Wind energy and solar energy — we need them both

Two recent editorials, Greg King’s earlier this summer in the North Coast Journal and Ken Miller’s on Sept. 27 in the Times-Standard, argue that solar energy is preferable over wind energy. Both writers claim that we don’t need the Terra-Gen wind project proposed for Monument Ridge near Scotia, that solar energy could serve our renewable energy needs. That’s a big misconception.

Don’t get me wrong. Solar energy is wonderful and important; it’s been my life’s work to teach people about solar energy and get it deployed. But solar doesn’t come close to providing the renewable energy we need for our county.
Here’s the energy arithmetic. The Terra-Gen project is projected to produce 407,000 megawatt-hours per year of electricity, almost half the county’s total electricity use. For comparison, the two large solar projects that the Schatz Energy Research Center and local partners have brought to Humboldt County — the photovoltaic array installed at the Blue Lake Rancheria and the array that is slated to be installed at the county airport — cover nine acres and total three megawatts and they have been subsidized by $10M from the California Energy Commission. They will produce about 3,700 megawatt-hours per year, less than 1% of the energy that the wind project will produce. We would need over 100 times as much solar to equal the output of Terra-Gen’s project. That’s neither reasonable nor affordable.

How about rooftop solar? Let’s do some dreaming. There are about 63,000 homes in the county. If we put three kilowatts of PV panels (around nine panels) on every roof (and who would pay for this is a good question) and every roof were sunny and not shaded (which isn’t true), we would generate about 230,000 megawatt-hours per year. Even in this hypothetical and impossible scenario, we’d generate only around 57% of the energy of Terra-Gen. Solar just cannot replace wind power in Humboldt County.
Both Mr. King and Mr. Miller also write about the impacts that the Terra-Gen project will produce. They’re right; there will be impacts. There are always impacts when we generate electricity and we live in an increasingly electricity-intensive society. We have to compare the impacts to those of generating power in other ways, like damming rivers or burning fossil fuels.

And we in Humboldt County have to own up to our responsibilities. We need to generate the power we use and not dump our impacts in someone else’s backyard. We’re fortunate to have a powerful local wind resource and, in my opinion, a carefully planned wind farm to utilize it.

But there’s a much larger issue here. Climate change is occurring much faster than anyone imagined. Our planet is on fire and we can’t be arguing over which fire hose to use. The solution needs to be all of the above — solar energy, wind energy, net zero energy homes, energy efficient lights and appliances, electric cars and buses, and everything else we can think of.

We must save our world for our children and future generations. This local wind project will green our energy supply and make us much more energy secure. It’s a small step in the right direction and it’s one that we should be proud to take.

Peter Lehman is the Founding Director of the Schatz Energy Research Center at Humboldt State University. The opinions expressed are his own and not those of the Schatz Center or HSU.