photo courtesy of Dave Clarke@flickr.com

Wind power plays a key role in addressing climate change. Developing wind power and other clean sources reduces the use of fossil fuels, reduces carbon dioxide emissions, and helps to stabilize our climate.

Climate change, with record-breaking droughts, catastrophic floods, and unprecedented heat waves, is upon us.  The only way to keep the crisis from getting much worse is to sharply reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

We can do a lot with efficiency. We can insulate and air-seal our homes, businesses, and public buildings. We, as a nation, can choose to build and drive more fuel-efficient cars. We can drive our cars less, choosing to carpool, bicycle, or take public transportation whenever possible.

But efficiency is not enough.  As long as we use electricity, it must come from somewhere. That’s why all the New England states have specific goals for getting more electricity from renewables.

Every wind turbine, solar panel, or hydro turbine reduces the use of fossil or nuclear power. Eighty-eight percent of the electricity used in New England is generated from either fossil fuels or nuclear power. Nuclear power leaves behind radioactive waste that remains poisonous, essentially, forever. We urgently need to generate more clean, low-carbon, renewable power. We need to use all clean sources, use them together, and use them now.

All energy production takes its toll on the environment. In addition to the climate impacts of fossil fuels, all energy has local impacts where it is mined or produced. Because of this, our first priority must be to be to use less energy through efficiency and conservation.

But we also need to decide where the energy we do use comes from. When we in New England get our energy from fossil fuels and large hydro, we export some of our environmental impacts. By making our own energy, we take responsibility for ourselves.

Wind power is one of the cheapest and most abundant sources of renewable energy. According to the federal Energy Information Agency, electricity from new, utility-scale wind projects costs one-third less than comparable large solar projects. A 60-MW solar project, large enough to replace the wind power from Sheffield or Lowell, would also take up a lot of land – about 1 square mile, or 640 acres.

Home-scale power generation, such as rooftop solar, provides an essential piece of the puzzle; but it alone, or even coupled with efficiency, is not enough to meet our power needs. We still need other sources of power.

Every day, people and businesses in New England use electricity. We turn on lights, TVs, air conditioners and computers. Every time we hit that switch, the electricity comes from somewhere. Wind power generated in New England is part of a responsible choice to meet our power needs and tackle climate change.

photo credit: Ivy Dawned, Flickr

The end of any legislative session is tumultuous. Vermont’s citizen legislature, that meets part-time only a few months each year, is no different. In this year’s end-of-session tumult, progress on clean energy was left on the cutting room floor. This is a big disappointment. The same legislature that made skiing and snowboarding Vermont’s official winter sports failed to pass legislation that would keep those sports off the endangered list.

The Vermont Legislature stripped the Renewable Energy Standard from the energy bill it approved. Renewable standards require utilities to help address climate change by providing their customers with a certain percentage of power from clean, renewable sources. The more power we get from clean sources, the less power we get from older and dirtier fossil fuel plants. Twenty-nine states, including every other New England state, already have renewable standards, but Vermont is left behind in the dark ages of dirty power.

Throughout the session, CLF worked closely with other environmental organizations, business leaders and renewable developers to put in place a meaningful renewable standard so Vermont’s electric power users can do more to reduce carbon. The urgency of the climate crisis demands strong action.

There will be opportunities to move further ahead on renewable electricity next year, along with some legislation to help heating efficiency and electric vehicles, but each year we delay means more carbon reduction is needed. It is disappointing that in a year in which Vermont saw, in the form of flooding from Hurricane Irene, the kind of damage that climate change can do, and then saw one of the warmest winters on record (which wreaked havoc on ski areas and maple syrup production), we are not doing more to tackle climate change.

At a time when both carbon emissions and fuel prices continue to rise, Vermont is poised to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels and increase the use of renewable power – a good thing at the right time.

The legislature is considering a bill that would create a renewable portfolio standard (RPS), requiring that each electric utility acquire a percentage of its electricity from renewable sources. This is an important step in the fight against greenhouse gas emissions and climate change; CLF has testified that the bill needs to be strong and ambitious.

There’s no doubt the climate needs this bill. Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continue to shoot up, and global temperatures are rising. A warming global climate has led to increased evaporation, causing droughts and floods around the world. In his testimony before the committee considering the RPS bill, climate activist Bill McKibben described the rising worldwide occurrence of extreme weather events. Among these was Tropical Storm Irene, which devastated parts of Vermont at the end of last summer. McKibben urged the committee to act now, through measures such as an RPS, before our climate crisis gets worse.

The current version of the Vermont bill would require that by 2025 all electric utilities in Vermont get 30% of their power from renewable power plants commissioned after 2012. Whatever renewable sources are already generating power now (in 2012) would not count towards the 30% standard.

Currently Vermont only has voluntary goals for utilities to acquire a certain percentage of their power from renewable sources. A fundamental flaw of the existing program is that it allows utilities to sell renewable energy credits (RECs) from Vermont renewable projects to utilities in other states, yet still count that power as renewable in Vermont. This means that the renewable attributes of the power are counted twice. The bill currently in the legislature would correct this problem.

By enacting this bill, Vermont would not be alone. Twenty-nine other states already have an RPS, including all the other New England states, and other states as disparate as Texas and Hawaii. Their requirements vary widely. Maine has an ongoing 30% RPS; New Hampshire requires 23.8% by 2025; and Rhode Island requires 16% by 2020. Details of the requirements vary, but Vermont’s proposed program compares well with other states in the region.

Vermont needs a strong renewable standard. CLF continues to push for strong measures to tackle climate change and reduce pollution.