The PSB attached a number of conditions to their approval of the project. As the Ridge Protectors, a group of people who have opposed the project for years, say, the attached conditions contain potential deal breakers and they intend to fight the actual project to the bitter end. We are with them. The Sheffield voters, when they approved the project for an entirely illusory tax benefit, sold the Northeast Kingdom's birthright for a mess of pottage. Assuming The Ridge Protectors prevail and the project is stopped, these same voters, when they discover the taste of pottage, will be thanking them.

So, to avoid a long and uncertain political and legal battle, Entergy, the state's lowest cost, most reliable energy producer, agreed to pay the state's new Clean Energy Fund as much as $28 million over the next seven years. The state will use the money to subsidize VPIRG's favorite renewable energy projects, chief among which are legions of already-subsidized 420-foot wind turbine towers marching along Vermont's mountain ridges.

With arbitrary enactment of the Shumlin tax, Vermont would send a negative message out to all businesses considering expansion or relocation to the state, while jeopardizing the amount of no emission carbon power it receives, at attractive prices. This would be both unfortunate, unnecessary, and clearly not the Vermont way. Shumlin should end the shakedown of Vermont Yankee now.

Beware, Washington voters — wind power is too good to be true. Approving the November ballot initiative [I-937] won't solve a thing. The current hype over wind power's credentials as a "clean and renewable" source of energy is belied by wind power's Achilles' heel — its intermittency. This fundamental flaw limits both wind energy's capacity value and its impact on emissions.

Good public policy promotes desirable social and economic change cost-effectively. Government programs, however well-intentioned, tied to bad ideas are bad policy. Such is the case with federal and state programs promoting industrial wind energy.

Suppose you wanted to make a bundle in the electric energy business in the little state of Vermont. How would you go about it? The old-fashioned way would be to generate electricity at a lower cost than your competitors. But forget that – too demanding. Here’s another way: get the federal and state governments to rig the deal in your favor.

To begin with, UPC would have absolutely no interest in wind energy if they weren't in line to receive enormous tax subsidies to do it. Wind energy from Vermont ridgelines hasn't a possibility of being produced at competitive prices with even the most expensive of traditional energy sources. Without the subsidies, wind energy in Vermont is an economic joke.

Estimates for developing the Sheffield and Sutton project exceed $100 million. Up to two thirds of that is offset by federal subsidies, which we pay for. Over $60 million. A pretty good motivator.

And despite Patt's irrelevant discourse on the difference between REC and cap-and-trade systems, the charge still stands that the primary driver of investment (and interest by utilities) in large-scale wind power is the potential profits from REC trading in a tight market.