Issue on ballot aims at making Vashon "energy independent"

Vashon Island isn't the best place to harness wind energy.

The wind just doesn't blow as hard in Puget Sound as it does in parts of the state where wind farms have been built.

Even so, there's enough breeze to make wind turbines a good investment, says a group of islanders who want to make Vashon "energy independent."

If voters create a public utility district this fall, it will be the first in the state, if not the nation, formed to produce all of a community's electricity locally, from renewable resources.

Rita Schenck, the architect of the plan, sees it as a way residents can heat and light their homes with renewable resources including windmills, instead of increasingly costly, climate-altering fossil fuels.

Before erecting any windmills, the district would launch an aggressive conservation program aimed at making homes and businesses more energy-efficient. The effort could reduce overall power use by 70 percent or more over 10 years, proponents say.

Homeowners who chose to hire the utility district to weatherize their homes would pay a portion of their savings on electric and gas bills back to the district. That money would fund investments in windmills, solar panels and plants that generate power from scrap wood and yard waste.

"It's blackberries to energy," Schenck says of the plan to gasify and burn yard waste.

More than 900 residents have signed a petition, qualifying the proposal for the Nov. 7 ballot.

Puget Sound Energy (PSE) would continue to maintain the electric grid and sell power to customers, while the utility district would promote conservation and develop renewable energy sources. The district, generating power mostly when the wind was blowing or the sun was shining, would sell its electricity to investor-owned PSE.

Owners of the island's 5,000-plus homes and businesses would decide whether to become utility-district customers. For those who opted in, the district would do an energy audit and install insulation, heat pumps and other improvements.

The district would pay for those improvements and charge customers a monthly fee — less than the projected savings on their electric and natural-gas bills. The utility district is expected to hire four staff members and create 26 contracting jobs.

In a study funded by the Bullitt Foundation and Schenck's longtime friend, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, her Institute for Environmental Research and Education last year concluded that conservation would save enough money to let the island generate its own power while lowering electric bills.

Conservation would save residents $95 million on energy costs over 10 years, Schenck's study said. The utility district would return $55 million of that to ratepayers and invest the remaining $40 million in renewable-resource power plants.

"My mouth fell open when I saw how much money there was in conservation on the island," Schenck says. The study showed many houses on Vashon are poorly insulated and use far more power than the typical Washington home.

An oceanographer and Seattle native, Schenck spent years on the East Coast as a corporate environmental manager before returning to the Puget Sound area seven years ago to found the Institute for Environmental Research. Her solar-powered office is in an old barn outside the town of Vashon.

Not everyone on the island is impressed by her ideas. Thomas Bangasser, a commercial-property manager, says advocates of wind and solar power don't have a well-developed business model. "It's been, 'Build it and they will come.' That's not the way to go about it," he said.

Bangasser said he expects to see organized opposition to the utility-district proposal but isn't predicting how residents will vote in November.

Puget Sound Energy, which is scrambling to close a projected gap between rising energy demand and a limited energy supply, won't take a position on the proposal, said the company's vice president for energy-efficiency services, Cal Shirley. Shirley said he hadn't read the environmental institute's studies and couldn't comment on its financial projections.

The studies found that Vashon's most plentiful energy resource, by far, is sunlight. But, because solar-generated electricity is currently more expensive than wind, Schenck's think tank suggested putting up 15 wind turbines on the south and east shores of Maury Island, which is attached to Vashon and would be included in the utility district.

If wind-poor Vashon and Maury islands can do it, Schenck says, anyone can.

Although the Institute for Environmental Research proposes that windmills generate three-quarters of the island's new power supply, an elected three-member public-utility commission would decide the actual mix.

"Wind turbines are certainly very attractive," said Cliff Goodman, campaign manager of Citizens for Vashon Public Utilities, which is organizing the campaign for the utility district. "Solar is not as attractive today, but there are so many things happening that in five years from now I'm not willing to bet what's the best alternative."

Among the uncertainties, Goodman said, are future federal and state incentives and the possibility that new technologies will lower the cost of solar power.

There's also the likelihood that some Maury Island residents would object to 230-foot-high windmills near their homes. The towers probably would require special-use permits, King County's toughest level of review, said Paula Adams, spokeswoman for the Department of Development and Environmental Services.

Those permits would require County Council approval.

Although utility commissioners could levy property taxes without voter approval, Goodman says the plan is to rely entirely on customer rates and grants. If commissioners imposed taxes, he says, "They might as well move off the island. They would not be popular."

"We're talking about securing our energy future," Schenck says. "It's a win-win situation. We save costs, we make jobs and we preserve the environment, so why wouldn't you do that?"

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com