Cape Wind: NIMBY vs. The Bottom Line
After a delay and ongoing controversy, the Minerals Management Service, part of the Department of the Interior, has released a draft environmental impact statement that gives a green light to the Cape Wind project, pending public comment. Sited for the Nantucket Sound, 4.7 miles off the Cape Cod coast, the proposed wind farm would consist of 130 3.6-megawatt wind turbine generators with the capacity to produce about 468 megawatts.
The environmental impact statement declared the construction and operation of the wind farm to have a “negligible” or “minor” impact in every way, save only for the the category of “visual resources,” on which it was deemed to have a “moderate” impact. These “visual resources” are best enjoyed from the affluent, preppy stomping grounds of New England’s elite, including the Hyannis Port estate of Sen. Ted Kennedy. The the project has faced adamant NIMBY-ism since its initial proposal in 2001.
An article in The Wall Street Journal points out that a similar offshore wind farm proposal was sunk off Long Island Sound last year, not because of NIMBY-ism but because of simple economics. While the recent EIS is a step in the right direction, it still faces staunch critics and the difficult economics of offshore wind.
Offshore wind is a largely untested market, especially as compared to inland wind. Between the added costs of bigger, more robust turbines and oceanic transmission lines, The Wall Street Journal estimates that offshore wind costs about 25 percent more than onshore wind. Uncertain government subsidies make wind energy that much riskier.
Still, the economics of fossil fuel energy are working to wind’s advantage. Cape Wind’s official site points out that when the project was first proposed, oil cost $20 a barrel and natural gas cost $3 per million cubic feet. Today oil is up at $100 a barrel and natural gas has risen to $10 per million cubic feet. Maybe the winds are changing after all.
the daily show did a hilarious spot on these nimby morons on the cape
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=91140
heres the link .. go on, laugh at the morons!!
‘doh - noscript didn’t know that was the daily show clip .. haha@me.
Ehrra , ther’s a damn propeller invasion on the ahh horizon. It’s not funny. Ehrra , whez my scatch?
I didn’t see the Wall Street Journal article you referred to but there’s never been a wind farm proposed for Long Island Sound. LIPA, I believe, proposed one for off Jones Beach but that’s the Atlantic, not the Sound.
The Sound on the other had is being proposed for a big LNG terminal, halfway between New York and Connecticut. It’s a bad proposal, for a host of reasons, but the feds released a FEIS last week that managed to find it owuld have not much of an impact on the Sound, which of course nodoby really believes.
Re: Tom Anderson:
Thanks, you’re absolutely right. LIPA gave a “thumbs down” to a 40 turbine installation off of Jones Beach, not in the Sound.
However, now it looks like another proposal for an offshore wind far farther off of Jones Beach has been put forward. Read all about it.
Green energy is definitely the best solution in most cases. Technology like solar energy, wind power, fuel cells, zaps electric vehicles, EV hybrids, etc have come so far recently. Green energy even costs way less than oil and gas in many cases.
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