Commercial Operations Begin at Stetson Wind

First Wind, an independent North American wind power company, today celebrated the achievement of commercial operations for its Stetson Wind project. Situated in Washington County, Maine, Stetson Wind will have the capacity to generate clean, wind energy to power about 23,500 New England homes per year.

At an event hosted by First Wind outside the town of Danforth, Governor John E. Baldacci spoke about the project and the environmental and economic benefits of wind power to the State of Maine.


“The Stetson Wind project continues Maine’s aggressive leadership in pursuing energy independence. We are capitalizing on the clean, renewable sources of energy that exist in our State, like wind, solar and tidal. By harnessing these sources of energy locally, we keep money in our State and we create jobs in our State, all while improving our environment and our national security.”
Governor John E. Baldacci


Stetson Wind, a 57 megawatt (MW) wind project, will surpass First Wind’s Mars Hill facility as the largest wind energy project in operation in the State of Maine and in New England. The project consists of 38 General Electric 1.5 MW wind turbines, and will have the capacity to generate approximately 167 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of clean electricity every year. The project officially began generating power on a commercial basis and delivering it to the New England electrical grid today.

Construction on the project began in January 2008. The project created 350 development and construction jobs, and First Wind spent about $50 million with Maine-based businesses developing and building the project.

“Today, we are proud to mark the commencement of commercial operations of our Stetson Wind project. With nearly 100 MW of clean, wind energy being generated between Stetson Wind and our Mars Hill project, we’re making renewable wind power in Maine a reality and plan to continue our commitment to the state through a number of other projects already in development.”
Paul Gaynor, President and CEO of First Wind

First Wind plans to build additional projects in Maine, including a proposed 25.5 MW expansion at Stetson Wind, as well as the 60 MW Rollins Wind project near the town of Lincoln. First Wind has submitted permit applications with state agencies for both projects.


“This project represents another big step in Maine’s leadership in generating clean, renewable energy. Each wind power project built in Maine provides us with jobs and helps reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. In Maine, we’re not just talking about the need for clean energy, we’re doing it. The companies and subcontractors who have brought this project to completion are helping to create a new energy future not just for Maine, but for our nation."
Pete Didisheim, Advocacy Director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine.

Stetson Wind will provide both environmental and economic benefits to the surrounding region. A project of this type can be considered a success for the following reasons:

• A traditional fossil fuel facility producing the same amount of electric energy that Stetson Wind will generate, would consume more than 331,000 barrels of oil per year or over 89,000 tons of coal per year.
• Wind energy emits no greenhouse gases. Based on data recently published by the U.S. EPA’s Emissions and Generation Resource Integrated Database (E-GRID), traditional New England generation sources producing an equivalent annual amount of electric energy as Stetson Wind would emit greenhouse gases (GHG) consisting of nearly 76,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2).
• To put this in perspective, the amount of CO2 avoided is the equivalent to the annual emissions of over 13,000 cars or over 9,000 SUVs.
• In addition, equivalent energy production from traditional sources would produce 190 tons of sulfur dioxide (SO2). Both SO2 and NOx cause acid rain.
• Through the development and construction of Stetson Wind, more than $50 million has been spent with Maine-based businesses and organizations.
• In total, $4 million in tax payments will be made to local communities over the next 20 years.
• First Wind hires local business services whenever possible, and employed more than 350 people during construction of Stetson Wind. In addition, 6 full time jobs have been created now that the project is in commercial operation.

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Green Electricity Suppliers

They’re all doing it, draping themselves in images of windmills and claiming green credentials – but how green are the UK’s electricity companies really?

How much of what you see is spin and how much is real? That’s a question we’ve asked ourselves often enough. And lately, with the ‘Big Six’ spending £millions on slick TV ads - this seems a more pressing question than ever. Is there a way to judge who's really green and who’s only saying they are? Actually it’s quite simple.

Just look at how much each electricity company spends building new sources of green electricity each year – New energy. The only green electricity that does anything to reduce CO2 emissions and our dependence on fossil fuels is the new green energy, the stuff that gets built today and tomorrow. If you’re not building you’re not actually achieving anything green at all. It’s just marketing and spin.

Ecotricity produced a measure for spending on New Energy called it ‘pounds per customer’ – it shows how much each electricity company actually spends, for each of it’s customers on the new green stuff. It’s a number that cuts through the fog of marketing and to the heart of the issue, irrespective of company size.

Some energy companies are bigger than others of course, so the total they spend on building new green electricity sources is useful to know, but is not the whole story. For example in 2004, npower spent £40m on new green energy, Ecotricity just £5m. But Ecotricity had just 5000 customers compared to npowers 5m customers.

To get meaningful comparisons you need to simply see how much is spent per customer. This shows you how much of your electricity bill actually gets spent each year, building new sources of green. And how much of a difference you make by being with your supplier. It's that simple - and called pounds per customer. It's the acid test of green commitment. It's simple enough maths too - Just take the total number of customers each supplier has and divide that by their total spend on new green electricity sources in any given year.

These are the figures for 2007. Prepare to be surprised.

