While all forms of energy have an impact on the environment, a transition to renewable, cleaner energy technology like wind power has significantly less impact than energy sources like coal. Technologies like wind power do not generate air or water pollution, and do not have extraction and transportation issues.
Supporting The Right for Wind in the Mountains
In Western North Carolina alone, there is enough responsibly-sited wind power to power anywhere from 137,000 to over 308,000 homes, depending on the home’s efficiency. However, North Carolina is currently facing the most extreme, anti-wind energy legislation in the country, in the form of Senate Bill 1068.
In its original form, this bill would have created a statewide permitting process for the construction of wind farms in North Carolina. After intense political pressure, the bill underwent significant changes in the final days of the 2009 session. The bill now includes a provision that would alter the Mountain Ridge Protection Act to place a restrictive height requirement on turbines that can be placed on North Carolina mountain ridges. If Senate Bill 1068 passes in its current form, the bill would create a de facto ban on commercial and community scale wind turbines on North Carolina ridges.
Health Benefits
Wind power does not produce any air pollution, unlike coal-fired power plants. Thousands of premature deaths from lung disease and tens of thousands of asthma attacks, primarily in children, across Appalachia every year due from coal-burning pollution. Mercury from these plants gets into our water and fish supplies, causing learning disabilities and a variety of neurological disorders in thousands of children born in the Southeast every year. More electricity generation from wind means less pollution from coal-fired power plants.
Economic Benefits
The Appalachian State University Energy Center conducted a study to identify wind potential in the mountains of North Carolina. They only looked at parcels over fifty acres in size and within five miles of electrical transmission. They excluded areas such the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Appalachian Trail (with a one mile buffer), Spruce Fir habitat, significant national historic areas, important bird areas and federal and state lands.
The study identified 768MW of wind energy-which translates to $1.26 billion in capital Investment, $8.2 million in annual local property taxes, and 350 new long term jobs for Western North Carolina.
Global Benefits
If more electricity is generated by wind, less global warming carbon dioxide will be release from coal-fired power plants. A 2010 report from the U.S. Department of Energy found that a 27 percent commitment to renewable energy in the western United States would translate into carbon emission reductions of 25 to 45 percent.
North Carolinians Support Wind
In a recent telephone survey conducted by Public Policy Polling, 84% of respondents from a random sample of the 24 counties of western North Carolina expressed a desire to see more wind energy in the state.
This response was even higher than solar and hydro-power, and is higher than the responses for coal, natural gas, and nuclear combined. When asked specifically about constructing large wind turbines on mountain ridge land, 70% of respondents felt that the practice should either be encouraged or allowed in appropriate circumstances.
In a second survey for Watauga County, N.C.—the location of the only large wind turbine and the location of the first megawatt-scale wind turbine in the state—responses were equally positive. Eighty-seven percent of residents have either a strongly positive or positive view of wind turbines, and 87% of respondents support the current large wind turbine. Only 3% of respondents do not support the turbine.
North Carolina