Seven Days; Wind Power and Ralph Nader

But. Hi, I'm Christie George and this is Seven Days. This week we'll see if the answers to some of our energy problems are blowin' in the wind and we'll look at the controversy over Ralph Nader's latest efforts to rally the troops. Will and. The earth. Was. The. Last. Joining us this week is Patty Wentz, who's a reporter at Willamette Week newspaper. Steve Locke covers the legislature for the Salem Statesman Journal. David Sarasohn is an associate editor for The Oregonian, and Jim Hyde is a reporter for KPTV Channel 12 in Portland. Between the northwest drought and the deregulation crisis in California, this has been a tough year for electricity generation. But

at the same time the price per kilowatt hour has been going up, so have 400 new windmills, and what's being billed as the world's biggest wind farm. It's just a few hours down the Columbia Gorge. You know those amber waves of grain everyone always talks about? Well, they're here, on the eastern Oregon and Washington border near Walla Walla. But while some people out here just see endless wheat fields, others see dollar signs. Because as rancher Billy Hinman learned about six years ago, there is an invisible commodity out here. Wind. "Well, they kept coming around and asking me if I'd like to get, into wind towers, and I really thought it was a joke." Billy Hinman is leasing the air rights to some of his grazing land high on the hills above the Columbia River. Once construction is done the state line wind farm will be the largest in the world and then Billy Hinman's cows can come back onto

his land and graze to their heart's content. "It's our understanding that the cattle can walk right in amongst them and rub on them and make themselves at home, I guess. We hope they like it." [woman]Wind is suddenly a boom business. Take the developer of state line Florida Power and Light Energy. You can't get much farther from the company's home office in Juneau Beach, Florida than Walla Walla Washington. But Florida Power has been building and investing in wind from Wisconsin to Kansas to California. [2nd woman]We are the largest producer of wind power in the country. We now own about 600 megawatts of wind power and by the end of this year we'll have probably another eight hundred megawatts online. [man]It's no longer the kind of resource that, you know, people are just fooling around with to see how it works. This is energy sized at, you know, the way that you would if you were building a gas plant.

[woman ]Dave Kwame's company, Pacific Power Marketing, has already agreed to buy all the power the state line wind farm can generate; some two hundred sixty two megawatts. Once you discount for when the wind isn't blowing, Stateline will yield about 100 megawatts per year, and wind goes up fast. Florida Power leased the land for state line in November. When California started seeing its first brownouts. The company built roads in February and broke ground for the first windmill in April. By July, dozens of windmills were already putting power back into the western grid. Deregulation is pushing the wind boom because dereg means consumers can choose their power company, and some want to choose renewable energy. [male]And this is changing kind of a mindset with utilities, whereby they're looking around for resources that they can blend with theirs, that they already have, and and create a green-up their,

their portfolio. [woman]The Straight Line project is just a few miles away from Oregon's first wind farm: Vansickle. It went up three years ago when electricity deregulation was just getting going. Thor Hinkley's company Portland General Electric which is owned by gas and wind joint Enron, buys all the power from Vansickle. [male]Willingness to pay studies all through the 90s have shown that up to 75 percent of the public is willing to pay a premium to get pollution-free power, to get wind power, to get renewable resources. [woman]Seventy five percent may say they want green power but so far only one percent of PGE's residential customers and 200 business customers actually put their money where their mouth is. But that isn't stopping wind developers. [male]Renewable technologies that, you know, were at one time considered a boutique resource or feel good resources, they aren't anymore. Companies like FPL energy and Pacific Power Marketing are committing to this because it's a good business decision. [woman]Twenty years ago, wind cost about 50 cents a kilowatt hour to generate. But now the

price is a nickel or less. That's cheap even compared to gas. During the recent deregulation debacle, Californians routinely paid forty three cents and sometimes as much as a dollar a kilowatt hour for natural gas. [male]There were areas that were just, just ripe for wind development, and as soon as the power costs got high enough, power prices got high enough, there were developers ready to go in and put down some wind turbines. woman]After the windmills are up and running, the natural resource is free and unlimited. And there's a federal tax credit that rebates 1.7 cents per kilowatt hour for every new windmill for 10 years, which means wind producers get back a third of their generating costs for the next decade. But that federal tax credit expires at the end of the year. Florida Power has friends back at home. [2nd woman]We're based in Jeb Bush's state - we have great connections in terms of our relationship with Governor Bush.

