Draft EIS for transmission line released
Posted on 12. Jul, 2010 by crowley in Blog, General, Renewable Energy News
The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) today posted the Draft Environmental Impact Study (EIS) for the transmission line to tie our Greater Echanis Wind Energy Projects to the grid. Although the projects are on private land, since 75% of Harney County is publicly-owned land, our project must cross federal lands to reach the grid. The Draft EIS studies the direct impacts of the transmission line on federal lands, the indirect impacts of our permitted project and the cumulative impacts of some 400 MW of “reasonably foreseeable” future projects possible down the road.
“Our projects will help the region move forward on renewable energy while protecting one of Oregon’s special places,” said Chris Crowley, CEO of Columbia Energy Partners, developers of the renewable energy projects. “Today’s study from the BLM offers the first comprehensive analysis of how our projects minimize their visual and environmental impacts on the Steens while bringing economic vitality to one of the most depressed regions in the state.”
The Draft EIS brings facts and extensive visual simulations to a discussion about the projects’ impacts. As the BLM notes on their web site:
Major issues brought forward during the public scoping process and addressed in the Draft EIS include:
- Vegetation;
- Wildlife;
- Visual and aesthetic values;
- Lands with special designations;
- Cultural and tribal resources;
- Public services and transportation;
- Recreation and tourism;
- Social and economic effects; and
- public safety.
The Visual Resource analysis (Appendix D) is a 121 page analysis, with simulations developed by the technical consultants who prepared the EIS for the BLM.
“About 87 points were initially identified in the field as potential KOPs (“Key Observation Points”). Of these, 35 KOPS were selected for study to analyze the Project’s direct, indirect and cumulative effects.”
Harney County Judge Steve Grasty said:
“The Steens Wilderness was designed to fit natural boundaries created by the terrain,” said Judge Grasty. “That’s how these projects can help Harney County create green jobs without sacrificing our natural heritage.”
The Greater Echanis projects offer a county facing 18.9 percent unemployment an opportunity to become part of the renewable energy economy.
“These projects will help expand Oregon’s pool of trained green-collar workers,” said Clif Davis, business manager and financial secretary of IBEW Local 48. “And they will harness some of the best wind resources in the state while driving economic benefits into one of its poorest counties.”
The public will have 45 days to review and comment on the Draft EIS. After the comment period, the BLM and cooperating agencies will work with the independent contractor responsible for the study to analyze and respond in a Final EIS (FEIS). The BLM expects to issue the FEIS in the fall.
Energy Facility Siting Council votes 5-0 to deny ONDA petition
Posted on 15. Jun, 2010 by crowley in Blog, General, Renewable Energy News
On June 11, the state Energy Facility Siting Council (EFSC) voted unanimously to deny ONDA’s petition to include private lands on Steens Mountain in a list of “protected places” off-limits to development.
The petition asserted that The Steens Mountain Act, passed by Congress in 2000, intended to preclude development on all lands within an area designated a “cooperative management and protection area” (CMPA). EFSC weighed volumes of written evidence from ONDA and others, then heard presentations on June 11 from ONDA attorneys, the BLM, Harney County and dozens of citizens. After carefully weighing all that information, EFSC considered six points in determining whether or not to move forward with the request. With five members considering six points, there were 30 times EFSC members could have agreed with ONDA or cited a gray area. They each disagreed with ONDA on each of the six points.
EFSC is a state agency, staffed by the Oregon Department of Energy. Council members are appointed by the Governor, from various interest groups, from around the state. Among other things, they are responsible for permitting larger energy facilities, including larger wind farms.
This was ONDA’s second petition (see here) to EFSC. Their first petition was also denied by unanimous vote.
From our perspective, this unanimous vote sent a strong signal that the wilderness is composed of those lands set aside by Congress as wilderness, and that private lands outside the wilderness were indeed explicitly protected by the Steens Act.
“Dead lake” at the Refuge, spewing oil in the Gulf
Posted on 07. Jun, 2010 by crowley in Blog, General, Renewable Energy News
The Oregonian ran a front page story on May 31 about the extraordinary drop in migratory birds visiting the famed Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
Waterfowl production is down 75 percent at the refuge and visiting bird numbers have fallen by several million a year, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.
The cause, apparently, is carp. The non-native species has proliferated to the point where they have eaten the plant and invertebrate life migrating birds have historically relied on.
“It’s a giant carp pond,” said Bob Sallinger, spokesman for the Audubon Society of Portland. “That lake is basically a dead lake.”
The article points out that the US Fish & Wildlife agency, which manages the Refuge, has tried poisoning the Refuge, with temporary, partial success. The fish are back in force within four years, the Oregonian reported. The story also notes that fishing is not allowed in the Refuge. The story says it would take two years to enact a simple fishing season through the federal process. Read the full story here.
