Photo courtesy of Crazy Mountain Cattle Company
For 12 years Rick Jarrett, a rancher and owner of the Crazy Mountain Cattle Company in Big Timber, Montana, has been trying to put wind turbines on his property.
“No surprise there,” says David Merrill, a Missoula-based organizer with the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. “Montana is tied with Kansas in having the second-best wind-energy potential in the country.”
Jarrett and Merrill both attended the Montana Clean Energy Fair in Bozeman two weekends ago.
Like any significant industrial development, the Crazy Mountain Cattle Company's proposed 24-turbine wind farm in Sweet Grass County has triggered resistance from some residents of the area who don't want to see a wind farm in their Montana viewshed.
"I don't have millionaires for neighbors; I have billionaires," Jarrett says. “Some of those deep-pocketed neighbors are lawyering up to fight the wind farm, but the project is moving forward.” He puts the odds at fifty-fifty that construction of the 80-megawatt project will begin next year.
Below, Jarrett with his sister Jami at the Crazy Mountain Cattle Company ranch in Big Timber.
Photo courtesy of Crazy Mountain Cattle Company
Merrill and fellow Missoulian Summer Nelson, director of the Sierra Club's Montana Chapter, traveled to Bozeman for the Clean Energy Fair, an annual event that brings together the Montana renewable energy industry, nonprofit clean-energy advocates, and the general public.
“More than 600 people turned out in spite of it being the hottest day of the year in Bozeman,” Merrill says. He and Nelson kicked off the weekend’s activities on Friday evening with a screening of the Sierra Club’s new film, Reinventing Power, at the Bozeman Public Library, followed by a panel discussion.
Among the panelists was Jarrett, whose family has been herding cattle in Sweet Grass County since the 1880s. That's Jarrett below, in pink shirt, flanked by Brad Van Wert of Harvest Solar Montana and Andrew Valainis of the Montana Renewable Energy Association.
One of the hot topics of the panel discussion was how NorthWestern Energy, a utility that has signed an agreement to purchase the energy from the Crazy Mountain wind farm, is putting obstacles in the way of commencing development on the facility. A subsidiary of the NorthWestern Corporation, the utility provides power to Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota, where it is headquartered.
Below, Jarrett talks with attendees at the Bozeman public library after the Reinventing Power screening and panel discussion.
Alone among the six owners of the notoriously dirty Colstrip coal-fired power plant in Colstrip, Montana, NorthWestern refuses to contribute to the conversion of the plant to renewable energy, and it steadfastly opposes energy generated by renewables to be transmitted over existing power lines.
“The Montana Sierra Club’s NorthWestern Energy campaign is working to break down these obstacles,” Merrill says. Colstrip is the second-largest coal-burning power plant west of the Mississippi, the eighth-dirtiest coal plant in the U.S., and one of the largest single point distributors of greenhouse gas emissions in the world. It was shut down last month, ostensibly for scheduled maintenance, amid rumors that it was being permanently shuttered due to its failure to comply with the EPA’s mercury and air toxics standards.
Merrill and Nelson spoke with a former solar installer in Bozeman who told them it's not the technology or the price that's holding up renewable energy development in Montana -- “it’s NorthWestern Energy, period!”
“This was the first time the Clean Energy Fair has been held in Bozeman,” Merrill says. “That gave us an opportunity to come to the fastest-growing city in the state and gather signatures on the Sierra Club's petition to NorthWestern Energy and meet potential volunteers for our NorthWestern Energy and Ready for 100 campaigns.”
At left, a young fair attendee gets his face painted.
The fair organizers pulled in a Tesla Model 3 -- a relative rarity in Montana -- for their electric vehicle lineup, at which EV owners were on hand to answer questions and share their experience with electric vehicles.
Below, local residents visit the Sierra Club table with EVs on display in the background.
