Political Quotes

“last year, several of my colleagues and I wrote to Secretary Gates requesting a clear policy through which the Department of Defense would encourage renewable energy development while maintaining necessary protections for military missions. Among other recommendations, to facilitate the development of renewable energy projects consistent with national security needs, we specifically pointed to the Department's need to formally consolidate all decisionmaking into a single office to limit unnecessary conflict between the Department and renewable energy development. At that time, there were a wide array of projects where the Department of Defense had objected very late in the permitting process. Since that time, conflicts between the siting of renewable energy projects and defense missions have only intensified in scale and now threaten to impede currently planned and permitted renewable energy projects, placing billions of investment dollars and thousands of new U.S. jobs at risk. Recent attempts to work with DOD for various compromise and alternative solutions, such as expanding current radar capability, has produced few results. For example, in my State of Oregon, the planned Shepherds Flat Wind Farm would produce more than 850 megawatts of electricity. It would be the largest wind farm in the world. Planners worked with numerous Federal agencies and cleared the project with the Navy.”