New setback rules for turbines could kill wind farms, advocates say
Columbus Business First|Tom Knox|June 17, 2014
“It is not right to have the setback measured from a home – it should be from a property line,” the Auglaize Neighbors United group says on its website. “If the wind company wants to intrude on the neighbor’s property, it needs to get an easement and compensate the landowner.”
“It is not right to have the setback measured from a home – it should be from a property line,” the Auglaize Neighbors United group says on its website. “If the wind company wants to intrude on the neighbor’s property, it needs to get an easement and compensate the landowner.”
The Ohio wind industry is facing its second big blow in less than a week.
The renewable and energy efficiency industries lost a tough fight Friday to stop a two-year freeze on mandates favoring them. Opponents of the freeze in Senate Bill 310 warned it would scare off new development of alternative energy sources.
Gov. John Kasich on Monday then signed another bill that could deliver the final blow for Ohio’s wind business, industry backers said. A late revision to Kasich’s midyear budget review, or midbiennium, authorizes big changes for where wind turbines can be built. Until now, Ohio law said turbines had to be 1,250 feet away from the nearest inhabited residence. The revision says turbines must be that distance from the nearest …
... more [truncated due to possible copyright]The Ohio wind industry is facing its second big blow in less than a week.
The renewable and energy efficiency industries lost a tough fight Friday to stop a two-year freeze on mandates favoring them. Opponents of the freeze in Senate Bill 310 warned it would scare off new development of alternative energy sources.
Gov. John Kasich on Monday then signed another bill that could deliver the final blow for Ohio’s wind business, industry backers said. A late revision to Kasich’s midyear budget review, or midbiennium, authorizes big changes for where wind turbines can be built. Until now, Ohio law said turbines had to be 1,250 feet away from the nearest inhabited residence. The revision says turbines must be that distance from the nearest property line.
That provision is something neighborhood groups opposed to wind turbines has pushed for.
“It is not right to have the setback measured from a home – it should be from a property line,” the Auglaize Neighbors United group says on its website. “If the wind company wants to intrude on the neighbor’s property, it needs to get an easement and compensate the landowner.”
In rural areas where big wind farms typically locate, that’s a big difference, wind companies say.
The trade group American Wind Energy Association said the new setback rules will make new wind farms cost-prohibitive.
“It appears designed to make the construction of utility-scale wind farms commercially unviable,” Gabriel Alonso, CEO of EDP Renewables North America, wrote in a letter to Kasich this month.
EDP Renewables in 2011 built the 55-turbine, 99-megawatt Timber Road farm in Paulding County, the first commercial wind farm in Ohio. American Electric Power Company Inc. (NYSE:AEP) signed a long-term deal to purchase a portion of its electricity from the farm.
The company has another 100 megawatts permitted by the Ohio Power Siting Board ready for construction, Erin Bowser, director of project management for the company, told the Senate Public Utilities Committee last month.