RENEW finds problems with Calumet County’s proposed ordinance
July 31, 2007
Ms. Julie Heuvelman
Calumet County Planning Department
206 Court Street
Chilton, WI 53014-1198
Dear Ms. Heuvelman;
On behalf of RENEW Wisconsin, an independent nonprofit organization with over 275 members statewide (including several in Calumet County), I would like to provide our perspective on two motions that appear on the August 2nd meeting agenda for the County Planning and Zoning Committee. The two motions, listed under the heading “Old Business,” would amend the County’s wind energy ordinance (Chapter 79). The first would require the preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for large turbine installations. The second would require the developer to have executed a Power Purchase Agreement with a utility as part of its application.
Unfortunately, I will be unable to attend this meeting in person. However, I would ask Planning and Zoning Committee members to consider RENEW Wisconsin’s comments which appear below as they deliberate on these two motions. To facilitate their consideration I ask the Planning Department to distribute this statement to Committee members prior to their August 2nd meeting.
Requiring an Environmental Impact Statement
While RENEW recognizes that an Environmental Impact Statement can be an appropriate vehicle for examining issues relevant to public health and safety, we oppose this motion on the following grounds:
1. There appears to be no minimum capacity threshold triggering the applicability of this requirement. Without a lower boundary, this requirement could conceivably apply to single-turbine installations as well as larger groupings of turbines. Presumably, the applicant of a 10 megawatts (MW) project would have to examine the same set of impacts as would a developer proposing to erect 80 MW. The smaller the project the more costly this requirement becomes, and is likely to encourage developers to add turbines to the proposal as a way of reducing the per kilowatt-hour cost of the EIS.
2. Under Wisconsin law, a full-blown EIS requires the applicant to identify and characterize a similar development at an alternative site. As applied to nonutility applicants, this requirement makes little sense in a jurisdiction as small as Calumet County. The County is already aware of the specific areas within its boundaries that developers would consider attractive for development. Little useful information will be gained from reviewing a second development scenario a few miles up the road from the developer’s preferred location.
3. It is not clear how an EIS prepared by a county would be guided by state energy policy, especially the Energy Policy Law, which expressly favors renewables over conventional energy sources. Moreover, it is an open question as to whether a developer could appeal an unfavorable County decision to the Public Service Commission, which, unlike county governments, has the legal authority to implement and enforce Wisconsin renewable energy law.
A requirement like this, imposed on every installation in Calumet County regardless of project capacity and location, presumes that wind energy is an inherently harmful technology with negative environmental impacts. We disagree with that presumption, and so does the state of Wisconsin. Wisconsin energy policy explicitly favors the use of noncombustible renewable energy resources like wind and solar. Renewable energy resources like windpower serve the public interest by:
1) Securing adequate supplies of energy from nondepleting sources;
2) Protecting ratepayers from rising fossil fuel prices;
3) Reducing the discharge of CO2 and other hazardous air pollutants from generation sources;
4) Preserving working farms and pasture land;
5) Reducing the flow of capital out of Wisconsin for energy purchases.
To expand their contribution to the electric resource mix, the Legislature last year passed 2005 Act 141, which requires utilities to derive, by 2015, 10% of the energy they sell from renewable resources. RENEW estimates that wind energy will account for about 90% of the new renewable energy leveraged by this law. But the proposed requirement, if adopted, will clearly complicate if not outright defeat efforts on the part of utilities and independent power producers alike to provide the state with a valuable renewable energy source in accordance with state policy.
If the County adopts this particular amendment, you can be certain that developers will respond by expanding the size of their project above 100 MW. Under the power plant siting law, the PSC is required to perform an environmental assessment of the proposed installation. The presumption going into any project review is that wind generation is an environmentally benign technology compared with other energy resources, and that the purpose of an environmental assessment is to identify any factors specific to the project site that might offset the emissions reduction benefits that wind energy always provides. When the PSC reviewed Invenergy’s application to build the Forward Wind Center, it determined that, given the potential for undesirable wildlife impacts due to the project’s proximity to the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge, a more rigorous environmental review was in order. However, when the PSC reviewed We Energies’ application to build Blue Sky Green Field, the agency could not identify a potentially problematic environmental impact at the site We Energies had proposed for development. For that reason, the PSC did not require the preparation of an EIS.
