Today, I want to continue
talking about energy futures and
alternative choices that we have
to face.
And I think about this as a
problem of being on the horns of
a quad-lemma.
 
And after I put this slide
together,
I was on my way to lecture this
morning,
I was saying to myself it's not
really a quad-lemma,
the analogy being a dilemma.
 
It really has many more
dimensions to it.
But the way that it's being
characterized to the public by
politicians and those that are
concerned about energy futures
is predominately a choice
between renewables and existing
production capacity with respect
to fossil fuels,
particularly coal,
and also our nuclear future
that we discussed last week.
 
But the topic that really does
not make it onto the agenda,
which is one that I think is
crucial,
is energy efficiency and what
we could achieve by altering our
patterns of consumption.
 
And I think as well,
our capacity to read the energy
demands of our own daily
behaviors in the marketplace and
in our daily lives make it
extremely difficult to do that.
So that today,
I want to concentrate
predominately on the problem of
renewables, but also
specifically talk about wind
energy.
So the National Academy of
Sciences prepared a publication
that you read,
hopefully, up on the Classes
server for this week,
on the potential of renewables,
particularly wind and solar.
 
And solar and wind,
they concluded,
renewable resources offer
significantly larger total
energy potential than do other
domestic renewable resources.
Solar intensity obviously
varies across the nation.
The land-based solar resource
exceeds by several thousand-fold
present annual U.S.
 
electrical energy demand.
 
So wind is capable is providing
at least ten percent to twenty
percent,
and in some regions of the
country,
potentially higher percentages
of current electrical energy
demand.
Think about installed capacity.
 
In the world,
Germany is clearly the leader
in terms of megawatt production,
but also percentage of their
total electrical energy demands
at about twenty-three,
twenty-four percent.
 
The U.S.
 
follows in second at about
eighteen percent,
then Spain, India,
China, Denmark.
But this ranking is shifting
quite rapidly,
particularly in China and India
and other rapidly developing
parts of the world.
 
Well, there was a statute that
was passed back in 2005 that has
really provided a lot of
incentive,
economic incentive to the
private sector and to government
agencies as well to think about
new forms of providing energy,
particularly from renewable
resources.
So income from activity may be
excluded from gross income and
not taxed if it's expended on
renewable energy facilities.
Income may be taxed at a lower
rate.
The expense from the activity
may be deducted more quickly.
And those of you that filed
your income taxes last week
probably do not itemize your
deductions.
But deductions are set up in
ways that you may depreciate
property over different lengths
of time.
You may be able to depreciate a
car,
for example,
over eight or ten years or a
truck over that period of time,
a house is thirty-two years,
and other kinds of products
that you might buy.
You could depreciate those
fully in the first year,
meaning that you can get a
total deduction on its value
during the year that you
purchased it.
So that these expenses may be
eligible for tax credits as
well.
 
A deduction is different than a
tax credit.
A deduction is an itemization
that you would use to reduce
your total estimated or adjusted
gross income,
whereas a tax credit would be a
reduction in your taxes at the
end of your return.
 
Most people would favor taking
a tax credit,
it would be more to their
advantage.
So that these production tax
credits that came into being in
2005 really have been quite
successful, as is demonstrated.
There were previous production
credits back in 1999 and 2001
and 2003.
 
And then they expired at the
end of those years.
So that if you can see this
chart, you can see the rather
dramatic decline in the
populations taking advantage of
these credits.
 
There is a business solar tax
credit that offers a thirty
percent tax credit for the
purchase of equipment that
produces solar electricity.
 
Business fuel cell credits are
available that are produced even
using chemicals that are created
by fossil fuels.
There's a residential efficient
property credit,
which is a personal tax credit
for eligible technology,
such as water heaters,
furnaces, boilers,
heat pumps, central air
conditioners,
building insulation,
windows, doors,
and roofs.
 
In my income taxes this year,
I installed a new energy
efficient water heater that I
was able to take a tax credit of
thirty percent of $2000,
which is a substantial savings.
Also, many states are acting on
their own.
And a topic that we've
discussed repeatedly in the
course is if you're thinking
about trying to change behavior,
what level of government is the
appropriate government to
establish law or policy?
 
And the federal government has
been clearly behind the eight
ball.
 
