More wind turbine woes

(Click on image to enlarge. Copies available on request.)


Students and I attended the Dixmont Planning Board's Question and Answer session on wind power, where I had been asked to be a panel member and answer questions, presumably because of the work I do in Maine community wind assessment and wind power planning.

Students, particularly in our Environmental Policy and Sustainability design and Technology programs, need to prepare themselves for the day when they will be in the hot seat at meetings like this, which is why I made sure a few of them went. One student who went to the meeting is also a Dixmont resident.

Dixmont, with Jackson and Thorndike, is the locus for a wind power development proposal by Competitive Energy Services, a relatively small regional electrical generation and wind power development company. They are the company who developed the three-turbine installation at Beaver Ridge in Freedom, Maine. They are also a parent of Maine Renewable Energy LLC, which sells green power power attributes (RECs) through the Maine Interfaith Power and Light program.

The current Dixmont ordinance would most likely act to discourage any industrial wind power development in Dixmont, even a facility in which the Town would have an ownership stake.

I went to this meeting primarily to say that residents should consider a wind power project if the Town could get an equity ownership in one or more, or part of one, turbine, and so receive more than just tax revenue, but also revenue from selling power under LD 1075, the Maine community energy law, now Public Law Chapter 329. The revenues from even one turbine would be in excess of several hundred thousand dollars, while the tax revenue would be significant, but much less. I also went to argue for a smaller setback than the one-mile currently in the ordinance, but only if combined with a different noise regulation, an absolute standard of 40 dBA at occupied structures.

These ideas would permit some form of development to go ahead in Dixmont, and are a middle ground between what the developers want, which is more or less to be free to go ahead and put up as many turbines as they see fit, and what a group of local activists want, which is either no turbines, or, to put it in the best possible light, remarkably strict regulation of turbines.

I was able to say what I had to say, and I think it was heard by many folks in the audience, but I'm writing it down here again so that there is an independent record.

The meeting was much better facilitated than previous meetings in Jackson, with a moderator who took written questions from the audience. This provided for less of the contentious "he said/she said" back and forth that has mired such meetings recently.

It was still pretty clear that there were quite a few folks there who were not particularly interested in working the problem, if that meant that the proposal stood a chance of going forward, even in truncated or modified format. Even with the meeting format, there was still a considerable amount of rhetorical high jinks, particularly in the form of leading questions, and those in the audience who disagreed with the speaker, particularly with Andrew Price, the representative from CES, expressed themselves by pulling faces and not letting speakers finish points.

I found this behavior somewhat regrettable and pointed this out politely but directly. After I expressed myself so, which the moderator did not particularly wish me to do, another case of "positive thinking being neither", the incidence of face-pulling and interrupting did seem to go down a bit.

While the CES representative and others on the panel continued to defend the record of the Beaver Ridge wind farm, which I also found somewhat regrettable, when most folks in our area know that it is noisy and probably too close to a row of residences on Goosepecker Ridge Road and elsewhere.

At Unity College we definitely know that this development is noisy because quite a few of those houses on that road are owned by Unity College employees.

I pointed out that the development was too noisy, and used the opportunity to argue for the lower noise limit.

After about two and a half hours of back and forth, the meeting ended and we all went home to gather our wits and decompress and get ready for another workday.

I may be wrong, but didn't go away with the impression that the Planning Board was interested in changing the ordinance.

So this is where we are at in Jackson and Dixmont. The ordinances are written and although I don't know this for sure right now, both Planning Boards seem content to let them go forward with restrictive setbacks that the company argues would more or less prohibit development.

In neither case is it guaranteed that the laws will pass. In fact, I'd say that there's a fair likelihood of them not passing. I'd give them fifty-fifty, or 60-40 right now. Some voters will defer to the planning boards and vote yes, but others won't. Maine towns, particularly Jackson, have a history of rejecting planning restrictions.

While many townsfolk don't know or haven't heard that there are other options, especially the ownership option. The local activists against the wind project remain very active and continue to effectively polarize debate. I'm not sure if they mean to do this or not, but they are having this effect.

I suppose we'll have to put it to the voters at Town Meeting. It will be interesting to see what will happen.

One important new fact did emerge. Andrew Price, the CES representative, stated that the ongoing wind measurements at Mount Harris and Common Hill show that the Wind Power Density Class is "less than five." I take it to mean that the data is coming in at Class 4, for the straightforward reason that Class 3 is generally not profitable with the GE 1.5 machines proposed, and soon after CES found it was only Class Three, they'd very likely pull their project proposal.

