by John Farrell
The last thing renewable energy needs right now
are new transmission lines.
This statement is heresy in the green
community, but there’s a danger that the increasing focus of green energy
advocates on a new nationwide transmission superhighway may undermine the
pursuit of near-term renewable energy goals.
People are excited by renewable energy. It’s clean.
It’s limitless. It’s local. It’s the one kind of energy source that anyone
can harness. Public polls show
substantial majorities of Americans in every state favoring more renewable
energy.
And states have an abundance of renewable
energy assets. A new report by the
Institute for Local Self-Reliance—Energy Self-Reliant States—shows
that every state has the potential to meet its renewable energy goal or mandate
and that 3 in 5 states could get all of their electricity from in-state
renewable resources. Almost every state
could get at least 20 percent of its electricity from rooftop solar
photovoltaics (PV) alone.
These renewable assets can be tapped for
significant local benefits. A single
wind turbine, for example, creates $1 million in economic activity, according
to the American Wind Energy Association.
And that’s just a generic, utility size turbine. Locally owned wind projects can create twice
the jobs and 3 to 4 times the economic impact of absentee owned projects.
The benefits from locally harnessed renewable
energy create a feedback loop, building even greater public support for clean
energy.
People are not so excited about new
high-voltage transmission lines.
Transmission legislation moving through
Congress would preempt longstanding state regulatory authority over
transmission line approval and siting.
The goal is to speed the construction of a $100 to 200 billion
interstate transmission superhighway, bringing solar power from the Southwest
and wind from the Great Plains to the coasts.
Why is this problematic? Let’s ignore for a moment that most people
wouldn’t care to live by a 150 foot tower running through a 200 foot swath of
denuded landscape. Or to have their land
seized for this purpose by eminent domain.
Many states oppose the new transmission superhighway
for two reasons. One, it’s
expensive. Two, it undermines efforts to
reap the economic rewards of renewable energy self-reliance.
In a New York Times Op Ed, the Massachusetts
Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, Ian Bowles, wrote:
Lawmakers
should resist calls to add an extensive and costly new transmission system that
would carry electricity from remote areas like Texas, the Great Plains, and
Eastern Canada to places with high energy demands like Boston, Chicago, and New
York … Renewable energy resources are found all across the country; they don’t
need to be harnessed from just one place.
In May 2009, the governors of 10 East Coast
states wrote to senior members of Congress to protest. Requiring their residents and businesses to pay
billions of dollars for new transmission lines that would import electricity
from the upper Midwest and Southwest into their region “could jeopardize our
states’ efforts to develop wind resources … “
They added, “it is well accepted that local generation is more
responsive and effective in solving reliability issues than long distance
energy inputs.”
Nine of the 10 Eastern states whose governors
signed the May 2009 letter could get over 80 percent of their electricity from
in-state renewable resources, according to Energy Self-Reliant States. And local energy also means fewer legal
battles over the siting of unsightly transmission towers, a fact that
politicians in that region are unlikely to have overlooked.
It’s not just state energy self-reliance and
economic benefits hanging in the balance.
A recent study released by Duke University’s Climate Change Policy
Partnership throws cold water on the renewable energy transmission
passion. It found that the proposed interstate
transmission links from regions with low-cost electricity (e.g. the Great
Plains) to regions with high-cost electricity (e.g. the East Coast) could
enable coal power as easily as renewables, with poor results for carbon
emission reductions and other environmental goals.
The evidence undermines the conventional wisdom
about high-voltage, long-distance transmission and should raise red flags among
advocates. To the people in affected
states, a new transmission superhighway is costly, anathema to local energy
generation, and a potential enabler of coal-fired power. It creates winners (in the sunny Southwest)
and losers (in the “import states” on the East Coast).
A victory for interstate transmission may be at
the expense of broader public support for renewable energy.
Renewable energy does not have to be harnessed
in a few, select areas and shipped across country. And public support for clean energy may hinge
on the opposite.
The ubiquity of renewable energy means that the
transition to a clean energy economy can also be a transition to a new, local
energy future, where the economic and environmental benefits of powering the
economy are everywhere the sun shines.
Related Links:
Paging Dr. Chu, venture capitalist
Why solar won’t topple in Germany
Gore talks energy and climate at SEJ
