Energy Cornestones
Regional report touts wind power for mountain area

By Scott Nicholson
nicholson@wataugademocrat.com

A regional environmental group has released a plan for the state’s energy future that includes the promotion of wind power in the mountains.

The report, “Cornerstones: Building a Secure Foundation for North Carolina’s Energy Future,” offers the organization’s blueprint to develop the state’s clean-energy resources and reduce its global-warming impact by 60 percent.

John D. Wilson, research director for the alliance, said the plan is more than just an environmental invective, since it attempts to lay out existing technologies instead of wish lists.

“We focus very much on solutions people know are working,” Wilson said. “We have pretty clear criteria that we didn’t look for a solution that would require scientific breakthroughs.”

The four key action areas, or “cornerstones,” described in the report are energy efficiency, clean energy, pollution capture and long-range planning. The alliance said employing the steps would result in significant greenhouse-gas reductions by 2030.

Wilson said the plan is both an educational document and an opportunity to give policy makers a simple approach to a complex problem. “What we wanted to do was put together a clear message,” he said, making it easier for policy makers to evaluate energy comparisons.

“There’s enough to do now to get started and make a meaningful effort. We get an opportunity to see how our first efforts work, and we can revisit them and do them better. Once we can come back and evaluate the progress we’ve made in a few years, we can make changes.”

Each year, North Carolina’s pollution results in an estimated $15 billion in global damages, according to the alliance. That cost also inhibits other sectors of the economy and misses opportunities to build growth through renewable energy sources.

Wilson said while the regional solutions have many of the same components, North Carolina has a chance to become the leader in an important area. “We work on global warming across the Southeast and make use of best research and expertise across country,’” Wilson said.

“There is an opportunity to install wind (power) in the mountains. We want a clear policy made so wind developers can know where to go and what is off limits. The problem right now is that things are so unclear that there’s very little effort for wind development anywhere.”

Wilson said comprehensive maps could show places where wind was potentially feasible and remove places that had too much wind or were in sensitive areas, either from environmental impact or scenic view.
“We certainly don’t want wind on every ridge top but we need to get clarity on that and move forward,” he said.

Wilson said development of energy efficiency was cheaper than developing new conventional power sources such as coal-fired or nuclear-energy electricity plants.

However, the plan does more than support wind power over nuclear power. “Energy efficiency is really the largest of our cornerstones,” Wilson said. “It’s not just a good idea, but it makes everything work.”
The plan will help give governments a handle on a problem that can seem too intimidating or prone to hasty feel-good decisions that have little measurable impact against the greater backdrop of long-term energy use, Wilson said.

“It might seem like a trite message, but legislators have been overwhelmed by people who say ‘I’ve got the solution,’” he said. “North Carolina has probably one of the best inland wind resources of any state in the Southeast. It has a real opportunity to develop jobs and resources to serve the entire region. On the other hand, if we wait five or 10 years, we’ll find that development has happened in other states.”

“Energy efficiency is the cheapest, most abundant, cleanest source of energy we can access, and every North Carolinian can begin to implement energy efficiency practices today,” the report says, promoting better building standards, energy recycling and better fuel efficiency. The complete report is available at www.cleanenergy.org.