Humming away at the Windham Solid Waste Management District's complex on Old Ferry Road in Brattleboro is a 250-kilowatt electrical generator powered by methane gas. The gas comes from trash that's decaying in the former WSWMD landfill.
Central Vermont Public Service is buying the electricity this generator is producing, enough to power about 300 homes. And soon, waste heat from the generator will heat a 20,000-square-foot greenhouse and aquaculture facility that will provide organic food to local markets and the Vermont Foodbank.
What Burlington-based Carbon Harvest Energy has planned on Old Ferry Road - a complete, closed-loop agricultural system that will produce food and energy with virtually no waste - will be a tremendous addition to the local economy. But it likely would have never happened without Act 45.
Last year, the Vermont Legislature passed Act 45, designed to spur the development of in-state energy from solar, wind, biofuel, hydro, and methane. Under the state's Sustainably Priced Energy Development Program, dubbed “SPEED,” Vermont's utilities are directed to buy, at premium rates for 25 years, about 5 percent of the state's peak electric loads. This requirement is known as a feed-in tariff (FIT).
With FITs, any person or entity generating electricity from a renewable energy source - whether a homeowner, small business, or large electric utility - is able to sell that power into the grid and receive long-term payments for each kilowatt-hour produced.
Payments are set at pre-established rates, often higher than what the market would ordinarily pay, to ensure that developers earn profitable returns. The rates for Vermont's SPEED program range from 9 cents per kilowatt hour for landfill methane power projects such as Carbon Harvest's to 24 cents per kilowatt hour for solar power.
This is how world renewable energy leaders such as Denmark, Germany and Spain have been able to rapidly deploy wind and solar power over the past decade. Similar policies have since been adopted by many other countries, as FITs have become the most prevalent tool for promoting renewable energy.
Critics have complained that this law forces Vermont utilities to pay more for electricity. But these critics fail to recognize that the cost of renewable energy is steadily declining. As fossil fuel prices rise, renewables have become more and more attractive to investors.
They also neglect the success that European nations have seen in subsidizing such sources of power.
At the same time, these critics also neglect the billions upon billions of dollars of subsidies that our federal government has given and continues to give to nuclear power - a energy source that never has been able to compete in the so-called “free market.”
Many electric consumers in Vermont say they are willing to pay more for renewable energy, and programs such as CVPS's “Cow Power” and Green Mountain Power's “Greener GMP” reflect this desire to support non-fossil fuel, non-nuclear sources of energy.
While the current per kilowatt-hour FITs for renewable energy in the SPEED program far exceed the 4.2 cents per kilowatt-hour that Vermont Yankee charges for its electricity, two things are certain.
The price of Vermont Yankee's power - if it stays open past 2012 - will rise, and the price of renewables will decline as more projects come on line and the technology improves.