Supplier	2007 spend per customer
Ecotricity	£555.36
Powergen	£17.28
Centrica	£7.12
npower	£3.89
EDF Energy	£3.55
Scottish Power	£2.63
Green Energy UK	£0.00
Good Energy	£0.00
Scottish & Southern Energy	£0.00

Ecotricity now offers two types of tariff, these are considered to be the greenest tariffs in the UK;

• New Energy
  
  All the Green energy in this tariff comes from Ecotricities own wind turbines, this year it’s just over 30% ­ and rising currently at almost 10% per year. The balance is ’Brown’ electricity bought in the market ­ and that reduces each year as the green increases. But the key part is this - for every £ customers spend through their electricity bills Ecotricity spend another £ building new sources of Green energy. And they price match each regional supplier so New Energy has no premium attached to it ­ - customers get ’Green for the price of Brown’.
  
  No wonder this is considered by people like the Soil Association, WWF and Oxfam to be the best green tariff in the UK, bar none.
  
  
• New Energy Plus
  
  For those that understand the need to build new sources to actually impact climate change ­ but who want a 100% tariff in the mean time. It’s New Energy (30% Green from Ecotricity turbines this year and rising fast), topped up with green electricity from existing renewable sources (instead of Brown) ­ making this a 100% Green tariff. You get the same total commitment to build, spend one £ on renewables for every one £ customers spend, ­ but it’s 100% green now. It’s a mixture of Old and New green energy in fact (New Energy Plus Old). It isn’t any better than New Energy, but some people just want 100%, so they offer it.
  
  The existing (Old) green energy they top up with is a scarce resource though, so there’s a small premium of 0.5p per unit, which works out at about £20 a year for a typical household - over and above the price of Brown electricity from each regional supplier.

For more information on Energy Suppliers by CO2 emissions and their "energy make up" visit our CO2/kWh table. The Ecologist magazine published an article on this same topic in June 2005 (pdf).


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Should the Government Spend on Renewables to Beat the Recession?

Rescuing ailing banks is only one half of the solution to the current global economic turmoil. The other is to keep spending buoyant to prevent a slide into recession.

But how to do that? With worries about ballooning personal debt, falling house prices and rising unemployment, many people are cutting back on spending. Christmas will probably not be enough to revive fortunes on the high street.

One answer lies with the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, the most influential economist of the 20th Century. It was his proposals that helped the world recover from the Great Depression of the 1930s. With unemployment in the UK, the US and many other countries reaching 20% or more in the early 30s, the task was massive. Whole economies were grinding to a halt.

Keynes' solution was simple. Governments needed to spend more. Spending on roads, hospitals and schools would have to offset the lack of private spending.

So should the government start spending on renewable energy?, introducing new grants could be one way to increase consumer spending into renewables, paired with the current high prices of energy, this could be a winner.

Spending further revenue on large scale projects, for schools, hospitals and government buildings to increase their energy efficiency, focusing on those with poor performances, from results of Display Energy Certificates.

Further investment of revenue into macro scale national projects could set the UK on track for energy security for the next few years, and a low carbon economy for the future.

This is pretty much what Chancellor Alistair Darling is arguing. If private spending is slowing, then the government needs to take up the slack by bringing forward billions of pounds of expenditure on construction projects. If government borrowing must rise, then so be it. However, annual borrowing in the UK is one of the highest in the world as a percentage of GDP. And it's rising fast.

One way to increase consumer spending is to use monetary policy. This involves altering interest rates. If recession is looming, central banks could as expected they will cut interest rates - as many did, by half a percentage point, on 8 October.

Even if customer rates are cut, borrowing and spending may hardly increase. With impending recession, people may try to cut back on their debts rather than spend, and businesses may be reluctant to invest.

The alternative to monetary policy is fiscal policy. This involves changes in taxes and/or government expenditure. If taxes fall and/or government expenditure rises, this should stimulate the economy. As long as we are not afraid to spend that is.

Keeping expenditure up is vital and increased government expenditure is probably the best way of achieving this. But another crucial factor is confidence.

If people believe the policy will work, it probably will. Firms will start investing more and consumers will start buying more. The vicious circle of recession could become the virtuous circle of recovery.

But creating confidence depends on politics as much as economics. If people see world leaders mean business and that they won't let recession take hold, then it won't.

If, however, politicians vacillate or there's no international harmonisation of policies, then any remaining confidence may evaporate and we could suffer from prolonged recession similar to that in Japan in the 1990s and early 2000s.

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In Search of Clean Power

In this, the last of his Big Ideas programmes, James May (of Top Gear fame) tries to find smarter, brighter and bolder ways of powering the planet for future generations. So James sets off on a global search to find people who share his dream. It takes him from Guildford, where he takes a solar powered car to its limit at night, to the US where he joins some aerospace engineers who are trying to build an 'elevator' into space.

In Holland, he meets the first Dutchman in space who has put away his rockets and has swapped them for kites as he tries to harvest the power of the jet-stream. And finally, in the deserts of New Mexico, James seeks out some modern-day alchemists, who offer the promise of allowing him to drive his car on petrol conjured out of thin air.

There will be a few familiar sites in this episode with the Marine Current Turbine in Strangford Lough and the Solar Tower in Saville, which have previously been mentioned in this blog.

You can catch this program on the BBC iPlayer for a few days yet.

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