Renewable Energy, Indiana: Cutting Off Our Noses To Spite Our Faces?

 County resistance plagues Indiana renewable push (News From The States) describes why Indiana remains an importer of energy.

Seventy-two of 92 counties have moratoriums or bans on such installations, according to legislative energy head Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso. Several attempts this year to intervene against blockages died, but lawmakers are starting to recognize the need for diversification. 

 “As long as there’s demand for renewables, if we can’t have them here, we’ll buy it from somewhere else – our folks will be paying the transmission costs plus the possibility of more,” said Soliday.

He said organized anti-renewable energy movements travel the state, attending county commissioners’ meetings, adding that they “can be quite unkind, threatening and so forth.”

While debate continues, the price of electricity is rising in Indiana. Once among the lowest in the United States, the state now ranks 28th for cost.

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Nearby Ripley County approved solar energy regulations last year.  County Commission President Mark Horstman said the three-person body felt their county needed its own standards....

“As an elected Republican in a conservative area that votes 78% Republican, we don’t want the green energy stuff in our county,” Horstman continued. “The people that elected me do not want it in our county. On the other side — we don’t have the demographics or topographies for it. We don’t have vast lots of land in our area.”

“So, you’re basically telling somebody – your biggest investment you’re ever going to make, your home, now you’re going to look at solar panels across the street,” he said, citing a belief that the panels lower surrounding property values. “I’m not opposed if they want to put a 1,000 acre solar farm in the middle of 5,000 acres and two people live there, that’s fine, but we don’t have that type of area in Ripley County.”

But I do agree with this guy:

Decatur County resident and farm owner Albert Armand emphasized he’s not against solar, but concerned about preserving valuable farmland.

“My view on these solar installations is that there’s a place for them and the best place is not a corn field,” he said. “We have a lot of ground we could use. We can put solar panels on roofs, over parking lots — if we install these on farm ground we’re going to eliminate a lot of crop acres.” 

 I have been saying something similar for the past decade and a half: put renewables in the cities; put them on brownfields. I would have any excess energy distributed by city utilities - those who install renewable energy on their buildings get a cut in their property taxes and those who do not install pay for the electricity, hopefully in an amount that makes up for the cut in property taxes. Doing this means thinking of rooftops in terms of acreage; maybe we have too little imagination in Indiana.

Perhaps some help for this problem also: Indianapolis air pollution among worst in U.S., report finds (Axios Indianapolis)?

sch 5/5