However, the NREL wind maps (see image above) show only pockets of Class 4 on Mount Harris and none on Common Hill.

These two bits of data, taken together, suggest that only a proposal for turbines on the Dixmont section of the ridge would be forthcoming, the Jackson section having proved unprofitable or marginal. I doubt that the numbers are all in and crunched, especially connection costs, but if the top of Mount Harris is only Class 4, then the topography says that Common Hill is likely Class 3 and below par. Andrew Price alluded to this in some of his other statements and I picked up on it, although I don't think very many others did. The Jackson section is also furthest from the power lines where the power would have to connect to the grid, another nail in the coffin. In the final number crunching, turbines on Common Hill would have to "pay for" more connection that those on Mount Harris.

This is all a guess, of course, but I'm very familiar with the power curves and cost analysis for the GE 1.5 at this point. It's an educated guess.

His data also apparently confirm that the prevailing wind that is above the cut-in speed of a GE 1.5 comes out of the north west, meaning most of the sound from Mount Harris would finish up in the southeast, the least occupied area. The topography there is steep and concave, and there's a good chance the sound, captured by the laminar flow, would fly over the top of the nearest buildings around Drake Pond, which in any case are in Jackson Town and presumably not protected by the Dixmont ordinance.

Of course, this is also an educated guess. We'd have to see the data to know all this for sure, which CES is not prepared to let us do.

So my other main point was, unless the Towns get to see the data, we don't know where the noise will end up. I argued for a part of the law requiring permit applicants to provide data.

This is unpalatable to the companies, who think they will lose out to competition if they have to give their private data away, but I think that they have to pay the piper. I also think they also have to cooperate in helping plan for some Town equity in these projects.

I think it's a no-brainer for the towns. Whatever else you do, get the data.

US climate emissions heading down, down, down

Finally, US climate emissions are heading in the right direction, although not necessarily for all the right reasons, all of the time. But they are going down for some of the right reasons.

Praise be.

This according to a Grist article published in the Guardian.

The reasons given are of course, the recession (no surprise there) but also energy efficiency efforts, and renewable energy deployment, especially wind power.

While oil prices are heading up again, and are now widely touted to keep going up.

I'm on record here in this blog and elsewhere for having said that we don't necessarily need a climate bill to get emissions down.

We don't have one, and emissions are going down, so I must have been right, right?

High energy prices for fossil fuels, combined with incentives for efficiency and renewables, will do just as well and possibly better, at least to begin, than a climate bill. There are so many low hanging fruit to pick in our national energy and energy efficiency portfolios, lowering emissions is just a matter of applying rational thought to the use of energy, at least in the beginning.

In an energy efficiency orchard full of nice, fat, juicy, expensive low hanging fruit, a climate bill might even slow down the pickers, or distort their efforts so they pick the wrong ones first.

The lingering danger is, however, that without climate action, the same market incentives (high oil prices and incentives for efficiency and renewables) also create a playing field that tilts in the direction of cheap-and-nasty coal-fired power production.

So what we need there is some kind of one-way valve for coal in this particular dynamic system. No place to go but down. I'm with Jim Hansen (and I quote): "somebody needs to step forward and say there has to be a moratorium, draw a line in the sand and say no more coal-fired power stations."

No new coal-fired power plants, and aggressive retirement and replacement of old ones, is definitely the ticket. Cap and trade will do this, or a carbon tax, but so will EPA regulation of CO2 as a pollutant, which doesn't require an Act of Congress. Way back when Obama first came on board, the EPA began the regulation-writing process. It takes a while, and can be slowed or speeded at the will of the President, but because of court precedent it is inexorable. Eventually the EPA will issue CO2 regulations, whether Congress caps, trades, or dances the fandago.

So either way, as long as the Obama administration is serious, coal goes down.

So it seems to me that we may have a fail-safe system in place at least for the next three years. I'm starting to feel kind of optimistic for the future.

There will of course be a know-nothing backlash.

That much is traditional in America.

And the neo-Coughlinites of radio and cable TV will sing out to high heaven that coal belongs to Jesus and we should burn it to praise him.

Again, tradition dies hard.

But we should always remember that the real tradition in American society is that reactionary movements always lose in the end.

In this case, they are already losing, as long as emissions, and fossil energy consumption, are going down.

Emissions will continue to drop just naturally because of all the low hanging fruit now getting more and more aggressively picked. The accession of the first graduates from programs like ours, trained to pick 'em, will help.

