Wind Is the New Cash Crop in Rural Wash. Town

[phantom power]

As the nation wrestles over its future energy policy, Goldendale and Klickitat offer a window into the changes that occur when wind comes to town. Residents tell a story both optimistic and cautionary. Wind, they say, brought stability to a place struggling with low wages, few industries and staggering unemployment. Wind development provided some new jobs and money for land owners who lease property to wind companies.

"It's helped us cover long-term debt, short-term debt," said Bruce Davenport, 55, who farms beef cattle and alfalfa hay and along with his family opened land to windmills. He is brother to Cheryl Davenport. "It's kind of a mortgage lifter and a nice shot in the arm with extra income."

Wind development at the same time has limitations. It hasn't transformed a poor town into a wealthy one. Green jobs haven't filled the gap left by the factories that closed and never reopened. And allowing wind projects required aesthetic sacrifices.

Goldendale sits 1,600 feet above the winding Columbia River, an area known as the Columbia River Gorge. Some people in Goldendale bought homes for open views looking out over the river and the sandstone hills of Oregon below. Those views now are gone. During the day, residents look at spinning windmills. At night, whirring white blades turn into a sea of flashing red lights. Federal rules require those lights as a warning for planes.

"This industrial-scale development with hundreds of wind turbines has absolutely transformed a natural landscape into an industrial landscape," said Michael Lang, conservation director with a local environmental group, Friends of the Columbia Gorge. "This landscape now has 200-foot-high turbines spinning around as far as you can see."

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/10/18/18greenwire-wind-is-the-new-cash-crop-in-rural-wash-town-3529.html?pagewanted=all

[kristopher]

1. And yet...

Survey data consistently confirms that homes with views of wind farms sell for more than comparable homes without a view of wind farms.

The indications are that most people are both pleased by the aesthetics of modern wind turbines and that they impart value based on positive associations with wind energy providing a cleaner, healthier environment than the large scale alternatives of coal and nuclear.

That's why only about 8% of people would prefer nuclear to wind.

[phantom power]

4. Based on the various stories and interviews I've read, my guess is...

that there is big difference between "in view" as in "a few miles away" and "in view" as in "a couple hundred yards away." I don't know how that poll was conducted, but I would be interested to see "property value delta" as a function of distance to nearest turbine, where distance starts at 100 yards or so, and increases to "out of sight." Also, I would be interested to have that poll re-done as the number of wind farms grows to significance.

[ladjf]

2. Another good post. Thanks. nt

[AlecBGreen]

3. oh the horror!

"Some people in Goldendale bought homes for open views looking out over the river and the sandstone hills of Oregon below. Those views now are gone."

Obviously if I were one of these people I would be super-pissed, but Im not, so Im not.

[phantom power]

5. Should we interpret your post as saying "as long as its not in my back yard" ?

[AlecBGreen]

6. you can interpret it however you want

In the great scheme of injustices, having the view of your 2nd or 3rd home sullied by a wind turbine is pretty far down the list.

[phantom power]

8. I see, well it's easy empathize with the "screw the rich and their 2nd homes" thing.

There's also the actual town residents, who appear to be middle class or poor, but they also experience impacts to their property values and views. Clearly a lot of them like the trade for the new revenue.

It seems to me that at least one of those couples didn't have a 2nd home in the Kennedy Family sense, more like a "we saved our whole lives to have a place to retire to" sense, which isn't exactly the same thing to my way of thinking.

[XemaSab]

7. Washington State has... interesting environmental compliance strategies

"Then in 2005 the town created the nation's first energy overlay zone. It expedited permitting for wind development, with the county pre-approving several time-consuming studies that must be done before windmills can be installed, Canon said, including research into the effect on birds and geology."

[phantom power]

9. Turn and Earn, baby.

Turn and Earn.

:shrug:

[kristopher]

11. You really, really, really, really wish...

... that people would dislike renewables as much as they dislike nuclear don't you?

That is such a bizarre expression of values that it is incredibly difficult to imagine what motives could be behind it.

[phantom power]

12. That is a good question.

I think that the impact of nuclear power per unit of energy generated is overestimated. I think that the impact of wind and solar per unit of energy generated is underestimated. I do my best, here on this forum, to post topics that make this more clear.

I don't actually "want" people to dislike wind power. I think that, to whatever extent I'm right, people will learn to dislike certain things about wind power all on their own as we build more of it. It's already happening, and we've barely gotten started. Wait until turbines start showing up in a lot of people's back yards.

But you know, this same article shows that those turbines are providing income to people who can obviously really use it. It's providing at least some jobs. And when they're "turnin and earnin" they're making electricity too. Those are all good things. I assume that people will learn to like those good things.

I am of the opinion that the costs that come along are under-emphasized, so I amuse myself by emphasizing them. As I've mentioned before here, the actual number of people who even see my posts, much less the number of people influenced by them, is miniscule.

I don't think the pro-nuke argument is getting much traction. People are still mostly extremely suspicious of it, if not outright hostile. Most people I talk to assume that some kind of renewable utopia is in our future, one way or another. And most people still associate nukes with Chernobyl, The Day After and also those giant ants from that old movie.

[kristopher]

13. You base your policy positions on truthiness, not valid analysis

It sounds a great deal like GG defending his IPAT "analysis".

It is possible to arrive at the conclusion you've stated by two methods:
1) You craft a very narrow and limited set of potential "impacts" for nuclear that excludes virtually all high consequence/low probability risks.

2) You exclude the increased economic impact resulting from diversion of very large quantities economic resources into the less cost effective and slower to deploy resource that nuclear power represents.

You can ridicule Jacobson all you want but this analysis is a totally fair accounting of the truth.

Abstract here: http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Full article for download here: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/revsolglobwarmairpol.htm


Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c

Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

Abstract
This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[XemaSab]

14. Good post

Wind has serious impacts over time.

Solar has serious impacts now.

Nuclear might have serious impacts down the road.

You pays your money and you takes your choice.

[cilla4progress]

10. Near where I live....driven through here

It's jaw-dropping. I do believe these windmills have a beauty of their own - kind of elegant in their stretch and breadth; also, of course, what they represent. Of course, the natural vistas are preferable but, come on, nothing comes without a cost - least of all, energy consumption. I would take this over smokestacks, uranium dumps, and global warming any time. I do sympathize with locals there for whom these windmills have become a blight on their landscape views.

Also, it's a parallel track - you convert to greener forms of energy WHILE you conserve.

And by the way, our friend's son who lives in an economically strapped small Columbia Gorge town is taking classes at a loca community college there to become a wind power technician. So, have firsthand knowledge of that positive impact.

Looking forward to reading article...thanks!