Last week, with little fanfare, the Cape Cod Commission denied Cape Wind Associates permission to run transmission lines to their proposed offshore wind farm, the Boston Globe reports. The Commission based its decision on Cape Wind's alleged failure to provide sufficient information about its project. Yet there is little doubt the decision was motivated by well-financed local opposition. As the Globe editorialized last week:
The cable has been the focus of so much attention by state and Cape Cod regulators because it is the one part of the project under their purview - the turbines themselves would be in federal waters and under jurisdiction of federal watchdogs. . . .Cape Wind can appeal the decision, or seek to satisfy the Commission's information request. Either course may involve further delay, and further cost increases. If local NIMBYs defeat this project, it could produce an ill wind for offshore wind projects nationwide.There is evidence that the Cape Cod Commission is finding fault with the cable proposal because some commission members or residents of the towns they represent do not want the turbines, which at their closest point would be about five miles from the Cape, in their viewscape. At the same time the commission was dealing with the cable proposal from Cape Wind, it approved without benefit of any review at all a new electric cable linking Nantucket with the Cape. At 26 miles, that cable has already been built, and it is double the length of Cape Wind's.
I previously wrote on regulatory obstacles to wind power and other alternative energy sources here.
It's hard for me to understand, but ever since this story became news I've started having a strong visceral attachment to this project . . . I'd very much like to see it through.
I don't know how many people have seen the wind farms at the Altamont Pass and coming down off the mountain into Palm Springs, but they are amazing.
Sad to hear such a worthy "green" project got shot down at the last moment by such a bunch of fools. They should have been proud and honored the privilege of having this project in their area.
The power cable that runs to Nantucket was not a "problem" in that it didn't impact the Kennedy's view of Nantucket Sound - in fact, the cables to/from the Cape Wind project won't impact their view either, but using the cable approvals as a lever in "allowing" Cape Wind to build and operate their turbines gives the Kennedy "interests" a significant ability to dictate the economics of the project. In the Hyannis/Cape environment, the Kennedy family needs never to rationalize the two apparently conflicting viewpoints - they merely need to make sure that there "patronage pals" follow the script that they've been given.
If any of the unwary were under the impression our lords and masters intended to pay any price at all for the Good Things the rest of us were going to be required to do, this...won't make any impression either.
"Amazing" as in beautiful, awesome, spectacular, inspiring, I assume, as that is how I see it.
The irony is that the windmills would actually add to the seascape or at least be benign. Oh well, lots of smart people are also very conventional in their attitudes and that's what you get with the wind farm hysteria.
Even if AGW is 100% real and those people 100% believe in it, this is still rational behavior. Selfish and despicable, but entirely rational.
Why should they sacrifice when the benefit goes to the whole planet?
But underlying this, we must remember that the right answer is to start building these wind farms, not to deny the problem. One thing that the GOP might think about is attaching a rider to environmental bills that the Democrats want to pass overriding the local obstructions and permitting the construction of the wind farm.
That's where Teddy K. sails, don'tcha know.
Very simply, those farms have basically completely reshaped that environment. You don't think of a wind-turbine as having that significant of a footprint (Maybe 16ft by 16 ft) but when you have hundreds that are all connected by service roads, you basically realize that you have just denied that entire region to any bird or other animal (non rodent) that requires a "pristine" environment.
Don't get me wrong- I am the first person to advocate teraforming projects that turn our environment into something more human-friendly. But don't fool yourselves: for the environment in which they are built, wind turbines are a disaster. And an environmentalist (I'm not one) should be very concerned with unleashing that anywhere.
Maybe he's afraid he'll crash into one of the turbines when he's drunk.
/cheapshot
A Dutch wind mill.
/Ted Kennedy
That's funny, because out here on the front range plains where a majority of wind farm projects are presently being erected, the native environment was nothing to crow about before the construction crews moved in. The land is dry and covered with prarie grasses and small ground aninmals; trees are extremely scarce outside of riprarian zones. Once the new power lines go in to service the windfarm, you've never seen so many happy hawks in your life.
Also, projects are sometimes structured around existing roads to facilitate construction and reduce net project costs; there is inevitable disruption during the construction and sometimes there is an access driveway left in place here and there, but (1) that happens all the time anyway for small-scale oil and gas collection equipment and (2) usually, the turbines are erected, commissioned, locked, and then physically ignored unless a serious malfunction occurs. Most of their operations are managed remotely via electrical or fiber-optic communications back to the collection substation, which is itself unmanned most of the time.
