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BEECH MOUNTAIN — The wind raking over a flat, grassy acre near the top of this mountain community stroked the blades of eight small windmills, each of which purred louder as gusts reached up from the valley below.

“I actually expected these to be bigger,” said state Sen. Kay Hagan, peering up at the turbines on her visit to the N.C. Small Wind Initiative demonstration site maintained by Appalachian State University. The turbines tested there are marketed for individual consumers who might erect them in a backyard to help power a single house.

Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat, made the stop as part of her U.S. Senate campaign to unseat incumbent Sen. Elizabeth Dole, a Salisbury Republican. The visit came as energy policy — from $4-per-gallon gas to alternatives for powering home appliances and business machinery — occupied center stage in news out of Washington and on the presidential campaign trail.

Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain have exchanged fire over their respective energy proposals in the past two weeks. Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of senators in Washington, dubbed the “Gang of 10,” has offered a legislative compromise that would allow individual states to authorize oil drilling off their coasts.

Dole and Hagan say they support the “Gang of 10” proposal but worked hard last week to separate their energy policies from one another.

Hagan’s visit to the wind farm was meant to emphasize her commitment to renewable energy and new technology. Although the Democrat says she is open to options that would allow more drilling, in policy statements and interviews she stresses clean energy as a way to cut dependence on foreign sources of oil and provide jobs that cannot be shipped overseas.

Yes, she acknowledged, there are problems with all types of power, including wind. Some communities, for example, don’t want turbines because they can obstruct scenic views.

“Four-dollars-a-gallon gas gets over that very quickly,” Hagan replied. “Energy cost is the first thing that people mention to me every day. ... We need to become the state that says, 'Alternative energy sources (are) important to us.’ We need to be helping people with manufacturing solar panels and windmill parts, creating those jobs in North Carolina. Once we do that, those jobs aren’t going to be outsourced.”

A day later, Dole met with members of the Lincolnton Chamber of Commerce to talk about economic issues, and energy policy came up.

Dole told the group that she likes the idea of new technology and renewable energy. But when asked whether alternative methods of energy such as wind or solar couldn’t produce dividends faster than looking for new sources of oil, the Republican was cautious.

“We’re not sure how long it would take on some of the development there,” she said.
So while Dole says she embraces a “kitchen sink” approach to solving the nation’s energy supply problems, she has emphasized finding new sources — particularly oil — that are within U.S. borders as a short- and medium-term solution.

“I think we’ve got to do it all; we need that comprehensive policy,” she said after meeting with the business leaders.

Dole and Hagan are the leading candidates in the U.S. Senate race. Christopher Cole, a Huntersville Libertarian, will be on the fall ballot, although he does not do the kind of fundraising or campaign appearances pursued by the other candidates and has been largely ignored by their campaigns.

“The price mechanism of the free market is an amazing thing,” Cole said. “Without deliberate attention by anyone, it devotes the most attention and resources to the most efficient source of energy possible.”

Cole’s said the federal government should neither encourage certain types of energy production through tax breaks nor discourage energy production through regulation.

“The less the government is involved, the more efficient (the market) would be,” he said.
Cole offers equal measures of criticism to Hagan and Dole, and the Republican and Democrat do agree on some basic issues.

For example, both have said the federal government should end certain tax breaks for oil companies and invest that money into research on conservation and renewable energy. Dole is a co-sponsor of a bill that would do that, although Hagan points out that she has voted against earlier legislation with similar provisions.

“Neither is talking a lot about the role of nuclear power in the role of energy production,” said Richard Kearney, director of N.C. State’s School of Public and International Affairs and an expert on energy policy.

After reading Hagan’s energy policy plan and material provided by the Dole campaign, Kearney said there were things to like and dislike about both approaches.

On the point about nuclear, Dole said the United States should encourage the expansion of the nuclear industry, saying most safety concerns have been addressed. Hagan is more tentative, saying that the disposal of spent nuclear fuel rods is still a concern.

“Both candidates reflect their national parties in terms of their plans,” Kearney said. For example, Barack Obama, too, has expressed reservations about expanding nuclear power, while John McCain has called for 45 reactors to be built by 2030.

Kearney gave Hagan higher marks for her energy policy statement’s thoroughness and citation of sources. And he added that while Dole says she’s comprehensive in her approach she gives “short shrift” to the role of renewable energy sources in favor of more oil production.

In his estimation, neither candidate spent enough time in their policy statements talking about conservation — although both mentioned conservation measures as important during interviews.

Kearney took a dim view of both candidates’ ideas for the strategic oil reserve, a national stockpile of oil. Hagan said she would stop buying oil to put there as a way to help bring down prices, while Dole said she would sell a third of the oil in the reserve on the open market.

Kearney said that either plan would produce only a small short-term drop in the price of gas while doing little to fix the reason for high prices.

Aside from sifting through the myriad technological and economic complexities, the Dole and Hagan campaigns have used energy as a platform to bash their rivals in ads and news releases.

Dole’s campaign targeted Hagan on Thursday because she and her husband have invested in oil-drilling operations.

“Kay Hagan is a hypocrite of the highest order for attacking Senator Dole for being too close to oil interests when she herself is an oil baroness and is profiting from the very product she is condemning,” said Dan McLagan, Dole’s campaign communications director. “It is no wonder that Hagan has no energy plan. She is profiting from the status quo.”

A third-party group released an ad last week that attacked Dole’s campaign contributions from oil industry groups, and Hagan has repeatedly criticized Dole for not doing more work on energy issues.

“Why wasn’t it a 'Gang of 11’?” Hagan asked at her stop in Beech Mountain. As for Dole’s attack on her own oil holdings, Hagan fired back that her holdings don’t cloud her judgment.

“One candidate has been out across the state railing against the exorbitant profits Big Oil and Gas have realized, talking about reducing our dependence on foreign oil and investing in alternative energies that mean the creation of North Carolina jobs that can’t be outsourced,” Hagan said. “The other candidate has personally taken over $266,000 in campaign contributions and votes 92 percent of the time with Big Oil’s president. All her oil money must be making her slick, because we can’t keep track of what Elizabeth Dole stands for or stands against, except, of course, for Big Oil’s Black Gold.”

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com