Category Archives: Energy

Oh hey look: another VTGOP climate change denier

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Here’s a little compost sprinkled on your cornflakes, courtesy of one Eileen Rodgers, “communications director for the Burlington Republican Committee”:

Along with plotting to place wind turbines on 200 miles of ridge lines and scheming to occupy thousands of acres of our fields with solar panels, the central planners in Vermont are busying themselves with projects that are guaranteed to squeeze our cars off the roads.

There’s a whole lotta hate in that little paragraph, which is the kickoff of an opinion piece by Rodgers posted on VTDigger this morning. Plotting, scheming, central planners squeezing our cars off the roads.

So tell me, when exactly did Old Joe Stalin resurrect himself and take over Vermont?

In the guise of Bill McKibben, no less?

Climate change has been a very convenient phenomenon. It has given a sense of validity to all sorts of projects the big guys support. Energy from the wind and sun will take care of our electricity needs and our transportation needs will be met with … bicycles!!

Yeah, that’s… uh, wait, nobody is saying any of that. Except maybe the voices in Eileen Rodgers’ head.

And “big guys”? Since when are Republicans against “big guys”?

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Will the VTGOP run an anti-renewables campaign?

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Sign, sign, everywhere a sign…

— 2010 Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Dubie emerges from five years of political hermitage to reveal himself as a vocal anti-wind advocate. He insists his stance has nothing to do with a proposed wind farm near his house, ahem.

— Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, the likely GOP gubernatorial candidate, doesn’t like ridgeline wind. He has described a road-to-Damascus moment when he was biking in rural Vermont, saw wind turbines on a ridgeline, and thought they looked ugly.

— Former Douglas Administration Ag Secretary Roger Allbee comes out of the weeds with an essay questioning whether wind and solar energy are in keeping with “Vermont’s environmental heritage,” which he describes in extremely rosy terms.

— Senate Minority Leader Joe Benning, a potential candidate for Lieutenant Governor, has expressed (on this very site) his opposition to any more large-scale renewable projects in the Northeast Kingdom.

— Then you’ve got VTGOP Chair David Sunderland, who has said “there’s science on both sides” of the climate change issue.

Taken together, that’s quite a few signs that the Vermont Republican Party will be running an anti-renewable campaign in 2016. Well, they’ll dress it up as favoring local control and taking “sensible” action (meaning little or none) while providing plenty of lip service about climate change.

This is one of the potential negative effects of a Phil Scott governorship: he would be a major obstacle to further progress on renewables.

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They paved (a tiny bit of) paradise and put up solar panels

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VTDigger’s Friday feed is infected with a bit of uncharacteristic headline fearmongering.

HIGH SPACE DEMANDS FOR VERMONT’S FUTURE SOLAR FARMS IF ENERGY STAYS LOCAL

The story concerns a presentation to the Legislature’s Solar Siting Task Force by Asa Hopkins of the Public Service Department. And by “HIGH SPACE DEMANDS,” it means Hopkins’ estimate of between 8,000 and 13,000 acres of solar panels statewide. That’s assuming we are to meet our legally-mandated goal of 90% renewable energy by the year 2050.

Wow. That sounds like a lot of land.

Is it?

Not really. The state of Vermont has almost 6,000,000 acres. A conscientious reporter (or editor) might have thought to include that fact.

So, if you take the upper end of the estimate, solar panels would cover two-tenths of one percent of Vermont. (A conscientious headline writer might have asked whether “HIGH SPACE DEMANDS” is an accurate characterization.)

You know what? I’d take that, if it means getting 90% of our energy from local, renewable sources.

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Vermont’s New Working Landscape

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Vermonters have a long, sometimes storied, sometimes notorious, history of working on our land. In the latter category we have, among others, the sheep boom of the early 19th Century that left vast forests converted to pasture; the near-clearcutting of the entire state during the lumber (and wood construction) boom of the later 19th; the complete trashing of our waters by riverbank industries; and our modern-day violations of the Clean Water Act, caused in large part by agriculture and inadequate public water treatment.

Throughout it all, Vermont has been a working landscape with a tenuous, inconsistent relationship to the environment. Fortunately, we never found exploitable resources like coal or precious metals or oil. Also fortunately, the population has remained small enough that we’ve never been able to damage the environment beyond its incredible ability to regenerate.

But whether we were engaged in massive sheep farming, clearcut lumbering, industry, dairy farming, or shopping malls and subdivisions, the one constant is that we live in a “working landscape.” We have often celebrated that fact. And indeed, long-familiar aspects of the working landscape — even if they cause environmental degradation — are cherished parts of our way of life.

Myself, I’m looking forward to the next evolution of Vermont’s working landscape: the integration of renewable energy, the creation of a closer-to-home energy supply, the diminished dependence on fossil fuels and on massive “renewable” sources elsewhere, such as Seabrook Nuclear and the destructive hydro projects in northern Quebec.

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A strange little bubble: the proto-candidacy of Bruce Lisman

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Former Wall Street panjandrum turned bland public policy crusader Bruce Lisman showed up on The Mark Johnson Show Friday morning, and came about as close to declaring his candidacy for Governor as he could without actually making a declaration.

