DOING THE RIGHT THING THE RIGHT WAY, NEW ENERGY’S BIGGEST CHALLENGE

Renewable Energy's Environmental Paradox; Wind and Solar Projects May Carry Costs for Wildlife
Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson, April 16, 2009 (Washinton Post)

SUMMARY
The 460-mile SunZia transmission line will carry 3,000 megawatts and link sun and wind energy supplies in central New Mexico with energy-hungry cities in Arizona, help Arizona utilities meet requirements for New Energy and eliminate the need for new coal – if it gets built.

The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) is trying to get it and other projects like it built. But DOI must first determine if they should allow SunZia and projects like it to go forward.

Confusing? Think how Ned Farquhar feels.

The SunZia transmission system crosses rare grasslands, skirts 2 national wildlife refuges and traverses the Rio Grande, all habitats of rich wildlife diversity. And much of the line’s path is under the protection of DOI’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

Ned Farquhar was just appointed head of the BLM. He was formerly an aide to Governor Bill Richardson (D-NM) and he was once the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Mountain West energy and climate advocate. Having worked both sides of the fence, he is in charge of working out the contradictions and arriving at the practical yet principled answer.

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Permit applications for New Energy and transmission projects are up, especially for projects on Western federal lands. BLM has 199 applications for solar projects on 1.7 million acres. 2 have undergone environmental impact assessment. 206 wind projects have been authorized (28 to generate power, the others for resource assessments) and ~200 more await approval.

Some say the impact of New Energy on the landscape has been underestimated because, with the big footprint New Energy projects make, the potential for bumping into trouble spots is bigger. Research substantiates the claim.

Compromise efforts are being made. The most ambitious example is a joint undertaking of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the National Audubon Society to create, through Google Earth, an online map of 13 Western states showing where New Energy projects would be most and least intrusive. They have put 10,000 conservation areas and 128 million acres out of bounds for New Energy and new transmission. They also left more than 730 million acres available for service to the nation.

An NRDC/Audubon Society/Google Earth map. (click to enlarge)

SunZia planners are doing everything possible to conform to environmentalists’ concerns. 80% of its path tracks existing lines so as to add nothing to the footprint and the rest zig-zags to protect sensitive areas. It’s crossing of the Rio Grande was chosen to protect the sandhill crane. The only problem: Every extra mile is a million dollars more.

Organizing forward. (click to enlarge)

COMMENTARY
Just as the pursuit of oil and gas resources brought energy producers into conflict with environmentalists, the pursuit of New Energy – despite its preferable benefits in contrast to the fossil fuels – has also raised the ire of environmentalists.

The conflict between New Energy producers and environmental stewards is not nearly so clear-cut or easily resolved as the fight over fossil fuels and the land.

Especially in the West, the federal government – legally charged with stewardship yet called on, especially under President Obama, to help the nation build a New energy economy – is caught between the warring forces.

The irony: The biggest single policy driver of New Energy development is the Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) that requires a state’s utilities to obtain a concrete portion of its power from New Energy sources by a specific year. 8 Western states adopted RESs in response to the urgent need to address global climate change by driving the growth of New Energy.

Utilities, urgently in pursuit of New Energy megawatts to meet their RES requirements, are pushing for regulatory approval on big energy and transmission projects. Potential harmful impacts on the Western landscape could result if projects are approved imprudently. But sources of energy will go untapped if projects don’t get approved.

Not a workable alternative. (click to enlarge)

Poster child? The graceful sandhill crane winters in New Mexico's Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge wetlands – adjacent to the path of the proposed SunZia power line.

There’s also less room for the lesser prairie chicken. Grassland birds are smart enough to avoid wind turbines – so their natural habitats are divided by prairie land installations and transmission system buildouts. In Kansas, lesser prairie chickens (protected under the Endangered Species Act) have been divided and populations are diminishing. The prairie grouse lek is similarly affected because it won’t mate near turbine and transmission towers. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may be forced to move wind and transmission projects away from their honeymoon hotels.

Research finds: Nature Conservancy scientists reportedly showed in a journal study that a given amount of energy from soy biodiesel can require 300 times the land as the same energy from a nuclear plant. By 2030, energy production will use an additional 79,537 square miles. (Aside: Did the journal study include the land nuclear requires as a safety buffer zone? Did it include the land nuclear will require for radioactive waste storage if any state ever voluntarily condemns itself to host the site?)

Energy producers have demonstrated many environmentalists’ concerns to be overstated. Most of the severe harm to bird populations from wind turbines, for instance, was eliminated a quarter century ago and today more birds are killed by housecats than by turbines. Ongoing interfaces between environmentalists and wind and solar energy producers regularly find compromises satisfactory to both sides. Both can agree that, without New Energy, climate change will do far worse harm than individual installations.

Proving energy producers or environmentalists right or wrong, however, is not the objective. Making the right decision to generate the New Energy so necessary to preserve the climate of this earth while protecting those particular places and things that are so precious to this earth is the objective.

Pre-designated Renewable Energy Zones could settle the squabbling and streamline the process. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
- Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior: "We have to connect the sun of the deserts and the winds of the plains to places where people live…"
Ned Farquhar, former aide to Governor Richardson, former NRDC energy and climate advocate, present head of the BLM: "Everybody in New Mexico loves the sandhill cranes…We also love our renewable energy. So we have to figure this out."
- Johanna Wald, senior lawyer, NRDC: "There is no free lunch when it comes to meeting our energy needs…[but the boom in New Energy] offers a chance to do it right.. We want to do it differently compared to how we did oil and gas development…"
- Ray Brady, energy policy team leader, BLM: "…BLM does have a challenge because of the additional work involved…Clearly there's an interest in expediting and streamlining the process. However, we need to make the right decisions that are based on the best science."

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- Jimmie Powell, co-author of the PloS One paper & national energy leader, the Nature Conservancy: "[The impact of new Energy projects on the Western landscape will be] substantial…It's important to know where the footprint is going to be."
- Michael Bean, wildlife director, Environmental Defense Fund: "Nobody knows what's in the bird's head, but presumably there's an inherited behavior that allows the birds to avoid avian predators who could perch overhead…"
- Ditlev Engel, President/CEO, Vestas: "Do people think it's better all those birds are breathing CO2? I'm not a scientist, but I doubt it…Let's get the facts on the table and not the feelings. The fact is, these are not issues."
- Tom Wray, transmission projects manager, SunZia: "We're not aware of any threatened or endangered species habitat or impact issues that we can't mitigate or deal with…"
- Lawrence A. Selzer, president, the Conservation Fund: "The answer from President Obama can't be no…They've got to find a way to say yes."