The next two weeks will be a turning point in the future of American energy. Hanging in the balance is the fate of the wind, nuclear and solar industries.

As this excellent feature story by Laurence Hammack of the Roanoke Times details, hundreds of small amateur efforts to build wind farms around the country are finding they are unable to attract investment without a push from the federal government in the form of carbon regime legislation or a renewable energy mandate requiring utilities to buy wind and solar energy no matter what the cost.

According to the report, windmill construction has declined 60 percent this year after falling 54 percent in 2008. The figures are from the American Wind Energy Association.

In Roanoke, a project to put 18 windmills atop Poor Mountain, one of the highest ridges in the region, has stalled indefinitely. The project is being developed by a former chicken farmer and his son who entered the wind business ten years ago. The developer declined to talk to the newspaper but speculation is that investors are waiting to see what emerges from Congress.

According to a substantial school of energy forecasters, a cap-and-trade bill – which now appears moribund – would level the playing field for nuclear, wind and solar energy and likely lead to a surge of activity in all three. But a renewable standard – which is still alive – would be a disadvantageous for nuclear, giving no credit to its carbon-free energy but directing investment exclusively into wind and solar.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid has not attached a renewable mandate to the modest energy bill he is proposing but chances are strong there will be a floor revolt among renewable first proponents that may end up attaching a renewable amendment.

The Waxman-Markey bill, which has already passed Congress, has a 17 percent renewable mandate enforceable by 2020. Even if a renewable standard does not succeed on the Senate floor, it still could emerge from an energy bill conference committee.

The Highland wind project described in the article would put eighteen 44-story windmills atop one of the highest mountains in the Roanoke region to produce an average output of 12 megawatts, a piddling amount of electricity by any measure. The project would cost $80 million. (Projected out, this would cost $8 billion for 1000 MW, well in the range of nuclear but still 3-to-4 times cheaper than solar.) 

Nevertheless, Highland has spent five years running a gauntlet of federal, state and local permits plus and oppositional lawsuits. Even now it is not certain whether the project will need a permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for possible bird and bat kills.

The lesson for the rest of the nation seems to be twofold: 1) accelerated progress on any non-carbon form of energy will be difficult without some kind of action on carbon from Congress, and 2) even the supposedly most benign forms of renewable energy will face exhaustive bureaucratic and legal roadblocks.

Nuclear is not alone in these frustrations.

Read more at The Roanoke Times

Tags: American Wind Energy Association, Laurence Hammack, Nuclear Townhall, Roanoke Times, Waxman-Markey, Wind Energy

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