As the BP Oil debacle sails into the Hall of Shame as the worst environmental crisis in American History, the call for alternative energy sources has grown to a deafening din. Much of the attention has focused on the Cape Wind Project. Already approved by the state, blessed by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and championed by Governor Deval Patrick and his administration, Cape Wind in Nantucket Sound would become America's largest off-shore wind farm.
Seems like a slam dunk. Few energies are cleaner than wind, and the biggest criticism so far seems to come from the likes of the Kennedy Family who raise some legitimate concerns, but whose complaints in the main seem a bit elitist; namely, it spoils the view from mansions such as theirs and is bad for yacht sailing. The Boston Globe is running headlines like: "Memo to Cape Wind Foes: Enough Already."
So done and done right? Well... There are legal challenges still pending, including one from the Wampanoag Indian Tribe whose tribal lands could be adversely affected by the construction machinery used to get the project off the ground. But, on the whole, opposition looks like an uphill battle. With 93% of Massachusetts residents in favor of the project, and a preponderance of American citizens calling for energy alternatives, the climate in the country seems to be: get us away from oil and do it now!
One aspect of the Cape Wind Project that is little discussed is the fact that this is not an oil free project. According to the Final Environmental Impact Statement published by the U.S. Government, an oil spill in Nantucket Sound is one of the considered risks. The 130 wind turbines all connect to what is called an energy services platform which contains 40,000 gallons of dielectric cooling oil. If this structure is breeched, this oil could reach the shores of Cape Cod within a matter of hours.
Even Audra Parker, President and CEO of The Alliance to Save Our Sound, admits that this is an unlikely scenario, but it is not an impossibility. Says Parker when considering the Gulf crisis, "we're seeing what's possible right now."
Additional issues arise from the fact that the wind-generated power has to be transmitted back to land somehow. Again according to the Environmental Impact Statement, this involves laying large lines along the sea floor which could have an impact on aquatic habitats. There is also concern from environmentalists about birds' flight patterns which might take them perilously close to lethal windmill blades. Still, according to Kert Davies Head of Research for Greenpeace, one of the many environmental organizations that support Cape Wind, "There is no pure technology that doesn't cause any harm." His organization has carefully weighed the costs and benefits of the project and has concluded "It is a bellwether to the renewable energy revolution that needs to happen."
MA Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray agrees, saying, "We can't move fast enough... We are trying to create a new economy in MA around Green Energy that doesn't exist in the density we want it to." Cape Wind would certainly be a showpiece project for this agenda.
Still, opposition groups continue to fight, including sending out reports on the negative financial repercussions for some MA energy customers. These numbers are refuted with equal vigor by other groups who support Cape Wind however.
In his 2005 NY Times Op-ed Patrick Kennedy reminded readers that his Uncle "John F. Kennedy, authorized the creation of the Cape Cod National Seashore in 1961, and why Nantucket Sound is under consideration as a national marine sanctuary." As he continues to oppose the Cape Wind Project's new energy, I would like to remind Mr. Kennedy that The Gulf Islands National Seashore is also a federally protected "national treasure" and that doesn't seem to be preventing the deluge of oil from old energy from despoiling her shores.
As a native Gulf Coaster, and as someone watching the death of the Gulf unfold in the daily media blitz, I struggle only a little with my feelings about the project. As everyday brings a new image of horror back home, and every news report a new story of the desperation experienced by a people and culture whose lives are being inexorably and horribly changed by big oil's failure of due diligence, it is difficult to think anything but that the costs of Cape Wind and projects like it are well worth paying.
Add all of this to the country's overall need for jobs and a reimagining of our manufacturing economy and I don't see how we can, in good conscience, oppose a project that could lead our country towards a greener economy and lifestyle. Sure there are consequences, some legitimate and some purely NIMBY selfishness, but it is difficult to imagine negative consequences any greater than those imposed on Gulf residents and culture right now. The real cost of Cape Wind would be in the not doing, in not moving forward into the world of cleaner, less hazardous energy options, electing instead to stay in a world where our demand for fuel comes at the cost of the lives and livelihoods of our citizens.
