The following is an open letter from Vermonters for a Clean Environment Executive Director Annette Smith to the Senate Finance Committee
I need to respond to something Sen. Becca White was quoted as saying in this evening’s WCAX coverage of S.236.
She says lower-income communities are disproportionately selected for these projects because the current regulatory environment “essentially forces renewable energy to go into communities that might not have the financial ability to make the case that something is aesthetically not in line.”
For many years, VCE has gotten calls from neighbors about poorly sited solar projects. The neighbors knew their neighbors and talked to them. What they learned was that the solar companies were targeting people who were in financial distress, with unpaid back taxes or behind on mortgage payments. Our experience was that it was their neighbors who were concerned for people being exploited by the industry who helped to make sure that their neighbors were not being taken advantage of.
I have not heard anyone claim in testimony in your committee on this bill that concern about aesthetics is forcing solar arrays to go into communities that might not have the financial ability to make the case that something is not aesthetically in line. We have found that solar sites affect people of all income levels. I would like to see Sen. White produce some data and facts to support her claim.
However, it is a fact that almost all the big wind projects have been built in towns that have been on the list of the 10 poorest towns in Vermont. That is no accident. The aesthetics criteria has nothing to do with it. It is well known that the people of Lowell voted for the wind project to get the money to offset their property taxes. Poor towns have been targeted because they are vulnerable to monetary promises. Iberdrola’s effort in Windham and Grafton was the outlier, with two fairly well-off communities torn apart by the proposal, and they were offered money if they voted to approve the project. To their credit, they said no thanks. But the other communities targeted for industrial wind said yes, because they wanted the money.
Sen. White has turned this situation upside down. Aesthetics has nothing to do with it. We are dealing with an industry whose large profits are undisclosed and unknown, empowered to choose the cheapest sites and not work with community members or talk to neighbors. As you see from the data I presented, almost all solar arrays are approved, almost all without any opposition and most without any public input. The Vermont legislature has given the industry tax breaks that I hear about frequently as robbing our communities of money that has to be made up by other property owners. Sen. White is right that it is all about money, but that money is not being used to benefit the people who are affected by these projects. It is making a lot of money for a few people in the industry, and their non-profit organization supporters.
Thank you for listening.
- Annette Smith, Executive Director
Vermonters for a Clean Environment
Categories: Commentary, Energy, Environment
“Sen. White is right that it is all about money, but that money is not being used to benefit the people who are affected by these projects. It is making a lot of money for a few people in the industry, and their non-profit organization supporters.”
IMHO Annette Smith could say that about all the energy and heating provisions proposed by the “Clean Heat Act” from heat pumps to solar covered fields.
Re: “We are dealing with an industry whose large profits are undisclosed and unknown, empowered to choose the cheapest sites and not work with community members or talk to neighbors.”
It’s not just the ‘industry’, per se. It’s our government (our Public Utilities Commissioners) and the VT legislature, who are the real grifters. They are no different from the public-school monopoly… or any monopoly for that matter.
The false dichotomy is plain for all to see. While we’re being forced to pay two times the cost of Hydro Quebec electricity for the wind and solar charade, U. S. oil producers have pumped more crude oil out of the ground in the U.S. over the last year than at any time in our history. Yes – more oil was produced in 2023 than during Trump’s drill-baby-drill years.
Meanwhile, my heating oil price per gallon increased from $3.54 per gallon in August, to $4.34 per gallon just today. ‘Carbon footprint’ my a—. WTF? And inflation is coming down? Right.
i dumped the oil company after they wanted to inspect my// my// my// oil tank/// never had a problem for 37 years and still do not/// burned wood for the last three years, and just piled six cords for next winter//
I can’t help noticing, and I wonder if you have noticed as well: the vast difference between the image crafted over the years by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, and that of his undoubted successor. The one has striven to paint himself as your kindly socialist grandpa; a wayward hippie in his youth (may have tapped into an electric line in Albany: yuk yuk). The other slides in on a tidal wave of dirty money; the goodie-giver has been sentenced to decades in jail, and yet there is no guilt-by-association amounting to the batting of an eyelash. Even if she did win legitimately, this is cheating, as her opponent had no such access to that large a piggybank. In her favor, I must say that she shows her face only rarely, but when she does, it is a conduit for slow-witted pronouncements such as the above. There is no attempt, at all, to either be accurate or show commonality with the residents of Vermont, whom she is more than likely to oversee as some future election shoe-in. In other words: There is no need.
Also on topic: I think you would like, and I’ve been meaning to tell you about, this book respecting a cousin of mine who served as U.S. Senator for 26 years, Governor of Massachusetts for two, and Lieutenant Governor for years before that. He tried to contribute as a true Progressive (e.g., Walsh–Healey act, forerunner of establishing a U.S. minimum wage; Workmen’s Comp in Massachusetts). As a reward for half a century of service to the nation and the Democratic Party, he was falsely accused of being a spy by Franklin Roosevelt, who then told him to shoot himself. No one remembers, apparently, or cares, but I believe the time is coming when this story will garner more interest.
https://www.lulu.com/shop/ellin-anderson/the-third-hill/paperback/product-q9evrr.html?q=The+Third+Hill&page=1&pageSize=4
P.S. I cannot tell a lie: Until I knew how harmful they were, I liked the big and shiny wind turbines: I thought they were pretty! Like giant Alexander Calder mobiles. Mea culpa.