with beautiful, rolling green fields and streams. But in terms
of what the state is actually doing, it's just not stepping up."

The big green dog in the state is, of course, Bernie Sanders, a major
supporter of the Green New Deal. In a statement from his office,
Sanders said that an energy transition to renewables is essential to
protecting "iconic Vermont pastimes like maple sugaring, skiing, and
snowmobiling" from climate change. "Senator Sanders is proud that, in
many ways, Vermont has been a leader in this transition," the
statement said. "The state legislature created the first statewide
energy-efficiency utility in the country in 1999, and the senator's
hometown of Burlington became the first city in the nation to get 100
percent of its electricity from renewables in 2014. However, we
cannot allow Vermont's notable successes to make us complacent; we
still have a lot of work to do, especially in the buildings and
transportation sectors. We must act boldly at all levels of
government."

BOLD ACTION IS NOT WHAT'S HAPPENING in the Green Mountain State.
Vermont's wind resources are relatively modest; the National Renewable
Energy Laboratory says that Vermont has just three potential gigawatts
of developable wind. That's enough to make a state with such a tiny
population self-sustaining on energy. But most of that wind is on
Vermont's scenic ridgelines. After the construction of five wind farms
between 1997 and 2017, a public backlash encouraged by Smith halted
further development.

Chad Farrell is the founder and CEO of Encore Renewable Energy, one of
Vermont's major renewable developers. He's now looking to expand his
company elsewhere. "Every project in this state is some kind of trip
hazard," he says, "and a lot of times NIMBYism is behind it. It's
something we have struggled with and worked hard to overcome."

[A small green house has two solar panel arrays outside it.]Many
Vermonters' ideal is off-the-grid, private systems like at this
homestead in Barnard.

Farrell came up against Smith a decade ago over a pair of 2.2-megawatt
turbines on a farm in the town of Derby Line, near the Canadian
border. "It was a vulnerable time for our business," he says. "We had
to pack up our tents, because we couldn't afford millions of dollars
and 10 years of fighting over two turbines. The farmer worked hard to
build support, but in the end we had to tell him that we were sorry."

Farrell frames his effort as self-reliance too, but for the entire
state, not just individuals. "The ability to control our energy future
independently within state boundaries should be something to be
celebrated, not fought against," he says. "We're going to deliver as
many megawatts of renewable energy in Maine over the next year and a
half as we did in Vermont over 10 years," he adds.

The amount of renewable energy at play in Vermont may be trivial, but
NIMBY opposition is everywhere and could pose big obstacles for
President Joe Biden's ambitious energy and climate change plans. Biden
has set a goal of a carbon-free power sector by 2035, followed by a
net-zero economy by 2050. The Green New Deal embraces that same 2050
goal, envisioning "meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the
United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy
sources."

Achieving those climate goals involves a big commitment to big
renewable energy projects. That entails a willingness to site
them—even in spitting distance of someone's backyard. Mark Jacobson,
director of Stanford University's Atmosphere/Energy Program, has
attempted to quantify how many renewable energy installations the
United States will actually need. He reckons 223,000 five-megawatt
onshore wind turbines, 171,000 five-megawatt offshore turbines, 44,000
50-megawatt utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) systems, 77 100-megawatt
geothermal plants, 137 million five-kilowatt residential rooftop PV
systems, 8.7 million 100-kilowatt commercial and government rooftop PV
systems, and 19 100-megawatt concentrated solar power plants.

All those turbines and solar panels (plus the requisite transmission
lines) have to go somewhere. But many communities—including those
full of avowed liberals and environmentalists—are working hard to
make sure they go somewhere else. In Klickitat County, Washington,
retirees who moved to the area for its scenic views convinced their
board of commissioners to stop permitting solar farms. In 2019,
California's San Bernardino County prohibited the construction of big
wind and solar farms on more than a million acres of private
land. _The Los Angeles Times_ said that the ruling was "bending to
the will of residents who say they don't want renewable energy
projects industrializing their rural desert communities." In
Coxsackie, New York, a group called Citizens for Sensible Solar
organized to stop the construction of utility-scale solar plants that
would "destroy the rural aesthetic of their homes.” In Culpeper,
Virginia, the blocking of an 80-megawatt solar farm led to the
creation of the nonprofit Citizens for Responsible Solar, which works
to stop utility-scale projects nationwide. "Rural communities are
under attack from big, corporate solar developers (some foreign) who
want to build large-scale, industrial solar power plants on
agricultural- and forestry-zoned land to take advantage of lower
development costs," the group says.

[A red barn and a dirt road sit among rolling green hills.]Vermonters
are intent on preserving the state's rural character, which is why
there are no industrial-scale solar or wind projects under
construction anywhere in Vermont.

In terms of organizing heft, no rural mom-and-pop NIMBY group can
rival the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, which waged a 16-year
battle to kill the Cape Wind Project, a 130-turbine, 454-megawatt
offshore wind farm that would have provided 75 percent of the energy
for Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket. The powerhouse group
spanned the ideological spectrum, with support from both the Kennedy
family and billionaire William Koch, and was known for burying
opponents in blizzards of filings and technical arguments. The late
Ted Kennedy, then a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, expressed
his objection simply: "Don't you realize—it's where I sail." Koch,
who donated $5 million to the cause, is a big sailor too (he won the
America's Cup in 1992), but he's also in the fossil fuel business, and
he's motivated by protecting his extensive real estate holdings
against "visual pollution." He told _The New York Times,_ "The
ability to acquire a special property where I can create a family
compound for my children and extended family was and is very
meaningful to me."

