Mounting Resistance: Vermont Democrat Announces “Wind Turbines Do Not Belong In Vermont, Period:”

Lowell Wind ParkThe online Vermont news site Vermont Digger here presents a commentary by Vermont state Senator John Rodgers who represents my childhood home county of Orleans, and Essex county as well.

Photo: Industrializing Vermont’s idyllic landscape. Cropped from video by Green Mountain Power Corp.

Senator Rodgers has had it with industrial wind energy ruining his state’s environment, announcing:

I will join with the growing number of Vermonters who have concluded that industrial wind turbines do not belong in Vermont, period.”

As a consequence, in 2016 Rodgers plans to introduce a bill that would ban industrial wind turbines, sending them the way of the billboard. Rodgers position illustrates the rapidly growing resistance to industrial wind parks erected on Vermont’s idyllic Green Mountains.

“Devastating” impact

Recently nearby wind-parks in Sheffield and Lowell have driven the message home to local residents and tourists that the green energies aren’t green at all and that they are coming with a unexpectedly high environmental price. Rodgers, in his piece, calls the environmental impacts of wind turbines “devastating”.

Corrupt legislators, campaign finances for environmental ruin

Moreover Rodgers, a Democrat no less, accuses the Vermont legislature of political corruption:

We have legislators who write policy to serve the very utilities and energy developers that finance their campaigns.”

He also blasts industrial solar fields in Vermont, another state where the sun doesn’t shine at night and one which often sees snow 6 months a year. He supports restrictions on large-scale solar installations, which he says benefits no one except solar industry profiteers. He writes that covering farmland and forests with solar panels reduces the amount of land available to grow food.

No affect on climate

The Vermont state senator writes that even the Public Service Department acknowledges that Vermont green energy policies will have no affect climate change, yet that they severely damage the local environment. He calls on protecting the state’s forests and not industrializing them.

Vermont’s power is already carbon neutral – why ruin the landscape for nothing?

It should be noted that some 150 years ago Vermont was mostly deforested due to its early sheep farming.

Moreover some 90% of the state’s electric power has come from carbon neutral sources already!, such as Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant and hydroelectric power from Quebec. Vermont has far fewer than a million inhabitants and there is no sense whatsoever in ruining its landscape for something that will have absolutely zero impact whatsoever on the climate. It all boils down to green ideological showboating – one that comes with a terrible environmental heritage price.

Hopefully, more political leaders will follow Rodgers’s lead and think seriously about what they are wreaking upon the state’s beauty. As it stands, too many politicians have been governing under the influence of “green” dope and climate science BS. Unfortunately it looks like it’s going to take a massive environmental hangover before they sober up from all the climate insanity.

Hat-tip: reader ‘Indomitable Snowman’

 

37 responses to “Mounting Resistance: Vermont Democrat Announces “Wind Turbines Do Not Belong In Vermont, Period:””

  1. oeman50

    Sorry, Pierre, but Vermont Yankee has been shut down for good, with its carbon neutral power. It could not compete in the marketplace against subsidized renewables and cheap natural gas.

  2. Bosporous Byzantium

    Don’t forget the millions of birds that die each year by those blades just in the North East States of NY, NJ etc etc…..

    Not worth making species extinct……

    1. David Appell

      Coal kills far more birds than does wind power:

      Number of bird deaths per TWh:

      https://notrickszone.com/2011/03/24/nuclear-is-the-safest-form-of-energy-opposition-is-a-glaring-denial-of-reality/

  3. Segue C

    Similar to Ontario which had nuke and hydro assets yet committed economic suicide with the “Green”Energy Act imposition of parasitic unreliables which don’t belong on a modern grid ANYWHERE.

    Environmentally they fragment and degrade forest/wetland wilderness…we see close up how, even with”mitigation”, formerly reference condition streams are subject to runoff events.

    This is an environmental suicide, not saving the planet…https://lsarc.wordpress.com/2015/08/08/the-roads-to-turbine-hell/

    1. DirkH

      Great documentation of the “low environmental impact” of wind turbine construction!

    2. John F. Hultquist

      Thanks. Very worthy post. I commented, even though it is not a current post.

  4. Davidg

    Wind power is a nightmare, a criminal scam. I predict that someone will start blowing them up, it’s inevitable. A visible blow against the monsters blottong the land.

    Of course, that won’t stop the corrupt politicians greasing the palms of these windmill builders, these carpetbagging scum!

    1. David Appell

      Would you rather live near wind turbines, or near a coal power plant?

      Or near Alberta’s tar sands extraction?

      http://www.digitaljournal.com/image/88209

      1. DirkH

        David Appell 17. December 2015 at 8:11 AM | Permalink | Reply
        “Would you rather live near wind turbines, or near a coal power plant? ”

        Silly question. A coal power plant.
        As you can see, the residents of Neckarau, Mannheim, live right next to one.
        http://www.fotocommunity.de/pc/pc/display/25588796
        Now imagine placing a bunch of giant wind turbines right in the middle of Neckarau. Would drive everyone nuts, not to speak of the icethrow and bladethrow.

