"The permit decision violates federal laws on numerous grounds - conflict of interest, failure to independently evaluate noise and aesthetics, the impacts of blasting and the impacts to groundwater, the changed circumstance regarding bats, and the degradation of the neighboring George D. Aiken Wilderness, to name a few."

Company spokesman Jeffrey Wennberg said circumstances dealing with permitting would have to significantly change for the project to go forward and such changes did not appear forthcoming.

The head of Vermont Electric Cooperative says the boom in U.S. discoveries of natural gas will keep electricity prices low and put the brakes on more large wind projects in the Northeast Kingdom. That's unless Vermont forces utilities to buy more renewable local electricity, says Dave Hallquist, VEC chief executive officer.

Vermont Electric Cooperative (VEC) is considering a moratorium on industrial wind projects. Dave Hallquist, the CEO of VEC, said in an interview Thursday that if the board of directors decides on the moratorium, it should include solar as well to prevent driving up the cost on energy.

Snelling, of Energize Vermont, disputes Hallquist's savings assumptions. There is no guarantee, he said, that Green Mountain Power will sell electricity to the co-op at the 9.6 cent per kilowatt rate. ..."They're making guesses about performance of a project that hasn't been built," Snelling said. "It's a gamble whether those numbers are right.

[Luke Snelling] said the size of the no vote showed that opposition is growing. Opponents will continue to fight the project, he said. Albany and Craftsbury are challenging the project's certificate of public good in court and they are involved in all the permits still outstanding.

A $100 million wind project by Kingdom Community Wind on the Lowell ridge line might provide renewable power, helping VEC and Green Mountain Power fill out renewable energy portfolios, he said. But it will not reduce electricity rates for co-op members, Hallquist said. Electricity prices are expected to climb across the U.S., even if utilities use renewable local sources, he said.

Vermont Electric Cooperative will oppose any large new wind project in northern Vermont, including Seneca Mountain Wind, CEO David Hallquist says. That's because existing wind projects have introduced instability in the grid, prompting grid operator ISO-New England to order existing wind projects in Vermont and New Hampshire to cut back or "curtail" electricity output.

MONTPELIER — Two state agencies continue to take differing views on the future of a closely watched Vermont wind project, according to filings made Tuesday.

There's been a lot of talk in Vermont about alternative energy sources -- and producing more power right here in Vermont. But so far, most of our fuel and energy are imported. Today, a conference at Lyndon State College focused on ways of developing local energy sources.

Vermont's energy future could become clearer in the coming months, with key decisions possible by year's end on the relicensing of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant and on the renewal of utilities' contracts with Hydro Quebec. Together, Yankee and HQ provide about two-thirds of the electricity currently consumed by Vermont residents and businesses.

Three days after announcing a deal with Burlington Electric Department, Vermont Wind LLC said Thursday that Vermont Electric Cooperative, Inc. has agreed to buy 50 percent of the Sheffield wind farm's power. Under the 20-year agreement, the utility will also purchase renewable energy certificates from the 40-megawatt wind project.

He said CVPS hit a record peak summer load of 490 megawatts late Tuesday afternoon, breaking the previous record of 488 megawatts that was set July 17. By Wednesday, he said the all-time peak load of 491.5 megawatts that was set last December would likely be broken as well. "Everything is coming together: heat, humidity, relatively low wind at this point," he said.

The technology is expensive, but Vermonters involved in the project say there's good reason to move ahead with it.

Energize Vermont, a group fighting development of utility-scale wind projects in the Green Mountain State, said yesterday that it will continue action against First Wind's Sheffield Wind project if an appeal to the facility's stormwater construction permit fails.

Two Vermont utilities signed an agreement Thursday on a 26-year deal to buy power from Canadian provincial utility Hydro-Quebec, replacing contracts that expire beginning in 2012. The deal is among Green Mountain Power Corp., Central Vermont Public Service Corp. and Montreal-based Hydro-Quebec.

The Vermont state legislature committee on Natural Resources and Energy introduced a bill to the House on March 15 relating to the conservation of energy and the generation of electricity in the state through renewable resources. In addition to proposing a goal of producing 25% of the state's energy with renewable energy sources by 2025, the bill seeks to establish a "wind-based electric generation facility tax." Furthermore, a revision has been included in the bill to allow net metering for systems up to 250 kW and to set a 2% cap on the amount of net-metered energy companies must accommodate.

Klein and Cheney said they had been hearing a groundswell of concern voiced by business lobbyists that getting more power from renewable sources, which are usually more expensive than electricity generated with nuclear or fossil-fuel-fired power, would drive up electric rates and make Vermont less competitive economically.

In a paper entitled Windfarms: Time to Change Direction? the Northamptonshire branch of CPRE said the organisation should "re-evaluate" its support for [wind farms] in the light of new evidence suggesting "that the generation of electricity from wind is not an effective way of reducing carbon emissions". There are lots of reasons for believing this, but the main one is probably the fact that there is as yet no economic way of storing electricity.

At the request of lawmakers, the Department of Public Service is looking for a contractor to run a series of public hearings, polls and Internet-based dialogue over the next several months. The goal of the search is to figure out where Vermonters want their power to come from and what they expect to pay for it during the next quarter-century.