Duxbury is also moving ahead on a plan to lease its capped landfill to a private developer, American Capital Energy, a national company whose customers include the Army, to build a solar energy farm there. Town Meeting backed the project last fall.
The town’s move to buy solar energy was made in conjunction with the Alternative Energy Committee’s decision to put a hold on the possibility of building a wind turbine. The decision comes at a time when neighboring Kingston is touting the construction of five turbines within its borders. Kingston officials said their town’s wind and solar projects together would earn up to a $1 million a year in new revenue.
Until recently Duxbury was planning to build a wind turbine, too. Goldenberg’s committee had planned to seek funding from Town Meeting to continue its feasibility study of a wind turbine on town property next to its North Hill golf course.
But that plan came under attack by a group of residents who said they feared that living near a turbine would undermine their health, lower their property values, and alter the neighborhood’s residential character. They hired an attorney, produced a report attacking the financial basis of the project, and won a vote from selectmen urging the committee not to seek funds for the project.
Local wind power advocates cried foul. They said opponents were relying on a corporate-quality website and dubious information supplied by an anti-wind lobby with little connection to the town.
But Goldenberg said his group chose the solar option solely based on a comparison of the economics of the wind turbine project relative to the solar deals committee members have been working on. The bottom line, he said, is that a wind turbine on North Hill would produce electricity at $.155 per kilowatt hour versus $.10 per kilowatt hour to buy solar, a 35 percent cost differential.