I would love to back the wind farmers, but in my case I live smack dab in the center of the San Jacinto Pass right outside Palm Springs, wind turbine central. It's not the noise, or seeing them that bothers me, but the complete lack of maintenance and the amount of dead ones out here that bugs me. I believe that when the majority of them were built, and maybe even continuing today, there were (are) huge tax writeoffs to build them.
That was true for older windfarms, and part of what you may be witnessing is that the technology has improved and advanced substantially since the days when many of California's early farms were installed. Unfortunately, those turbines are probably obsolete, and the power systems equipment that collects the power and delivers it to the grid is likely unsuitable for a modern reconditioning project. Meaning, it would be a 60% tear-down and rebuild of the entire site.
Given that there are many virgin sites available for new projects all over the US, particularly in non-coastal western states where the regulatory and tax burden is a lot lower, the utility or LLC that owns that system may choose to just ignore the whole thing and write off the unproductive equipment as a loss, leaving the turbines wilt and rot on their own time. If that bothers you, do a property search to find out who actually owns the land and track back to the system owner from there (keeping in mind that the system owner may only be leasing it), then start lighting up phones in your municipal and/or county governments.
Keep in mind, though, that while physically broken wind turbines are definitely not operating, turbines not turning may just be at the wrong position relative to the wind at that point in time. You won't usually see all of them turning in any given area -- they won't all turn at low windspeeds because the wind patterns are disrupted by the lay of the land relative to the incomeing stream, and they'll also shut down automatically at wind speeds over about 50mph because the turbine blades might disintegrate (At full speed, a large turibine blade looks to be turning at a very moderate speed but the tip of the blade is moving circularly at 100mph.)
Meanwhile, the owners of new projects are definitely getting renewable energy credits; but modern turbines make these projects profitable even without the tax incentives, assuming you choose the site carefully.
I doubt it. They'll find a locality where the proletariat don't have the political pull that the Cape Codians (sp?) have. I'm sure Kennedy would even be happy to vote to subsidize it.
As to the environmental damage, in our area it is virtually nil. I have a UTV and travel all through and around these areas and have never seen dead birds and such like under the blades. The dead ones I am discussing are the newer, larger ones, that have lost blades and the older ones are no doubt older technology that the owners have simply walked away from after they got what they wanted. Believe me, I know how they work and I know a lot about them, and often give tours to interested people.
They can be a tremendous power source, the latest GE models are said to generate 1.3 megawatts a year at buy in prices in the vicinity of 100K per kilowatt, no infrastructure included.I just wish these investors would take care of the mess they left behind, or new investors clear the existing farms and rebuild.
Hey, Cape Wind, lots of wind here, and lots of room to take over existing fields, come on down.
Good post @ 5:05pm. Half [or more] of the windmills at the Altamont are stopped at any given time. About a week ago one collapsed and fell right on a car.
Oh, and The Economist recently reported that the new generation of windmills will have blades in excess of 100' diameter. Bring on the nukes!!
[not to be nitpicky, but that 1.3 megawatt figure for a windmill is certainly bogus windmill propaganda. A large coal-fired power plant produces maybe 800 MW. And windmills only work when there's enough wind. A nuke plant produces way, way more than 1,000 MW. Clean power, too - and not one American has ever been killed by a nuke power plant.]
Discount, discount, discount.
Hint: View Source to learn this trick.
(If the spammers ever figure it out, the anti-spam bots will have to adapt to stop it.)
But I will say, I did think that advocating for one's own property was generally approved of by conservatives - especially in the face of what may reasonably be cast as a potential Government "taking".
Not all the residents of the Sound are hypocritical environmental liberals. This one, for example, is pretty conservative.
If the opponents of Cape Wind are at all correct about the negative impact, then it will not be the rich who suffer. Any negative impact sufficient to destroy views and property values will also destroy the local economy of the mid cape for people at all economic levels. A risk is being incurred and it is incurred by all, not just the wealthy property owners.
As for myself I'm not an opponent, I'm not worried about the view and if birds are impacted, hey, sorry, the Cape shoreline is long and we need the juice.