They've been delinquent or
neglectful of passing renewable
energy standards and creating
incentives in a way that really
had a strong influence on
renewable energy production
relative to particularly fossil
fuel production.
So states have jumped into this
problem by creating their own
renewable energy portfolio
standards.
So for example,
Massachusetts has a standard
that is targeting fifteen
percent renewable of their total
energy demand by 2020.
 
Ohio is twenty-five percent by
2025, New Mexico is twenty
percent by 2020.
 
California is 20 percent by
2010, and Washington is fifteen
percent by 2020.
 
So that these are legally
binding standards and the states
are required to figure out how
to reduce their reliance on
fossil fuels while increasing
their reliance on renewable
sources.
 
So if you look at the problem
of wind and you think about its
distribution in the nation,
Texas, perhaps not
surprisingly,
has the largest current
installed capacity,
almost 9,000 megawatts,
followed by Iowa,
California, Minnesota,
Oregon, Washington,
New York, Colorado,
Illinois, and then Kansas.
 
You can also see the effect in
this graph of the recession on
installation of wind-provided
electricity.
So 2008 was far higher in new
installations than 2009,
so that this industry also is
subject to the same kinds of
limitations as any other sector.
 
The cost of wind and
transmission that is
economically available might be
broken into two different
categories, onshore and
offshore.
It's quite obviously more
expensive to develop further
offshore.
 
And the less expensive areas
are those that are closest to
the coastline.
 
And what we see,
we'll see a case in a few
moments known as Cape Wind that
is being proposed for Nantucket
Sound.
 
And the advantage obviously is
that this is in federal
territory so that no private
property needs to be purchased,
so that the quantity available
offshore is believed to be just
about the same as onshore.
 
But the difficulty of getting a
wind project off the ground on
private property,
as we'll see in a few moments,
compared to offshore is really
quite significant.
So many people are now arguing
for a twenty percent target by
2030 as a goal for wind-based
energy.
If we choose this as a target,
how do we get there?
And what would be the influence
on our use of alternative
sources of energy?
 
So if we have no new wind,
you can see in this chart then
our reliance on natural gas,
coal, nuclear,
hydro, and current wind would
look something like this,
with wind in the green.
 
But a twenty percent wind
scenario would predominately
cause us to reduce our reliance
on coal,
but also some of our reliance
on natural gas and nuclear.
And why nuclear?
 
Well, because many of the
reactors are going to be
approaching the end of their
license periods.
And many of them,
as we discussed last week,
are beyond their thirty to
forty-year licensing period.
So we're going to be phasing
out nuclear,
and depending upon the
incentives for investment in new
nuclear plants,
the future growth is going to
be impeded,
not just by the extraordinary
capital costs and the
incremental cost of securing
loans for nuclear,
given its uncertainty.
But also, the problems of
simply the amount of time it
takes to build a nuclear plant.
 
If we rely more heavily on
wind, we need to think about how
to get transmission facilities,
transmission lines,
in close proximity to the key
sources of wind.
So that obviously,
as you look at the United
States, you find wind capacity
varies geographically.
The coastal areas,
Washington, Oregon,
California, the East Coast and
the Gulf Coast are the
predominant sites for offshore
development.
And the Midwestern United
States is the predominant
location for development in
non-coastal areas.
And this creates a problem,
particularly for the Midwest,
because the Midwest is not a
population center in the nation.
So that transmissions needed to
relieve congestion in the
existing system to improve
system reliability for all
customers,
to increase access to
lower-cost energy,
but also to access new and
remote generation resources.
 
So that if the twenty percent
scenario by 2030 is followed,
this is going to have a very
significant effect on Co2
emissions from the electricity
sector.
So that this is thought of as a
really important type of
investment.
 
Now siting often creates an
enormously complex set of rules
and regulations that have to be
followed in order to gain
permits from the federal
government,
state governments,
and local governments.
The predominant concerns about
development include visual
impacts,
property value impacts,
effects on local wildlife and
habitat,
turbine or rotor noise and land
use,
potential effects on adjacent
land uses.
So wind generation is,
for example,
responsible for about 0.003
percent of human-caused avian
mortality, particularly among
passerines and bats.
And bat mortality has been
found to be higher than
expected,
but only in certain areas of
the world,
in certain high elevation
zones, mountain peaks,
and also mountain passes.
So that these are the
predominant concerns that cause
litigation.
 
People are also worried about
the amount of area that it's
going to take in order to reach
this objective of twenty percent
by 2030.
 
