Advocating Renewable Energy & Conservation
Renewable Energy _SBM_ Albemarle Policy Final Report (click PDF)
Spring 2013
Team members: Isabella Artilles, Kelly Lahvic, Chris Haberland, Trevor Gopnik, Austin Dabney, Sam Reid
The main objective of our team was to amend the policy in Albemarle County to facilitate the installation and ownership of residential wind turbines. Naturally, this brought about several subsequent objectives that we needed to accomplish in order to achieve our goal. These secondary objectives included researching the conditions of Albemarle County (viability for wind energy, current policy on wind turbines, past environmental legislation), drafting a proposal for changed policy based on the knowledge gained from our research, and establishing contact with the Board of Supervisors. Depending on the outcome of our communication with the local government, we may take additional steps to attempt to have our proposed ordinance adopted.
Having accomplished the majority of our secondary steps, we now have adequate knowledge of current conditions and support for changed policy. We researched the wind potential of the county based on maps of annual average wind speed (provided by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Figure 1) and the minimum requirements for effective turbine use. Many articles were found documenting previous debates surrounding residential wind turbine use in Albemarle (specifically, a dispute between the county and a resident complaining about a structure that was illegal at the time), as well as the actual administrative policies. Professor William Shobe in the Frank Batten School of Public Policy offered us additional council on our proposal. We obtained other information and connections by contacting directors of the Virginia Center for Wind Energy, including Remy Pangle-Marten and Jonathan Miles. Mr. Miles, who lives in Albemarle, was able to advise us on our approach to the proposal. He also was able to connect us with the chair of the Board of Supervisors, with whom he has interacted previously. In this paper, we will detail the process of how we arrived at these objectives, barriers we have faced, what progress we have made, and an evaluation of our approach.