That's right. We will very soon graduate our first Sustainability Design and Technology graduates, all of whom are very well trained in the finding and picking of low-hanging energy fruit. They are already saving money for the college and for their internship providers, while also reducing emissions. I'm very pleased with the smarts and the good sense of our soon-to-be-grads.

What will also help is the continued regime of aggressive incentives for renewable energy and energy efficiency, and of course high oil prices. I have a lot of faith in the likes of Chu, Holdren, and Fetter, to keep up their end of the argument within the administration.

Optimism. It's a drug I don 't usually recommend. I'm with Barbara Ehrenreich:

"Positive thinking" is neither.

All this New-Agey positive thinking, if-you-can't-say-something-nice-don't-say-anything-at-all nonsense is for intellectual lightweights.

Real scientists and serious thinkers are not, and should never be, trained that way.

If you have something negative to say, based on fact, you should always say it.

But, if the facts appear positive, then that has to be said too.

And, for once, I think they are.

In your backyard: Streams and energy hogs

(These columns reprinted courtesy of Stef '06 at the Maine DEP)

In Our Back Yard; Who Lives in Your Stream?

Rivers, streams, and wetlands in Maine are classified as AA, A, B, or C depending on the goal for the waters use.  AA is the highest class and C the lowest.  All classifications meet the requirements of fishable, swimmable set by the Federal Clean Water Act.  But do all the waters live up to their goal? 
 
The Maine Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) Biomonitoring Program evaluates waters all around the state to see if they are meeting their class goal.  They do this by monitoring the health of the populations of algae and macroinvertebrates (animals without backbones that can be seen with the naked eye) that live in the rivers, streams, and wetlands.   These creatures live in the water most of their lives.  By monitoring them, DEP knows what the water quality was like not just when they took the sample, but what it was last week and last month. 
 
Many different types of macroinvertebrates and algae can be found.   Some species require cold, clean water to survive and others tolerate polluted water.  Finding a variety of the organisms that require clean water is good, meaning the water quality is good and any human activities in the watershed are having minimal effect. A community of mostly pollution-tolerant species indicates poor water quality.
 
Maine is a national leader in using biological data to better identify the health of waterbodies.    A statistical model based on the types and numbers of creatures collected has been developed that predicts whether a river or stream sample attains Class A, B, or C.  New models for wetlands and algae data are being developed. 
 
So how’s your neighborhood river, stream, or wetland doing?  The Biomonitoring Program posts data to a DEP website to help you find out about your local waters.  Visit our web site at: www.maine.gov/dep/blwq/docmonitoring/biomonitoring/data.htm .   The web page includes helpful hints about biomonitoring data and uses Google Earth.
 
Look at the web site to find out whether a river or stream is classified as AA/A, B, or C, and if it meets its class.  For example, searching for “Guilford, Maine” reveals site S-84 on the Piscataquis River.  Click on the red square representing the site to show a window with that information.  To see all the data on the site click on the link in the bottom left corner.  The interesting information about this site is its class attainment.  In 1984 and 1985, it did not “attain class,” but after 1989 it does. Additional treatment of discharges to the river in the mid 80’s resulted in improved water quality, and by 1989 it attained its water quality goal.
 
For more information, contact us at biome@maine.gov . 
 
This column was submitted by Hannah Wilhelm, Maine Conservation Corps Volunteer with the Biomonitoring Program at the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
In Our Back Yard; Borrow A Kill A Watt Meter & Save Energy 
 
With a rising cost of living, everyone wants to know how to save energy these days.  Kill A Watt meters can help people better understand where electricity is being used – and wasted – in their homes.  This spring, Efficiency Maine equipped Maine’s public libraries with Kill A Watt meters.  Public libraries are great resources; they provide books, videos, music, internet access – and now – a great tool to help you conserve energy.
 
Here’s how it works.  Go to your local library and check out a Kill A Watt meter.  When you get home, plug the meter into an outlet and then plug an appliance into the meter.  Turn the appliance on, and the Kill A Watt’s digital readout will tell you how many watts the appliance is using.  Ask yourself how often you use this appliance.  Do you think it has a big impact on your electric bill?
 
Next, find an appliance like a TV or computer.  Plug the Kill A Watt into an outlet and plug the TV or DVD player into the meter.  Don’t turn the appliance on.  Look at the digital readout; you may notice that this machine is using several watts of energy!  This is called a phantom load, and many appliances are guilty of using electricity when not in use.  Such phantom loads can add up to a hefty part of your electric bills.
 
