SunCommon takes hold of energy future
by Laura Stroup
At my home, we are in the process of an energy revolution. SunCommon, Vermont’s residential solar company, will be soon installing a large photovoltaic solar panel on our southern roofline. SunCommon will guarantee, if a house has good potential, that you will save money on your monthly electricity bill.
My house will go from solely-consuming electricity to being a producer of the electricity I use, and at a cheaper rate than Green Mountain Power can supply it from a variety of energy sources. This will further reduce my family’s carbon and energy consumption footprint for an already Efficiency Vermont-certified house. The other benefits include household money-saved, and the community benefit that Green Mountain Power does not have to acquire additional energy from more costly and polluting sources.
On June 11, Vermont passed a bill creating a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) goal of 75 percent by 2032. Vermont and Hawaii’s (passed June 8, 100 percent RPS goal by 2045) standards are currently the most ambitious in the U.S.A.
As an environmental studies professor at St. Michael’s College, I have worked with students researching Vermont’s energy crossroads: how will we (and can we?) realistically get to 75 percent renewable energy by 2032—that’s only 17 years from now!
With the decommissioning of Vermont Yankee, the state’s main electricity source for the last 30 years, Vermont is currently in the process of determining a new energy source mix. The majority of electricity in the state is imported from Canada from Hydro Quebec’s hydroelectric generation and from the Northeastern Electricity Grid (nuclear, coal, natural gas). Vermont now produces negligible in-state electricity. Newer, larger scale renewable projects tend to attract more controversy than the existing older reliable domestic and imported hydropower sources.
Right now, Vermonters appear to be saying they would rather buy cross-border electricity than generate it themselves, and pass the negative externalities of electricity production onto a larger scale. I have not even mentioned our fossil fuel use, which we import 100 percent. Transportation is our largest energy use sector.
In 2005 and again in 2008, a Burlington Electric customer satisfaction survey assessed preferences for obtaining additional power for their Burlington customers. The top results for residential customers were “promoting more energy efficiency programs, wind generating power plant, and obtaining power from residential-scaled projects.” These are consistent to the vision of a state that brands itself as one of the greenest places to live in the U.S.
In Vermont, we have exhausted all of our economically and environmentally viable hydropower. There is simply no more hydro-electric capacity development to be had. That leaves Vermonters three main choices at the crossroads:
• Continue to import a large proportion of our electricity from Hydro-Quebec and the ever-changing mix of the Northeast Grid (which ironically includes nuclear power from the Seabrook plant in New Hampshire) and fossil fuels, either from foreign sources or fracked sources, domestically.
• Develop large-scale projects, distributed in and around the state based on the resource potential, as in commercial wind and solar projects.
• Promote community and household — scale efficiency and distributed production of renewables, specifically wind and solar on the smart grid.
Based on the recent Vermont Comprehensive Energy Plan Public Forum I attended with a student last month in St. Albans, the first and second choices are not the routes anyone wants to explore further, and that leaves choice no. 3.
So I ask, what are you going to do in terms of your home and community? The distributed renewables plan no. 3 seems a fitting one for Vermonters, with our can-do independence and community spirit (Freedom and Unity). We need to individually and collectively figure out how to make homes and businesses in Vermont net contributors to our energy future instead allowing big business economics or the market determine our future for us. Indeed, the time is now to plan. There has never been a better time, and current and future residents of our beautiful Green Mountain State, and your pocketbook, will thank you for it.
Laura Stroup of Essex Junction is assistant professor of environmental studies, Department of Economics and Geography, at St. Michael’s College.
