The company, Renewable NRG Systems in Hinesburg, “lives and works its environmental and social values every day,” says Jan Blomstrann, CEO and Women of Wind Energy’s first Woman of the Year. In 2012, the White House named her a Champion of Change. Photo: Jan Doerler

Few in Vermont argue anymore about needing to change from fossil fuels, but opinions about alternatives vary town to town. While solar energy got slow traction from Small Scale Renewable Energy Incentive Program (SSREIP), enacted by Governor James Douglas in 2003, commercial wind power has found the state's mountain ridgelines fertile for development.

Four commercial wind farms have been developed since 1996. More than a dozen other wind farms across the state are in various stages of permitting and data gathering. Commercial wind has divided communities as people grapple with rising energy costs, alarming weather events, and slowly emerging environmental studies that show energy development has costs to Vermont.

Recently, big wind experienced a major setback. New Hampshire wind developer Eolian Renewable Energy backed off their Seneca Mountain project in the Northeast Kingdom. Likely due to the cost of upgrading the transmission infrastructure needed to connect remote wind power to a weak rural grid network, in July Eolian Renewable terminated the project, citing lack of community support.

Current Winds

In 2005, the state created a program called SPEED, to provide more incentives to developers to meet Vermont’s goal of 20 percent renewables by 2017. Other Vermonters have been pushing back: ridge tops are set above many small villages, and serve as Vermont's wildlife corridors.

At issue is the size of the 400-foot tall turbines’ footprint on the ridgeline: their sound and construction levels, destruction of critical habitat and harm to inflight bats and migrating birds. The energy return is relatively small: Vermont’s annual wind capacity is about 3 gigawatts, says the U.S. Dept. of Energy, compared to Texas with a 1900 gigawatts return on investment.
Questions also arise when townspeople learn energy gained will be sold out of state.

Vermont’s statute, the only such law in the country, allows the sale of its renewable energy credits (RECs) out of state, but then counts them a second time toward Vermont’s own renewable energy goals. Legislation passed in Connecticut early this year prevents any more purchase of Vermont RECs because of this double counting, and in May, a leading renewable energy power supplier, NextEra Energy, announced an end to its purchase of Vermont RECs for the same reason.

Vermont’s Public Service Board (VPSB), which has issued required Certificates of Public Good for each new energy development says these moves by Connecticut and NextEra will not affect Vermont’s push for renewable energy. But next year, VPSB will report to the Vermont legislature on creating a renewable energy portfolio standard (RPS), already used by 29 states. An RPS would end double counting, and also likely increase the pressure to develop wind power.

Stakes for Everyone

The public process for energy development is flawed, and the science is not all in yet. Yet most Vermonters love their land, want clean and efficient energy sources, and in many ways, are on the forefront of innovation for conservation, and environmentally friendly energy efficiency.

Depending on personal history, energy development is seen quite differently, weighing the importance of habitat and environment against the need for clean renewables. Jan Blomstrann of Hinesburg and Annette Smith of Danby are good examples of Vermont similarities and differences in perspective. These two women have both been involved a long time in creating clean energy, both with valid arguments, both effective—and with polar opposite solutions.

Both women walk their talk. Their private lives are precious to them and serve to renew them for the roles they both say have...well, found them, not the other way around.

Neither woman remembers setting out and saying, “This is what I want to do.” Yet both believe passionately they can help solve Vermont's environmental and energy challenges.

If they ever did meet, they might find common ground in gardening and farming, and in the merits of further work on Vermont’s clean energy development process.

Blomstrann, Embracing Change

Women of Wind Energy's (WoWE) first Woman of the Year, Jan Blomstrann has been CEO of Renewable NRG Systems since 2004, and active in the wind industry since the 1980s. In addition to its manufacturing strengths, Renewable NRG Systems has been recognized for innovative workforce practices and benefits that promote environmental consciousness. “Our company lives and works by its environmental and social values every day,” Blomstraan says. “And we strive to encourage and support our employees to do the same.”

Working with her entrepreneurial husband, David Blittersdorf, Blomstraan began to understand that mitigating climate change through renewable energy sources was the future. With a degree in nursing and human services, she took business classes at Champlain College to better manage the company. “I was learning by doing, and I love that part of my work.” The passion for wind energy came second, she said.

In 1982, there was barely an industry, and discussions at trade shows were at the level of “how to make a wind turbine and how to make one work,” Blomstrann recalls. By 2004, the company was globally established. “My husband and I had built the company together. But he is an entrepreneur and started getting restless.” He told Blomstrann he was moving on to other projects. Did she want to be CEO?