Follow Susan Deily-Swearingen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/sdeilys
Rooftop PV Solar, Offshore wind, and Waste Bio char, can supply the worlds energy and fuel needs: cleanly, safely, Forever, within 12 years and cheaper in the long run 2-6 cents now, and 26$ per barrel bio oils.
http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_panels.htm
about 1$ per Wp solar panels, new.
install solar plants for about $1.30 per watt, compared with an industry average of about $1.75, according to Hardy." http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=a7K1FZoNgJ0w
Wind: “between two and six cents today, depending on location.12 Wind power approaches competitiveness with conventional generation at this price point. “
http://www.repp.org/articles/static/1/binaries/wind%20issue%20brief_FINAL.pdf
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/publ/BiofBioproBioref%203,%20547-562,%202009%20Laird.pdf
26$ per barrel bio oil from waste bio char.
Biofuels have been debunked right here on Huffpo.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-wiles/forests-new-coal-in-house_b_614034.html
Real cost of solar
Largest solar installation in the US, just built, at Arcadia Florida 42 Gwh/annual $150M, $32B/Gw or 50 cents a kilowatt hour at Florida Power’s discount rate. 25-megawatt peak, 4.7 megawatts baseload equivalent Dual axis tracking Capacity factor 19%."
Real cost of wind
Cape wind 24 cents a kwh going to 34 per tariff.
My links PROVE people are getting solar for under 2% per watt installed, and thus less than 3 cents per KWH.
Not so renewable power actually produces more GHG's than it saves via its associated fast spooling low efficiency load balancing gas plants replacing high efficiency slow spooling CCGT gas plant which would produce less green house gases at a lower cost. Better to skip the not so "renewables and built the CCGT plant instead. Big Oil/Coal loves not so "renewables" because they know they will do nothing but enhance sales of their odious products.
http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2010/06/kent-hawkins-offers-reasonable-doubt.html
Big Oil/Coal loves not so "renewables" because they know they will do nothing but enhance sales of their odious products. One only has to look at advertising in the notoriously anti nuclear Scientific American pushing crazed renewable schemes to see how Big Oil/Coal is spending their disinformation cash.
It would cost New Brunswick Power or Hydro Quebec $200M and 2 cents a kilowatt - ten percent the cost - to provide the New England ISO the same amount of nuclear power from their Candu nuclear reactor complex's. We are already buying nuke power from them and I'm sure they would be happy to supply us all we want at an excellent price and profit for them. New England could be Candu clean and green powered by 2015
Instead of unreliable intermittent wind power the Candu's would put out extremely valuable baseload power.
AECL has built so many Candu's they've got new construction down to almost factory efficiency cheaper than wind coal or gas, and 4 year construction times. Hydro Quebec is far more efficient than any American utility, borrows money at 5%, and is free from the nightmares of the American legal,regulatory, and political systems that make new energy development in the US almost impossible. Canada could once again save America by rimming the border with cheap clean and green nuclear power.
The Candu can also remix old fuel rods from Vermont Yankee turning our nuclear waste into our electricity.
Every year, misinformed and sometimes malevolent green people and their cheering supporters over at Big Coal/Oil can defer the conversion from fossil fuels to nuclear 3 million people die world wide from coal air pollution and the US alone dumps a 40 feet deep 10000 sq mile Lake Erie sized toxic radioactive waste dripping pile of coal ash .
Nuclear waste is valuable nuclear fuel for the Gen IV reactors in service and planned around the world except the USA.who invented the technology. India is firing up a big one next year and Japan just got one of theirs up and running. Bill Gates has one on the go.
After powering the world on existing nuclear waste for hundreds of years the tiny amount of low level waste from these units would fit in a toolshed, stored for 30 40 years then burned up in a fusion reactor.
Scientists tell us we are maybe less than ten years away from a civilization ending peak oil and climate crisis. Only nuclear power can save us in that time frame.
Even in the worst case, if we had to destroy a football forever as a storage dump for nuclear waste, better that than losing the entire planet. Three million deaths every year from coal pollution, is their sacrifice worth silly dreams of an impossible renewable energy future?
Read and learn
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2009/01/relative-safety-of-new-generation-of.html
The really deadly disaster waiting is that terrist missile waiting to take out a nuclear bomb sized LNG tanker, in New York harbor carrying the natural gas required to load balance that Cape Wind project.
That third world nation just north of us - Canada - would be happy to host the nuclear waste and reactors for us though. Just a few miles out of downtown Montreal at Gentilly is the preferred spot. They are already sending us lotsa nuclear power. Why not a little bit more.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12938722 France has very high radiation type cancers rates.
