Outside Looking In

Let’s start with this premise (as our governor has):

To save our planet, we should be developing and deploying energy sources that will gradually replace the most dangerous polluters, starting with coal (“clean coal” is the best punch line ever perpetrated on the public).

Within the context of that premise, however, there has to be room for sane policy.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s policy ignores such things as holistic assessment of energy sources, importance of listening to the voices of residents in the state and the notion that not every energy project is appropriate for every area of the state.

The policy ignores these important policy aspects because it is his goal to achieve 50 percent renewable energy production by 2030.

Right now, the percentage is just a tad more than half that.

Thus, the bar the governor has set is almost impossibly high.

The schedule relies heavily on wind and sun generated power to get to his goal.

This is problematic.

Both sources, for example, are spatially outrageous in comparison with other renewable sources.

Wind projects consume land assets measured in square miles rather than acres.

Their sprawl can be excessive.

Sun powered arrays, at least those that meet commercial generation standards, are not as greedy as wind projects, but they can be inordinately high.

The other problem with sun and wind power is that they are both intermittent — especially wind, whose main fuel is especially difficult to predict and which stubbornly recedes as peak power builds.

This conundrum is exacerbated by the location of viable wind resources in New York.

Industry wind maps show adequate wind generation to essentially follow the shorelines of lakes Erie and Ontario, the shorelines of Long Island, and spotty areas in the peaks of the Adirondacks and Catskills.

You may note that this is among the most valuable real estate in New York.

If the wind developers’ decision to build was based on economic considerations, cost-to-benefit ratios would kill nearly all proposed projects.

But with a federal production tax credit for renewables and new state subsidies combined, along with the brash assumption by developers that they will receive large tax breaks from communities in the form of payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreements, these choices trump the marketplace.

And the environmental benefits?

Both sun and wind require, due to their intermittent nature, standby power. At this point, that means that even coal fired plants may need to be ready to fire up at a moment’s notice when the sun goes down or the wind dies.

The environmental groups have at least begun to consider the deficits of solar and wind power.

As Jefferson County Planning Board member Cliff Schneider recently pointed out to the Public Service Department, the proposed Galloo Island project has huge environmental concerns that must be addressed.

Those problems have been swept under the rug by the Department of Environmental Conservation, an action that so badly betrays the public trust that someone should be held accountable.

There are places where wind generation and solar power make far more sense than in New York state.

The vast, agrarian plains of the Midwest, where the land’s value is measured in yield-per-acre and not in tourism dollars, and where farmers far more prevalent than in the Thousand Islands or the Hamptons eagerly embrace wind operations as a way to defray uncertain crop yields and weather disasters, are home to large wind operations that make, at least, geographic sense.

Texas, with the same assets, has embraced wind power in many but not all areas.

And other areas, with other priorities, may well embrace wind and sun projects.

There is a lesson in New York for wind developers, if they wish to learn it.

Wind projects need to be in harmony with the area in which they are proposed.

Tug Hill residents have embraced the projects because that region’s tourism factor does not rely on views; it relies on activities.

With most of the travel to Lewis County being generated by snowmobile and all-terrain-vehicle owners, wind projects pose little economic danger.

In Chateaugay, the same principle holds true.

But in Jefferson, Oswego and St. Lawrence counties, the tourism and vacation home assets rely in a very large measure on the beauty of their waterfronts.

The Thousand Island region is internationally known and an enormous draw of money that could well fade away if a series of wind projects, spread nose to tail through the region, is allowed to prevail.

In Livingston County, Apex Clean Energy has a project under review that, based on a series of surveys, is opposed by about two-thirds of the region’s residents — and more of its property owners, considering the number of vacation homes on and near the lake.

Residents and municipal officials there have flooded the Public Service Commission with letters, petitions and comments opposing the plan.

And that has had an impact on the state’s review of the project under Article 10.

Neither the Galloo Island nor the Horse Creek project here has generated that level of response.

Because of that (absent the Schneider comments, that have caused a stir at the PSC and DEC), neither of the pending projects here has flagged the state’s awareness of any opposition that may exist.

Wind farms have a place, despite their hidden environmental problems.

That is graphically shown right here, where projects a mere 50 miles apart have completely different resident reactions.

But if the project proposed is generally opposed by the local population, one key response must be that residents and property owners bury the PSC staff in letters of opposition and meaningful petitions against the proposal.

If you don’t do that, don’t wail when the project is approved.

Perry White is managing editor of the Watertown Daily Times. Reach him at pwhite@wdt.net.