Transition

Blomstrann took two years to make that decision. “I knew it would change the dynamics we had together, and it did. I knew that somebody had to lead this company. I was asking myself, did I want to make this bold move, or have somebody else take it on?”
She found herself facing fears of whether she was capable or not. She wondered, “Was I ready to become the external face of the company? Maybe that's a female thing,” she mused. But the size of the job and how that would impact her and her family, in the end, were not deterrents.

Her marriage did not survive the transition, but with children grown older, the time she needed to put into the job had less impact than would have been true earlier. She had her children’s full support, she said.

As one of the few female CEOs in the wind industry, she found herself getting invitations for speaking engagements to share her knowledge and experience with other women. In 2009 she was invited with fellow business leaders for the White House Forum on Jobs and Economic Growth. In 2012, she was recognized as a “Champion of Change” for renewable energy by the Obama White House.

But this did not happen overnight. Blomstrann said she got some advice from Madeline Kunin, a neighbor of hers in Hinesburg. She was questioning her worthiness to attend the job summit in D.C.

“Just do it. Just show up,” the former Governor told her. “You know why you are going and why you were chosen. Women participate by being at the table. You need to be there at the table.” Blomstrann said she took that to heart. “Sometimes you just have to go with the gut and plunge in. Don't doubt yourself; hold your head up high and just do it.”

Mentor and Leader

Blomstrann founded two offshoots of her involvement in wind. She began and still serves as a volunteer leader and mentor for Women of Wind Energy (WoWE). Recently, Blomstrann spoke at a national meeting. She told attendees, “I brought a fresh face to the business world,” and recalls being told repeatedly by people in the industry, ‘We need more women on board.’ But this is how change is going to happen. I participate and do the best job that I can, paving the way to have more women, through WoWE.”

The second initiative, American Wind Wildlife Institute (AWWI), is Blomstrann's answer to potential ecological impacts. Blomstrann said her motivation was proactive, to help the industry be smart about where to site alternative energy sources using good research and education. She said AWWI doesn’t take a position on sites, but does research the impact a particular site would have on wildlife in that area.

She said, “No other energy industry has taken the time to form” a group like AWWI.

As the climate changes, and as renewable energy takes hold, she noted that major wind companies and the Union of Concerned Scientists, Audubon and the Natural Resources Defense Council “have all come to the table. We want to protect, to help wildlife to thrive.”

Grounded Innovation

On the job, Blomstrann is responsible for a benefits package that has been touted in the media for its attention to wellness. Business innovations such as “Voice of the Employee” bloomed under her watch. She says, “From my own point of view, a job is not just a job. We spend at least 8 hours a day with people we work with, in what I hope would be a good environment, relating with people. One of the tickets to happiness in life is good, meaningful work.” Employee programs that provide “support for success and happiness in life,” help Blomstrann achieve her own satisfaction as CEO.

Outside of work, she finds connection with the environment through her gardens, having cultivated raised beds for years. And, when she flies home from a trip abroad, over the mountains and lakes of Vermont, she says, “My favorite part is landing and getting on the ground. I am home.”

Annette Smith of Danby created Vermonters for a Clean Environment and works to makesure new energy sites “help Vermonters, not hurt them.”
Photo: John Penwarden

Smith, A Voice for Vermonters

Annette Smith describes her work this way: “We are not 'Environmentalists for a Clean Vermont.' We are Vermonters for a Clean Environment (VCE), with the emphasis on the people having a say in what goes on in their communities. We assist people in being effective advocates, rather than starting with a focus on the environment and then finding people to support that focus, which is what other environmental organizations do.”

Smith says that VCE formed organically in response to a large natural gas pipeline proposal for southwestern Vermont where she lives. In 1998, pipeline plans were being drawn up. Company spokespeople approached landowners and select boards, urging support.

Smith heard that proponents were claiming emissions would “just be water vapor and carbon dioxide,” or “just like human sweat.” Smith knew this wasn’t true. “And that got me mad.”