Columbia Energy Partners has been working with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for an easement across less than 10 miles of federal lands to get power from an approved wind farm off the north side of Steens Mountain to the existing grid. One group that’s expressed strong concern about the project is Portland Audubon, citing fears for birds stopping over in the Refuge.
The Oregonian story suggests there are more pressing problems, such as coping with carp, to deal with. And that oil spill in the Gulf. That project was permitted with a “Categorical Exclusion” (basically an administratively approved permit) unlike the 2 year, $2million process CEP is engaged in to build a power line across open desert.With overwhelming local support.
CEP sees our project as part of the answer, not a problem, and we’re eager to work with Audubon on reducing our country’s reliance on fossil fuels. We’d even help with those carp, if invited to try.
New study shows renewables can be 35% of energy mix by 2017 in western US
Posted on 21. May, 2010 by crowley in Blog, General, Renewable Energy News
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has released a study assessing the operational impacts and economics of increased contributions from wind and solar energy producers on the power grid. The Western Wind and Solar Integration Study examines the benefits and challenges of integrating enough wind and solar energy capacity into the grid to produce 35 percent of its electricity by 2017. The study finds that this target is technically feasible and does not necessitate extensive additional infrastructure, but does require key changes to current operational practice.
The study found that if utilities generate 27 percent of their electricity from wind and solar energy across the Western Interconnection grid, it would lower carbon emissions by 25 to 45 percent.
The study can be downloaded at http://www.nrel.gov/wwsis.
3 more climate change reports urge action now
Posted on 20. May, 2010 by crowley in Blog, General, Renewable Energy News
News of three more major reports on global warming hit today from the US National Academy of Sciences. The reports call for immediate action by Congress to put a cost on carbon pollution.
A story in USA Today highlighted the breadth of political views endorsing the urgent call for action.
“The reports reinforce that we know enough, now, to take sensible actions to address climate change,” says James Connaughton, former environment council chief for the Bush administration. (…)
“This is a wake-up call from science telling Congress to get real,” says Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C. “Wake up and smell the carbon.”
The numbers are sobering:
Echoing past reports such as those by the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, researchers in the new reports expressed confidence that average global atmosphere temperatures were about 1.4 degrees warmer in this decade compared with a century ago and that future fossil-fuel emissions of greenhouse gases and related activities would increase temperatures anywhere from 2 to 11 additional degrees by 2100.
Price of oil, coal is high, worldwide
Posted on 19. May, 2010 by crowley in Blog, General, Renewable Energy News
The news out of the Gulf of Mexico is sickening, but it is hardly the only environmental disaster associated with fossil fuels in recent news. Thirty coal miners are trapped in Turkey in an explosion that occurred May 17, following similar coal mine disasters in Russia, China and West Virginia.
A wire story in Sunday’s newspaper about environmental devastation from oil drilling put the overall cost in context. “Quest for oil leaves trail of damage across the globe” tells of impacts from Alberta to Newfoundland to Nigeria. The point of the story is America is driving the quest for more and more oil, but when the impacts are not felt inside our borders, Americans seem not to care.
Despite calls for more domestic drilling and new sources of energy, America’s reliance on foreign oil has climbed steadily over the years, from 44.5 percent of consumption in 1995 to 57 percent in 2008.
“Spills, leaks and deliberate discharges are happening in oil fields all over the world, and very few people seem to care,” said Judith Kimerling, a professor of law and policy at the City University of New York and the author of “Amazon Crude,” a book about oil development in Ecuador.
A particularly chilling quote was this one:
“We see frantic efforts being made to stop the spill in the USA,” Bassey added. “In Nigeria, oil companies largely ignore their spills, cover them up and destroy people’s livelihood and environments.”
The old adage “Think globally, act locally” may need some rethinking if we’re to be honest about our country’s energy policies and practices.
Glacier National Park centennial – a tough birthday
Posted on 13. May, 2010 by crowley in Blog, General, Renewable Energy News
Age has not been kind to Glacier National Park.The gorgeous million-acre park in northwestern Montana celebrated its 100th birthday today. But many of its glaciers have melted, and scientists predict the rest may not last another decade.
That’s how the story begins about the celebration of the first 100 years of Glacier National Park. The Associated Press story continues:
Many experts consider Glacier Park a harbinger of Earth’s future, a laboratory where changes in the environment will likely show up first.
“What national parks all give us is, in effect, a controlled landscape where we can see the natural and climatic processes at work,” said Steve Running, a University of Montana professor and co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in 2007 for his work on climate change.
Average temperatures have risen in the park 1.8 times faster than the global average, said Dan Fagre, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist.
The change is visible to the naked eye, with the vast moraines left behind as the giant glaciers melt away. Climate change is blamed for the increasing size and frequency of wildfires, and lower stream flows as summer progresses.
What this all means for the bears, wolves and other big predators in the park is unclear, Fagre said.
