Cap-and-trade schemes could hurt families and send jobs overseas The recently passed U.S. House bill to create a cap-and-trade system to tackle greenhouse-gas emissions threatens to hurt families and send jobs out of the country, argues Washington state Rep. Shelly Short, R-Addy. In Washington state, the definition of 'green jobs' is ill defined.

With frequent ferocity, The Columbian has expressed editorial support for both: -- Wind energy as an alternative energy source. -- The Endangered Species Act. But what happens when those two advocacies collide, when wind turbines kill birds, especially birds of a threatened species? ...If forced into a corner of mandatory choice, we suspect the proper view would be to support the ESA and the birds, for one simple reason: Extinction is precisely that, irreversible.

It is well known that raptors commonly fly at an altitude that puts them at particular risk for collision with wind power blades. Proper siting was touted as the key to green wind power. So why is wind power being sited in an Audubon Important Bird Area, and why is that Important Bird Area slated for border to border wind power development? The answer is simple. Instead of proper planning, Northwest wind power is being allowed to develop wherever infrastructure is available and politicians are agreeable.

Tonight the Umatilla County Planning Commission meets to discuss whether to adopt an amendment to the county's comprehensive plan that would ban giant wind turbines. ...The Blue Mountains are a resource shared by folks who live in Southeastern Washington and Northeastern Oregon. Anything that changes that resource is cause for concern, which is why we believe the "No Turbine Zone" amendment is worth considering.

Despite our region's decades-old dependence on hydropower as a reliable, reasonably clean and inexpensive power source, Washingtonians have embraced the concept of extracting energy from wind. In 2006, 52 percent of voters approved Initiative 937, requiring large utilities to increase renewable energy sources to 15 percent of their power production by 2020. Still, wind energy in the Northwest has raised valid concerns. For example, last month a golden eagle was killed at a wind tower southeast of Goldendale; it was believed to be the state's first casualty of an eagle killed by a wind turbine.

But what are our tax dollars buying? In Utah, $79 million is being spent on improving drinking water. School districts in Georgia are receiving $660 million. Nebraska received $1 million to maintain national wildlife refuges. But what about Washington? In particular, will our tax dollars help build the Desert Claim Wind Power Project in Kittitas County?

I-937 requires that large electric utilities increase their use of renewable energy sources to account for at least 15 percent of their power by 2020. Sure, in an era of climate change fears, and a push for alternative energy supplies to wean us from our dependence on foreign sources it sounded like a step in the right direction. But I-937 had some serious and expensive flaws and the Legislature - with the waiting period for tinkering with an initiative over - is looking at ways to fix those problems.

Wind turbines are the latest popular "answer" to our country's energy problems with talk of three-bladed monsters covering vast areas from Texas northward. T. Boone Pickens is spending millions to promote his vision of generating 20 percent of our energy from wind power (although he refuses to install any of the turbines on his own 120,000 acre ranch). ...The variability of wind power makes it very difficult for power companies to integrate wind power into their grid and still maintain the stable power supply required to avoid user-operating problems. This is a particularly severe problem if wind power is a large portion of the total power output.

Wind power has been proposed in letters to the editor as a good option to LNG, but there is no silver bullet solution to our energy needs, as far as I can see. Because wind power depends on the wind, it is an unreliable source of electrical power. Wind power must be backed up by a more reliable conventional power source. That power source is LNG. As wind power develops out, more LNG power plants will be built to back up wind power. Wind power cannot replace LNG; it will, instead, make LNG more necessary.

EnXco, one of two unscrupulous commercial wind power developers who are attempting to despoil the west end of the Kittitas Valley, is back in the county. They recently placed a full-page ad in the 4th of July Daily Record supplement implying they were a member of the community and positioning themselves as "one of America's premier wind energy companies." ...To set the record straight, a member of the community does not circumvent local land-use authority for the permitting of wind energy projects by asking unelected state EFSEC bureaucrats to pre-empt our elected commissioners' decision to reject their project as originally designed. A member of the community does not knowingly impact his neighbors under the guise of "helping" the larger community when in fact the real purpose is to further their own profits.

A company called Evergreen Wind Power Partners LLC expects to negotiate a lease of 5,400 acres in the hills of east central Clark County from the Washington Department of Natural Resources. As reported in The Columbian Thursday by Erik Robinson, Evergreen would build as many as 39 wind towers in the Yacolt Burn State Forest east of Hockinson and just west of the Larch Corrections Center. At full output, they could supply about 10 percent of the county's electricity needs. The company, which is a subsidiary of enXco energy company of Escondido, Calif., is hard to track down. Robinson had no luck Wednesday reaching anyone from Evergreen or enXco who would talk about the proposed project. ...we won't get too excited until more is known about the company and its record, the environmental and visual impact of this envisioned wind farm, and plans for getting the power out of the hills.

