Nov. 8--We live in a place where voters did not want Barack Obama as our president. The majority of Democratic voters preferred Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary election. The majority of all South Dakota voters preferred John McCain in the general election. The election of President Obama provided the ultimate disruption that caused the abandonment of two coal-fueled electricity generation projects planned for the area and the expansion of the electricity transmission network that would have facilitated the export of more wind power from our region.

We do not know whether President Obama will allow TransCanada to pierce the U.S. border a second time for its proposed XL pipeline, which would carry crude oil from Alberta to Texas. We do not know if the Hyperion refinery project proposed for Elk Point can get the environmental clearances it needs from the Obama administration or whether Hyperion will have a supply of crude oil to process. We do not know what environmental sanctions might be placed on the current Big Stone coal-fired power plant in Grant County.

We live in a time and a place of increasing uncertainty and increasing demand for electricity. We do know the development of the ethanol industry has strained the supply of rural electricity. We now have peaking plants at Groton fueled by natural gas and another one, also to be fueled by natural gas, proposed by Basin Electric at White. We will see more wind-driven electricity, and because wind is not as reliable, we will continue to see the need for peaking stations fueled by natural gas.

What we can expect to see is more opposition to expansion of energy-transmission facilities, whether they be overhead electric lines, underground pipelines or rehabilitated railroad routes to haul coal. The sustainability movement has an unmistakable foothold in South Dakota and favors backyard turbines and rooftop solar cells. We are lacking in South Dakota for regulations regarding wind turbines whether in the countryside or in communities. If wind and solar are part of the future, we must prepare.

In the case of wind, we should remove the tax exemptions for wind-energy units and repeal the state siting permit waiver for smaller wind farms. Without some regulatory framework on where people can put turbines and what happens to them when they're no longer in use, we will have chaos. We need a model zoning ordinance for home wind generators.

We also need to change our policy of getting the state's cart ahead of the federal horse on permitting for energy facilities that need federal environmental clearance.