And the actual footprint that
has been measured and is being
used by the proponents of wind
energy is really quite small.
So total acreage of about
fifteen million acres,
roughly about the size of Rhode
Island or Anchorage.
So that the deceptive aspect of
that statistic is that the
conflict that surrounds this is
not generated by the site
development and the amount of
area,
the land area or the ocean area
that has to be disturbed in
order to put the facilities in,
it's generated by its
visibility, predominantly by
people's impressions that I find
to be really quite curious.
 
I was driving to work this
morning and admiring the wind
turbine that was just put up
over here next to the Q-Bridge,
and was thinking about that and
thinking about people's
acceptance or preferences to
view landscapes without towers
generally.
 
And as I kind of surveyed the
landscape quickly,
I was looking at the old
coal-fired power plant next to
the Q-Bridge,
then I was looking at the
transmission lines that lie next
to it.
I was looking at the bridge
itself.
Really an industrialized
landscape.
Probably not a good thing to
say to people here for Yale
Bulldog Days.
 
There are very beautiful parts
of New Haven and the university
is a central source of New
Haven's beauty.
But that part of New Haven is
not, it's one of the most
industrialized zones in
Connecticut.
But there stands this new wind
turbine, gleaming white.
And actually,
it's dwarfed by other stacks,
smokestacks and the
transmission lines nearby.
But people have problems with
towers generally,
and I was wondering about that.
 
And I've worked on tower siting
problems in the past.
And I used the example when we
had the lecture on land
preservation of the controversy
over the Olympic Games in
northern New York where the
ninety- and seventy-meter ski
jump were proposed that almost
brought the Olympic Games to a
halt because of threatened
litigation by the Sierra Club.
And the aversion there was the
loss of the sense of a natural
landscape.
 
And this is very much a
prominent part of the argument
on the part of landowners in the
coastal area that looks out over
Nantucket Sound.
 
They're worried about the view.
 
They're worried about the
visibility.
Somehow, they think it's going
to diminish the sense of
naturalness of that landscape,
and that's provoked their
litigation.
 
So that there are other kinds
of towers that we seem to
accept,
but it may be a function of
whether or not we can get up
into the tower to take a look.
Many people up in Lake Placid
eventually accepted a 300-foot
tower as a ski jump that was
immediately adjacent to a
wilderness area.
 
But part of the fascination was
well,
this is for sport,
but it also is going to give
the opportunity to create an
observation deck that people
could go up to.
 
I was thinking about other
towers that we seem to readily
accept in more urbanized
environments,
residential towers,
office buildings,
or even the Eiffel Tower.
 
So that what is it about towers
and our sense of naturalness
that provokes this kind of
reaction?
I've also worked on
communication towers and
electrical transmission lines
that demand high towers.
And these are commonly fought
with great energy just as people
are fighting the wind turbines.
 
So that that would be the
subject of a great senior essay,
by the way, if anybody is
looking around for one next
year.
 
Think about also the nature of
property rights to wind and to
solar radiation.
 
So does the developer,
for example,
have the right to block access
to a resource such as wind or
solar radiation or water,
if you live upstream and you
decide you want to put a dam in
the river?
Or sand, remember the shifting
sands on barrier islands,
and remember,
if you fly out of New Haven
over the coastline and you see
these groins that are set up to
trap sand as it moves along the
coastline.
And that causes a sand deficit
downstream so that the person
that lives next to you has to
build a groin so he can catch
sand to prevent his shoreline
from eroding.
The same basic principle here.
 
So that if I build a structure,
perhaps a high rise building
that blocks your access to wind
or even if I build a high rise
building and it blocks your
access to solar radiation,
do you have the right to take
me to court and either to
prevent the development or do I
have the right to demand that
you compensate me for my
property loss in value?
Well common law,
law passed by courts,
is really unclear on the matter
unless there's clear and
malicious intent.
 
So unlike underground minerals,
no one can extract wind or
solar radiation from your
property without your consent.
Now, I want you to think back
about the lecture several weeks
ago when I considered the Horse
Whisperer out in Wyoming and the
extraordinarily rapid
development of coal bed methane
gas being extracted because the
federal government sold off the
underlying property rights to
private corporations who then
basically had the right to
transfer their production
equipment to build towers on
people's ranches,
on their private lands.
 