The would-be developers of Cape Wind surrendered their federal lease
in 2017 after a series of setbacks orchestrated in part by the
Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. "We must remain vigilant to
ensure long-term protection for the Sound so that it is never again
threatened by industrial development," says the group on its website.

MORE RECENTLY, Citizens for the Preservation of Wainscott is hoping to
repeat the alliance's success in rallying the 1 percent. Wainscott is
a hamlet in East Hampton, Long Island, a seaside escape for wealthy
New Yorkers where the median home price is $1.8 million. Denmark's
Ørsted A/S and Eversource Energy, New England's largest energy
provider, want to build a 12-turbine wind farm 35 miles offshore that
would produce an estimated 130 megawatts and be operational by late
2023.

The United States has a total of seven offshore wind turbines. Europe
has 5,400.

If Citizens for the Preservation of Wainscott has its way, the farm
will never be built. The group insists it's not against wind power per
se. Instead, its focus is on a single transmission cable that would
come ashore on exclusive Beach Lane, then run to the Cove Hollow Road
substation in East Hampton to be connected to the wider electric grid.
The group claims to have "serious concerns" about water pollution,
access for emergency vehicles, and "an unnecessary new substation."

Residents who signed a 2018 petition against the cable included
billionaire Ronald Lauder, actress Edie Falco, futurist Faith Popcorn,
and Daniel Neidich, a former business partner of Steven Mnuchin in
Dune Capital Management and also a Citizens director. In written
replies to questions, Citizens derided "New York State's rush to
achieve its clean energy goals." The group says it supports wind
energy, but "there are better alternatives to using miles of
residential streets to snake the cable to a substation."

Despite the opposition, New York State's Public Service Commission
approved the transmission cable route last March. It's still coming
ashore in Wainscott and will be buried 30 feet underground. Citizens
for the Preservation of Wainscott hasn't given up the fight, though.
It asked the PSC to reconsider, sued East Hampton, and is "poised" for
further litigation.

"Some of these people have big bucks, and they aren't used to losing,"
Jerry Mulligan, a retired lawyer in East Hampton who favors the wind
farm, told _The Guardian_. In a letter to the East Hampton Star, he
called Citizens "just a small, moneyed NIMBY group who want
electricity for Wainscott without any involvement or inconvenience on
their part." Mulligan says he still plays tennis with opponents—they
just try not to talk about the wind.

THE WORLD INVESTED HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS in decarbonization in 2020,
reports BloombergNEF, which says that more than half the world's
electricity will be produced by wind and solar by 2050. The long-term
prospects are very good—the price of offshore wind turbines has
fallen by 80 percent in the past 20 years, and solar installations are
growing rapidly and becoming more affordable. Yet solar accounted for
only 2.3 percent of US generation in 2020. And though as many as 16
offshore wind farms have been proposed on the East Coast, the United
States has a total of seven offshore wind turbines. Europe has 5,400.

In May 2021, the Biden administration approved what will be the
country's first commercial-scale offshore wind project in the waters
off Martha's Vineyard. With up to 84 turbines and 800 megawatts,
Vineyard Wind will generate enough power for 400,000 homes. Commercial
fishers aren't happy—their Responsible Offshore Development Alliance
condemns the approval as "scattershot, partisan, and opaque." But at
least so far, there are no legions of lawyers to rival those arrayed
against Cape Wind. It helps that wind technology is advancing,
enabling larger farms farther out at sea—and out of sight.

Audra Parker, executive director of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket
Sound, is surprisingly sanguine about Vineyard Wind and hasn't spoken
out against it. "Our position hasn't changed," she says. "We support
renewable energy, assuming it's responsibly sited, cost-effective, and
has the support of the local community. Cape Wind had none of those.
Involving the community early on is extremely important."

Steve Crowley, climate and energy chair of the Sierra Club's Vermont
Chapter, says that the chapter has taken positions both for and
against wind sitings. It opposed Deerfield Wind because it's close to
the George D. Aiken Wilderness and was against a later expansion
because of its impacts on critical bear habitat. But the chapter
supported a (never built) wind project on Equinox Mountain in
Manchester and a wind study on East Mountain.

Crowley credits Smith's community engagement with changing a lot of
minds. "Her group gets in at the first hint of a project and starts
spreading not-always-accurate information about the impacts," he says.
"They're scaring people before they have a chance to listen
objectively."

Robb Kidd, who runs the chapter's priority campaigns, tells about a
eureka moment he had regarding renewable energy siting. He was talking
to Søren Hermansen, the renewable energy evangelist from the Danish
island of Samsø, which generates all its own power from wind and
biomass (and sells excess to the mainland). Kidd asked Hermansen how
Samsø got locals on board. "He said before the construction started,
they worked in the community to assess the needs," Kidd says. "The
developers here didn't do that very well. They should get in the habit
of working closely with communities."

And what should be their message to those communities? They could
emphasize that a rapidly changing climate and the urgent need to slow
that change leave us with a shrinking pool of options. They could make
it clear that massive change is coming, the severity and scope of
which will be determined by how we choose to respond now—as
individuals trying to preserve comfortable lives and lovely sight
lines for the rest of our days or as communities trying to maintain a
livable planet for our grandchildren. There will be painful
trade-offs; that much is assured. Our task is to agree, together, on
which ones we can live with.

_This article was funded by the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign
[[link removed]]._

_Jim Motavalli most recently wrote High Voltage: The Fast Track to
Plug In the Auto Industry (Rodale Books, 2011)._

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
* [[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web [[link removed]]
Submit via email
Frequently asked questions [[link removed]]
Manage subscription [[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org [[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]