NYSERDA Conference Comments by John Droz (12/12/07) 

Good morning. My name is John Droz, and I live on Brantingham Lake in the western part of the Adirondacks.

As you know, all of us here wear different hats at different times. One minute you are a parent, the next a sibling, later an employee, then a doctor’s patient. I mention this as these multiple perspectives can sometimes get us confused. At least I know I can be.

So, although I am a NYS resident and taxpayer, I am here today primarily wearing three other different but related hats. I am a physicist who is used to investigating complex issues (like wind power) in a thorough, organized, and logical manner.

I am a financial expert. I’ve taught many financial management classes. Through my own ideas I was able to retire at 34 from a management job at GE. I am now one of the leading people in the state working on trying to fix the NYS property tax assessment situation.

I am also an environmental activist, and have worked on a variety of environmental issues for some 25 years – like improving lake and groundwater quality standards in NYS.

I also happen to be one of the foremost experts in the state on septic systems. A wag might say that my extensive experience in dealing with effluent gave me a substantial head start in understanding the wind power business, which is currently my main focus. Who knows?

Anyway, as a scientist, economist and environmentalist I am opposed to industrial wind power. The fundamental reason for this is that wind power fails to deliver the goods.

By this I mean that:

1) wind power is not a scientifically sound solution to help with global warming, and

2) wind power is not a financially viable source of energy on its own, and

3) wind power is not environmentally responsible.

Those three basic criteria haven’t been selected to make wind power look bad; they should be used to evaluate the legitimacy of any proposed source of energy.

Maybe it has been too long since I got out of graduate school, but my recollection of how science is supposed to work is this:

When a new idea is proposed as a potential solution of a problem, it is up to the solution proponents to PROVE its efficacy – not the other way around.

Here we have businessmen and investors proposing wind power as part of an energy “solution” to global warming. So the ball is in their court as to providing independent, objective proof that it is a viable solution from all pertinent perspectives. THIS HAS NOT HAPPENED.

I can fully appreciate the predicament that RPS (www.dps.state.ny.us/03e0188.htm) puts NYSERDA into, but that is a political problem. This political quandary does not absolve NYSERDA from their charter responsibility (see below, emphasis added), which is:

to present energy issues to the NYS public in an objective and balanced manner.

So far NYSERDA’s presentation of wind power has not been objective or balanced (e.g., www.powernaturally.org/Programs/Wind/toolkit.asp). I am here today – now wearing the hat of an optimist – in hopes that this can be immediately fixed.

Thank you.

[For MUCH more information on any of this, please feel free to contact me at “aaprjohn@northnet.org” or 315-348-8428/-8551.]

About NYSERDA (text.nyserda.org/About/default.asp) …

Download original document: “NYSERDA Conference Comments”