So the story was the Horse
Whisperer woke up to
construction crews bulldozing
roads over their property.
And outraged,
thought that he had the right
to call the police and stop the
development,
when he didn't,
because those gas extraction
companies had purchased the
rights legitimately from the
government.
 
Well, in this case are the wind
or solar radiation rights
similarly owned as common
property by the federal
government?
 
And the answer is no.
 
So that you would have the
opportunity to prevent somebody
from coming onto your land and
building a wind turbine.
But kind of an interesting
comparison here,
the way that law is structured
to allocate common property
rights to the private sector for
energy development.
So think about wind capacity
and the desirability of
different areas of the country,
and also think about the nature
of private development in the
coastal zone.
And I remember the California
oil spills and how the tar and
the oil would wash up on the
beaches.
And it was kind of interesting,
you'd go for a run on the beach
and you get back to your house
or wherever you were staying and
your feet are covered by tar.
 
Even today in some parts of
California, they're covered by
tar from the Santa Barbara oil
spills back in the 1970s.
So that these tend to be highly
developable properties,
highly valued property.
 
And if they are the site of
residential structures,
you're guaranteed to have a
fight for any significant
offshore development.
 
So there's an interesting kind
of coincidence here of high-end
property,
people that are likely to have
values that are instinctively to
protect the coastal zone as well
as to protect the naturalness of
the views from their private
property.
 
So that this conflict is the
source of litigation and also
legislation.
 
Here are the top ten states for
wind energy potential.
The last slide I showed you was
top ten states for current
generating capacity.
 
So Texas, Kansas,
Montana and Nebraska,
Midwestern states and Texas
particularly in the coastal as
well,
South Dakota,
North Dakota,
Iowa, Wyoming,
Oklahoma, New Mexico.
 
So very interesting that these
have the highest capacity,
but they tend not to be close
to where the majority of people
in the U.S.
 
live.
 
I'm going to jump ahead here.
 
So here is the scenario,
offshore development versus
land-based development.
 
The projections are that the
majority of new capacity will
come from onshore or land-based
development that creates all the
political conflict because of
questions about how to manage
private property rights.
 
So that if you look at the
quantity available offshore and
onshore and you look at the
relative wind speed in these
areas,
you see that the land-based is
going to likely generate more
gigawatts than the offshore.
So what are the key benefits
here?
Well, benefits to the
environment, benefits in terms
of reduced air pollution from
fossil fuels,
and there's no question about
the fact that we'll be facing
increased coal generation,
coal power generation,
that is going to give us
problems with particulate
matter,
sulfur and nitrogen oxides.
And remember that statistic
that I told you last week,
that this is a really important
statistic,
particularly relative to the
health effects of coal.
Between 30,000 and 60,000
people are estimated in a
variety of peer-reviewed and I
think highly defensible studies,
they suffer premature death in
the United States every year due
to coal production.
 
So that you compare that to
nuclear, you compare that to
mortality estimates from wind or
solar development,
and there really is no contest.
 
In terms of climate,
the reduced CO_2
emissions are estimated to be
about 825 million metric tons
per year if the twenty percent
of our electricity is produced
by 2030.
 
Reduced water,
reduced coal use,
reduced cost per kilowatt hour,
and also the increased tax
revenues that'll be generated to
local communities.
So if you build a wind turbine
on your property,
you're going to have to pay the
local government property taxes
on your revenue.
 
And also you're going to be
paying the federal government
taxes on the revenue.
 
So the future of wind,
as I mentioned earlier,
is likely to have the greatest
influence on our reliance on
coal,
but could also affect our
reliance on nuclear.
 
There's a lot of concern among
environmentalists over avian
mortality.
 
So it's important to think
about the different causes of
avian mortality,
and it's quite striking that
mortality from buildings and
windows,
and these are avian deaths,
so that you see that the
majority are being caused by
birds flying into buildings and
windows,
followed by housecats,
high transmission lines,
vehicles, pesticides.
Actually, the pesticide
estimate is low.
I worked on a panel that
addressed the question about
several of the largest,
most produced insecticides in
the world,
and they are responsible for
very significant avian losses.
 
Communication towers and wind
turbines, if they reach this
twenty percent by 2030,
are projected to be really
quite low.
 
