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Burlington Free Press.com Top Stories-Wind Project Suspended

Nearly three years ago, before the wind energy controversy heated up in Vermont, I wrote a piece on regulation and wind farms that was published in the Burlington Free Press. That piece can be found in my blog here. In it I argued that fragmented regulation dealing with individual wind farm proposals was costly, inefficient and time consuming. Instead, at that time we would have been better served by efforts outside of regulation to develop our public policy position before developers were forced through the costly sieve of regulation and public opinion one project at a time.

Today's Free Press story reporting that the developers of a proposed wind project on Glebe Mountain in Manchester have decided to suspend their work and not request approval now at the Public Service Board is not surprising. In light of hearing officer Kurt Janson's recommendation (which I support) that a smaller wind proposal in the Northeast Kingdom not be approved as submitted, delaying the Glebe Mountain project makes sense. In addition, a recent vote of townspeople in Manchester showed they are 2:1 against it.

I have long maintained that the cost/benefit result of wind energy development is not supportable at the present time. In fact the wind controversy is a distraction to the much larger question of replacing the base load electricity supplies, Vermont nuclear and Quebec hydro, that provide 2/3 of Vermont's supply. These sources must be extended or expanded in contract negotiations with Quebec and extension of the operating license of Vermont Yankee.

Surely conservation can be a mitigating factor and we have a conservation utility in place whose job it is to do just that, but wind and conservation will not make a substantial impact on the demand as our population and usage increase.

We'd best be about a sound policy that ensures that we have sufficient electric energy supply beyond the next five years. We cannot afford the 'feel-good' distraction of small wind projects.