Why do appliances have phantom loads?  One reason is that many of these machines have internal clocks and remote sensors – for example, computers, TVs, microwaves and stereos.  Anything with a digital clock, glowing light or remote control could be wasting electricity.  Battery chargers, although small, are often guilty, too!  Once you’re done charging your cell phone or mp3 player, unplug the charger.
 
So how do we squash these energy hogs?  Unplug!  Any appliance that has an easy-to-reach plug can have its power cut with a simple tug.  What about those hard-to-reach outlets?  Plug the offending appliances into a power strip, put the power strip in an easy-to-access area, and turn it “off” when you are done using it.
 
These Kill A Watt meters have been in public libraries for several months now, but Efficiency Maine is starting a new program to stock school libraries with Kill A Watts too.   Accompanying the meters will be lessons to help teachers integrate the Kill A Watts into their classroom curricula.
 
Teachers who would like to take your Kill A Watt investigations a step further, can contact Maine Energy Education Program.  They offer free, classroom-based, hands-on energy programs and can assist you with Service-Learning projects focused on energy efficiency.  Visit www.meepnews.org for more information.
 
To learn more about Efficiency Maine’s Kill A Watt program, visit www.efficiencymaine.com .  And don’t forget to stop by your local library to borrow a Kill A Watt meter! 
 
This column was submitted by Stefany Arsenault, Assistant Director of Maine Energy Education Program.  In Our Back Yard is a weekly column of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).  
 
 
 
 

Ostrum wins Nobel

Elinor Ostrum, whose work on common property rights showed how flawed Hardin's "tragedy of the commons" thesis was, just won the Nobel.

For once I agree with the Nobel committee.


Nobel economics prize won by first woman

• Elinor Ostrom's work may help fight climate change
• American academic Oliver Williamson shares award

Old fashioned carpentry

Photos: Ryan makes a notch for a 6 by 8 hemlock beam, which will hold up the hay floor of our barn.

This post mirrored from our barn blog.


The exterior walls of our barn are "stick-built," meaning they are built with relatively thin sticks of lumber, two by four inch by eight foot studs, or "2 by 4 by 8's," or just "studs."

Wishing to build both a sturdy and a locally-sourced building, we employed fully two inch by four inch, locally produced, "rough cut" hemlock lumber of high quality, which we bought in quantity from Gerald Fowler's lumber mill in Thorndike, Maine.

I say "fully" because most lumber that carpenters and contractors use for building is only nominally 2 by 4 inches. Mainstream commercial lumberyards for generations have sold only kiln-dried, planed, stamped 2 by 4 studs. The "stamp" is the manufacturer's quality assurance stamp, and while most carpenters know it means very little, most insurance companies wish you to build with this material. The reason is not because it's the best lumber to use for any particular purpose. It's instead authorized for use because this kind of lumber, stamped by a reputable and large lumber company, carries with it the implied promise that, if the carpenter or contractor uses this lumber, uses it correctly, following standard systems taught in trade school and written in carpenter's manuals, then if the building then falls down, causing a loss for the insurance company, the lumber company will be available to be sued, as well as the contractor, and any sub-contractors, to make up the insurance company's loss.

The lumber companies, contractors, and all but the flakiest of subs, carry bonding and insurance too, just in case they are sued.

Kiln dried lumber, however, is not two by four inches but instead planed down to an actual dimension of one-and-a-half by three-and-a-half inches. This dimension was not chosen for ease of calculation. It was chosen because this was what you got when you planed down a rough two by four. These days, with low kerf band saws and high speed planing knives, you'd get a larger stud by just planing down a rough two-by four, but the one point five by three point five inch size is kept because the savings from the new equipment has been absorbed as extra profit to the lumber company, not passed on as stronger lumber to the customer.

Kiln dried or KD or, phonetically, kay-dee lumber is brittle, generally cut from spruce or douglas fir, cracks easily, warps spectacularly in the wrong circumstances, rots well, and has less than half the strength of air-dried rough cut lumber if hemlock is the species used. Experienced carpenters in Maine, where this conifer is abundant, keep hemlock lumber around and use it for bracing and other jobs where superior strength is needed.

They also use it to build their own buildings, especially outbuildings, where wallboard is not used. Hemlock has the additional benefit of being rot-resistant.

Kiln-dried is for the customer's barn, not the contractor's.