Now, that doesn't mean that we
don't pay attention to them,
and legally we have an
obligation to do so.
And that's because of the
Endangered Species Act.
And this will come to play when
we talk in a few minutes about
the Nantucket Sound case that
might influence the piping
plover that nests in the
adjacent shorelines.
Also, there are concerns about
noise, how noisy are they
compared to other sources of
noise?
So if you look at jet aircraft
at 250 meters,
you look a pneumatic drill,
you look at a truck,
an office, a car at forty
meters, then you find a
wind-power plant at 350 meters
would be about equivalent to a
quiet bedroom or perhaps a car
operating at forty miles an hour
that drives by a hundred meters
away.
So the implications of this are
kind of interesting in terms of
managing noise.
 
How might you do that?
 
Well, you could think about
using zoning.
You could demand very large lot
zoning.
And remember the case in the
Adirondacks where one new house
for perhaps forty percent of the
private land in the Adirondacks,
forty percent of two and a half
million acres.
So one new house requires
forty-three acres up in the
Adirondacks.
 
So what would it take you to
get a buffer between the turbine
location on land and a
separation distance that would
reduce the decibel level on
adjacent properties?
Well, you could imagine
designing a zoning ordinance
that would allow you to control
noise on adjacent lands in that
fashion.
 
Well, it's important for you to
think too about the structure of
the U.S.
 
utility industry.
 
There are about two hundred
investor-owned utilities in the
nation,
seventy large municipal and
federal or state systems,
fifty rural generation and
transmission cooperatives,
and three thousand local
distribution companies.
 
Think also about who are the
dominant consumers of energy in
the United States.
 
Turns out that the federal
government is the largest single
consumer of electricity in the
world.
The federal agency electricity
consumption in 2005 was more
than 55,000 gigawatt hours,
which would equate to
approximately eighteen gigawatts
of wind capacity.
So federal agencies were
encouraged to meet an executive
order goal of two point five
percent of site electricity from
new renewable energy sources by
the end of 2005.
By the way, we've not talked
about executive orders in the
class,
but I'm going to pause here
just to point out that law may
be established at very different
levels of government,
state, local, federal.
But also it may be established
by regulation,
so EPA has the legal authority
to establish regulations.
And the Executive Branch of the
government,
the office of the President,
has the legal authority to
establish executive orders that
must be complied with within the
federal government by federal
agencies.
So that in this case,
to meet the ordered goal of two
point five percent,
this goal was actually exceeded
with a final tally of about six
point nine percent of
electricity consumed was derived
from renewable sources.
So that's kind of an
interesting idea.
So figure out who are the
largest consumers and then set
goals for them and then
challenge them,
set up a competition.
 
And we've seen that competitive
spirit work here in the college
as well.
 
So that colleges are trying to
not just reduce their waste and
to increase their rate of
recycling,
but they're also trying to
reduce their energy consumption.
So that now the federal
agencies are all challenged to
try to figure out how they can
increase their renewable
component of their energy
consumption portfolios.
There's also the concept of
renewable energy credits and
renewable energy certificates.
 
And these are tradable
non-tangible energy commodities
in the U.S.
 
that represent proof that one
megawatt hour of electricity was
generated from an eligible
renewable energy resource,
which would include solar,
wind, geothermal,
hydro, biomass or energy
derived from hydrogen fuel
cells.
 
Now, I want to talk for a few
moments about the problem up in
Nantucket Sound.
 
And this is a project,
Cape Wind, that was initiated
in 2001 when this company
decided that they wanted to put
up about 130 turbines in
Nantucket Sound.
And the state of Rhode Island,
by the way,
has taken a very different
path, not just reacting to a
developer's proposal,
but Rhode Island has taken the
initiative to zone parts of its
offshore territory.
And they have designated a
company, a developer,
as a preferred developer,
and have now proposed about a
$1.5 billion farm in eastern
Rhode Island.
So states could basically be
reactive in their approach to
developing wind energy.
 
Just wait for the developers to
show up.
But Rhode Island is taking a
very different approach to this,
so that they are in a way
acting as the developer
themselves.
 
So if you take a look at this
wind map of the southern New
England coastline,
you see that there are areas,
particularly off of Rhode
Island and particularly here in
Nantucket Sound,
which are really quite suitable
in terms of the amount of wind
energy that is available for
development.
 
So the Cape Wind proposal would
involve, as I said,
130 different turbines.
 
On average, it would provide
about seventy-five percent of
the entire electrical
requirements for the Cape and
the islands.
 
So I don't know if this is
going to work.
But let me see if I can show
you a YouTube video here,
just briefly.
 
