| Wind Watch is a registered educational charity, founded in 2005. |
Wind Power News: Utah
These news and opinion items are gathered by National Wind Watch in its noncommercial educational effort to help keep readers informed about developments related to industrial wind energy. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of National Wind Watch. They are the products of and owned by the organizations or individuals noted and are shared here according to “fair use” and “fair dealing” provisions of copyright law.
Rocky Mountain Power pauses new energy deals while it weighs risks and legal challenges
Clean-energy advocates and state regulators are pushing back on Rocky Mountain Power’s 20-year plan for providing electricity in Utah, saying the company is relying on unproven technologies and hasn’t shown it can meet the plan’s timeline. Rocky Mountain’s parent company PacifiCorp last September suspended its request for proposals for new energy projects, and environmental groups and consumer advocates say that impedes the short-term goals of the company’s 20-year “integrated resource plan” (IRP). Released last spring, the company’s IRP set an . . . Complete story »
Renewable energy is a failed path, scientist tells Utah legislators
A Utah legislative committee this week gave 45 minutes to a scientist who argued that policy makers across the globe are committing a grave mistake by turning to renewable energy. William Hayden Smith, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, wrote a research paper with colleagues in Switzerland and South Africa that claims to calculate a full cost of producing electricity from various sources. The paper was published this year in the Journal of . . . Complete story »
Interior approves big power line for renewables in U.S. West
The Interior Department yesterday announced the final approval to construct a 416-mile transmission line intended to move renewable energy across three Western states. The Energy Gateway South transmission line from PacifiCorp will support the utility’s renewable expansion and will carry wind energy from Wyoming to solar-rich areas of Utah, as well as power from traditional plants. The line is set to originate near Medicine Bow in southeastern Wyoming, travel through northwest Colorado and end outside of Mona, Utah. The project . . . Complete story »
Summit County Council to consider a 6-month moratorium on nightly rentals
In other business the council will get an update on the Wind Farm that’s been under consideration for several years. The plan is for a 100-megawatt wind generating facility up Echo Canyon near the Wyoming border. As many as 39 wind turbines could be built, capable of powering more than 20,00 homes per year. But according to Fisher, the energy that would be produced at the farm isn’t necessarily headed for homes here in Summit County. The council would still help finance the project, Fisher says, like it's helping to finance the solar farm in Tooele to advance the county’s net zero goals for 2030. Tax increment financing, known as TIF, could be used to fund construction on property that’s owned by Councilor Chris Robinson. While Robinson has recused himself from the conversation, Fisher says no sweetheart deals are being negotiated. Complete story »
Utah lags behind others in clean energy goal. Is that about to change?
With Utah on track to meet its 2008 goal of producing 20% of its electricity from clean sources by 2025, it is time to review and reevaluate the goal process, according to a new plan unveiled Tuesday at the Utah One Summit at The Grand America Hotel Thom Carter, executive director of the Utah Office of Energy Development, stopped short of saying a new goal should be set, but he said the 2008 process that established the earlier goal, which . . . Complete story »
Summit County officials file conflict disclosure forms
Robinson owns hundreds of thousands of acres of land, with roughly 10,000 acres under contract to create the first wind farm in Summit County on land near the Wyoming border. He listed his membership on various boards and commissions, including the Utah Local Government Trust, which provides insurance to the county, according to the disclosure. He also chairs the Central Wasatch Commission, to which the county has paid at least $200,000 since 2013 and which is tasked with determining transportation and land conservation solutions for the Central Wasatch Range. Complete story »
The dark side of ‘green energy’ and its threat to the nation’s environment
Wind farms and massive arrays of solar panels are cropping up across public and private landscapes both in the United States and abroad as users increasingly turn to “green energy” as their preferred flavor of electricity. President Joe Biden, in fact, has directed the Interior Department to identify suitable places to host 20 gigawatts of new energy from sun, wind or geothermal resources by 2024 as part of a sweeping effort to move away from a carbon-based economy and electrical . . . Complete story »
First-of-a-kind U.S. grid cyberattack hit wind, solar
A Utah renewable energy developer was hit by a first-of-its-kind cyberattack that briefly cut contact to a dozen wind and solar farms this spring, according to documents obtained by E&E News under the Freedom of Information Act. Salt Lake City-based sPower suffered “denial of service” attacks on March 5 that left grid operators temporarily blinded to generation sites totaling 500 megawatts, the documents show. Hackers did not cause any blackouts or generation outages, according to sPower, which says it’s the . . . Complete story »
Wind farm nears approval on land owned by County Councilor Chris Robinson
Summit County’s first wind farm is moving toward approval and a public hearing Thursday will likely result in the developers being granted the permit they need to start building. The project is on the far east side of the county, nearer to Evanston, Wyoming, than to any Utah population center. Eastern Summit County Planning Commission Chair Tom Clyde said he’s surprised there hasn’t been more public interest in the project, with a previous scheduled public hearing sparsely attended. “It seems . . . Complete story »
East Side weighs 22,000-square-foot homes in Promontory, and a wind farm near Wyoming
An effort to increase limits on home sizes to 22,000 square feet in a proposed neighborhood in the Promontory development failed to gain the Eastern Summit County Planning Commission’s recommendation last week, with Commissioners saying it would need to wait for action from the County Council. The Summit County Council and Planning Commission have taken up the issue seven times between them, with an eighth scheduled in August. The developer is requesting an amendment to the original developer’s agreement to . . . Complete story »
