KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - An industry-sponsored poll suggests most Tennesseans support renewable wind energy, but don't count U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander among them. "I am all for renewable fuels. I am all for clean air and carbon-free electricity," the Tennessee Republican said Tuesday in a conference call from Washington, where the Senate is getting ready to debate an energy bill that could come with renewable energy mandates. But Alexander has no love for windmills. Wind power, he said, "is expensive and disfigures the landscape. It produces a puny amount of power, and it doesn't fit Tennessee."

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - An industry-sponsored poll suggests most Tennesseans support renewable wind energy, but don't count U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander among them.

"I am all for renewable fuels. I am all for clean air and carbon-free electricity," the Tennessee Republican said Tuesday in a conference call from Washington, where the Senate is getting ready to debate an energy bill that could come with renewable energy mandates.

But Alexander has no love for windmills. Wind power, he said, "is expensive and disfigures the landscape. It produces a puny amount of power, and it doesn't fit Tennessee."

Let windy North Dakota or Colorado have their wind farms, he said, but leave Tennessee _ home to the only major wind farm in the Southeast _ out of it.

"This is a clear example where the senator is out of touch with the business community, with his constituents and is on the wrong side of this issue," said Steven Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

A poll released Tuesday by Chicago-based Invenergy Wind LLC, owners of 15 of the 18 turbines on the Tennessee Valley Authority's wind farm on Buffalo Mountain near Oliver Springs, Tenn., says Tennesseans support more wind power in the state by a 12-1 margin.

The random survey by Telephone Strategies Group interviewed 1,047 likely registered voters on June 5-6. The results: 74 percent want increased use of wind energy in Tennessee, 78.7 percent know Tennessee ranks near bottom of states producing wind power, and 82.8 percent believe "wind energy is a viable source of pollution-free electricity in Tennessee."

Survey results had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

"The residents of Tennessee are saying 'yes,' to more wind power," Karl Eiermann, Invenergy's Buffalo Mountain manager, said in a statement.

Alexander worries, though, about an anticipated amendment to the energy bill from Senate Energy Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., that would require every state get 15 percent of its energy from renewable resources by 2020. The Senate passed a similar measure two years ago, but it failed in the House.

"The only way that anyone can achieve it across the country is with wind power," Alexander said, adding that he envisioned a string of 500 wind turbines along 100 miles of ridgelines between Knoxville and Chattanooga.

Any state failing to meet the requirement would be subject to penalties that Alexander said could eventually add $410 million a year to Tennesseans' utility bills. It would be better to spend that money on energy efficiency, he suggested.

Smith, however, considers the 15 percent mandate modest, realistic and achievable with several wind companies showing growing interest in East Tennessee.

"The thing that is scarring the mountaintops is mountaintop removal coal mining," Smith said. "If he (Alexander) is concerned about the mountaintops he should really be concerned about the fact that we are too dependent on coal."

TVA spokesman John Moulton said the country's largest public utility has no current plans to add more wind energy, but the agency's newly adopted strategic plan does call for adding renewable generating capacity over the next decade.

 

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