E-Mail This Article to a Friend The winds of war (continued)
	The answers are not only blowin’ in the wind Wind-farm proponents often point to Denmark’s offshore turbines as aesthetic and technical examples of wind energy at its best. After all, the spinning blades off the Danish coast help the country meet an impressive 20 percent of its energy needs from wind. But existing offshore generators also serve to remind us that wind technology — especially in its offshore form — is still developing. Take what happened at Denmark’s Horns Rev wind park, where in 2004 all 80 turbines had to be taken down for repairs due to manufacturing mistakes (they’ve since been replaced, and are now in working order). Wind farms are expensive, but they benefit from hefty government subsidies (in the United States, the Production Tax Credit affords wind-farm developers a 1.8-cent tax credit for every kilowatt-hour of electricity they produce). At this level of investment, taxpayers want to see efficient, dependable results — not costly repairs after only a year of operation. However, in the world of renewable energy, particularly wind power, technological innovation is moving so swiftly that rookie errors are fast becoming irrelevant. Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rodgers likens the technological advances to those within the field of computers. For example, within five or 10 years, experts predict they’ll be able to site wind farms much farther offshore — which obviously appeals to groups like the Alliance To Protect Nantucket Sound. There’s a long road ahead, however, even if advances in alternative-energy technology attract broader political support and, as a result, more government subsidies. In part three of her widely acclaimed May 2005 New Yorker series "The Climate of Man," writer Elizabeth Kolbert points out that given the standard output of wind turbines, we’d need close to a million worldwide to make a substantive dent in stabilizing future carbon dioxide emissions. (To have a comparable impact with solar power, we’d need panels "covering a surface of five million acres — approximately the size of Connecticut," she writes.) In other words, wind power isn’t the only answer. Coal-burning power plants must get cleaner, cars and trucks must become more fuel-efficient, and developing energy technologies need investment and support. And another thing. "If clean energy can’t make money," Rodgers says, "we’re not going to have very much clean energy." _DF

On the Republican side, Senators John Warner of Virginia and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who proposed a bill this year that would eliminate federal subsidies for projects like Cape Wind (the bill was sent to committee in June), both vacation or own property on the Cape. Governor Mitt Romney also got into the act when he spoke against wind farms at a December 2004 public hearing in West Yarmouth.

"I’ve seen wind farms, and they are not pretty," Romney said. "If we want them in Massachusetts, we’ll build them, but not here on Nantucket Sound." Instead, Romney has proposed building them in the Berkshire Mountains. In Cape Cod’s Barnstable County, the average home price is more than $350,000. In Berkshire County, it’s just over $150,000. Draw your own conclusions. (The governor did, however, recently float the idea of putting turbines somewhere in Boston Harbor or on its islands.)

Shameless beauty

For Audra Parker, an Osterville resident who serves as assistant director of the anti-wind Alliance, having a NIMBY attitude is nothing to be ashamed of.

"I understand that comes across as NIMBY," she says at the organization’s Hyannis headquarters. However, "NIMBY can be a valid argument," because indeed, it is in their back yard that wind-farm opponents have identified safety concerns (ferry- and aviation-related), environmental hazards (they claim birds could be mangled by the turbines’ rotating fins, or marine life disrupted by construction and operation), and yes, visual blight. Computer simulations show that from certain points on Cape Cod’s southern shore, turbines will be visible on the horizon. From Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, it’ll be more of a stretch.

"Part of it is clearly visual," Parker says, pulling out a glossy photo of the transformer, or electric-service platform (ESP), that will sit in the middle of the wind turbines, converting the wind-produced voltage into energy that’s compatible with the electric grid. "What will be the impact on tourism," she asks, when visitors look to the ocean and see the equivalent of "a 10-story parking garage?"

"At some point in their campaign," counters Rodgers, "the Alliance realized that a lot of people like the way wind turbines look, so they switched their poster child of the project from the wind turbines to the electric-service platform." Rodgers says that compared to the 417-foot-tall turbines, the ESP, stretching a mere 100 feet out of the water, will scarcely be visible from shore.

The platform debate is just the latest in the public-relations battle the two camps have engaged in over the past four years. In 2003, the Alliance dropped more than $400,000 of the $1.7 million it raised on PR, according to federal tax returns. Because Cape Wind is a private corporation, it’s not required to disclose its finances. However, Rodgers insists that when it comes to PR, the Alliance has outspent Cape Wind.

It’s worth noting that the Alliance is fighting on two fronts: at home on the Cape, and on the national level in Washington, DC, where the organization joins Senator Kennedy in pushing for more-comprehensive siting standards for offshore wind power in federal waters — which don’t exist now, since this project would be the nation’s first. "It seemed incredible to me that you could just develop the ocean," Parker says, without national standards in place. To that end, the organization enlists public-relations strategists both in DC (spending almost $100,000) and here in Massachusetts (for more than $118,000).

The most recent public-opinion poll, conducted by the Cape Cod Times and WCAI, the local National Public Radio station, shows an evenly divided Cape, with 39 percent against the project, 37 percent for it, and a quarter left undecided.

"There are good people on both sides," says John Basile, the managing editor of several of the region’s Boston Herald–owned community newspapers. According to Basile, who’s reported on Cape affairs for 20 years: "There are people who are very committed environmentalists who are finding a problem with this. I’ve never seen an issue divide people like this one."

A win-wind situation

In May, a group of Clean Power Now members that included executive director Matt Palmer visited two offshore wind farms in Nysted and Blavand, Denmark. Showing digital photos of the 70- and 80-turbine generators, Palmer describes them as "majestic and elegant."

When Denmark embarked on these projects, its government and developers also met with significant public opposition. But there’s little controversy today, even in the town of Nysted — a beach community that Palmer compares to the Cape. On hazy days in Denmark, you can barely make out the tops of the turbines, he adds. (Admittedly, these wind parks are a few miles farther out than they would be in Nantucket Sound.)

Regardless of how they look, they represent Denmark’s dedication to wind energy. The country already gets about 20 percent of its energy from wind, and hopes to reach 35 percent by 2015. By comparison, Germany gets 3.5 percent. The US gets less than one percent.

On June 28, the US Senate passed a $16 billion energy bill, which includes clean-energy incentives such as tax breaks for hybrid cars and grants to develop "biofuel" made from things like vegetables or waste. It also encourages renewable- and nuclear-energy facilities, to offset coal-burning ones, which release the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. As the Senate and House (which passed its $8 billion version of the legislation in April) enter into negotiations to hammer out energy legislation, supporters hail the Senate’s attempt as an important step toward stabilizing greenhouse-gas emissions while increasing energy diversification.

Of the country’s wind resources, the US Department of Energy writes: "If even a small percentage of this potential is developed, it will help alleviate a variety of energy issues facing our Nation, including increasing electricity demand, congestion on regional electricity grids and concerns over air emissions from traditional power generation."