MOUNT HOLLY, Vt. (AP) – Vermont Sen. James Jeffords says the state should get more of its electric power from wind.

Wind energy protects the environment and the pocketbook, said Jeffords, an independent who is the ranking member of the Senate Natural Resources Committee.

“It’s so important for the whole state,” Jeffords said of wind energy. “You don’t have to pay much for wind. Why pay money?” he told the students of Mount Holly Elementary School.

Jeffords is the benefactor of the alternative energy project at Mount Holly Elementary School, having landed $1.5 million in federal funds that helped put wind turbines at several schools as pilot projects, including Mount Holly’s.

Jeffords stopped short of endorsing the proposed East Haven wind farm, but he said he believed that Vermonters could tap the wind over the Green Mountains for electricity.

Some Northeast Kingdom residents oppose the East Haven project.

There is only one commercial wind project currently generating power in Vermont: the Green Mountain Power and enXco partnership in Searsburg. But a planned expansion of that project has been put on hold by enXco, a French company, because of delays in getting environmental permits needed to expand part of the wind project into the Green Mountain National Forest.

Another wind project, the proposed Glebe Mountain project by Catamount Energy, a subsidiary of Central Vermont Public Service Corp., has also gone on a slow track, as its developers concentrate more of its effort on other, out-of-state wind projects.

Jeffords spoke to the 88 students, teachers and parents at the Mount Holly Elementary School Thursday afternoon.

The school’s turbine, which was motionless during the sunny blue-sky afternoon, has helped put a dent in the school’s electric bill, said Principal Craig Hutt Vater.

He said the wind turbine was providing 10 percent of the school’s electricity needs.

AP-ES-03-25-05 1031EST