[1st woman]And Jeb's brother George was a big fan of wind, back in Texas. [2nd woman]We're the largest producer of wind power in Texas as well. And much of that stemmed from Governor Bush's support, and President Bush's support when he was governor of Texas. [1st woman]Even so, Florida Power is lobbying hard to keep that tax credit. All energy sources get some federal support, With the least environmentally friendly fossil fuels getting the biggest subsidies. [male]We need to put our public policy emphasises in these emerging technologies that really need a boost. [woman]But some environmentalists are still uneasy about wind. It may be cleaner than coal or oil, but wind does have one downside. Some think the earliest commercial wind producers never anticipated what are euphemistically called 'avian issues' or 'bird blade interactions'. [male]The Golden Eagle is extremely vulnerable because they fly at the critical altitude. They get focused on their prey and they run into the blades.

[woman]Dennis White is with the Columbia Gorge Audubon Society. While it supports renewable power, including wind, the group is also calling for much stronger planning and local input into siting new wind, including studies on the impact of multiple wind farms. [male]They are huge industrial complexes with row upon row of mechanical devices that are sticking 200 to 250 feet in the air. The colors you use, the speed of the rotor, and where you place the turbines all go into whether or not you're bird friendly. [woman]Modern windmills have been redesigned. For one thing, exterior blades move much more slowly than they used to, in hopes of reducing bird mortality. [male]This device is on the inside of the machine. The rotor would be outside there. The rotation of the rotor comes into this gear box, and using this device you increase the speed to feed the generator, as opposed to prior technology where the gear boxes were

smaller, but the rotors had to spin at higher revolutions per minute. [womn]And sometimes windmill blades are painted in alternating black and white, but it's still not clear birds see them. Even more important than windmill design maybe siting. State Line and Vansickle are both located off major flyways, but Dennis White says those won't be the last wind farms. [male]The State Line project covers 50 square miles, thirty thousand acres that are given over to energy generation. Some of us see it as the biggest land grab since the settlers came to this country in a covered wagon. The Achilles heel of wind power is going to be when they proposed projects and the high real estate district. You'll never see wind power develop, say on the west hills, west of Portland, or on the upscale areas of the coast. [woman]Nationally wind is expected to grow by 60 percent this year, and worldwide, wind has quadrupled in the last five years. But for now wind is a welcome

neighbor for farmers and ranchers like Billy Hinman. [male]Then I got to thinking, well maybe there is something to it. You're going to have to realize a little more income off the ground, and to do that you'll have to subdivide and irrigate some of it, or sell home sites, or something. Actually I think the towers will help us keep the place in one unit instead of having to split it up and subdivide it. So I said sure, I'd like to, I could sure use the money.[laugh] [woman]Jim, is there an irony here after moving so slowly on renewables like wind, all of a sudden we're moving very quickly? [male]Well yeah, I mean I suppose there is some irony to it, but they've been so eager for any kind of legal generated electricity. You know we don't care where it comes from. Just give us more power for the grid. And certainly this project

is like... near to the Vansickle project and it uses some of the same principles. But they will they will tell us that, you know, the technology is better now, we're more efficient, it costs less to generate the power. The birds, the avian issues we spoke of are supposedly, according to the statistics, that Pacific Corps and uh the contractor are providing us, the birds are not so discomforted by by running into these things as often. They can't perch on them, for one thing. It's a pretty difficult place to set your feathers, so. [woman]Well yeah, and they're siting them better too. They're siting them off fly ways. [male] That's a factor and they did incorporate that, all kidding aside, they did try to set them properly, and set them over there were you know it generates some money for the farmers. The contracting was a big job and it's going to put something like what 262 to 300, they were telling us earlier, 300 megawatts into the system, and that's that's nothing to sneeze at anymore.

