The Democrat and Republican running for Senate District 47 seem to have reversed roles — the Democrat blocking a wind farm and the Republican calling for heavily subsidized jobs.

Republican Ralph Hise criticizes incumbent Sen. Joe Sam Queen for “trumpeting and celebrating the creation of government jobs,” but Hise advocates using government money to create “private sector” jobs in the renewable energy field.

Hise, the mayor of Spruce Pine, was excited last year about the prospect of a wind farm being built in his hometown.

“We were working to bring an $80 million investment in wind energy to Mitchell County, dealing with a company that was ready to sign,” Hise said.

But then state Sen. Joe Sam Queen introduced Senate Bill 1068, a bill Hise said would have banned “all commercial wind energy development in Western North Carolina because [Queen] didn’t like the way [wind turbines] were going to look.”

It’s true. Queen didn’t like the way wind turbines were going to look, but his bill died at the end of the short session and did not become law. Even if it had, it would not have blocked the construction of 20 500-foot turbines. Instead, the 1983 Mountain Ridge Protection Act states that no building in the high mountains can be more than 40 feet tall.

Queen’s proposal made an exception for residential windmills, allowing them to exceed the height restriction by 60 feet.

The turbines Hise wants are three times as tall as the Sugar Mountain condos that prompted the Ridge Law, Queen said.

They would’ve been built “right down the center of a view shed that’s the most pristine and unique in the Eastern United States,” Queen said. “They would be seen by three counties, and they light them like airports at night.”

Queen said the wind farm wouldn’t create jobs; it would destroy them. He estimates tourism, construction, and real estate (mainly vacation homes) make up between 50 percent and 60 percent of the economy in Mitchell County.

“They’re all thriving based on the beautiful views of this wonderful place.”

Destroying the view, he believes, would result in a loss of “hundreds and hundreds” of jobs and property values to the county treasury.

Most importantly, he said, wind in the mountains isn’t consistent and blows at off-peak hours. The turbines would only be efficient about 30 percent of the time, he said.

The project wouldn’t replace any coal-fired energy, Queen said, and “wouldn’t even be considered if it weren’t being subsidized with 60 percent tax credits” — 30 percent from the federal government and 30 percent from the state.

Queen said the tax dollars would be better spent a few miles off the coast of Eastern North Carolina, where “the wind blows harder and more consistently.”

Daren Bakst, director of legal and regulatory studies for the John Locke Foundation, says both candidates are mistaken. Wind energy isn’t a cost-effective option anywhere in North Carolina, Bakst said. And Queen is also wrong because wind power is even less efficient offshore than it is in the mountains.

“It’s far more expensive to generate electricity offshore than onshore,” Bakst said.

It wouldn’t reduce the use of coal and it would have the same negative impacts on tourism and real estate, he said.

Hise said it was hypocritical of Queen to try to keep commercial wind energy out of his own back yard, after supporting Senate Bill 3 — the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard — which essentially mandates its use.

“It’s a complete mistake for us to get into a system where we are as a state managing and regulating the types of energy we’re going to need,” Hise said. “That clearly should be managed by the free market.”

But as long as the mandate is in place, Hise said, his district needs to be competitive. If the state’s utilities have to buy renewable energy from somewhere, it might as well be from Western North Carolina.

Bakst said Hise would do better to work on repealing S.B. 3, rather than benefiting from it.

What neither candidate is taking into account, he said, is that all North Carolinians are paying higher electricity rates.

“People think jobs will solve all our problems,” Bakst said. “What they’re not seeing is we’re spending a fortune creating these jobs.”

Other issues

Hise said he supports lifting the cap on charter schools, repealing “restrictive” state gun laws, enacting laws to “better protect the unborn human life,” and exempting North Carolina from the federal health insurance mandate.

“The federal government clearly has overstepped its bounds,” Hise said. It is a violation of states’ rights and individuals’ rights for the federal government to step in and say any item must be purchased by an individual.”

“We have to send the message that we will not tolerate it,” he added.

To deal with the state’s estimated $3 billion budget deficit, Hise said he would cut back on administration.

“The state wastes a tremendous amount of money administering programs — from education to corrections and the judicial system,” he said.

Queen said he was not prepared to comment on questions about the budget deficit, the health insurance mandate, or the cap on charter schools.

Sara Burrows is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.