Washblog

The Gold Rush is on in Washington: Alternative Energy


Photograph by Frederick Bentler taken in the Quilomene Wildlife Area,
across the ridge from where Wild Horse Wind Farm will be built.

There's a new gold rush and it's a big one. On the money and jobs front, alternative energy rivals biotech and computing.  Politically and environmentally, its potential is more profound. The way we design the infrastructure of this emerging industry will help determine our response to core political questions of our day:  how well do we use our land-based resources?  Can we build an energy infrastructure in this state that is more friendly to our local environment, economy, and communities than what we've got now?

Like the old-fashioned kind of gold rush, this one's sited mostly out in the open country, in farmlands and grasslands and on the mountains. But it's as urban or industrial as it is rural. Wild Horse Wind Farm, which will help light up my house in South King County, provides an iconic example of a rural and wildland presence that powers the metropolitan areas. Its meteorological towers, 127  (or so) wind turbines,  underground cables and 32 miles of road, are being constructed now on Whiskey Dick Mountain in Kittitas County.  It's a monument of the renewable age, that will loom 2,400 Feet above the Yakima River Valley to the west and 3,000 feet above the Columbia River Valley to the east.  And it's expected to add more than $4.5 million to the local economy and to become Kittitas County's largest single taxpayer.   Wild Horse is the second wind farm owned and operated by Puget Sound Energy. In addition to these mammoth projects, smaller, 10 kW, turbines are beginning to dot Washington's landscape.   Our Wind Coop invests in these turbines for farms and ranches, funded partially through Green Tags that anyone can purchase.

Gold rushes tend to be rich with promise and culture-changing significance.  As the stakes of climate change impacts and war in the Middle East intensify, our 'good citizen' response to the promise of renewable energy - our alertness, our action on its potential to help us face our challenges - becomes a more critical factor in determining our direction on matters of environment, war and peace and economic stability.

Many choices face us.   Here's an example of one that's a "secret" hidden right out in the open, an example of an opportunity that can silently pass us by as we blink.

We've got an energy initiative, I-937 , that will make the ballot if enough people sign the petitions before the July 7 deadline. I-937 requires utilities to supply an increased percentage of their supply from renewables (or conservation).  The outcome on I-937 is a key event for us.  Among other things, its fate may be a deciding factor in whether we get a brand new coal plant in Kalama, Washington - or whether we turn for that new demand to other sources such as wind, solar, and conservation.

Lisa Noble Rennick, Outreach Director for   Northwest Energy Coalition, wrote me in an email that coal is the resource that utilities are turning to right now to meet growing energy demand.   "There's really nowhere to put up another dam that will supply a significant amount of energy, so the hydro system is more or less maxed out.  Natural gas is currently priced so high compared to our current rates that it's not competitive.  This leaves two main choices: coal or renewables." - or, as she then goes on to say, "We also always stress that energy efficiency can meet a large portion of our growing needs."  Amazingly, as much as half our 20-year projected growth in demand, according to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, can be met by conservation.

Where we go on renewables is an economic, environmental, and social justice issue.  Consider, for example, that alternative energy has many synergistic connections with sustainable farming - and that sustainable farming has been struggling with great success but also some vulnerability to establish new markets and to maintain its independence and vitality in the face of multiple critical challenges.   If we end up with an alternative energy infrastructure that has a good mix of big projects like Wild Horse - as well as small community-based projects such as those that Institute for Washington's Future and NW Sustainable Energy for Economic Development  collaborate on with local communities, the economic and cultural environment in Washington is likely to be more hospitable not only for 'children and other living things' but also for sustainable farming.

Our problems in this world express themselves in melting glaciers and disappearing jobs and family farms.  They start in the mind.  Imagine that labor, and peace and social justice advocates, environmentalists, farmers, agrarians, business owners, economic traditionalists, evangelicals, and what Northrup and Lipscomb refer to as: the increasingly large and prominent group of architects, elected officials, and concerned citizens advocating the New Urbanism - were politically aligned on the key land use issues of our day.  We'd likely be better equipped to transition away from the excesses of an increasingly top-heavy and centralized economy that appears to be leading us ever deeper into environmental degradation and war.  Wouldn't it be lovely to head in that other direction, toward a resilient peace and broad-based citizen consensus on what makes for a healthier environment, toward a more collaborative public spirit bridging the regional and ideological divides?

< open thread | The Company Dave "DC" Reichert Keeps >
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Great post Noemie.  I would just like to throw my vote for some sort of job-creating renewable energy legislation as the focus of the Netroots Legislative organizing that Emmett proposed.

Also just have to throw out there, that Nuclear power is another option.  I'm probably in the minority of the people here that still think that there is promise in that technology.  Of course the biggest problem (waste disposal) still hasn't, and may never, been solved.

PortDork

by PortDork on Thu Apr 20, 2006 at 10:11:55 PM PST

* 1 5.00 1 *


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