Green Mountain College Joins Growing Divestment Movement

Green Mountain College today announced that it is divesting its $3.1 million endowment from fossil fuel companies, making the Poultney liberal arts school the fifth college in the nation — and the second in Vermont, after Sterling College — to endorse a campaign playing out on more than 300 campuses across the country. 

The goal isn't necessarily to hit companies like Mobil, Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell in the pocketbook; most divestment advocates agree that even the wealthiest universities won't make much of a ding in these corporation's profits by divesting. 

“I don’t think financially we can cripple them. They’re so big and so rich,” Vermont resident and environmental activist Bill McKibben told Seven Days in December, as the divestment campaign was gaining steam. Rather, McKibben said divestment represents an “inherently moral call, saying if it’s wrong to wreck the climate, it’s wrong to profit from that wreckage.”

GMC's board of trustees voted on Friday to immediately divest from the top 200 fossil fuel companies targeted in the nationwide divestment campaign headed up by the environmental activism organization founded by McKibben, 350.org. Currently 1 percent of GMC's endowment is tied up in these companies, which collectively own the vast majority of the world's coal, oil and gas reserves.

"We see this as another step in an ongoing effort to connect our investment decisions with our ideals,” said GMC president Paul Fonteyn in a statement released today. "Investing endowment funds on the basis of social, economic and environmental criteria is one of the ways Green Mountain College expresses its values."

Could Germany's "Bottom-Up" Approach to Renewable Energy Work in Vermont?

Here's the problem: Most Vermonters support renewable energy, but when it comes down to individual proposals — be it for wind turbines, solar panels or biomass plants — these projects can be divisive, controversial and unpopular. 

One solution, according to Andreas Wieg, of Berlin's German Cooperative and Raiffeisen Federation: energy cooperatives. Along with Belgian energy consultant Dirk Vansintjan, Wieg is barnstorming through Vermont this week on behalf of the Heinrich Boell Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes civil society and a healthy environment. The pair will be in Burlington tomorrow, April 27, for a forum called "Vermont's Energy Choices: Old Dirty Problems, Clean Energy Solutions." 

Both European energy experts are promoting a grassroots, "bottom-up" approach to the so-called energy transition. Germany in particular has experienced meteoric growth in new cooperatives in recent years; roughly 650 new energy cooperatives have been founded in the last five years, encompassing about 100,000 members.

Wieg attributes the growth to a German law called the Renewable Energy Sources Act, which established a "feed-in tariff" system guaranteeing investors a set per-kilowatt-hour price for energy generation. (Vermont enacted a similar tariff in 2009.) Cooperatives allow residents — typically in rural areas in Germany — to band together and invest collectively in renewable energy projects.

This isn't to say that Germans wholeheartedly embrace renewable energy development. In a telephone interview, Wieg says that, just as in Vermont, Germany has experienced backlash against proposed turbines, solar panels and biomass plants. The problem of acceptance for renewable energy — "especially for wind turbines," Wieg says — "is a huge problem in Germany, and it is one of the key problems we must solve in the future."

Spotted on Route 74: Landowners Protesting the Pipeline

As the lone member of Seven Days' Addison County bureau (I live in Shoreham), I spend a fair amount of time schlepping back and forth along Route 74, the two-lane highway that runs from Cornwall through Shoreham to Lake Champlain. In recent days and weeks, it's been impossible to ignore the growing number of homemade signs sprouting along the roadside. 

The sentiment is clear: Neighbors here are not pleased about the possibility of a natural gas pipeline cutting through this neck of the woods.

The proposed pipeline would carry natural gas — some of which is derived from the controversial drilling technique known as "fracking" — from Middlebury to the International Paper plant in Ticonderoga. Vermont Gas is pushing the pipeline as part of its effort to expand its natural gas network. The company currently serves customers in Franklin and Chittenden counties, and plans to expand south to Middlebury and across the lake.

The pipeline proposal has incited protests from neighbors and environmentalists alike; neighbors are raising concerns about health, safety and environmental impacts, while environmentalists are pointing out the hypocrisy of Vermont's willingness to expand natural gas access after becoming the first state in the nation to ban fracking.

The so-called "Phase II" project (the section of the pipeline that would run to Ticonderoga, which would be funded by International Paper) is still in the early stages of planning. Vermont Gas identified five possible routes for the pipeline, which they narrowed down to two "feasible" options; both would run through Cornwall and Shoreham before cutting under Lake Champlain. The company's timeline calls for selecting a route this spring, securing the necessary permits next year, and constructing the pipeline in 2015. The planning group that is hashing out the Phase II leg will meet next on Thursday, April 25, at 7:30 a.m. at the Addison County Regional Planning Commission.

