Energy Law

A Boston-based renewable energy company is pledging to open the region?s biggest solar power array on a former landfill in Canton.

Officials at Southern Sky Renewable Energy said Monday that the 5.6 megawatt solar photovoltaic facility will be the largest of its kind in New England when completed.

The company said it?s already received final approval from the Canton Board of Selectmen and is negotiating a distribution agreement with NStar.

Once that?s completed it should take about six to nine months to build the facility.

The European Union says investment in renewable energy has to be doubled to reach the bloc's target of having 20 percent of its energy come from renewable sources by 2020.

The EU's executive Commission said Monday that only three states -- Germany, Hungary and Sweden -- have met their 2010 interim goals for renewable energy for both electricity and transport.

The Commission says to reach the 20 percent goal, investment in renewable energy needs to rise to euro70 billion ($96 billion) a year from euro35 billion currently.

In Hawaii, hearings begin Tuesday for the state's extensive windmill project. The plan is for a massive wind farm with hundreds of windmills on several islands. It's the largest renewable energy project for a state racing to get off oil.

Almost all of Hawaii's electricity now comes from a few massive generators, which burn oil imported on a never-ending line of tanker ships.

Hawaii would rather get electricity from wind ? like that produced by the new 42-story windmill at the Kahuku Wind Farm on Oahu's North Shore.

"They're big but they're beautiful, they are," says Kekoa Kaluhiwa, who works for the company running this farm, First Wind.

Hawaii is hoping to build up to 200 more of these windmills on the small and windy islands of Lanai and Molokai. The power produced on the islands would then be sent to heavily populated Oahu through undersea cables.

This week, the Public Service Board opens hearings on Vermont's largest wind development - a proposal for 21 wind turbines that would stand 440 feet tall on a ridgeline in Lowell.

Developers hoped to avoid some of the controversy that other projects have faced by asking for, and winning, Lowell voters' support last Town Meeting Day. But it hasn't been that easy.

In the first part of our series on wind's future in Vermont, VPR's John Dillon explains how passionate, and personal, the debate still is in Lowell.