Here is a scene that shows a
boat of sightseers just moving
through a wind farm off the
coast of Denmark,
just to give you a sense of
what it would be like.
Now, there are questions here
about navigation.
There are questions about
interference with others'
property rights.
 
So offshore waters,
if you're beyond the three-mile
jurisdictional limit then it
becomes federal lands.
If you're between the mean high
water mark and the three-mile
zone, that is state land.
 
And what this means is because
these power lines will have to
lie beneath the surface as they
run from the turbines back to
the mainland,
that they clearly will cross
from federal lands into state
lands.
And then they will cross
private lands.
Or in some instances,
they will require dredging of
wetland areas up onto local
government property.
So that local,
state, federal,
and private property rights are
all at play in this case.
So that there are also issues
that arise from conflicts with
fishermen who may have the right
to lobster in this area.
Perhaps they use a form of
fishing that drags over the
bottom.
 
These are known as the
Nantucket Shoals,
known to be former clamming
areas.
The Nantucket area,
the Buzzard's Bay area,
has a long and rich history as
being important as a
commercially viable fishing
area.
So that there are also
potential conflicts here with
air rights with respect to
flight paths,
so that the Federal Aviation
Administration is also involved.
So that this is really a legal
quagmire in a way,
it's a cobweb of rights that
touch off jurisdiction on the
part of three different levels
of government and many local
jurisdictions and different
state and federal agencies as
well.
 
So the location in the Sound
that is being proposed is pretty
much between and to the north of
Nantucket,
which lies over here on the
right side on the bottom,
and Martha's Vineyard,
roughly five to six miles
offshore.
 
Now, this has become most
controversial because that is
close enough so that the towers
would be visible from shoreline
areas.
 
So they've completed six years
of environmental studies of the
surface and subsurface geology,
wind, tide, waves,
sediment transport patterns,
benthic infauna and shellfish
resources,
fish habitat,
commercial and recreational
fisheries,
and marine mammals and
threatened and endangered
species.
 
And what's interesting about
this is also that they've been
quite successful.
 
Cape Wind, the corporation,
has been successful in federal
court litigation.
 
So that all of the permitting
on the part of local governments
and the state government,
is now complete.
This also fell under the
requirements of the National
Environmental Policy Act that
demanded that an environmental
impact statement be prepared.
 
And this was done with great
care and it also pointed to all
of the possible effects on fish,
on wildlife,
on endangered species,
but also was clear in
identifying conflicts between
the developers and the wind
turbines with the various
interest groups that currently
have rights to use the area.
 
So that state permitting status
is complete as of the Fall of
2008.
 
And there's a Facility Siting
Board in Massachusetts.
There is a state environmental
quality permitting process that
was required to be complied
with.
There also are state wetlands
laws in Massachusetts that are
particularly protective of
coastal wetlands so that all of
these permits have been now
granted.
The federal permitting status
is managed by the Minerals
Management Service,
and that sits within the
Department of the Interior.
 
So that a favorable draft
impact statement was prepared in
2004 and then it released a
favorable final Environment
Impact Statement on January 15
of 2008.
Favorable comments on the part
of different organizations,
including the Natural Resources
Defense Council,
known for being very protective
of coastal areas around the
nation and being very concerned
about issues of climate change.
"Cape Wind (NRDC argued)
is to our knowledge the largest
single source of supply-side
reductions in CO_2
currently proposed in the United
States and perhaps the
world."
 
And the Department of Energy
assistant secretary said,
"As the first
shallow-water offshore project
under review in the United
States,
utility-scale projects like
Cape Wind are important to our
national interests and a crucial
first step to building a
domestic globally competitive
wind supply."
And another former
U.S. Department of Energy
assistant secretary and now
Massachusetts Secretary of
Environmental Officers,
Susan Tierney commented,
"The Cape Wind draft
environmental impact statement
is thorough,
it's detailed.
It identifies and analyzes and
describes a wide array of
impacts with great care,
detail, and comprehensiveness.
Indeed, it's one of the most
thorough that I've ever
seen."
 
So wide support among a variety
of different agencies.
Now, right now the Cape Wind
Company is awaiting a decision
on the part of Ken Salazar,
who is the Secretary of the
Interior.
 
And Ken Salazar is responsible
for the National Park Service
that also sits within the
Department of the Interior.
And you might ask the question,
well, what does the Park
Service have to do with
permitting for a facility such
as this?
 
