As I noted there, the climate and energy imperatives we face require us to embrace a big and diverse portfolio of resources that will supply our energy needs without pumping pollution into our air and water. These range from the many efficiency, conservation and demand response solutions that reduce demand for energy, distributed solutions like solar panels on roofs and large renewable energy facilities like wind farms and even some big solar facilities where conditions allow them to operate and thrive.

Different facilities will perform best at different times. Some renewable energy facilities, like solar panels and offshore wind farms, will tend to produce energy during the summer hours when electric demand is highest in New England, others will deliver more energy during hours when cell phone chargers, night lights and other “non-peak” resources are making demands on the electric system.

Of course, increased use of many forms of energy storage and similar solutions will allow more smoothing out of demand and use of these different resources in different ways but the bottom line remains that we will need small, medium, large and extra large clean resources.

Deploying and operating these diverse portfolio of resources in a smart and effective way and integrating them into a system will not be easy. We do indeed need to be mindful of the need to avoid and reduce, wherever possible, impacts to local wildlife. That is just one of the many challenges we must face honestly and work to solve, it is not an excuse for not taking action.

Unlike solar, IW is typically hardly working in the hottest part of those sunny days. In fact, according to Vermont biologist and bat expert, Scott Darling (VPR Vermont Edition 1/16/2012), the operators are being advised to shut them down when the are spinning the slowest in order to protect bats!

Let’s invest in solar panels everywhere and ditch those environmentally destructive, intermittent, inefficient, ugly, 1% enriching, behemoths!