[woman]Yeah it's a very interesting thing to me, that you have sort of two factions of the environmental movement now a little bit at odds with each other. You have the sort of, the energy efficiency crowd saying this is, this is what, we've been asking for this for 25 years. And you have the Wildlife Conservation people saying, "You know whats, they're very pretty and they're nice, and you know, here and there, there's nothing better than a than a lovely windmill. But you know, if you start seeing these things on a grand scale, in the, you know, the sort of industrial scale, the gas plant scale, you know, the 10 to 20 percent of our energy mix scale. This could mean windmills everywhere. [male]I don't think you can see the gorge lined with them if that's what you mean. [2nd male]But there's the question of scale, seems to be what is crucial here. I mean when people talk about the Dakotas being able to supply enough power to fuel the entire country, and does this involve completely covering the Dakotas with these things... Apparently there is in fact a fair amount of space that is taken up, and more space when you try to get to a level of

significant production. [male]But what's the alternative? There's... [1st male]Every single energy source has some by-product, and this one appears right now to have perhaps fewer than, certainly hydro with the salmon issues, and nuclear power with safety issues, for all of that. [woman]Even solar, people say, has problems too, where they're environmental in nature, but I mean I think they're cleaner, they're one step cleaner than wind is probably... [male]But I'll point out that it's, the fuel is free, the price of natural gas is going to go up and down as it is it has historically. But as long as they can, they can get the, as long as the wind blows, which it does sufficiently, steadily, to power the 450 windmills, well... [woman]Yeah I found it fascinating that they don't really want windy windy areas. They don't want high winds, or hurricane winds, they want, yeah, the windmills start turning at like nine miles an hour, and they turn 'em off at 50 or 55 miles an hour because they, you know, they probably, the blades would fly off in all directions or something, but they... [male]I saw that movie! [woman]Did you? [male]Yeah, that was great.. [laughter]

[woman]It's 22 miles an hour. That's the kind of nice slow steady 22 miles an hour, I mean that's not that windy, really. [male] And this project is also a good way for Pacific Corps to get in the game because they have mainly coal- fired power plants generating their electricity, and this adds a clean green component for which they can also charge a somewhat higher 'green' price. It's a feel good price for those of us concerned about it. It's a feel better price for Pacific Corps as well. [woman]That's a really interesting point. They they do charge more. PGE also, Portland General also charges more and in fact should they be charging more? I mean the, the reality is, in the current energy market, I think wind might be cheaper now than any other sources. They get subsidies and they're charging, uh, value- added costs to the consumers. [male] I don't think they need to anymore at 5 cents a kilowatt hour. But we also should note that the state of Oregon is going to begin taxing us on our electricity bills every month. Three percent of our bill is going to go into this 'public purposes,' and one of the public purposes is supposed to be to aid renewable energy. That won't start, I guess, until next year now, but that's a lot of money that's going to be

available to develop projects or for maybe mitigation of some of the environmental impacts. [other male]But this has been a consistent pattern, sort of a cycle where you know all kinds of renewable and new energy sources that when the basic prices of your core energy, your fossil fuels, shoot up, you know people put money into it, and this, this is the future. But then when they come down again, as so far they always have, you're left hanging out there which in this case is sort of literally true as well. I mean, what happens if prices do come down sharply and you are obliged to charge a premium there? [woman]I think this is where the public opinion and the conservation ethic that we have, especially in the Northwest, will come into play because it's true, people aren't signing up for the wind power, but frankly I don't think PGE has promoted it very well. I went on their website this afternoon to see how I could do it because I confess I'm not doing it yet. It was very confusing and I buy these $5 shares and part of the money goes into developing more power. I mean, if I buy wind power, I want to know that my dollars are

going to support the project. So I think they could do a better job of marketing. But because the need is great now, and these go online very quickly, and you can take them out quickly if you need to, people, I think, are going to be more supportive of that. I mean Trojan is going to be with us forever. If we find a cleaner, a cleaner method than wind power later down the road, we can just pull them out of the farms. [2nd woman]I'm not so interested in the politics of this. George Bush was a very big wind fan in Texas. I was actually there before he was sworn in as president, when he was still governor of Texas and interviewing environmentalists, who basically didn't have much good to say about him, but they said you know the one thing about George Bush is he loves wind, 'cause there's a lot of wind in Texas and wind producers in Texas including Enron were his favorite utility. You know I have built a lot of stuff there. But he cut the budget for renewables. And this, this tax subsidy, you know, incentive tax credits that they're getting right now, um, I think Bush, it's in Bush's package, but they're not so sure