Well, the Park Service
curiously is responsible because
of the National Historic
Preservation Act.
This requires that historic
facilities in the United States
be identified and ranked for
their relative importance,
and if they're found to be of
national significance,
they are eligible to be placed
on the National Registry of
Historic Places.
 
So that the Secretary of the
Interior-- I'm going to have to
jump ahead here for a second.
 
The Secretary of the Interior
had the ability to decide that
either the national significance
of this as Native American
burial grounds was so high that
it would be designated and
therefore this wind farm would
not be allowed to go forward.
And he's committed to reaching
a conclusion about this within
the next two weeks,
so pay attention to the press,
it will turn out to be quite
interesting.
So the Secretary went out and
took a look at the site several
months ago and has held a
variety of press conferences
over the past couple of weeks
that demonstrate that he is
really on the edge,
not knowing whether or not he
should be pursuing the national
objective of increasing the
renewable energy portfolio of
the United States.
I'm going to have to jump ahead
here, because I've got way too
much material,
so forgive me.
I wanted to talk just a moment
about comparing this case to
other kinds of problems that
we've discussed in class or that
you may be familiar with,
and the idea of the government
role of providing either credits
or subsidies.
I want you to think about the
relative historical absence of
federal subsidy of renewable
energy sources and compare that
to the subsidies that have
occurred for the oil industry.
And perhaps the greatest
subsidy that I can think of is
in part a reflection on what
happened when a major automobile
company,
tire company and oil companies
in the early 1900s went around
to different cities and
purchased up the trolley lines,
the tram lines.
They purchased them up as a way
of diminishing the public's
ability to use public transit
and to develop an increased
reliance on automobiles.
 
Now think also about the
national cost to maintain and
build or rebuild our national
highway system.
And where would the auto
industry and the oil industry be
in the United States if that
were not accomplished by our tax
dollars?
 
So now I think about the
highway system as being really
an enormous subsidy for the oil
industry as well as for the auto
industries.
 
Think also about how we have in
the past year subsidized the
auto industry and banks as well,
so that how do we come to
choose to subsidize certain
private ventures and not others?
We have a clear problem that we
need to deal with there.
I also want you think about a
variety of different conclusions
with respect to land use
regulation.
We've looked at land use
regulation and we've looked at
problems of controlling private
behavior, taking away rights
from individuals on private
land.
And I want you to think about
the opportunities for a variety
of new land use regulation and
subdivision regulation schemes
that might zone lands for wind
farms,
so that if you think back on
the Adirondack Park zoning
scheme,
where they did zone certain
areas for industrial growth.
 
They zoned other areas for
agricultural growth,
food farms, that why not the
concept of zoning for wind
farms?
 
Now, you could argue that well,
if you're going to zone for
wind farms,
you need to think about how
you're going to manage the
externalities that might fall
onto adjacent landowners.
 
Well, that could be dealt with,
as I mentioned a few moments
ago, in a variety of ways.
 
And these might include
offering development credits to
adjacent landowners to increase
density elsewhere.
In other words,
transferable development rights
might be a component of these
land use regulations.
So that the adjacent landowners
are actually given a bonus,
they're given a development
right that would be assignable
to an area that was zoned to
receive increased density.
These would be bankable,
so they wouldn't have to
physically develop it.
 
They could put the credit into
a bank and somebody else,
another developer who wanted to
build in that high-density zone,
could purchase that credit.
 
So there's a potential here to
tie zoning for wind farms to
transferrable development
rights.
Require minimum acreages,
a hundred acres,
two hundred acres,
a thousand acres,
whatever it would be.
 
And regulate lot dimensions.
 
So you could imagine a thousand
acres in a relatively narrow
strip of land going on for
miles.
But you could also think about
how you might design lot
dimension requirements in a way
that would ensure that you would
have a separation distance from
the turbine to the adjacent
landowners that might sense a
fence.
We also need to think carefully
about zoning for new
transmission lines.
 
And zoning in corridors has
always been a part of local and
state land use regulations.
 
So think about where the
corridors are right here in New
Haven.
 
We have a rail corridor that
also serves as a highway
corridor.
 
It's also a power line corridor.
 
So that building new
transmission lines in areas
where rail and highway corridors
already exist make a lot of
sense.
 
