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April 11, 2006
Who should own wind farms?
Lining Rt. 20A through central N.Y. last week, were maybe a dozen placards urging the reader to reject a proposal from EcoGen to put wind farms through the area; they included a URL to saveupstateny.com. The proposal, it seems, is to put a number of turbines in Prattsburgh and Italy; opponents complain about noise, hurled ice (!), and general unsightliness. They are also claiming that the turbines will not generate local electricity.
Now, wind farms are a necessary part of sustainable power generation, and most of the problems with them can be ameliorated with proper siting—that is, local government needs to step up and get involved at the front end. Now it turns out that Tom Golisano, the primary underwriter of saveupstateny.com, is backing off of his outright opposition to the farms and is urging local governments to go one step further—into actually owning the farms themselves. Wired News is reporting that Golisano has dropped his opposition to wind farms per se, but wants to see them “done right.” To that end, he is going to the affected cities and towns and telling them that EcoGen will pay at most $300,000/year to erect the farms, but cities running them themselves could make up to $9 million/year.
Publicly-owned utilities have been around the fringes of U.S. energy policy for quite some time; right here in the Bay Area I know that Palo Alto owns its own water, electric, gas, and sewer systems. There’s also been a ton of talk about municipally-owned fiber networks for Internet delivery. The counterargument has always been based on efficiency—private actors > state actors when it comes to providing these kinds of services.
Is Golisano right? That’s a question for an energy economist. But even if he’s wrong about the virtues of public ownership, I suspect Golisano is doing a public service by giving Plattsburgh, Italy, and the other wind-rich municipalities a little bit of extra bargaining leverage with EcoGen. Maybe they’ll get more than $300,000/year, now that the threat of municipal ownership is on the table.
Oh, and these things really ought to generate at least some local electricity. Do you know how much energy we lose in long-distance transmission?
Posted by Rob Courtney at April 11, 2006 10:52 AM
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Comments
do these cities really have the money to erect the farms themselves? unless they can get some state support, they should take the more modest $300,000 a year, because realistically, it's probably all they're going to get.
i agree, the problem is the ineffeciency of transmitting energy over long distances. but compared to the inefficiency of a lot of other energy sources, i guess it's still a step in the right direction.
Posted by: bruce at April 11, 2006 08:41 PM
Well, if they're really going to bring in $9m a year, it's a cinch that some bank would lend them the money to get things started up. The question is whether they're competent to manage this type of project (I have my doubts).
Posted by: Rob at April 12, 2006 09:36 AM
But in theory the could contract out all the particulars and still own the windfarm. For nine million a year, there's a lot of expert advice to be bought.
Posted by: drew at April 12, 2006 10:31 AM
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