Congress will renew that. I mean I am just struck by what's going on with him and I don't I don't know. Does anybody want to hazard a guess? [male] ...the wind power in Washington D.C... [woman laughs] Ah. [male] Well, I mean this is sort of the the question about priorities, which is that when you actually look at the energy bill, the energy bill which moved through the house, you know, it's got all this money in it, and it's got six or seven times as much money for fossil fuel bounties or encouragement as it adds for anything else, as it has for the renewables, as it has for conservation. And you have to think this is actually a pretty clear indication of what the administration's priorities are, you know, whatever he does he's done in Texas. [male]But you have to say this is not a wacky experimental technology anymore. Enron, one of the biggest energy companies now in the world is investing heavily in solar energy and wind energy so what does that tell us. These are these are sources that are available now and in immediate future so the Bush administration is going to come around on that later.

[male] It's also difficult to tie energy policy to to the economy, to the marketplace. I'll date myself by recalling in the late 70s, in western Colorado, they were going to generate oil from oil shale. They were going to crush the rock and squeeze the oil out of it because the Arab oil embargo, the first of them, was on. Hey what a great idea, and the government spent millions and millions hundreds of millions of dollars looking at technology, doing the leases doing the E-I-s-es,[?] and then the price of petroleum came down and the oil shale projects in western Colorado.... [woman]and Ronald Reagan went away too. [male]Yeah, that was part of it. He stopped some it that too. Before we moved our next topic, I just want to ask one quick question about BPA and just the extent to which they've put out all these bids for wind. They've said, you know, we'll take all you can get us, basically; and I just wonder if anybody thinks they're really driving wind production in the Northwest or whether we're just a happy friendly place to put windmills because we're so green. [male] Well you know there are two things here. The first is that BPA can look at its numbers and see that they are committed to deliver more energy than they're

confident they're going to be able to produce. So they're actually a pretty considerable market here. And second that BPA is located someplace where there is that reliable amount of wind. So I think this makes them a steady and quite confident customer. And they were cut short-handed with the California deregulation crisis, they had to go on the market and buy that high power which is sticking us with higher bills in our utilities, even though we were relying upon hydro power ... [woman] and that, that's your federal energy policy on wind. Let's, let's talk about another kind of green power. Ralph Nader made headlines again locally and nationally when more than 7000 people paid $10 to hear him speak at Portland's Rose Garden Arena. [alt.woman]Organizers were thrilled with the turnout, which was just slightly smaller than a rally last September that drew 10,000 supporters and helped kick off a national tour for Nader's unsuccessful presidential bid. After the election many

Democrats blame Nader for siphoning off support from Al Gore and possibly even costing him the election. But Nader says his only regret is that he didn't receive more votes himself. He won't say now if he is running for president in 2004. Instead, calling the recent Portland rally simply the first of several meant to spark citizen involvement in politics. [alt.woman]Oregon was one of the few places where Ralph Nader got his 5 percent of the vote last fall. Patty, you interviewed Nader before last week's rally. Is he, uh, Is he getting some momentum or is he just going to be a thorn in the Democrat's side forever. [patty] Well I think it's too early to say whether or not he's getting some momentum. It was significant and I was surprised at the people that showed up at the rally. It would have been very easy for people to blow this off, especially in the middle of August. And I think he is trying to build a movement that is larger than just his presidential campaign. He definitely intends to continue being a Democrat or a