25 cent per kwh nukes 9$ per W average. http://energyeconomyonline.com/uploads/Is_New_Nuclear_Competitive_July_10_2009_FNS_Event.pdf
25 cents per KWH for new Nuclear.
http://climateprogress.org/2009/01/05/study-cost-risks-new-nuclear-power-plants/
10$ per W nuclear minimum.
http://climateprogress.org/2009/07/15/nuclear-power-plant-cost-bombshell-ontario/
http://energy.probeinternational.org/nuclear-power/nuclear-economics/the-candu-reactor-bankrupted-ontario-hydro
The CANDU reactor bankrupted Ontario Hydro
50% default rate on reactors, can';t get private insurance without taxpayer cosign, don't pay for waste, or decommissioning.
Proliferation...
we just watched BP cut corners till things broke, Nukes are doing the same thing running 50 year old reactors "forever".
Trust big business, they love you.
fools.
France's cancer rates are from smoking.
"Real cost of American nuclear power built by American engineers in five years or less overseas for public power companies instead of the attorney’s, corrupt private power companies and pet politicians, and greedy wall street financiers taking ten years at four times the cost to build the same nuclear plants in the US."
"AP1000 build $1.2B/Gw 2007, 1.3 cents a kwh"
"http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&refer=asia&sid=aJPyNB5Q_Fr0"
Oddly nuclear power from Ontario Hydro nukes retails for 5 cents a kwh. Bankrupt?. It's one of the largest power companies in the world.
No nuke has defaulted worldwide in 40 years, they have paid 50 billion already into NRC mandated waste and decommissioning funds, and they have a $10 Billion insurance pool.
You just make stuff up as fast as you can spew don't ya?
However, I would like to point out that the argument about the cooling oil is a red herring. The area currently uses oil fired power plants that require oil to be shipped in. That is a far greater risk than a fully contained cooling system. As recently as 2003 there was an oil spill in the area that dumped almost 100,000 gallons of oil, 2 1/2 times what is contained in the enclosed system.
No technology is without risks and drawbacks. No single technology is going to solve our power needs, and our needs are not gonig to be met by technology alone, but also by changes in our lifestyles.
Don't believe the hype. You get PLENTY OF SUNSHINE to hit a substantial percentage of your power there from the existing built environment. Germany and Ontario, Canada are CRAMMED FULL of rooftop solar, and it's producing just fine (they both have less solar insolation than the NE USA).
I'm sick of people looking for Big Centralized Remote Power Plants to save us from global warming, oil spills and coal disasters. LOOK AT YOURSELF AND GET GOING ALREADY. Can't afford it? That's because you haven't fought for policies that make it affordable and even profitable to produce clean power right where we need it. PACE loans, net metering, feed in tariffs and efficiency upgrades will get you all where you need to be - quickly, cheaply, democratically, and CLEANLY.
What are you waiting for?
if we don't give away all our money to Big Wind and Big Solar, we get normal PACE style loans funded and we expand time of use net metering and feed in tariffs (all very cheap or free), then we can "pay" for our solar power as we go via offsets and loan repayments rather than "paying" for it all upfront.
artificially subsidizing (directly and indirectly) the kinds of projects that destroy our open spaces and probably our planet so that Chevron, Massey and other Big Energy companies can make a fortune is exactly what we cannot afford. It's like working in a cubicle for a giant corporation vs. having your own business - right wingers should be the FIRST on the energy independence bandwagon! and i mean independence from Chevron Oil as much as from Chevron Solar.
add rooftop pv solar, and WASTE bio fuels, and we can supply all the worlds energy and fuels needs, clean, safe, cheaper and forever.
Long haul is not practical with electricity. Even with the best batteries, it will have 1/20th the energy per lb, thus a long trip would necessarily be inefficient because of the large weight of batteries needed, and it would be an expensive waste of the lithium we need for passenger cars.
That's where Waste Bio Fuels come in. Waste bio fuels can supply all the liquid fuels we need, clean, cheap and carbon negative.
Bio Char of sewage alone would produce about 15% of the world energy needs, and kill all the pathogens in the water.
Waste Bio fuels is what we use to supply the base load backup that wind and solar need.