She wrote op-eds for local papers, warning people to “watch what they wish for with unbridled development.” She harkened back to changes she had witnessed in her childhood “home country,” really two places.
Smith's early youth was spent in Union County, Pennsylvania, “just thirty miles from coal country,” an hour from Three-mile Island, and in the heart of what is now fracking country. The rural landscape that she knew as a youngster, and the changes she witnessed, informed her awareness of the full costs of energy development.
When her family moved from Pennsylvania to Florida, she witnessed more irrevocable changes. Condominiums near Sarasota replaced jungles, as canals were dredged to access waterways to the Gulf. She felt “just sick” as a girl, watching jungles cut down in the name of progress.
When her father got a yearlong job in Geneva, New York, they traveled back through the farm country of her earliest years, and saw industries gobbling up farmland. Returning back to Florida a year later, she was appalled by quick urban sprawl. That experience marked her for life, she said.

Not Alone

As her op-eds were published, she started getting calls from people who wanted to know what they could do to stop the pipeline. She made it her job to learn everything she could about the pipeline. She did her research on an early iMac, the Internet still in its infancy.

When the gas company sent letters to select boards of towns along the route, urging support, she knew she had to do something. Not inclined to be a public speaker, she nevertheless thought, “They can't do this to Vermonters.”
In Manchester, Smith’s talk was interrupted repeatedly by spontaneous applause, reported The Bennington Banner in April, 1998. Smith crafted a 1300-word resolution to bring to town select boards, urging rejection. Armed with information on fracked gas, and the not-so-great safety record of pipelines in residential areas, she went to town after town along the pipeline route. “That was the beginning of the end of the project.”

In 1999, Smith formed VCE. In over 14 years, VCE has raised and spent an “equivalent to VPIRG’s budget for one year, something like $1.5 million. We have accomplished a lot for relatively little money.”

Given the $100 billion fossil fuel energy development move in southern Vermont that prompted its formation, it’s a wonder VCE remains involved in so many energy development cases. VCE is currently working with neighbors of the Lowell, Georgia Mountain and Sheffield wind projects, citing the projects’ serious noise, health and environmental issues, following their construction.

But VCE is also working in the extremely complex regulatory and permitting processes affecting water safety, protection from agriculture pollution, mining safety, industrial waste and land use. It advises townspeople about effective participation in regulatory proceedings, including local zoning, Act 250, and Public Service Board (PSB) cases, which oversee energy site location.

Vermonters’ resistance does not seem to be against renewable energy generation itself, so much as against overlarge commercial solutions that dominate, rather than collaborate. VCE’s website says:“Unlike Act 250, we find the PSB process to be nearly impossible for citizens to participate in effectively, unless they spend tens of thousands of dollars and are represented by legal counsel.”

“For us to be vilified as being anti-renewable or anything is just ludicrous," Smith told John Herrick last week in The Brattleboro Reformer. “Let’s do it right.”

Informed By Life

Despite her early exposure to environmental degradation, Smith was not a particularly rebellious youth. When her mathematician father complained one night at the dinner table that his geometry manuscript would never get transcribed, Smith, an award-winning typist at school, piped up and offered to help complete it.

She also excelled at sewing, creating cocktail dresses from Vogue patterns for her mother and her friends. “I went for the most complicated patterns out there.” She enjoyed that challenge and extra income.

But the thing she most loved was building a harpsichord from a kit for independent study at New College in Sarasota, where her father taught math. She later attended Vassar College, where a professor advised her to find something she loved doing. So when she graduated, she opted for an apprenticeship, instead of grad school—with Boston’s master harpsichord maker, William Post Ross.

Eventually, she and Ross “became a couple.” But then he got very sick. She said it was devastating to watch a vibrant human being barely able to walk. Determined to get him well again, she turned up a connection between his illness and mercury poisoning from dental amalgams. With fillings removed, he eventually recovered his health. And she discovered another skill: her research.

His illness reduced their circumstances drastically. They moved 16 times, she recalls. When a relative died and left an inheritance, Smith wanted a place she would never have to move from. They found ten acres in Danby and settled in. Their “very humble” Vermont abode quickly became home.

Its permanency was sealed, Smith said, when she immediately purchased a cow from a farmer neighbor, without knowing how to milk it. But in her self-taught style, she went to the experts and learned. She now has vegetable and herb gardens, as well as chickens and geese—including one 28-year-old goose, testament to how well she learned.

And while her on-the-mend husband began to make harpsichords again, she carved wooden purses, crafted copper furniture, and sewed real fur teddy bears and coats (including for the Miss Vermont Pageant), indulging her love and skill, making things with her hands.

She relishes farm life surprises, recalling a recent summer morning, looking out at a slightly diminished vegetable garden, to see her cow, escaped from her enclosure, happily munching a garden breakfast.

Allison Teague of Saxtons River is a frequent contributor to Vermont Woman.