Commentary: Energy — Why ownership matters

July 03, 2008 03:12 am

— Clean Up the River Environment’s involvement with advancing renewable energy in the Upper Minnesota River Watershed was originally developed as a strategic response to the question, “If not Big Stone II, then what?”
Our answer is that American Energy for the 21st century has the potential to benefit the rural communities of the Upper Minnesota River Watershed and, in contrast to the coal imported from Wyoming and burned in South Dakota, it can be clean, renewable, sustainable, distributed, and to every extent possible, owned and to the benefit of the people who live here in Minnesota.
The second-most frequently asked question is, “What does renewable energy have to do with clean water?” In the beginning the simple answer was, “Coal equals mercury; wind does not. Our watershed is impaired by mercury and it is consistent with CURE’s mission to protect the river from further damage.”
The bigger answer is that the relationship between all forms of energy production and water quality are part of the very complex web that all of us weave.
Big Stone I mercury emissions directly pollute our surface waters. Its contribution to global warming affects water quality in broad and subtle ways including the rising water temperature affect on habitat, species sustainability, algae blooms and fish food supplies. Drought and convective rain events associated with global warming affect the health of our watershed and contribute to unstable flows into the river watershed system.
More directly, the 3.2 billion gallon draw down of water from Big Stone Lake required to operate the proposed Big Stone II plant would not only affect that lake’s ecosystem but also the water necessary to sustain the flow in the first miles of the Minnesota River.
Increased corn production to fuel the growing demand for ethanol also raises concerns. We question the ability of local aquifers to provide adequate water. Already in just one short year of operation, the Granite Falls ethanol plant had to build a pipeline to the Minnesota River to get its water after the local aquifer was exhausted. Already we are hearing reports of plans to plant Conservation Reserve Program acres to corn. The sediment load in the Minnesota River, which is already at record levels, seems poised to increase even more.
Wind energy development has none of these environmental hazards associated with it. Biomass energy development can lead to the planting of harvestable permanent vegetative cover on highly erodible land, there by decreasing run off into the river.
But CURE is increasingly coming to understand that the promise of renewable energy to deliver cleaner water is clouded by a troubling question: Who will own the renewable energy infrastructure in this region?
At CURE we have long understood that meeting our mission to preserve and restore the landscape of the river watershed can only be fully accomplished within the wider context of sustainability. It is imperative that we work to balance the requirements of our river environment with the social and economic needs of the people who live here.
In the words of Wendell Berry: “The land cannot prosper unless the people using the land are prosperous.”
Demographic and economic statistics show a decline in human capital matching the decline in the ecological health of the watershed. As the forces of consolidated agriculture and remote electricity generators combine with public policy that neglects to sustain rural communities and lifestyles, little thought is put into how our actions today steal from the next generation’s ability to pursue a living on this rural landscape.
Consider these enlightening facts gleaned from David Morris of The Institute for Local Self Reliance and his recent paper, “Energizing Rural America — Local Ownership of Renewable Energy Production is the Key.”
• For corn ethanol, farmer ownership in a co-op plant has returns of 10 to one over just delivering the corn to an absentee owned facility. 95 percent of the ethanol plants currently planned are not farmer-owned and are too large to be locally sustainable.
In the future, the national plan will be to offset 25 percent of our liquid transportation fuels from biomass-derived sources. This will require more than 2,500 biofuel facilities, which under local ownership could help sustain broad sectors of the rural population.
• Wind energy has similar promise. If wind replaced only 15 percent of current electricity needs, 100,000 turbines would be required at a capital investment of over $400 billion. Return to local investors would be 10 times that over simply leasing farm land to a large corporate investor with significant recirculating returns of that money to local rural communities.
CURE represents a region of western Minnesota that was home to some of the first and oldest of the farmer co-op elevators in the nation. The Upper Minnesota River Watershed was home to the development of the first rural electric cooperatives in the nation. The region was the hotbed of the Farmers Holiday Movement which called for the formation of Production Credit Associations and led to the establishment of several rural telephone cooperatives. Many of these cooperatives still serve our region today and we continue to reap the benefits of local ownership from them.
In the spirit of this history of local control and cooperative ownership, CURE is calling for the development of sound policies that will encourage the broadest possible ownership in our renewable energy future.
CURE believes that there is a direct correlation between local ownership, rural prosperity and the resulting benefits to a healthy watershed. Now that the Renewable Energy Standard has been signed by Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, the effort to state our clear desire for local ownership in the development and delivery of our renewable energy system has begun. On behalf of the Upper Minnesota River Watershed, its communities, its people and the generations to follow, CURE is saying “ownership matters.”

Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.