thorn in the Democrat's side. Not a Democrat, he doesn't want to be a... [woman]Well he's not even a Green, so maybe, well right, maybe he is a Green. He's not a Green, and I think that there should be a distinction between you know Ralph Nader running for president and Ralph Nader running this sort of civic movement that he's trying to start, and the Green Party as it is now. He's been very clear that the current structure of the Green Party doesn't work for him and he's trying to pull it along with him. And there have been some successes here in Oregon. They have run for conservation district, in the water district, which I think that's actually pretty smart for a Green Party candidate. [alt woman] It is, and I would assume that is the real grassroots party-building, when you're running for the soil and and conservation.... you know, soil and water conservation district and you make it, those are the future, you know, US senators, right? [male] Actually, I'm....[laughter] [woman] OK. [male] Yes, I mean, I think for each of these things there are places where nobody could name their soil and water. [woman] OK, I could. [male]...commissioners ...You could?

[confused voices]. [woman] What I should have said about this was in Tualatin, where there was a huge battle over drinking water in the Willamette. So that, right, that is not a low profile position anymore. So if Lisa McMellan [sp?] not sure if that's the name...., she could launch them into something bigger, theoretically. The soil conservation district -- that's more problematic.... [Patty?] This, is this ... does this rally mark a turning point? I'm... because I just read all the articles before the rally which were kind of saying he's running for president he's just a pain, you know, uh, nobody will show up, you know. It was between the lines and then afterwards really he did quite a good turn out there and I wonder... And you're saying, you know, it is a civic movement and it is different from a presidential run, and I kind of wonder why I say... [alt. woman] I'm saying he's trying to start a civic movement. If this happened in Chicago or some other place that isn't Portland, then I will be more convinced. [Patty?] And... but he will try to spin this into more rallies and I guess what's a little early to weigh in and say that. But what do we think -- there are other...?

[alt.woman] When I was in Michigan in last fall, that was a battleground state,I was shocked, and amazed at how many Nader signs I saw, a lot, yard signs in.... Maybe I should have been Detroit, Ann Arbor, Lansing -- places like that. I guess that's Union country but he claimed some credit for Debbie Stabenow's victory in the U.S. Senate in Michigan, and Maria Cantwell in Washington, by polling those progressives. [male]There's some of that anti-NAFTA affect and other issues beyond the Green Party platform that generated some of that support from Nader I think. [woman?] And it's clear that these people are here because they want to see Ralph. They didn't come to Portland I don't think to see someone from a grunge band in Seattle. I mean, in all due respect they were really there to see him, even though they, the other entertainers had the you know celebrity power. They really respect this man and what he's done over decades now and so the question is, does that translate if there is someone else besides him running for the Green mantle that they bring out people. That remains to be seen. But he clearly is mobilizing people for to be active

and that is pretty, and isn't that common on the left in the United States, and see that kind of, you know, thousands of people coming for an event and what they have to pay for. Pretty pretty impressive. [woman] Yeah. In your interview you really probe this with him. And I thought he was, very clear on the need for a strong progressive force to sort of keep the Democrats from moving, all, ever more Center or ever more right. And I thought that was really, he was very clear that that was really his mission. [alt.woman] He was right. Which I think he's been clear about from the start, frankly , when there are a lot of critics who said, you know, OK, you really scared Al Gore, you really scared the Democrats so a couple of weeks before he should've pulled out, and then Gore would have won. I think that's a strategy that would have worked once and he never would have been able to use that again. I think he believes you have to play hardball with the Democrats, and this is the best way to do it. [male]The problem with Nader's position on this is that it's very hard to say that, you know, you're, you're responsible for the Democrats

controlling the Senate, and pointing to Maria Cantwell and Debbie Stabenow. and say this is important, and then say, but it wasn't important whether Democrats were elected president. I mean it's either significant to you or it's not. And if you're a third party, presumably you're prepared to say it doesn't matter. [woman] And it was my understanding that when he brings up that argument, it's always in response to 'you lost the election for the Democrats.' [alt.woman/confused voices Right, he coupled[?] that, and then you said [unclear].. If you're going to blame me for that, you've got to credit me for the Senate. I think that, that's right he's coupling it. But I have a.... My question of course is, is, did Al Gore lose the election? I mean I'm not sure, I'm not clear on that yet. [laughter]. I'm reluctant to say that Nader was the spoiler. I mean, well, it wasn't the Supreme Court. [male] Well but ... at any rate, you know, Al Gore is not in office. He's off in Europe growing a beard. [?] which, you know, George Bush isn't, and Ralph Nader isn't even doing that. And Nader can say, you know, plausibly and quite accurately that there were a lot of things that, you know,