So why would anyone use kiln-dried lumber for an outbuilding?

Because the insurance company made them do so.

This is one of those cases where the decline in lumber quality and concurrent common sense is a symptom or knock-on effect of a primary shift in values in society as a whole,

Long ago, lumber companies began kiln-drying and planing lumber to make it easier to get smooth finishes on walls if dry wall and other wallboard products were to be used. Before drywall there was lathe-and-plaster finish which could accommodate the irregularities of rough cut lumber. My own farmhouse, 109 years old this summer, is rough cut hemlock, and originally had lathe-and-plaster walls. But drywall saves time and produces a smoother if not superior finish, and so planed lumber, and wallboard, were needed to "knock out" the cheap family housing that began to be the norm after Levittown and other motor suburbs, eventually with their attendant shopping malls and "box stores," came to replace the historic pattern of American cities, beginning in the 1950s.

Most American families benefited from this cheaper housing supply and the overall price of housing fell, allowing middle-class values of home ownership to be achieved lower on the pay scale than previously possible. It was also in this era that the dependent, commercial, middle class suburban house began to replace the independent, subsistence and market-producing, rural homestead or farm as the American ideal housing format, the dream that most would strive for.

In fact, since the 1950s there has been a substantial net loss in farm and homestead ownership, and a corresponding commercialization and intensification of agriculture.

And so went the Jeffersonian dream, taking the rough cut 2 by 4 with it, superior strength notwithstanding. Now you can only buy them from small private lumber mills.

Actually, Jefferson, who wasn't a carpenter but knew a fair amount about building and planning, probably would have thought of even rough cut, stick-built, lathe-and-plaster finished housing as cheap and nasty. In Jefferson's time, if you built to last, you used stone, brick, and post-and-beam construction.

The walls of our barn are thus somewhat anachronistic, and employ a building technique, using rough cut sticks, abandoned by the mainstream some 40-50-60 years ago. The interior frame of our barn, which will be held up by massive, cross-braced hemlock posts and beams, will use a technique a hundred or two hundred years yet more anachronistic. Post and beam technique, in English-speaking society, dates back to the Anglo-Saxon settlement of England, or before, to the Iron and Bronze Age Celts. The technique was well known to the Romans and Greeks, and, where timber was available, used throughout the biblical world of the ancient Hebrews and Egyptians. Carpenters in the time of Ptolemy or Aristotle knew how to make a cross-brace that fit. Jesus, an Israeli carpenter by nationality and trade, would have used these techniques. His cross certainly used them. David's palace, and the first, second and third temples, would all have had post and beam roofs, even if the walls were of Jerusalem limestone.

The oldest European-settlement buildings in America are post and beam.

Many can be studied to this day, if you are interested in how buildings, and societies, are built.

My own particular favorite, in which the carpentry, and social construction, can still be observed well to this day, is Third Haven Quaker Meeting House in Easton, Maryland. But I'm a Quaker, and so biased. Third Haven used "green" or fresh-cut American white oak, Quercus alba. In Britain, where the Third Haven Quakers came from, we would have used the English oak, Quercus robar.

Interestingly, alba, in gaelicized Roman, also is Albion, perfidious or not, and where the Third Haven Quakers, and me, were from.

Third Haven was the third haven they had found from religious persecution, as they tried to build a better society.

It was not a metaphor. They were kicked out of the previous two.

The Easton Quakers still meet there every Sunday, or First Day, in summer. These days most that are not retired are commuters and many work in Washington DC for the government.

As for our class, we're just beginning to take our inquiry into the building of a building a little deeper, inquiring further into what the design and execution of a building might teach us about the building of a society.

At 8am, the time for our class, students are tired, and much as Trey, one of last year's students, described in his post here, participation in that debate seems too much for most. Most would rather just build. Building a building is more concrete, and possibly more fun.

But there are hopeful signs that a few are willing to begin to think about what kind of society they are being trained to lead, and how to make sure it is sturdy-built and will serve, or even serve better, for their lifetimes at least.

The Chamber

Thomas Noyes explains in the Guardian how the US Chamber of Commerce's anti-climate bill effort is falling apart and why.


Cents and sensibility

US energy firms are starting to abandon climate change denial and embracing plans to regulate carbon emissions

Blogging Heidi

Heidi, one of our above-average Sustainability design and Technology students, began blogging about her internship at ReVision energy today.

Very cool.



http://unitycollegeinternshipprogram.blogspot.com/2009/10/welcome-to-revision-energy.html