Wind advocates misguided
Tri-City Herald, www.tri-cityherald.com 8 January 2012
As general manager of the Franklin PUD, I’d like to state that the Dec. 18 In Focus column, criticizing an earlier Herald editorial and suggesting wind power helps ratepayers, screams for a strong dose of reality.
— FERC’s recent ruling on BPA’s “environmental redispatch” policy is misguided, politically driven, overstepping by federal bureaucrats with no basis in law or authority.
— Wind power doesn’t pay its own way. Costs for wind power and to integrate it are significant drivers of higher rates. It’s time to stop government “incentives” for building more intermittent resources.
— Wind is not a “guaranteed, cost-competitive” resource. It generates power about 30 percent of the time and it’s unpredictable when that 30 percent will occur.
— Profits from wind energy or its “environmental credits” exported out of the region at the expense of regional electric system reliability, fish protection and retail power rates is a poor policy choice for the region’s environment and ratepayers.
— The State’s Renewable Energy Standard requires renewable projects to be built even though the power isn’t needed to serve ratepayers. That is not sustainable. It’s wasteful.
— Local utilities already have invested in new wind and solar generation but it is time to pause to assess and limit further degradation of a regional treasure, our renewable hydro system.
ED BROST, Pasco
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/01/10/wind-advocates-misguided/