Wind in Vermont: a Video

The people in this video, Margaret Harrington and Annette Smith, are eager to shut down Vermont Yankee. They are speaking on a TV series called "Nuclear Free Future."  This makes parts of the video hard to watch.  However, Annette Smith is realistic about the inability of wind projects to replace Vermont Yankee.

VPIRG and Governor Shumlin and Green Mountain Power have been very active in favor of wind.   VPIRG's booklet about shutting down Vermont Yankee proposed hundreds of wind turbines to replace it.  The Coalition for Energy Solutions (I am part of that group) wrote a report two years ago which debunked the VPRIG report.  Here's my blog post about the press conference for our report.

Annette Smith does not buy into the "wind-instead-of-Yankee" scenario favored by VPIRG. This video is a reasonable review of the current wind situation in Vermont.

I do not agree with everything in this video, but it has many valid points.  For example, the ridgeline water issue is well described.  On the other hand, wind doesn't break up large animal habitat badly, once the construction is complete.

I do not plan to go through this video word for word, however. Overall, I think this is worth watching.

Nucleonics Week

I said that I would keep people informed of reactions and reviews of the Coalition for Energy Solutions report Vermont Electric Power in Transition.

A brief review of the report is in Nucleonics Week, May 5 edition. The review is by Suzanne McElligott and appears on page 8 of the magazine. Since I know what our report says, I was more interested in the article's quote from James Moore of VPIRG. Moore is the author of the Repowering Vermont report which we reviewed.

A few days ago, Moore had this to say about us and our report in the Brattleboro Reformer: Their analysis, if you can call it that, is disingenuous," he said. "It’s a Vermont Yankee support group manipulating the numbers to paint the picture that they want."

In Nucleonics Week, he seems to have changed his tune. Instead of "their analysis, if you can call it that," his new words are "no surprise." Here's the quote:

If coalition members “were just focused on capital costs then yes, building hundreds of megawatts of renewable generation costs a lot. Building hundreds of megawatts of anything costs a lot, this shouldn’t’ be a surprise.”

I was wondering what part of our analysis was disingenuous. That word has a nice ring to it, but it is more accurate to acknowledge that the high costs of renewables are "no surprise."

I am glad Moore noticed, however belatedly, that our report simply quantifies a situation that is intrinsically-- no surprise.

Matt Dunne

While I was in Montpelier for the press conference, I gave a copy of our report to Matt Dunne, a candidate for the Democratic Gubernatorial nomination. Today, Vermont Buzz has a review of his web site and energy policies. Like all the Democratic candidates, he wants to shut down Vermont Yankee. Still, I found the review interesting because Matt acknowledges the need for baseload power, but plans to supply it with biomass. Many environmentalists in Vermont seem to think that baseload is "your father's Oldsmobile."

Otter Creek

This just in....

The small Otter Creek Hydro station, which has supplied locals with inexpensive power for years, needs maintenance and has been sold to CVPS. It is 18 MW (actually, we are talking about a series of hydro plants here) and was sold for $33 million. A further $13 million in maintenance will be required. Rates are going up for the plant's customers.

Even existing renewables are not free.