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Energy needs vs. landscape; Giant turbines may be great for environment but not for neighborhood 

They are an environmentalist’s dream but possibly a neighborhood nightmare.

Clean and renewable, wind power turbines from 30 feet to 300 feet tall could pepper the Sonoma County landscape, especially at higher, visually prominent locations.

Their kilowatt-hours of electricity would be carbon-free and completely sustainable, wind power advocates say, but their presence might require a profound shift in sensibilities.

“You’re not going to ignore them,” said Alexandra von Meier, associate professor of energy management and design at Sonoma State University.

Von Meier said the county is speckled with prospective wind turbine sites and suggested that local governments should “make it easy” to tap the wind with whirling machines.

That notion, she said, could set off NIMBY (not in my back yard) alarms from Petaluma to Point Arena. But the era in which electricity is generated by large, ugly, greenhouse gas-belching power plants in someone else’s neighborhood may be ending, she said.

Small-scale solar and wind power facilities may be “the wave of the future,” said John Haig, Sonoma County General Services energy and sustainability manager.

While county agencies are contemplating large wind turbines on land they own, businesses and private landowners could also fit small installations on their property, a pattern known as “distributed generation,” said Cordel Stillman of the Sonoma County Water Agency.

The county may need to “balance the need” for sustainable energy versus pristine landscapes, a potentially tough choice, Haig said.

“We have beautiful hillsides and ridgelines,” he said.

What we might need, von Meier said, is “a shift in consciousness.”

By Guy Kovner

The Press Democrat

27 May 2008

This article is the work of the source indicated. Any opinions expressed in it are not necessarily those of National Wind Watch.

The copyright of this article resides with the author or publisher indicated. As part of its noncommercial educational effort to present the environmental, social, scientific, and economic issues of large-scale wind power development to a global audience seeking such information, National Wind Watch endeavors to observe “fair use” as provided for in section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law and similar “fair dealing” provisions of the copyright laws of other nations. Send requests to excerpt, general inquiries, and comments via e-mail.

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