Nothin' but Blue Skies From Now On
Art: Meikle
In Wyoming, as the saying goes, the only things holding back the wind are the barbed wire fences, unless of course someone leaves the gates open. But no laughing matter, this constant breeze has become a resource, not just a source of irritation.
Wind-generated electricity is not just coming, it’s here now. A dozen miles from the Utah-Wyoming border, 80 wind towers and turbines rise from the rolling landscape like a giant daisy farm. Their 180-foot blades intercept the near constant 16-mph wind and make 144 megawatts of electricity every day, enough to power 43,000 homes.
Utah Power and Light customers, through the Blue Sky Program, can subsidize this renewable and clean power source by purchasing wind power in 100-kilowatt-hour (kwh) blocks, at $1.95 per block. Each block represents about one fourteenth of an average home’s demand. So far, almost 30,000 customers have signed up for the program. And consumer users, such as Park City’s three mountain resorts, The Canyons, Deer Valley Resort, and Park City Mountain Resort, have opted to put their own green into the program.
Park City Mayor Dana Williams has been instrumental in Park City’s participation. “A year and half ago, I attended a wind and solar power conference, and was amazed at how far wind energy had come,” says Williams. “I approached the City Council. They agreed to purchase seven and a half percent of our power from wind, and we would buy more if residents would participate.”
So far they have. Over five percent of Park City residents now purchase wind power, spurring the City to increase their purchase to 10 percent. “We pay a bit of a premium to be involved, but it offsets the cost of creation in Utah,” says Mayor Williams. Now the challenge is to increase citizen participation to 15 percent.
Maile Buker, an Old Town resident and the director of marketing at Black Diamond, a local outdoor equipment manufacturer, is helping local participation. Buker’s Park City Leadership Class 10 has adopted the program as, in Buker’s words, “wind ambassadors.” “This fall we’re extending the challenge area to the Park City School District boundaries,” says Buker.
A challenge from the southern Utah community of Moab has spurred them on as well. City officials from Moab have challenged Park City officials to get more of our town’s citizens signed up for the program than Moab’s. Moab Mayor Sakrison says, “Our commitment to a better environment is a lot about who we are and what we want to be.” Over one tenth of Moab residents now buy wind power.
“We’re going to blow Moab’s doors off,” Buker says. Interest in the Blue Sky program is high and growing. During the two-day Park City Arts Festival last August, her volunteer group signed up 79 people to purchase blocks of wind power. “Right now, 95 percent of electrical power in Utah comes from coal. Wind power reduces greenhouse gases, the cause of global warming,” concludes Buker. This year the Utah Legislature may pass a bill to grant a sales tax exemption for renewable energy sources, just like Wyoming, ensuring blue skies far into the future.
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