First of all, I think setting up an either-or choice between utilizing local renewable energy resources or better, more remote renewable resources is the entirely wrong way to look at energy policy. Too often we get sidetracked into these kind of debates and lose track of what Bill McKibben calls the “fierce urgency of now” (http://www.thestar.com/article/607657) – i.e. the need to do everything we can as soon as we can to change the carbon trajectory of our economy to avoid the worst consequences of severe climate change.

There is no reason why developing local renewable resources is or should be mutually exclusive with developing resources that are currently more remote. For example, offshore wind in the Northeast is actually highly complementary with wind from the Midwest, since offshore wind blows more during the day while Midwestern wind produces the most at night.

Right now there are over 300,000 MW of wind plants waiting to connect to the grid, but are unable to do so because of the inadequacy of our power grid. That number is not a typo – 300,000 MW is more than 10 times the amount of wind we currently have installed. We need all of that wind energy and more to be developed as soon as possible if we are to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.

Also, your article overlooks the fact that developing local renewable resources will still require a large amount of transmission. In the Northeast and other highly populated regions, the best renewable resources are still located at considerable distance from where people live. Developing those resources will require large amounts of new transmission lines.

Similarly, you also attempt to claim that people in the Northeast would be net “losers” from building transmission to bring in wind from the Midwest. In fact, every study that has looked at the issue has found that consumers in the Northeast would realize net benefits to the tune of over $15 billion per year if transmission were built to bring in low-cost wind energy to offset their use of high-cost fossil fuels. (http://awea.org/pubs/factsheets/Transmission_and_Consumer_Savings.pdf) The only people who might not like new transmission are fossil fueled power plant owners in the Northeast who don’t want competition that will limit their ability to charge exorbitant prices for electricity, but you won’t see me shedding any tears for them.

Michael Goggin,
American Wind Energy Association

There are places where there is no wind and tradeoffs may be required, such as tapping solar power instead of wind.

The point of my commentary is not to argue that everyone should be self-sufficient (e.g. off the grid), but that we should prioritize local self-reliance when the cost is similar to that of building an interstate transmission superhighway. There’s a lot of middle ground.