        1. David Appell

          I wonder how those residents feel about the soot and mercury that that plant emits? (One snapshot in time doesn’t represent the plant’s actual emission.)

          How are the brain development of their infants?

          That site wouldn’t have wind turbines anyway, because there are many better sitings up where the wind blows stronger.

      2. DirkH

        Here’a photo of the coal- and gas-powered Heizkraftwerk Mitte in Brunswick, my hometown. It provides 300 MW plus district heating. As you can see it’s surrounded by very livable residential city quarters and a park.
        https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heizkraftwerk_Mitte_%28Braunschweig%29
        Replace it with a gargantuan whirlygig and you can kiss the quality of life in that part of the city goodbye.

        David, you have absolutely no concept of life in Europe, or our power plant technology.

        1. David Appell

          A single snapshot does not represent the plant’s average condition or its impact on the environment. That should be obvious even to you.

          What are the plant’s annual SO2 emissions?
          Annual mercury emissions?
          PM emissions? Soot?
          Mercury emissions?

          Numbers please.

  5. sod

    The article does not contain a single piece of relevant data.

    Vermont Yankee was closed, because it had economic problems. It just can not compete with gas and alternative power.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Yankee_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Closure.2Fextension_planning

    Wind power is one the rise, scoring new records all over the USA, for example in Texas. It is making electricity cheaper, not more expensive.

    http://www.platts.com/latest-news/electric-power/houston/wind-power-sets-new-record-for-energy-share-in-21615934

    Even Australia (about the only place which had the same strange position on wind power as this article has) is finally changing course again, following the voices of reason:

    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/dec/13/malcolm-turnbull-lifts-abbott-ban-on-government-finance-for-wind-power

    1. Graeme No.3

      The change in policy is for off-shore turbines.

      Meanwhile South Australia – home to over 50% of on-shore wind turbine capacity and with the highest penetration of household PV installations – is having blackouts. These will get worse when the remaining coal fired and CCGT generation shuts down next year. Yes, they couldn’t compete with SUBSIDISED wind and solar while paying for the disruptions caused by them. Meantime rising electricity costs are driving (or have driven most) industry out of the State.
      sod – you are completely ignorant about the real world.

      1. sod

        “Meanwhile South Australia – home to over 50% of on-shore wind turbine capacity and with the highest penetration of household PV installations – is having blackouts. ”

        please provide links for a causal relationsship.

        This is the only source i could find, but the black out reason was a “substation owned by transmission provider ElectraNet affected supplies from Victoria via an interconnector.”

        http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/wind-and-solar-hits-reliability-of-power-grid-energy-tsar/news-story/70e54b9a3cb7b471be0efe18be1b63e4

        35% renewables is about the level, that can be reached easily without any effect on the grid. Above that, you need to do some planning. That is what the conservative wind-hating Australian Government failed to do.

        South Australia will do fine.

        1. DirkH

          “35% renewables is about the level, that can be reached easily without any effect on the grid. Above that, you need to do some planning.”

          So, sod, tell us the secret of how to plan the wind.

          Does it have to do with child sacrifices?

          1. sod

            “So, sod, tell us the secret of how to plan the wind.”

            There i no need to “plan the wind”.

            Planning is done, by looking at the wind expected on the next day, week or hours and reserve capacity (we have plenty of that) is dispatched accordingly.

            Denmark and other regions are showing, that 35% wind is not a problem. That is a fact.

          2. DirkH

            40 day long blocking highs in winter are a fact.

      2. David Appell

        Wind and solar *should* be subsidized, as long as fossil fuels get a free ride by dumping their pollution in the atmosphere for free.

        The consequences aren’t free. Just the dumping.

    2. The Indomitable Snowman, Ph.D.

      Once again, “sod” demonstrates that he doesn’t actually know anything, and just gleans links from green propaganda sites and other unreliable sources.

      Unlike him, I actually live in Vermont. The shutdown of Vermont Yankee was a long-term, purely-ideological effort by the usual ignorant anti-nuclear know-nothings – who whined for years in the usual way until they got a green android into the governor’s office in 2011. The idea was simple – make life so miserable for the parent company that they’d just give up on keeping the plant going. And there went more than 600MW of reliable, clean, baseload-capable electricity.

      The technically-illiterate professional agitators who got this done of course were always hyperventilating that it could be easily replaced with the usual worthless green cr*p. But the underlying irony is that when all was said and done, the replacement for the Vermont Yankee power is mostly coming from the Blackstone (Connecticut) and Seabrook (New Hampshire) … nuclear plants. So you have green fantasists who think that shutting down the stuff that works will somehow magically make the green cr*p work, and well-off trustfunders who are fine with nuclear power (and other “dirty” primary sources) as long as it’s sullying someone else’s nest.

