Distributed Generation Developers Need Your Help
Wind turbines generate more than clean energy
Its a common fault of busy people – leaving tasks for someone else. School district needs money? Someone else will organize the effort. Parks and playgrounds need to have graffiti cleaned up? Someone else will see that it gets done. Renewable energy projects are going before your local commission for a hearing? Someone else will be there.
If energy independence in this country is to ever be a reality, you’ll have to be part of that someone else that supports community-based distributed generation projects. The truth is that most renewable energy developers need broad-based citizen support for proposed projects. All the media has to do is publish one short story about a proposed wind farm and opposition comes streaming out of the woodwork. Concerns can range from alleged aesthetic impacts to sage grouse habitat. There will always be a group shouting, “Not In My Backyard.” You cannot assume that a developer’s resources will be enough to allow it to successfully obtain approval against these NIMBY organizations.
Imagine a sea of support for renewable energy development
photo credit: Berd Whitlock
If you are concerned about global warming and economic security, then why not spearhead a “Build Baby Build” campaign in support of proposed distributed generation projects? Don’t have a clue how to do this? Here is an outline of what you can do:
- Get the basic facts about the proposed project – location, size, developer, and – most importantly – when and where a public hearing will be held. Often, only a month or two will pass between submission of an application for a distributed generation project, and the hearing at which it will be considered.
- Ask three close friends or colleagues to help you make telephone calls, emails and spread the word in favor of the proposal. You will need to do this as a concerted effort at least 4 times in a one month period.
- Write letters to the governmental agency or municipality that is considering the project, in support of the proposal. A written record will be developed, and your submissions will be preserved as part of the record. The more letters submitted, the better. Just make sure to support them with facts, as well as your passion.
- Urge your contacts to attend the public hearing with you. Do not rely on “someone else” to be there. You must attend to have your voice heard. Sign in, if required, and be sure to respect any time constraints on your public testimony.
- Organize your group around a single theme, like “Build Baby Build.” Wearing buttons or t-shirts can help provide unity to an otherwise diverse gathering. It is powerful for elected officials to look out into the audience at a sea of support for the proposed community-based project.
Do you think you could make an investment of about 40 hours total over a month or two in the name of renewable energy? Distributed generation developers can use your help – not someone else.
The planet is waiting.
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As a renewable energy developer I find it interesting that opponents to wind/solar facilities are so well organized, but proponents are often not as well organized. In some locations like on the Cape there are now groups that have web sites, budgets, staff, etc. – but in a lot of places throughout the country the “build baby build” movement is still in its nascnet stages.
Why do we need to wait for a project to come into our towns to rally support? What about letter writing, online and phone campaigns to the towns or our utility providers to demand more or better renewable energy options or local energy independance efforts. As an NSTAR customer who recently opted for the NSTAR Green option on my account, I find it frustrating that while the effort is admirable, the energy is sourced from a windfarm in New York and from a pending project in Maine. What about opting in to local sources, or helping support their development?
We need a good line of very cheap, highly efficient, very durable, domestic sized, windmills. Storage battery systems with electronics for over-charge protection must be built in, and the whole system automated, right down to the grid connection. These units for cost reasons will have to be manufactured in China and perhaps retailed by net directly from their to keep the meddlesome and very expensive American middleman out of the circuit. Larger installations require capital, and as most Americans have extensive personal debt, and huge credit card and bank overdrafts, are not likely feasible. Perhaps, government assistance from the (GRD) great republican depression in form of long term loans at lower interest rates will allow the purchase by a Village, Town, of County of a barrage of larger windmills, feeding overproduction to the grid, and providing a more energy conscious population the power they need. Combining a change in American energy consumption patterns and Wind and Solar power sources, we can avoid our enslavement to foreign oil, and huge dirty and dangerous, non-renewable nuclear involvements. A new LED light-bulb replacement from Cambridge University promises to give us lighting at a tenth the cost of CFL lighting, but most Americans, like the Brits, are a callous and wasteful lot and are yet to convert even to the CFLs, and deserve the crash they are experiencing! Somebody should tell the wastrels that the British Empire is over, and the American Empire is on the wane, and their sense of entitlement is no longer justified. Leave that to the politicians, the fact is we use too much for how much we produce and the end is in sight. Brownouts are just the “Canary in the coal mine”, signaling a complete and imminent breakdown, even massive nuclear development can’t keep up with. We are our own worst enemy, and until the sloth stops we are on a very slippery slope indeed! Post GRD society will be a “post-materialist” society, for those who survive the purge and the crash. Just check out the post U.S.S.R. situation, on the web, to see what can happen after a bust!