Given that history, an EIS requirement will motivate wind project developers with active prospects in Calumet County to supersize their proposals in excess of the 100 MW threshold. Wind developers will seek Commission review of their proposals for three practical reasons. First, if they can demonstrate that the developing that site poses no unique threats to the environment, the Commission might not require the preparation of an EIS as part of the proceeding. Second, unlike the PSC, Calumet County has no experience reviewing power plant proposals. Third, Calumet County is under no legal requirement to decide on a windpower application in a specified period of time, in contrast to the PSC, which is required by law to issue a decision no more than 180 days from the date the project application was deemed to be complete.
Requiring the Developer to Include an Executed Power Purchase Agreement as Part of the Application
RENEW opposes this motion for a variety of reasons. First, a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) has no bearing on the County’s ability to protect health and safety of its constituents. In our view a local jurisdiction that adopts such a requirement is exceeding its regulatory authority defined in Section 66.0401 of the state’s statutes. We are not aware of any PPA that addresses setbacks, sound output, shadows, groundwater protection or other element of a permit or ordinance that relates to public health and safety.
Second, the requirement is wholly impractical. An independent wind energy developer cannot enter into a PPA with a utility without having control of the project site. Until a permit is issued, the developer can only estimate electricity production, based on the number of turbines, the project layout, and the turbine type described in the application. But the conditions of a siting permit may result in a different number of wind turbines than what was proposed in the application. The developer may also have no choice but to select a different turbine to compensate for any reduction in approved turbine locations resulting from permit conditions. A change in project size, turbine layout or turbine type would assuredly have an impact on project revenues. For that reason, developers cannot obtain financing for a wind project unless such important details as project size, turbine configuration, and turbine type are fixed. And a project developer simply cannot enter into a PPA without having fixed the project’s financing terms, a necessary element in determining the sale price of the power produced. It would appear, then, that this requirement is intended to act as a “poison pill” against the development of independently owned wind projects in Calumet County.
Third, this requirement, if adopted would be discriminatory, because while it would render independently owned windpower projects unfinanceable, it would have no effect on utility-owned projects. The reason is clear: utilities are retail providers of electricity, and would simply fix the project’s construction costs in their revenue requirements. No PPA is required. Even though Section 79 is silent on the issue of wind project ownership, this requirement would have the practical effect of limiting wind development in Calumet County to just utility-owned projects. We don’t believe Calumet County has the legal authority to restrict wind development on the basis of ownership.
A final point: we at RENEW believe that local jurisdictions have an obligation to support windpower developments that will enable the state’s utilities to meet their renewable energy requirements in a cost-effective manner. We are not opposed to local jurisdictions scrutinizing individual wind projects on the basis of their likely impact on public health and safety. But we have seen a number of local jurisdictions load up their ordinances with requirements that have an ulterior purpose: to make wind development within their borders as uneconomic and unpleasant as possible. This is done to placate a loud minority of residents who want the wind turbines to go someplace where they can’t see them. The motions pending before the County Planning and Zoning Committee are designed to keep wind turbines out of Calumet County, and force them on another jurisdiction. But there are only a few counties where wind development is economically attractive, and Calumet County is one of them. Therefore, when considering these motions, we ask that you keep the following question in mind: what would happen if every county adopted these requirements? Because if every county did, then there would be no place in Wisconsin where wind generation could be built, and Wisconsin would become more abjectly dependent on imported CO2–emitting fossil fuels than it is now. Is that the direction Wisconsin should pursue?
Sincerely,
Michael Vickerman
Executive Director
RENEW Wisconsin