What do Vermont landowners have to say so far about all of this? The signs speak for themselves. Here's a recent sampling:

IBM Advises City: "Make Burlington Synonymous With Green Tech"

On April 1, the city of Burlington welcomed a team of six international experts from IBM's "Smarter Cities Challenge Initiative." Their goal: Spend three weeks meeting with Burlington stakeholders to figure out how to reduce the city's carbon footprint. Seven Days previewed their arrival in the March 27 story, "IBM Wants to Help Burlington Reduce Its Carbon Footprint — No Strings Attached."

On Thursday night, April 18, after more than 40 meetings with over 150 people, the IBM team reconvened in Contois Auditorium with their findings and recommendations. Their advice was summed up in six words by IBM team member Christian Raetzsch of Prague: "Make Burlington synonymous with green tech." In other words, Raetzsch advised, build off Burlington's unique strengths, culture and infrastructure and use them to create a "new ecosystem" of sustainable, renewable energy.

The IBMers, who hail from Germany, France, the Czech Republic, Brazil and the United States — and whose consulting services over the past two weeks are worth an estimated $400,000 — focused their efforts on five areas: transportation, Burlington's new smart grid metering system, renewable energy, energy efficiency and stormwater lake protection. The team offered up four major recommendations, all of which will be spelled out in greater detail in a written report available within a month. Those recommendations include:

In New Ad, Vallee Hits Sanders on Wind Development

Gasoline magnate Skip Vallee is lashing out once again at Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — this time targeting the senator for opposing a moratorium on industrial wind development.

The Maplefields owner and gasoline distributor has ponied up $10,000 to run a new, 30-second attack ad on WCAX-TV for a week, according to the station. In it, Vallee accuses Sanders of seeking to "industrialize our mountains with giant wind turbines."

"Once we sacrifice our mountains to big corporate interests, it will change Vermont forever," the ad's narrator says. "Tell Bernie Sanders we won't let him and his corporate cronies spoil our Green Mountains." 

The ad appears to be referring to a press conference Sanders held in January to express his opposition to a proposed three-year moratorium on industrial wind development in Vermont. The state legislature has since mostly abandoned that proposal.

Here's what Vallee's ad looks like:

Environmentalists Rally to Landowners' Defense in Vermont Gas Pipeline Fight

In the fight against Vermont Gas' proposed Addison County natural gas expansion, it's largely been landowners piping up with concerns about the project, which would run a natural gas transmission line south through Vergennes and Middlebury — and potentially on to Ticonderoga, N.Y. Until now.

A rally last night at Champlain Valley Union High School illustrated that property owners aren't the only ones balking at the pipeline extension. A growing grassroots coalition of environmentalists and workers' rights advocates, singing solidarity songs and brandishing banners, gathered in front of the high school to make their objections known prior to the start of a Public Service Board public hearing on the project.

Chief among their concerns is the environmental impact of extending a pipeline that carries fossil fuel deeper into Vermont. In particular, the protestors are unhappy that the pipeline would carry a portion of gas obtained in Canada using hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as "fracking" — Vermont Gas concedes that this is the case. Vermont lawmakers last year passed a law making the Green Mountain State the first in the country to ban fracking. It's a technique oil and gas companies love, because it opens up vast reserves of shale gas previously too costly or difficult to extract. Environmentalists have long raised the alarm, however, pointing to problems with groundwater contamination, waste water disposal and even earthquakes in places where fracking is underway.

"I am concerned about the hypocrisy of Vermont to on the one hand ban fracking and on the other use gas from somebody else's devastated landscape," said Rebecca Foster, a Charlotte resident who turned out for the rally and PSB hearing.

First Sound Study at Lowell Shows Wind Project Noise (Mostly) Within Required Standards

The first round of noise studies is in from Kingdom Community Wind, the contentious wind-energy development straddling a ridgeline between Lowell and Albany.

The verdict?

For the most part, the 21 Vestas turbines strung along the spine of the Lowell Mountains did not generate enough noise to violate the conditions under which the Public Service Board approved the Green Mountain Power project. But in a few instances, noise at the remote Northeast Kingdom wind project did spike high enough to violate GMP's permit. 

That’s according to a report GMP filed yesterday (PDF) with the PSB. Wind opponents and neighbors, however, aren’t satisfied with the study, and say the noise generated by the 400-foot-tall turbines is still loud enough to disrupt the quality of life for nearby residents.

“I don’t call it that we have a quality of life anymore,” says Shirley Nelson, who along with her husband, Don, lives on more than 580 acres on the eastern slope of the Lowell Mountains. Their property borders the Lowell project, and the Nelsons have been vocal opponents of it. The Nelsons and GMP are entangled in a lawsuit over disputed ownership along a section of the ridgeline.