The citizens of Washington recently passed I-937 which requires the use of narrowly defined renewable energy sources by utilities serving over 25,000 customers. PSE is required to build generating resources to meet this requirement. Never mind that the legislation effectively creates a government-mandated market for basically only one renewable energy source (commercial wind power); we should all be happy that Washington is a "leader in becoming energy independent" and we are also solving the world-wide problem of climate change. To accomplish this goal requires large amounts of capital - in fact, PSE needs to spend $5.7 billion on infrastructure in the next five years - more than the company was worth last October! But wait a minute, haven't we been told wind power is the cheapest, most cost competitive energy source available today?

Although AWB strongly supports all forms of renewable energy, we opposed the initiative because of its mandatory nature and because it will increase energy costs. The initiative does not count hydropower as renewable energy, despite the fact that hydropower is Washington's biggest source of renewable energy and produces no greenhouse gases. As a result, in order to meet the 15-percent threshold mandated by I-937, utilities in our state will be forced to sell our cheaper hydropower energy to California in exchange for more costly wind, solar and biomass energy.

As for a suggested inconsistency by our locally elected permitting authority, Mr. Killian might care to read the public record on the Vantage Wind Project and see that any resident who may have had a concern about setbacks was satisfied with the project as designed. Our commissioners have been very consistent throughout the last six years of wind project permitting process. If concerns and/or objections were raised by the public, mitigations were explored - publicly. To date, the commissioners' only "hard" setback requirement was what is considered the "safety setback" that is determined by the turbine manufacturer. In the Kittitas Valley Wind Power project and the Desert Claim Wind Power Project, the overwhelming response by residents that would be affected was that they wanted greater setbacks due to impacts documented in the record. And in fact, most residents wanted 1 mile setbacks like most of Europe specifies; but the commissioners only suggested 2,500 feet. And even then, the commissioners stated that exceptions would be entertained.

It would be a lot easier to choose up sides in the Columbia Gorge wind farm disputes if the capitalists wanted to dig open pit mines or put up oil derricks and extract resources from the land and then truck or pipe them away for decades to come, risking erosion, spills or explosions. If that were the case, it would be easier to spew venom and spread fear about money-grubbing, land-raping operations planned along the border of the nation's first national scenic area. ...[T]he scenic area was created almost 22 years ago, and by now its protection ought to be a sacred duty and universal desire. We should be beyond the point of nibbling around the edges of the law and violating its spirit. Erecting giant towers, seven of which would be partly visible from parts of the gorge floor, seems a violation of that spirit.

A good place to start is with the passage of I-937. ...So, Mr. Pratt, don't bother asking PSE why your rates are so high, but instead ask your state legislators and Gov. Gregoire why they are so high. Answers you will not receive are that there is a lack of competition for commercial electrical power generation and that government has created and micro-manages artificial, mandated energy markets.

So, now we have this local mess with the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEG), and the surfacing of internal correspondence, which apparently demonstrates a blatant disregard for the sanctity of the public process in the ongoing issue of wind farm siting in Kittitas County. The process appears to have been nothing better than a staged play that has had a good run over the past three years. A script where the final scene was determined well before opening night... well before all the hundreds of hours of time spent by numerous local citizens researching and expressing their opinions on the issue of wind farms.

As the economy expands and the population grows, so does the demand for power. Even a cursory review of available options shows how few real choices we all have. For example, all our major hydropower sites are built, coal power is environmentally unacceptable (by Energy Northwest and many others), new nuclear in the region is still 20 years away, wind power is intermittent and expensive, solar power lacks output, tidal and wave power are undeveloped and environmentally suspect, and natural gas supplies are dangerously close to shortages. Any claims that the region can meet its future power needs with wind power and conservation alone are woefully misguided and overstated. As wind power developers we have first-hand knowledge of wind powers benefits and limitations. Shunning promising technologies like Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle without understanding them is the first step toward blackouts, sky high prices, and power-shortage panic like we saw in 2000-2001.

Eight years ago, when my wife and I bought a 28-acre farm on the serene and beautiful Tucannon River near Dayton, we had no idea we were in the crosshairs of wind tower developers. Later, despite being told we would not see the towers, we now look out our dining room window at 43 wind turbines. About 14 miles northeast of Dayton, where Highway 12 crosses the Tucannon River, you start to see the desecration that the wind projects have wrought.

Asked this week about this summer's decision to preempt Kittitas County's rejection of the controversial Kittitas Valley Wind Power Project Washington Public Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland said it was an easy call. ...In recommending preemption of the Kittitas County decision in August, the siting council opined that proponents of the KV wind project had met most local land use requirements before county commissioners rejected it. Sutherland said the message constituents were sending to commissioners at the time was "if they wanted to continue in office politically, you're not going to allow these instruments. From the county's position, it was a political decision."