IN A TRUE FREE MARKET FOR ENERGY, COMMUNITY-OWNED WIND & SOLAR WOULD DOMINATE

By Harvey Wasserman and David Weiss

With the airwaves filling of talk on global warming and a simultaneous push for new nuclear and coal power plants, it's time to deal with the issue of true economic competition. 

We've got an oil, gas, coal and nuclear power administration in the White House.  Even when the President talks about hydrogen, he wants to generate it with nuclear power.

But the other news that is also filling the airwaves is, more and more wind farms are being built not only in New York State but nation wide.  There's a good reason for it:  wind power is extremely profitable and much cheaper and faster to build than new nuclear and coal power plants.  A new generation of windmills has made capturing clean, cheap and limitless wind energy into a lucrative business.

According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) nearly 2,500 megawatts (MW) of wind turbines were installed in 2005. That’s over $3 billion in generating equipment in over 20 states. Wind farms constructed in 2005 will generate close to $5 million in lease payments to landowners annually. They also created skilled, long-term jobs and tax benefits along with short-term construction jobs in rural communities starving for employment opportunities.

Now with the Federal govnerment’s energy program, it's time to re-assess the future of wind and solar in pure economic terms.

Nuclear power and coal are being hailed by the Bush administration as the solution for our energy problems. Last year the administration chose to move the Production Tax Credit for wind from the budget to the Energy Bill. The PTC has support from both Democrats and Republicans. At the end of 2003, the PTC went into limbo, only to be recently revived. It will lapse again at the end of 2007 and faces another extension.

In a true free market framework, if ancillary costs are truly accounted for, wind power is cheaper than the fossil-nuclear alternatives, and has been for some time. So are the apparently pricier solar panels and biomass generators.

A true nuclear power comparison is not even close. Reactor builders and owners regularly put out unrealistic estimates of the cost of reactor-generated electricity, reminding us of the time they said it would be too cheap to meter. They're now issuing low-ball guesses on a new generation of nuclear reactors that exist only on paper.

They conveniently ignore ancillary costs alien to wind and solar. Start with storing nuclear waste, which nobody knows how to do or price out. Then talk about the environmental impacts of directly heating the air and water with waste reactor heat. Then add the day-to-day impacts of "normal" radiation releases. Then try to figure in the likely future meltdowns, which we've already tasted at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

In 1954 the Federal govnerment installed a "temporary" insurance plan meant to subsidize the industry until it was safe enough to persuade private insurers to jump in.

Fifty years later the industry still can't get private liability coverage. We the taxpayers are subsidizing that liability insurance through the Price-Anderson Act.  President Bush now wants the new "inherently safe" design to get the same welfare. But if these plants are so safe, why can't private companies insure them? And what's the true cost of this fed-funded free pass from the fallout of a supremely unsafe product?

Since 9/11 we must add the costs of protecting these reactors from terrorist attack. Had that first hijacked jet dived one minute earlier into the Indian Point nuclear complex, the death toll would have been incalculable and the American economy would have never recovered. America's 103 reactors are no safer from air attack today than they were on 9/10. So how do we assess that danger's true cost?

Since wind and solar have no such costs, let’s do a free market thing. Let’s assess a fair price for the impacts of wind and solar power.

And for fossil fuels, let’s throw in oil and gas spills, global warming and emission effects, mountaintop removal and black lung disease.

Then let’s abolish all government subsidies all across the board and see what happens. Our money is on the wind and sun, literally and figuratively.

And to really cover the issue, let’s throw in another unspoken factor:  the regenerative economics of community ownership.

There is scant history of nuclear, coal, gas or oil resources being owned by grassroots citizens. From the outset and by their nature, they do not lend themselves to community control. They tend to be monopolized in situations that drain money, health and ecological balance from captive markets.

On the other hand, renewable energy and distributed generation are ideally suited for creating jobs and real wealth at the community level.  When a wind farm is owned by local farmers, when solar panels come to private homes, the money stays in the community.  Jobs come to local retailers and installers and service providers.  Local banks jump in.  Small towns thrive.

And farms are saved.  Farm-based wind LLCs in southwestern Minnesota are already helping generate the cash that can allow families to stay on the land.  These "combines in the sky," when they are owned by the landowner, can be tremendously profitable.  The cash crop that is farm-harvested, wind puts the income right where it belongs -- in the pockets of the landowner and the community.  This money can make the difference between survival and bankruptcy, and could save thousands of farms and small towns all across the country.

Central New York is home to many small family farms.  But, as anyone who’s driven through the region in the last several years can attest, more and more fields which formally boasted crops are now sprouting new homes.  Farmers who can’t afford to farm anymore have been forced to sell their land to developers.  We are losing an invaluable and irreplaceable resource in these lands.  But, as has been demonstrated in Minnesota, it doesn’t have to be this way.  When farmers own windmills, they can continue to farm, pay their taxes, and bring prosperity to an entire community.

Community benefits are vastly enhanced by local control.  Where farmer-owned wind farms rise up, local installers and service personnel build a self-sufficient infrastructure.  Hole diggers, concrete pourers, maintenance crews and road-builders all thrive.  

In a true market economy, if ancillary costs are realistically accounted for, wind and solar will win out. And if those wind farms are community- and farmer-owned, the benefits take on a whole new dimension.  Someday we may even have a market system that accounts for the true positives of community ownership.  It would also reveal the true negatives of obsolete, environmentally destructive technologies, which in the end must finally give way to the wind and sun.