“I sometimes wake up with headaches, and can’t sleep the night through anymore. My ears ring almost constantly when the turbines are going,” says Shirley Nelson.

Don Nelson likened the noise inside the couple’s farmhouse to the sound of rushing water. Outside, he says, the turbines sound like “a jet plane on the horizon.” The noise isn’t steady, the Nelsons say, but pulses in and out. Nearby neighbors, they say, have to run a fan at night in order to block out the turbine noise and get to sleep.

One condition of GMP's permit to operate the wind farm is that sound levels not exceed 45 decibels outside of any existing homes near the project and 30 decibels in interior bedrooms. (GMP equates 45 decibels to the ambient noise level inside a library.) The utility must collect noise measurements from the project for at least two weeks, four times a year, for the first two years of operation. GMP hired White River Junction-based Resource Systems Group, Inc., to collect and analyze the first round of noise data, and submitted the data to a third party for confirmation that it was sufficient for a thorough analysis.

Media Note: Green Mountain Power to Pay Barton Chronicle Reporter's Legal Bills

Fourteen months after Green Mountain Power had a Vermont reporter arrested for trespassing, the electric utility company has agreed to foot the reporter's legal bills.

Barton Chronicle editor Chris Braithwaite said Tuesday afternoon he planned to drop a lawsuit against the company after it promised to compensate him $22,500 for legal fees he racked up defending himself against a previously dismissed trespassing charge.

The dispute stems from Braithwaite's December 2011 arrest for failing to leave GMP-owned property on Lowell Mountain as he covered a protest against the company's Kingdom Community Wind project.

In a written statement, Braithwaite called the settlement "a fair resolution of this matter."

GMP spokeswoman Dotty Schnure, meanwhile, said the company's decision to settle the suit in no way indicates it did anything wrong.

"We're confident we would have prevailed based upon all the facts and the law, but we didn't see how it benefits our customers to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to litigate the case," Schnure said.

Vermonters Urge 'Separation of Oil and State' in Climate March on Washington

It was famed Vermont activist and author Bill McKibben who led the 35,000-strong "Forward on Climate" march in Washington on Sunday. But it was the scores of uncelebrated Vermonters who helped infuse the largest-ever outpouring of its kind with a vocal mixture of hope and fear.

Three buses filled with students from the University of Vermont and from Middlebury and St. Michael's colleges made the 23-hour round trip along with three more buses carrying Vermonters of all ages. They came to urge President Obama to stop the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would pump oil extracted from Canadian tar sands 1700 miles to the Gulf of Mexico. Tar sands oil is an especially carbon-rich fossil fuel that, opponents warn, could push the climate crisis to a tipping point.

But the rally alongside the Washington Monument and a subsequent march around the White House were motivated by more than the Keystone project. There were loud and urgent calls for investment in clean forms of energy, making the event feel at times like a wonky exercise in lobbying. But plenty of raw emotion was expressed on a bitterly cold afternoon.

"I don't want to bring children into a world they can't live in," said Corinne Almquist, a Middlebury vegetable farmer and Nordic ski instructor who plans to become a midwife. "Climate change is the biggest issue of all. It affects everything."

Gary Beckwith of Richmond also expressed worry about how a hotter, more tempestuous planet will affect the lives of his own three children and "all the children of the world." But climate change "isn't just about the future," said the inventor of a bus that runs on solar energy. "It's about today. It's happening now."

Sterling College Pledges to Divest From Fossil Fuels

Though they've been snagging the headlines, it wasn't Middlebury College or the University of Vermont that nabbed the distinction of being the first college in the state to divest from fossil fuels. That honor goes to little Sterling College in Craftsbury Common, where the board of trustees voted on February 2 to strip its $920,000 endowment of the 200 top fossil-fuel companies as identified by the environmental organization 350.org. 

Unlike other colleges in Vermont, where the push to divest is coming primarily from student activists, Sterling's decision originated in the board room: President Matthew Allen Derr says it was the 18-member board that hatched the plan to divest, and voted unanimously to pursue divestment.

"This was a board that was really able to speak with one mind," says Derr. He adds that the thinking at Sterling, a college devoted to a mission of environmental stewardship, was, "If not Sterling, than who would do this?" 

Sterling is the third college in the country — after Unity College in Maine and Hampshire College — to pledge to divest its endowment from major fossil-fuel companies. Those promises are in the vanguard of a growing movement calling for divestment on college campuses nationwide. To date, 350.org tallies 234 "Go Fossil Free" campaigns in the U.S., including four in Vermont at Middlebury, UVM, Green Mountain College and Goddard College.