      And in the past few days, we learned that Big Wind has goons who don’t like people pushing back against them – even when local opposition has been declared irrelevant by the corrupt greenocracy in state government. Remember Pierre’s piece about how the residents of places like Swanton, when given a chance to vote on wind projects, vote overwhelmingly to reject these worthless monstrosities? Look what happens:

      http://www.mychamplainvalley.com/news/resident-tires-slashed-on-rocky-ridge-road

      Can’t have regular people pushing back against the theocracy and the official state religion now, can we.

      “Renewable” (sic) energy has only two constituencies – fantasists, and kleptocrats.

      1. Graeme No.3

        “Once again, “sod” demonstrates that he doesn’t actually know anything, and just gleans links from green propaganda sites” – very true.

        He picked up the one major blackout blamed on failure of a sub-station and didn’t find the minor ones that followed (and will follow). He then claims that 35% wind energy is OK citing Denmark, apparently unaware that this is only possible by exporting the surplus to Norway, Sweden and Germany at a loss (because it doesn’t pay to shut down the coal fired stations).
        SA relies on reliable power from a coal fired power station in Pt. Augusta, (which will shut down in March) and from Victoria by the inter-connectors. There is also a large gas fired CCGT plant that is being made uneconomic by interruptions by surges from wind (as is happening in Germany) and will also start shutting down units from next year. So SA will rely on short term limited amount of OCGT generation, Wind, Solar PV and the inter-connectors, which are limited to 25% of peak demand and about 50% of normal summer night time demand.
        So when we get hot nights with little wind, as is happening this week, then there will be blackouts because with no wind power and (although sod will deny this) no solar because the sun doesn’t shine at night, so available supply will only cover 40% of the higher demand,. His solution will be for everybody to rush out and buy a lithium battery (why lithium?) which MIGHT be enough for ONE NIGHT.
        To cover 9 nights in a row will require many diesel generators, much as the UK is installing due to the “success” of wind turbines. I wonder if sod has ever tried sleeping with no cooling & an overnight minimum temperature of 29℃ (34℃ at 1 a.m.)?

      2. David Appell

        Wrong. Vermont Yankee was shut down because power from natural gas is now cheaper.

        1. Graeme No.3

          So? What the hell does that have to do with South Australia?

          And by the way, the TV tonight was reporting that Premier Weatherill ( chief “donkey loves wind turbines”) has been in ‘discussions’ with the 3 last big industrial users of electricity who have “expressed concern” about the high cost and unreliability of wind power. (Read; Do something or we will shut down in this State).

    3. yonason

      Yes, “sod,” do quote more Wikipee articles. They are so informative, especially given the knowledgeable writers who always adhere to the highest standards.
      https://youtu.be/5FuJT9mp0jw

      1. yonason

        Oh, and don’t forget this much more informative view from the outside.
        https://youtu.be/-bYAQ-ZZtEU?t=193

        “Critical thinking,” for the likes of Susan Gerbic (in my previous comment), consists of uncritically repeating the propaganda to which she subscribes, nothing more. And how, as a professional portrait photographer, she is qualified by virtue of her “BA (in) Social & Behavioral Studies” to be a “Scientific and Technical Consultant,” is anyone’s guess.

      2. David Appell

        Studies find Wikipedia as reliable as encylopedias, and more current, too.

  6. sod

    Vermont power company is giving some very interesting offers on the Tesla power wall.

    https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/green-mountain-powers-bet-on-tesla-powerwall-value-50-per-month

    Storage is moving up and wind power will keep expanding.

    1. DirkH

      As usual, if it moves, tax it, if it doesn’t, subsidize it.

      Nobody except a hedge fund billionaire gone nuts buys a Li-Ion battery box for his home without subsidies.

  7. crosspatch

    “Vermont Yankee was closed, because it had economic problems. It just can not compete with gas and alternative power.”

    Not exactly true. It was shut down due to increases state regulations. Compliance with those regulations made the plant unprofitable when compared to cheap power available for import from Canada.

    There are currently 5 new nuclear plants under construction or in the process of starting (TVA’s Watts Bar 2 plant has just been fueled and is in the process of starting. Will be fully operational in early 2016.)

    A seven year legal battle with the state of Vermont cost a lot of money. The legislature attempted to shut it down in 2012 by trying to deny it a state licence. That required another court battle. The truth is that lawfare is expensive.

  8. Mervyn

    Until politicians wake up from their ‘mixed up world of make believe’ – that human activity CO2 emissions if the key driver of climate change – nothing is going to halt this climate madness.

    But just wait and see what happens when Donald Trump becomes president.

    Donald Trump is not going to stop the renewable energy industry. Trump is only going to stop all the green loans, grants and subsidies from taxpayers to the renewable energy industry … and that, my friends, is what is going to kill the non-viable renewable energy industry.

  9. Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #210 | Watts Up With That?
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    […] In Vermont, Period:” NoTricksZone Pierre Gosselin 13 December 2015The online Vermont news site Vermont Digger here presents a commentary by Vermont state Senator John Rodgers who represents my childhood home […]

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