Bird Calendars
Wind Power II
By Clem Klaphake
In the last issue of The Meadowlark, I ended my column promising I would have more to say about wind power. Well, since last month about a dozen articles have appeared in the Omaha World-Herald concerning wind power in Nebraska. Remember, I said, "Wind power is coming."
I want to discuss a side of the wind power issue that we are not likely to see in Nebraska, namely opposition from other energy sources. But our neighbor to the west has a real conflict going on over the pros and cons of wind power.
As you may or may not know, Wyoming is the number one coal-producing state in the nation and number three producer of natural gas. Therein lies the conflict.
I'm sure you all have heard or maybe even used the phrase, "Politics makes for strange bedfellows." Well, in Wyoming currently you can find CEO's of coal and natural gas companies suddenly siding up with their previous "enemies," GREENS and ENVIRONMENTALISTS who oppose (a topic for another column) wind turbines and transmissions lines in many locations.
One newspaper columnist wrote about a meeting in the Laramie area to discuss the county's position on allowing turbines to be sited in the following manner, "Over the next couple of hours, grizzled ranchers who on almost any other occasion, might spit before and after they say the word `environmentalist,' stand up and tout the benefits of green energy. And then classic antigovernment, anti-regulation conservatives ask the county to bring down the hammer of regulation to save their beloved mountains from energy development. An employee of one of the biggest coal mines in the nation cautions against letting wind turbines go unregulated, the way coalbed methane did." A little confusing to an outsider?
The above meeting took place because the county planning commission was meeting to decide about a moratorium on industrial development in the more mountainous areas of the county in order to consider implementing wind-targeted zoning. (By the way, Wyoming is almost free of any zoning laws anywhere seen as government interference with individual rights.) There also has been the formation of a new but sizable group called the Northern Laramie Range Alliance. Its mission is to prevent "industrialization of the high country" by the wind industry. From what I have written so far, you can guess who helps support legally and financially this organization.
Thus, in Wyoming much of the resistance to wind power comes from the fossil fuel industry and the politics it bankrolls. Fossil fuels production is huge in Wyoming.
A reporter in the High Country News stated, "Severance taxes and royalties from these industries keep the state's government, schools and other services afloat. In an indirect and sometimes convoluted way, wind power threatens that old-school energy dynamic."
This past August at a symposium on wind energy at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Aaron Clark, an advisor to the governor, said candidly, "We can't let wind development hurt the state's revenue stream from extractive minerals."
Some of the biggest political donations by these fossil fuel CEOs have gone to candidates who are absolutely anti-regulation by government. Many of their large donations went to organizations like the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a Denver-based property-rights, anti-environmental regulation group — former Interior Secretaries Gale Norton and James Watt were members. Former Vice-President Dick Cheney has also been a supporter of this organization.
However, ranchers who might also be anti-regulation see great potential in developing wind energy on their ranches. They can make lots of money. Wind developers usually pay a signing bonus, rent fees during the testing phase, and a payment during construction.
Once the turbines start producing electricity, the cash flow is pretty stable for years. A turbine can net a landowner $4,000 for every megawatt per year. That could amount to as much as $55,000 per year per section of land owned (640 acres).
Wyoming ranches are often measured by the thousands of acres, so some landowners stand to make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Thus, many ranchers are at odds with the coal, oil and natural gas industries, but are not necessarily with the environmentalists either because they don't want any regulation of the wind power industry.
It is always interesting how a state next door can have such different economic circumstances, views and politics. More on wind power in the next issue of The Meadowlark.
01/28/10