The article notes that there were 150 named glaciers in the Park 150 years ago, with just 25 glaciers today. It is possible they will all be gone as soon as 2020.
Yes, there is real urgency to our efforts to build the Greater Echanis wind projects. Oil spills, coal mine disasters and disappearing glaciers are signals to us all that we need to take urgent action to reverse our dependence on fossil fuels.
Oregonian editorial links oil spill, coal tragedies to cost of fossil energy
Posted on 30. Apr, 2010 by crowley in Blog, General, Renewable Energy News
The lead editorial in today’s Oregonian, “Oil, Water & wind” connects the dots on some of the costs of fossil fuels and calls for increased focus on renewable energy.
The editorial notes:
It is fitting that the $2billion Cape Wind project, which would include 130 windmills built about five miles off Cape Cod, would take a big step forward just as crews raced to respond to one of the worst offshore oil drilling accidents in American history.
For while oil is today’s main offshore energy resource, the wind ought to be tomorrow’s.
The editorial points to the fact that offshore wind development is unlikely in Oregon’s deep coastal waters, which makes the embrace of Cape Wind seem a touch less convincing.
You’re still not going to see offshore wind turbines coming to the Oregon coast anytime soon. The ocean off the Oregon shore quickly deepens to more than 1,000 feet, too deep for anything but floating wind turbines anchored to the sea floor.
But the editors are no doubt correct to connect the dots:
But unless we miss our guess, history will show that this was a significant week in the evolution of the nation’s energy systems. At the very time it struggled to contain the oil cascading from a shattered offshore well, the federal government recognized the enormous power of mixing water and wind.
The urgency of developing all high quality wind resources is indeed compelling, not just in light of the offshore oil spill. In the last month, more than 30 people have died in coal mining tragedies in the US alone. Coal is still the largest source of electric generation in the country. Of course, the impacts to health from burning coal extend far beyond the victims of tragic mining accidents.
Hopefully, these awful accidents will help galvanize opinion that decisions about these critical projects need to take much more than NIMBYism into account as we wrestle with slowing global climate change and rebuilding our economy based on green jobs.
Cape Wind decision draws broad support
Posted on 29. Apr, 2010 by crowley in Blog, Renewable Energy News
The State House News Service in Boston led its first story on the Cape Wind decision with this sentence:
SALAZAR APPROVES CAPE WIND: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar approved a 130-turbine wind farm in Nantucket Sound Wednesday as “the final decision of the United States of America,” saying he was “very confident” the long-awaited verdict would withstand opposition.
State House News also noted statements from the following organizations:
– The Conservation Law Foundation, Mass Audubon, and the Union of Concerned Scientists applauded the decision in a joint statement. The groups said the project’s nine-year review was “much longer than is typical for a traditional coal power plant” and predicted Cape Wind “could meet as much as 75 percent of the electricity demand for Cape Cod and the Islands.” John Kassel, president of Conservation Law Foundation, said in a statement: “Today is a turning point for New England in which we can start to turn smokestacks into wind turbines. It is fitting that Massachusetts, which has no coal or oil of its own to burn, should be first in the water with offshore wind, a carbon-free energy source which we have in abundance.”
– The National Resources Defense Council said the decision “paves the way for other facilities to get off the ground nationwide.” In a statement, council president Frances Beinecke said, “Cape Wind represents a significant clean energy first for America. It shows us we can repower our country, we can do it the right way, and we can start today. Renewable energy projects like these not only help fight climate change, they can create jobs and play a central role in our economic recovery.”
– LCV President Gene Karpinski and Massachusetts League of Environmental Voters Executive Director Lora Wondolowski said: “We applaud Secretary Salazar’s approval of the Cape Wind Project, an important step towards transitioning our nation to cleaner, more secure sources of energy. We have sat idle while countries in Europe have continued to reap the benefits of offshore wind development and now it is time to take advantage of clean energy sources in our own backyard, which will help make America more energy independent and curb dangerous carbon pollution. After a long process that took an exhaustive look at the environmental impacts of the Cape Wind Project, we are pleased that Secretary Salazar came to the right decision in granting its approval. Cape Wind represents a tremendous opportunity for renewable energy in the Commonwealth and will help make Massachusetts a leader in the nation as we transition to a clean energy economy.”
A story in the on-line editions of The Boston Globe quoted George Bachrach, president of the Environmental League of Massachusetts, saying it was “a critical step toward ending our reliance on foreign oil and achieving energy independence.”
“Those who continue to resist and litigate are simply on the wrong side of history,” he said.
NYTimes – strong support for Cape Wind
Posted on 26. Apr, 2010 by crowley in Blog, General, Renewable Energy News
The long-awaited decision on the Cape Wind project is due this week. The off-shore wind project has pitted renewable energy advocates against neighbors and others in a battle that has raged for years.
The New York Times has taken a strong position in favor of the project. Today’s editorial concludes as follows:
Read the editorial in its entirety here.
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