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EDITOR:
I'm writing in response to Stuart Craig's letter titled "Wind Farm Opposition" that was recently published. HSE has repeatedly and tirelessly defended itself against atrocious assumptions continuously made by the uninformed. I'd go so far to say some intentionally mislead others by copy and pasting everything they see anti-wind on the Internet.
Point 1: Mr. Stuart Asks – "Will we be able to use that energy?" The energy created by those turbines is definitely distributed to the residents of Garden and the U.P. It would take a lot more space on this page and time to explain how power distribution and Power Purchase Agreements work, however, locally produced power gets distributed and consumed locally. The problem is not many realize that when those turbines are producing power there is a non-renewable generator somewhere taking a break and producing less emissions or using less resources.
Point 2: Mr. Stuart Asks – "Will wildlife and people be negatively affected?" Actually, quite the opposite. The Audubon Society currently classifies 314 species as severely threatened by global warming. What is the purpose of a wind turbine? To slow or even stop the destructive process of global warming.
Point 3: Mr. Stuart Asks – "Will we be paying for this expansion through our taxes?" Your taxes go wherever the government wants to put them. Would you rather they went to an out-of-state program say, in Texas? Or would rather have it go a beneficial development in the U.P. that will continuously, for the life of the project, pay enormous amounts of tax to the community in which the project was developed? The answer seems simple here.
Point 4: Mr. Stuart States – "Do you know that the carbon footprint (241.85 tons of CO2) of each industrial wind tower far exceeds the value of the energy it will save?" This little tidbit is amazingly inaccurate. Type in "241.85 tons of CO2 wind turbine" into Googles Search Engine and it reveals this number as being top choice for several anti-wind groups. Interestingly, not a single reputable source was cited as coming up with number. I will, however, cite a study completed by two researchers of Oregon State University in 2014 (Comparative life cycle assessment of 2.0 MW wind turbines, Int. J. of Sustainable Manufacturing, 2014 Vol. 3, No.2, pp.170 – 185) using data from a large wind farm in the Pacific Northwest. It concluded a 2MW wind turbine will offer a net benefit in five to eight months of being brought online which over a 20 year life, the turbine pays back its carbon footprint about 36 times over. This includes the 78 percent CO2 impact of the construction and manufacturing of turbine. Typically, the anti-wind studies all gloss over the fact that while those turbines are producing power, the "stand-by" fossil fuel generator is just hanging out. The problem is not many realize that when those turbines are producing power there is a non-renewable generator somewhere taking a break.
Bart Hautala
Operations Manager
Heritage Sustainable Energy