But the callow Schadenfreude exhibited here in the comments is distressing. I yield to no one in my contempt for Ted Kennedy but really the issue is larger than him.
It seems the liberal MSM is not the only institution to read their "narrative" onto what is in reality a fairly nuanced and complex local issue.
Note that Mitt Romney was with the NIMBYs on this one.
They would have appeared to be about the size of your held up thumb.
Not much damage to the view, eh?
But to a Kennedy, even that amount of sacrifice is apparently too much.
Should say commercial nuke power plant, Army lost 3 people on AR1 back in the 50's
I suppose this would be just like the way the offshore oil rigs off Santa Barbara (which are much more visible than these would be) have completely destroyed the property values there...
Actually, GE has wind turbines rated all the way up to 3.6MW, but at that rating you need a very large clearance (blade diameter is greater than 300 feet) and a fairly high continuous wind speed to run efficiently and recapture the investment. Offshore sites are typically ideal for this. On land, lesser ratings are more common. However, if you get enough of them over a large area feeding into one collector system, average power flow into the grid can be fairly high over long periods of time.
It is quite feasible for a medium-sized site (say, fifty turbines ranging from 750kW to 1.5MW) to be continuously matching or exceeding the output of a medium-size coal burner or two on a moderately windy day. The turbines may not be running at their maximum capacity, but unlike the coal fired plant, the wind turbines have very low maintenance costs, no fuel costs, and no emissions after the initial infrastructure investment. It's not a replacement for energy on the scale that the US demands it, but it's a very nice supplement.
I would expect that it is. However, whenever those with power or wealth presume to lecture the rest of us on the perils of environmental destruction, and demand that we all adopt lesser lifestyles or renewable energy resources...and then proceed to show a complete unwillingness to live by those words even to the point of a mild inconvenience, well, guess what? They will necessarily take crap for it. That's why Al "An Inconveniently Large House" Gore gets a round of raspberries for consuming a month's worth of utilities at a couple dozen times the national average, and it's why Ted "The Kennedy" Kennedy gets a bronx cheer for opposing Cape Wind.
No, I think those risks are small, as I believe I made clear.
My issue is that those small risks are borne by more than just rich people on the shore.
If a developer encroached on your personal property and your own community in a similar manner I think you'd want to have the opportunity to judge the magnitude of those risks yourself, and not take the opinion of a hostile crowd eager to stick it to some (in)famous local resident (however much he has it coming).
All the more so if your community in question possessed an unspeakable natural beauty. Residence transcends mere posesion; stewardship is an imperative. Ah, but the risks are so small! Fine, you take them, then.
Again, I agree that the risks are small, but it irks me that those with nothing at stake are so cavalier about them.
You will not goad me into defending Teddy. (Actually, electrodes on my 'nads could not induce me to defend him). But please be aware that not all residents fit this charicature. If you want to engage in polemic and warp reality to a narrative, then fine, but be aware what you're doing.
I've been to residents meetings. To suggest the opposition is uniformly liberal and hypocritical is incomplete at best and decidedly unfair in many cases. But, hey, the narrative is so compelling I'm sure I won't dissuade many from expounding on it at every opportunity.
Let every wind farmer know, whether he wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure wind turbines stay out of Cape Cod....
That's an excellent suggestion, and one that made me laugh out loud. I think the lighthouse at the top would be the perfect addition to the nuke plant to make it fit in with the rest of the cape. Thank you!
Off-shore windmills are great as tourist attractions. And really, are you expecting a significant drop-off in tourists because of a few specs on the horizon? You can't even drive down Rt 6 on a summer weekend. That's a bigger turn-off than something miles off-shore.
Ah, but you forgot the one major hitch in that plan. Who represents Newport in Congress? The Spawn...
When Teddy was mending his good name after that unfortunate Chappaquidick business, one of his first projects was to involve himself in Vineyard affairs, aligning himself with the interests of individuals against those who wanted to develop property consistent with the zoning laws at the time, that is before Massachusetts enacted legislation that stopped them in their tracks, causing them and their lenders huge losses.
No, no narrow self-interests at work, plenty of noblesse oblige from the venu and parvenu.
(Gee, didn't realize there was this much sarcasm/cynicism within me just waiting to be released. But hypocrisy does have that effect on me.)
Can you tell us what the government is "taking?"