A comment to follow up on Gaelan's posting on Wind-ependence:

A few years back I attended a workshop on energy in Vermont in which the big controversy was whether huge wind turbines should be allowed on Vermont's highest ridgelines. My comments then did not make me friends on either side: Since we can't make a huge dent in our electricity needs via wind turbines on the highest ridgelines alone, we will eventually have to build most wind turbines in locations that are not quite as windy. And perhaps use smaller turbines.

Electricity from smaller turbines in suboptimal locations is, currently, more expensive than electricity from conventional sources (such as coal, if the climate cost is ignored). But in a few years, I said then, the cost of electricity will rise, and the cost of wind turbines will continue to decline, and the twain shall meet. Thus, why not skip the arguments over the highest ridges and move right on to the lesser sites?

Fast forward to 2008, recently I read this on the BFP:

MILTON — A Georgia family is preparing to seek state approval for three 400-foot wind turbines atop Georgia Mountain, the first commercial wind project to be proposed for Chittenden County. ... The Harrisons’ proposal differs from most of the dozen other wind projects in the Vermont pipeline. It is small by wind-industry standards, would be locally owned and would be located not on a remote ridgeline, but within sight of travelers on Interstate 89 in the state’s most populous county. ... Georgia Mountain is a long, low ridge running north and south just east of Arrowhead Lake on the Milton-Georgia border. Yearly average wind speed is just under 17 miles per hour. Once, that would have been insufficient wind for a commercial project. “Ten years ago, power prices were half what they are now,” said John Zimmerman of Vermont Environmental Research Associates, a wind energy consulting firm employed by the Harrisons. “As the cost of power from other sources becomes higher, the more marginal wind terrain becomes attractive.” ...

Most public discourse on the future of electricity in Vermont these days assumes that, with the right new contracts to replace those we now have with Hydro Quebec and Vermont Yankee, we will maintain "affordable" electric rates. I don't believe that. In the coming years, I expect the price of electricity to keep on rising, in part due to the depletion of Natural Gas in North America even as demand keeps rising.

We will have to learn to live with less electricity - which is really pretty easy once we change our attitudes and expectations: there is no need for most outdoor lighting, nor for much air conditioning in Vermont. Clothes can be dried on a rope, and lighting an empty room does not create human welfare even if it does increase the GDP. If we use electricity sparingly as the miracle that it is, we can have all of it that we really need from existing small dams and from wind turbines on the lower hills. The only reason to sacrifice our highest ridgelines and wildest rivers is to maximize the private profit of a few - it is not necessary for our energy future.