State’s Hostility Toward Renewables Escalates; “Leaders” Lag Citizenry on Wind Support

Two articles from Catching Wind, a newsletter published by RENEW Wisconsin with funding from a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy:

State’s Hostility Toward Renewables Escalates
At the urging of Wisconsin utilities, several lawmakers have introduced a bill to allow a renewable energy credit (REC) to be banked indefinitely. If adopted, this measure (AB146) would constitute the most devastating legislative assault yet on the state’s renewable energy marketplace, which is already reeling from the suspension of the statewide wind siting rule this March and the loosening of renewable energy definitions to allow Wisconsin utilities to count electricity generated from large Canadian hydro projects toward their renewable energy requirements.

“Leaders” Lag Citizenry on Wind Support
Public support for wind energy development has held strong against the attacks launched by Governor Walker and the Legislature’s new Republican majority, according to a poll conducted between April 11 and April 18 by the St. Norbert College Survey Center for Wisconsin Public Radio.

Asked whether Wisconsin should "increase, decrease or continue with the same amount" of energy supply from various sources, 77% favored increasing wind power, the highest of any option (60% favored increasing hydropower, 54% biomass, 39% natural gas, 27% nuclear, and 19% coal).

Touring this year’s renewable energy crop

Commentary
by Michael Vickerman, RENEW Wisconsin
September 27, 2010

One of the abiding pleasures of my job at RENEW Wisconsin is going out into the field to visit renewable energy installations. Many of the systems sprouting across the state owe their existence to state and federal policies that make these systems economically viable to their owners.

In turn, some of those policies owe their existence to RENEW, an advocacy organization that has elevated the Wisconsin renewable energy marketplace from a dreamy aspiration to a thriving marketplace employing hundreds of people and generating millions of dollars a year in local revenues.

Whenever I’m asked to describe our mission, I often say that we act as a catalyst for advancing a sustainable energy future in Wisconsin. Our vision of that future places small, entrepreneurial companies at the center of the transition toward clean, locally available energy resources that do not deplete over time.

RENEW endeavors to steer Wisconsin along this path through policy mechanisms that help renewable energy businesses establish themselves in an economy that for many decades has operated almost exclusively on fossil energy. Because of that dependence on concentrated energy sources like coal, natural gas and liquid hydrocarbons, which are still priced very cheaply, the shift to renewable energy has been an uphill battle. The incumbent energy sources are well-entrenched and will not hesitate to expend significant political capital to block policy initiatives aimed at putting renewable energy on a more equal playing field.

At RENEW’s urging, the State of Wisconsin has taken a few measured policy steps to carve out some room for renewable energy. The most important of these initiatives is a statewide incentives program (Focus on Energy) for small-scale renewable energy systems. Though most of Focus on Energy’s budget is set aside for energy conservation and efficiency, about $10 million a year is reserved for customer-sited renewable energy systems such as solar hot water, solar electric, biogas, biomass heating, and small wind.

This program, coupled with several voluntary utility initiatives, has elevated Wisconsin into a regional showcase for renewable energy systems serving dairy farms, cattle farms, orchards, greenhouses, breweries, cheese producers, corporate campuses, apartment buildings, municipal wastewater facilities, schools and technical colleges, and manufacturers.

The policy seeds planted 10 years ago are yielding an impressive crop of installations this year, broadly distributed throughout the state. As important as these policies are, however, these systems don’t get built unless someone decides to spend dollars today to receive a decades-long supply of energy tomorrow. We at RENEW would like to give a shout-out to the owners and installers of this year’s bumper crop of home-grown renewable energy, including:

 The City of Evansville, for hosting a 100 kilowatt (kW) Northwind turbine to serve its wastewater treatment plant. Installer: H &H Solar, Madison.
 Stonehouse Development, for building two Green Built apartment houses in the Madison area, each with 60 kilowatts of rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems and solar water heating systems. Installers: Full Spectrum Solar, Madison (PV); Cardinal Solar, Sun Prairie, solar hot water.
 Random Lake School District, for hosting a 50 kW Endurance wind turbine on the high school grounds. Installer: Kettle View Renewable Energy, Random Lake.
 Fountain Prairie Inn and Farms, in Columbia County, for hosting a 50 kW Endurance wind turbine to serve its sustainable family farm. Installer: Seventh Generation Energy Systems, Madison.
 SCA Tissue, Menasha, for hosting four 20 kW Renewegy wind turbines at one of its facilities. Manufacturer and installer: Renewegy, Oshkosh.
 Milwaukee Area Technical College, for building the state’s largest PV system, to be used as a training center. The system is rated at 540 kW. Contractor: Johnson Controls, Milwaukee; Installer: Pieper Power, Milwaukee.
 Montchevré-Betin, Belmont, a producer of goat cheese, for upgrading its wastewater treatment capacity with an anaerobic digester and 335 kW generator. Contractor: Procorp, Milwaukee. System owner: Clear Horizons, Milwaukee.

I urge the citizens of Wisconsin to go out and see for themselves how fertile the territory is here for home-grown renewable energy. As you observe these installations out in the landscape, delivering clean energy year after year to the local area, you begin to appreciate the totality of benefits that these systems yield. If you talk to system owners or installers, you will feel their passion and soak in the positive energy that comes from being part of this growing community. They are, along with the installations themselves, the most persuasive advocates for extending and strengthening Wisconsin’s clean energy policies. They not only represent today’s jobs and business opportunities, but also tomorrow’s hope.

Response to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel column on wind vs. cows

A column by Mike Nichols in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel seems to present an either/or dicotomy between wind-generated electricity and digester-generated electricity. Nichols wrote:

This is something to ponder as we head into a new year - and a new era. We are developing huge wind farms in Wisconsin. People are talking about setting turbines out on our Great Lakes. Breaking wind could be the key to the future. The only question now is "What kind?"

Do we harness our skies or our pies?

The Journal Sentinel published the following response from RENEW's executive director Michael Vickerman:

The statement that Wisconsin can generate more electricity from manure than from windpower is not supported by the numbers.

To make biogas from manure, a dairy farm operator has to keep the cows inside and under a roof at all times. Only in a confined setting is it possible to collect cow manure and break it down in an oxygen-free digester that results in methane. Of Wisconsin’s 1.3 million dairy cows, only one-eighth of them live in confined animal operations. The average dairy cow here is part of a small herd and spends a considerable amount of time in pasture.

As stated in the column, Wisconsin is well ahead of other states in capturing energy from dairy cow manure and generating electricity with it, and there is certainly room for growth. Bear in mind, however, that takes more than 2,000 dairy cows to produce enough methane to equal the output from one commercial wind turbine. Yes, Wisconsin now boasts about two dozen biogas generation systems attached to dairy farms. But compared with the output from the 251 wind turbines installed this year at four different projects, their electrical production is quite modest.

Though other locally available resources--solar, small hydro, woody fuels and biomethane—will certainly play a larger part in contributing to Wisconsin’s electricity mix, wind energy will remain the renewable energy workhorse for the foreseeable future.

Finally, the Governor’s Global Warming Task Force recommended a raft of policies to achieve a renewable energy goal of 25% by 2025, no small undertaking I can assure you. If we are serious about achieving that goal, we must accept expanded contributions from all eligible resources. We do not have the luxury of playing favorites.