“I’m leaning strongly toward running,” he said, and indicated he was embarking on a weeklong family vacation that would probably produce a final decision. But while he’s pretty sure he’s running, he’s a lot less sure how he will do it: as a Democrat, as a Republican or as an independent. “If I choose to run, I’m running for the people. I’ll figure out how best to do that.”

Aww. For the people, eh? Well, the people appreciate the kind gesture.

He spent the rest of the hour basically proving my contention that he doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance of ever being Governor.

His answers were awfully rambly and not terribly engaging. He frequently changed subjects in mid-answer — sometimes in mid-sentence. He rarely ended up anywhere close to where he began.
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But that’s not the worst problem.

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Know-nothings, kneejerks and NIMBYs: a field guide to the anti-solar brigade

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Things is gettin’ a little cray-cray on the anti-renewables front, with signs of truly irrational behavior among those who don’t want solar farms anywhere, anyhow, anytime, anyplace, some of whom appear to harbor delusions that solar energy is our worst ecological nightmare. Others exhibit the more garden-variety strains of obstinate oppositionalism.

We begin down Bennington way, where it’s harvesting season in the nutbar orchard. In Pownal, Fire District No. 2 wants to install a 500-kW solar farm on the land where its pump and wellhead are located. The revenue would cover the cost of the FD’s water system, something local taxpayers have been unwilling to do.

(The array, FYI, would be less than half a square mile. Which, in terms of a sweeping Vermont landscape, simply isn’t that large. Small price to pay for keeping everyone’s fire fees low.)

There were the predictable anti-solar reactions — spoiling the view, affecting property values — but this one takes the cake:

Attendees expressed concern over possible pollution from the array, a risk of fire or explosion, and long-term logistics with the array’s maintenance and decommissioning.

Artist's rendering, proposed Pownal solar array.

Artist’s rendering, proposed Pownal solar array.

Waitwaitwait.

A risk of fire or explosion?

Mmmmmyeah.

There’s plenty of stupid in the rest of the article, but I’ll just stop there. Anyone suggesting spontaneous combustion at a solar array has forfeited all credibility.

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The Vermont Yankee Lie

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Well, I guess I’ve got to get my elephant gun, because an irrepressible little Republican gnat is buzzing in my ear again.

The metaphorical “gnat” in this case is a favored lie among Vermont Republicans: that Democrats are to blame for the closing of Vermont Yankee, thus robbing our state of putatively “clean” energy (as long as you can ensure thousands of centuries of safe storage, heh) and hundreds of good-paying jobs.

The latest shibboleth-repeater is one Scot Shumski, member of the Burlington School Board and spectacularly unsuccessful candidate for the House in 2014. (For those keeping score at home, he got whomped by Dem Jean O’Sullivan by a nearly 3-1 margin.) He took to the Twitterverse on a hot Monday afternoon:

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The Deep Derp of John Ellis Bush

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Pardon the diversion from my usual focus on Vermont politics, but I just couldn’t resist.

When I first heard about Jeb Bush’s “Americans need to work harder” statement, two thoughts came mind:

1. Isn’t he supposed to be the “smart” Bush brother?

2. Is this really what it means to be a moderate, “responsible” Republican in 2015? And if so, how is the VTGOP going to try to package and sell this manure pile to Vermont voters?

I was paraphrasing his actual quote; here’s the original, as stated in his interview with the New Hampshire Union Leader:

“My aspiration for the country — and I believe we can achieve it — is 4 percent growth as far as the eye can see. Which means we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. It means that people need to work longer hours and, through their productivity, gain more income for their families. That’s the only way we’re going to get out of this rut that we’re in.”

There’s a lot of bad to unpack in that single paragraph, but let’s move on to Bush’s attempt to re-contextualize that little turd he laid on the heads of American workers:

“If we’re going to grow the economy people need to stop being part-time workers, they need to be having access to greater opportunities to work,” he told reporters.

… “You can take it out of context all you want, but high-sustained growth means that people work 40 hours rather than 30 hours and that by our success, they have money, disposable income for their families to decide how they want to spend it rather than getting in line and being dependent on government,” Bush said.

In actual fact, his clarification isn’t much of an improvement on the silver-spoon original.

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The NRC has faith in the stock market

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Our government’s nuclear watchdogs made a move yesterday that reinforces their image as the Industry’s Best Friend.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has granted requests from Entergy Nuclear Operations Inc. to use some of the $665 million in its decommissioning fund to store used fuel rods that remain radioactive for thousands of years.

And by “some,” we mean $225 million, or more than one-third of the same decommissioning fund that’s woefully underfunded for the task of actually decommissioning Vermont Yankee, which is why we’ll have to wait 60 years before the thing is safely disposed of.

And here’s the ha-ha funny thing.

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2015 Legislature: Triumph of the B-sides

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When I look back on this session of the Legislature, a strange thing keeps happening: over and over again, I’m reminded of a significant bill, and my reaction is “Oh yeah, that.”

RESET bill? Oh yeah, that.

Child protection? Oh yeah, that.

The gun bill? Oh yeah, that.

Consumer protection, including limits on rent-to-own stores? Oh yeah, that.

Same-day voter registration? Oh yeah, that.

Economic development? Oh yeah, that.

The legislative agenda was so top-heavy with high-profile issues — the budget, taxes, education, Lake Champlain — that a lot of normally headline-making issues flew more or less under the radar. Or were quickly dealt with and forgotten.

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