Gore did, which hurt him more than things that Nader did. And but there, too, you get into problems of strategy, problems of calculation. I mean when he suggests to you that there are 13 times as many Florida Democrats voted for Bush as voted for Nader, and what are you blaming him for, then the obvious strategy for Florida Democrats, is to go get back the ones who voted for Bush, and not worry about the ones who voted for Nader. So as this moves into actual calculation, there always seem to be some flaws popping up in it.. [alt.male]This is always going to be an issue for people in third parties in the United States, always going to be accused of being a spoiler. And frankly, the ones who complain the loudest are the ones that are hurt by it. I didn't hear the Democrats complain so loud about Ross Perot when he was bleeding votes with money from the Republicans. But this [is a man?] in Oregon at least, if those people want to be more than self-serving they should look at this instant runoff idea that the Green Party is promoting and actually the Oregon Constitution allows for it from sometime in the 1910s. People thought about

this and allowed it in the Oregon Constitution, so that you can vote your number one choice and then someone doesn't get 50 percent; then you revert to number two, and then you could, people could vote for a Libertarian or a Green Party, and if there wasn't a majority then the two leaders get to proceed in that way. That way people could vote their conscience and you might actually have a better debate on the campaign trail along the way. [woman] Right, and you get the five percent .... the third party movement start actually getting their five percent. They start qualifying, and they, you're absolute right, they don't get shut out of the debates any more. But they don't take the long view. [male]You remember them, if you all read last couple weeks before the election, the Democrats are going to have a rally they say -- 'Ralph Nader we respect him but he needs to get out of the race and make room for Al.' OK now let's talk about the issues. So they were they were really concerned about how he was going to bleed [?] off that vote, and they weren't taking a long view, they were taking that the election is next Tuesday and you know it is hurting us badly. [woman]There is an extraordinary amount of rage still. [male] Well there was and part of this is not simply a matter of, you know, whether or not he got out, which I don't think people expected

him to do. But there was a sense that toward the end of that election Nader could have been campaigning in New York and California and Texas -- places where he was not only not going to affect the outcome but where he could have brought in the largest number of absolute votes to get him closer to his five percent. And where you actually saw him [in that and...] was Minnesota and Wisconsin and Michigan. [woman/confused voices] the battleground. The battleground. Recent national TV networks didn't care about the race of California as they weren't an issue, so would never want to get any face time, [?]you know, based on TV if you know... [woman] I'm, by the way, I lived in a place that has a version of that instant proportional voting in Cambridge Massachusetts for city offices, and it would take about ten days to count the votes. And it was fun, though. People go down and watch, OK, you know. You know, kind of like Florida. But you know, if it did that, and if people felt good about that system, and it's not a bad system it's its different system, but.... I always like that. [male] You know, it's like, there's another kind of system which which Oregon's

Constitution doesn't allow but which you see in, you know, a few places like New York and California, where you have cross-endorsements, where the Greens could say in a particular race, if you nominate someone we like, we will endorse him. And if you don't nominate someone that we lik, we're going to run our own candidate and you're going to be in a lot of trouble. And in states like New York this has considerably empowered a number of third and fourth and even fifth and six parties. [woman] And we have like 10 seconds left. but does anybody want to hazard a guess as to whether all of this that we just saw in the last week or so, is, is an Oregon phenomenon, a granola belt phenomenon, or going to be a national phenomenon. [male]I think he's going to be able to bring in the large numbers of people in large cities and some other places. [woman] OK. [male] ...[unclear] his credibility with us.[unclear] [woman] Thank you David Saracen, Patty .W.. , Steve Lawn [sp], Jim Hyde. Thanks for joining us this week on seven days and thank you for watching. Good night.

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