Windpower in West Virginia? Now that's funny.

I read an today, article today, and republished by my employer SNL Financial. The headline reads:

West Virginia rejects siting application for Liberty Gap wind project

Why do you ask would the WV PUC reject a wind project? The PUC claims it was because the developer didn't entertain a study by a hydrology consultant, hired by an opposition group. US WindForce claims that the reason the hydrology consultant didn't perform the study is he was unwilling to sign a liability waiver.

The opposition group, Friends of Pendleton County opposes windpower development because it claims that the wind turbines kill birds and make unsightly, and noisy ridgelines. (I find the first claim kind of ironic given the mythological usage of canaries.) They also claim that windturbines don't make much of a dent in our overall energy demand. All of this is true, although I don't personally find windturbines unsightly, and I have a hard time believing, in a state where the average home costs less than a couple year's rent in San Francisco or New York, and the population has declined since 1980, that real estate value is a widespread concern.

So what's really behind the opposition?

Could it be that West Virginia, a major coal producer, is threatened by a technology which competes directly with coal power generation?

I'm putting my views out to the world, and want to let every West Virginian know this: You have nothing to fear. Your jobs in the coal mines are safe. Yes, windplants are relatively small. A 100 MW windfarm will do little if anything to stop the rising tide of new 1,000 MW coal plant developments in the US and abroad. Coal is being exported to other nations, as the world flow of coal tips toward China, which is building new coal plants every week.

I can pretty much assure you that those beautiful hills of West Virginia are gonna get mined till the very last ounce of cheap coal has been scraped out. And maybe the expensive coal too. All 53 Billion tons of it. 153 billion tons of West Virginia coal is produced each year, virtually all of it will be burned up in power plants, and more of it is being burned each year. Of course burning all this coal means releasing millions of tons of greenhouse gases and toxic chemicals into the air, but that's a subject of another blog.

If windpower did come into your town, there are benefits. Windpower could provide a hedge against the possibility of increasing power prices in the future, and provide highly skilled jobs to a communities that are otherwise dependant on the coal industry.

West Virginia is a beautiful state, and I have tremendous respect for the coal miners who take great risk to bring us the fuel that powers nearly half of the nation's power. But that said, there is room, and indeed a need, for cleaner, more sustainable power. Blocking windpower development in the state is short-sighted, and a brash political move that panders to people who have been burned time and again by the cyclical nature of the coal business. Someday, there will be another crash. Wouldn't it be nice to have at least some kind of backup industry to hedge against this eventuality? And, wouldn't it be nice to join the rest of the country in moving forward, instead of staying stuck in the past?