Sometimes when the wind blows, it clears the air. Other times, it's just a lot of hot air.
Such is the case with a provision of the recently introduced Energy Policy Reform and Revitalization Act halting all new wind energy projects and phasing out power production from existing developments.
Rahall's proposal - Subtitle D of H.R. 2337 - would immediately halt construction and operation of new wind power until the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued new regulations. Once those rules were in place, each proposed wind farm would be required to apply for certification, then wait for approval.
Within six months of the new rules' adoption, all existing wind projects would be shut down, awaiting their certification. Based on 2007 statistics, that would mean the loss of 31 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity - enough to power 3 million U.S. homes. And wind-energy production is expected to increase by 30 percent this year alone.
Rahall's proposal would, in fact, require certification of every wind turbine in the nation, even the smallest residential units. Operate an unapproved turbine in the post-H.R. 2337 world and you'd be subject to a $50,000 fine or a year in jail.
It is no exaggeration to say that this legislation would unnecessarily - and frankly, unexplainably - eliminate a cost-effective and readily available technology for zero-emissions electricity generation.
Power generated from wind requires no transportation by rail, pipeline, tanker or truck; no disposal of hazardous waste; no blasting, mining, smelting or reclamation; no Superfund cleanup. It also requires no water - a fact far more important than most of us realize, as the single largest per-capita use of water in this country is for electric generation: 100,000 gallons, on average, per year per American.
Wind turbine blades can, and do, kill birds and bats. And there were serious problems associated with raptor mortality at one of the world's first large-scale, commercial wind farms, at Altamont Pass, Calif. But that project was built in 1981, using first-generation technology and without considering raptor migration patterns in the siting decision.
Much has changed in the ensuing quarter-century.
Modern wind turbines are considerably larger than their ancestral towers, and are spaced much farther apart. Blades rotate more slowly and are more easily avoided by passing birds. Today's towers are also designed with smooth, vertical surfaces that provide no perches.
And the siting of new wind farms includes environmental reviews that identify and avoid critical habitat and migration routes of at-risk bird species. In fact, the National Academy of Sciences recently issued this finding: “Clearly, bird deaths caused by wind turbines are a minute fraction of the total anthropogenic bird deaths - less than 0.003 percent in 2003.”
In other words, house cats kill 1,000 times more birds each year than do wind turbines. And Rahall and Co. aren't suggesting that the Fish and Wildlife Service regulate house cats. (Though it would be fun to watch them try.)
Honestly, we just don't understand this anti-wind initiative. Wind is our nation's most cost-effective and readily available source of renewable power generation.
The American Wind Energy Association, which counts as its members 1,000 companies that build, finance, sell, operate and maintain wind farms, already is at work with the U.S. Department of the Interior on technologies and strategies that greatly reduce the potential for bird mortality at wind-energy projects.
And 20 states have developed their own requirements for siting and operating wind farms. H.R. 2337 would eliminate those rules and scuttle the joint industry-government Wind Turbine Guidelines Advisory Committee.
If anything, Congress should be promoting - not jeopardizing - the production of wind as an integral part of a renewable, sustainable, environmentally friendly national energy portfolio. We cannot afford to lose another potential source of power. Wind should not, cannot suffer the same fate as nuclear power or the same apathy as conservation. We cannot, as a nation, say no to everything.
Montanans need to speak up, as ours is one of the nation's top potential wind power-producing states. Call, write, shout it out. Tell Congress to let the wind blow freely, clearly, ever more efficiently. And save all that hot air for another day and cause.
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