If we have to buy new land to
create new transmission lines,
that's going to be an
extraordinarily expensive
venture.
 
And think about again this
problem of having the production
being located in large distance
away from the points of higher
population densities and
consumption.
So another conclusion that I
want you to walk away with here
is with respect to property
rights.
So that offshore development is
going to be much easier to
accomplish than onshore
development.
Now here we are in 2010,
the Cape Wind developers made
their proposal in 2001.
 
They've wandered their way
through this regulatory
permitting process for nine
years.
There's a lesson there.
 
The lesson has been followed in
a variety of other regulatory
contexts and it's called
one-stop shopping,
one-stop shopping for a permit.
 
What if we had one renewable
agency, renewable energy agency
that had all of the authority to
grant the permits?
And yes, they would have to
consult with state
representatives,
they would have to consult with
local representatives.
 
But a developer could go
through this process perhaps in
three or four years instead of
nine years.
The capital carrying costs that
are involved here when you're
purchasing property and trying
to figure out what state of
technology you're going to
apply,
capital costs here are enormous
and can be discouraging.
I mentioned the coal bed
methane issue and think
distinctively about how that
coal bed methane property right
was allowed to be purchased by
the private sector,
whereas the wind property
right, like the solar property
right,
is generally assigned with the
surface lands.
 
So who has the right to block
wind?
Who has the right to block
solar radiation?
And are these legitimate bases
for civil actions as nuisances?
Now, I'd like to close by
having you think about damages
and how we calculate damages.
 
And as you think about every
case that we've discussed in
this term,
when we think about
environmental effects,
you should be thinking about
the magnitude of the effect and
you should be thinking about the
distribution of the effect.
 
So think about this comparison
between nuclear power on the one
hand and wind energy on the
other.
What are the adverse
environmental effects from wind
power likely to be?
 
Well, we've gone through a
variety of them,
biological resources,
land area that's going to be
required.
 
But they all pale in response
to the problems associated with
constructing and operating
nuclear power plants and then
figuring out what to do with the
waste.
And one way to think about
distribution is just to think
about how something spreads
geographically.
But think about distribution in
a temporal way as well.
So that the fact that the
Environmental Protection Agency
is required to develop a nuclear
waste disposal plan to cover one
million years for the management
of the Yucca Mountain storage
facility that has to do with the
persistence of the
radionuclides,
particularly plutonium isotopes.
I mean, think about that,
the persistence of the problem
over time is another way to
consider distribution.
So the consideration of
magnitude and distribution as
well, by thinking about
questions of equity,
who are these damages going to
fall onto?
How should they be managed?
 
And some people are much more
capable of managing risk than
other people are.
 
So they can buy higher quality
insurance than poorer people
can.
 
So once again,
magnitude and distribution for
a variety of different kinds of
effects.
So the effect in my opinion on
wildlife and fish,
on noise, on esthetics and
vibration,
on the shadow and flicker
effects that are being studied,
along with the vibration
effects right here in the Yale
Medical School.
 
There is a claim,
by the way, that these wind
turbine farms create vibrations
that you can't actually feel but
they're strong enough if you are
in close enough proximity to
these fields to have your sleep
disturbed.
And also on property values and
on recreational access,
these are the core points of
contention.
But compared to managing
nuclear waste over hundreds of
thousands of years,
these seem like relatively
minor issues.
 
And I'd like to close with just
one thought,
and that is as you think about
difficult tradeoffs such as
this,
I encourage you to consider the
idea of reversibility.
 
Reversibility is a concept that
has been built into a variety of
different laws.
 
So that under many different
statutes, the government is
required to consider whether or
not the effect is reversible.
So plutonium,
the creation of plutonium is
not a reversible decision,
given the length of
persistence.
 
The construction of a
coal-fired power plant such as
you see here in the upper left,
yeah, that's reversible.
You could pull that apart.
 
But if we look at our history
of rehabilitation of damaged
sites and industrial facilities
in the nation,
they tend not to be rebuilt
because they're so highly
contaminated.
 
Think about the disassembly of
a turbine farm or the
disassembly of a solar
generating facility such as this
out in the New Mexico desert.
 
These are easily disassembled.
 
So just consider the idea of
reversibility as you think about
how these kinds of choices might
be made.
Okay.
 
Well, that is the end of
lecture twenty-three,
and we'll wrap with a final
lecture on Thursday.
Thank you.
 
 
 
