201906230709...

This story caught my attention because I like reading about such things. A little over half-way through was something that made me mad. So mad that I actually subscribed to the digital version of the Wall Street Journal so I could create this post. (The alternative was to type all the words myself.) It demonstrated to me that some projects, no matter the benefit to society - or the planet - can be stymied by one rich asshole politician.

____________________

Building the Wind Turbines Was Easy. The Hard Part Was Plugging Them In

In the Oklahoma panhandle, one entrepreneur saw a future fueled by cheap and clean energy. But there was a big snag.

By Russell Gold
Updated June 22, 2019 12:01 am ET

Adapted from “SUPERPOWER: One Man’s Quest to Transform American Energy” by Wall Street Journal reporter Russell Gold, to be published by Simon & Schuster, Inc., on June 25.

When Michael Skelly first visited the Oklahoma panhandle in 2009, he gazed at a giant grid with squares of corn and grassland. There were few houses, one every mile or so. Half had been abandoned decades ago by homesteaders who gave up to the elements. This pancake-flat landscape, he thought, held the key to overturning one of the greatest misconceptions of the climate-change crisis.

For years, the wind and the sun were widely dismissed as niche sources of power that could never fill America’s vast need for energy. But now the cost of solar and wind power had fallen so much that the U.S. could substantially reduce harmful emissions while also lowering the price of electricity. Put it all on a big enough grid, one that could use the ample sunshine from the desert Southwest to keep Atlanta’s office towers cool, or the persistent wind in the Great Plains to run Midwestern factories, and you’d address the often-repeated critique of renewable energy: The sun isn’t always shining and the wind isn’t always blowing. On a big enough grid, that’s not an issue. There is wind somewhere and the clouds don’t cover the entire U.S.

What started as an idea, with Skelly and a couple of others hunched over a kitchen table, soon grew into a company with dozens of employees. Skelly told them never to refer to the company as a startup. They would encounter powerful utilities and politicians in coming years, he said, and as Clean Line employees they needed to take themselves seriously.

The company made good progress. Clean Line gathered state approvals and prepared to file for a federal blessing. Fifteen wind developers expressed interest in building in the Oklahoma panhandle to deliver power on the proposed extension cord. Skelly approached the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federal power agency. In 2009, he told them he could deliver electricity at $70 a megawatt-hour. By 2014, wind technology had improved so quickly that he was talking to the TVA about $40. His offer price would soon be significantly cut again, to below what the TVA paid for coal power.

Here's the part that made me mad...

Skelly was regularly visiting TVA’s headquarters and received a warm reception from the TVA head. Negotiations seemed to be going well. But the TVA was getting a decidedly different message from Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Republican who had a longstanding dislike for wind turbines. He had bought a vacation property on Nantucket Island, off the Massachusetts coast, in 2001. The week he closed on the property, news broke about Cape Wind, a plan to build 170 wind turbines in the middle of Nantucket Sound. A year later, after being elected to the U.S. Senate, he introduced a bill that would make life difficult for offshore wind developers. Over the next few years, he kept up his campaign against them. “The windmills we are talking about today are not our grandmother’s windmills,” he warned. Sen. Alexander would make sure that Skelly and Clean Line didn’t have it easy.

Link to entire (kinda long) article HERE.

(Unfortunately, you might not be allowed to read it unless you have reading "privileges".)