Montana: Power Project Stalled

Ill winds for Montana power project; investors turn to California

The strong winds that blow across the Northern Plains have been chased over the past two years by a spate of politicians and entrepreneurs eager to promote wind as an alternative to fossil fuels.

Yet political will, tax breaks and a seemingly endless supply have not been enough to guarantee developers can turn wind into watts. As a result, one of the largest wind farms ever proposed in the United States has been shelved after the Montana project ran into opposition from an unlikely source environmentalists.
“Montana has a great wind resource, one of the best in the country. And the governor of Montana is an outspoken proponent of wind,” said Gary Evans, chief executive of GreenHunter Energy, Inc. “But you can talk about this all you want. Business goes the place it’s easiest to do business.”

GreenHunter Energy’s proposed 500-megawatt wind farm north of Glasgow, near the Canadian border, stirred a backlash this year from environmentalists worried the 400-foot turbines would loom over an adjacent wilderness area. Unwilling to scale back, the Texas company will take the $200 to $500 million it planned to invest in the 20,000-acre Valley County site and sink it into another wind project, most likely in California.

GreenHunter has also pulled back on three other Montana wind projects, totaling 372 megawatts, because of a capacity shortage on the transmission lines needed to carry the power. Construction of new lines has stirred opposition from environmentalists and landowners.

The company’s troubles illustrate that large renewable energy projects benefits notwithstanding have yet to gain automatic acceptance from groups with a history of opposing coal plants, dams and other facilities that change the landscape. On a broader level, it reflects the complications facing policy makers who see wind as a means to curb global warming and reduce oil dependence.

Yahoo Finance