Drilling for Climate Change

  • President Obama lifted the moratorium on offshore drilling last week, against the wishes of environmental groups. (Photo Courtesy of the US Minerals Management Service, Lee Tilton)

There’s been lots of speculation about why President Obama is allowing expanded gas and oil drilling offshore. Many environmentalists don’t like it. Lester Graham reports the move might be part of a larger strategy to get a climate bill passed in the Senate.

Transcript

There’s been lots of speculation about why President Obama is allowing expanded gas and oil drilling offshore. Many environmentalists don’t like it. Lester Graham reports the move might be part of a larger strategy to get a climate bill passed in the Senate.

President Obama never ruled out expanding drilling offshore, but it still caught a lot of people off-guard last week when he lifted the moratorium. John Prandato thinks he knows why he did. Prandato writes for the Partnership for a Secure America. In a recent article he argues it’s about the climate change and energy bill being pieced together by Senators John Kerry, Joesph Lieberman and Lindsey Graham. Senator Graham has said a carbon cap-and-trade scheme such as the one in the House climate bill… is dead in the Senate. But maybe not… now…

“Graham has been a proponent of offshore drilling and he has said any climate change and energy bill would have to include expanded offshore drilling, which Obama has now made that concession. So, with any luck, this concession could revive cap-and-trade in the Senate. But, we’ll just have to see.”

Senator Graham says offshore drilling should be expanded further. The White House says the President is not “horse trading” to get a climate bill out of the Senate.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Decision Coming on Cape Wind

  • Bill Eddy of East Falmouth, Massachusetts, built his own schooner, and would one day soon like to sail through the proposed wind farm known as Cape Wind. (Photo by Curt Nickisch)

A decade-long fight over a proposed wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts could be over soon. It’s called Cape Wind. U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he will make a decision by the end of April. What would be the nation’s first offshore wind farm is bigger than a simple “not in my backyard” issue. It has divided communities and even neighbors. Curt Nickisch met two people, who’ve come down on opposite sides – both for environmental reasons.

Transcript

A decade-long fight over a proposed wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts could be over soon. It’s called Cape Wind. U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he will make a decision by the end of April.

What would be the nation’s first offshore wind farm is bigger than a simple “not in my backyard” issue. It has divided communities and even neighbors. Curt Nickisch met two people, who’ve come down on opposite sides – both for environmental reasons.

At 63-years-old, Bill Eddy has old-man-and-the-sea white hair. He’s been sailing all his life, including the waters where the 130 wind turbines would go up more than five miles offshore. He knows the wind’s power. And he’s willing to give up part of the horizon he loves for clean energy.

“I have a firm, firm belief. We may have to for one generation be willing to sacrifice a very small portion of a coastal sea off the coast of Massachusetts. To launch this new future.”

Cape Wind would generate three-quarters of the electricity used by Cape Cod and the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. Bill says it’s time for residents here to share in the sacrifice for the energy that drives modern life.

“Consider for just a moment the sacrifice that’s already being made by the thousands of our fellow American citizens who live where their mountains are being removed for coal. Or what about the thousands of American men and women who are serving overseas to protect the places where the oil is that we import? To be honest with you, the 130 turbines of the wind farm, I’d prefer any one of them to one more marker in Arlington National Cemetery.”

“It’s not going to make any difference, this one wind farm.”

Martha Powers is just as passionate about Cape Wind, but she’s against it. She lives by the water, too.

“So this was a summer cottage, my Dad bought it in 1958.”

As a kid, Martha spent summers here. Now she’s a librarian with graying hair. She keeps binoculars by the back porch for birdwatching.

“This project would tear a big hole in that whole web of life there that could never be repaired. It would tear a hole that big under the ocean, all of the animals that live in the ocean beneath that water, and that fly above that water, it would be horrific. I can almost see it, like a bomb, to me, it feels.”

Mainly, Martha’s worried about the birds that will be killed by the spinning blades of the wind turbines. Her Christmas card this year was a photo of a chickadee perched on her finger.

“When you feel those little feet on your hand, trusting. It’s an amazing experience. So to kill them is just such a horrible thought. That’s the hardest thing for me to accept about this project.”

A few miles away, Cape Wind supporter Bill Eddy says it would be hard for him to accept the project not going forward.

“I know, I just know that, in a year or so, I’ll be able to go out to the wind farm. The wind in my sails and the winds in the blades of the turbine, that something very old and something very new is bringing about a most wondrous evolution.”

Whether that evolution starts off of Cape Cod will be up to someone in Washington. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says the nation will move ahead with wind farms off the East Coast. But since people like Bill Eddy and Martha Powers can’t agree, Salazar will decide whether Nantucket Sound is the right place to start.

For The Environment Report, I’m Curt Nickisch.

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Tapping Offshore Wind

  • Offshore wind farms have the potential to create jobs in struggling states like Michigan, but uncertainty in the permitting process continues to slow projects down.(Photo courtesy of the US DOE)

It’s been nine years since developers first proposed a wind farm off Cape Cod. You can now find offshore wind proposals in just about any state with a coastline. But these are still just proposals. Dustin Dwyer has a look at what needs to change before the U.S. can tap into its offshore wind potential:

Transcript

It’s been nine years since developers first proposed a wind farm off Cape Cod. You can now find offshore wind proposals in just about any state with a coastline. But these are still just proposals. Dustin Dwyer has a look at what needs to change before the U.S. can tap into its offshore wind potential.

One of the newest plans for offshore wind in the U.S. is in Michigan, a state that’s desperate for the kind of jobs that an offshore wind project could create.

But local landowners don’t want to have to look at the turbines – it’s the same problem Cape Wind confronted nine years ago. And the process for getting offshore wind projects approved remains murky.

Steve Warner is CEO of Scandia Wind, which is proposing the Michigan project. He says the response from state government so far has been confusing.

“In the absence of understanding the process and what it entails, people want to hesitate and we understand that.”

There is an effort underway in Michigan to clarify the permitting process for offshore wind. But as that effort drags in many states and at the federal level, developers are left waiting.

For The Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

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Wind on the Water

  • Energy developers are watching how the Cape Wind Project plays out. It could clear the way for more big wind farms off the coasts of places such as New York, Maryland, and Michigan. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

A big shift to alternative energies
such as wind and solar will take a
change in thinking. One example is
the Cape Wind project. Cape Wind
plans to build one-hundred-thirty
windmills in the water. It would
be the country’s first off-shore
wind farm, but not everybody likes
it. Mark Brush reports the fight
over this wind farm could clear
the path for others:

Transcript

A big shift to alternative energies
such as wind and solar will take a
change in thinking. One example is
the Cape Wind project. Cape Wind
plans to build one-hundred-thirty
windmills in the water. It would
be the country’s first off-shore
wind farm, but not everybody likes
it. Mark Brush reports the fight
over this wind farm could clear
the path for others:

Say you want to make some money putting up windmills. You need a place with lots of wind, lots of open space, and lots of people who will want to buy your power.

It turns out, Nantucket Sound off the east coast is an ideal setting.

Jim Gordon first proposed the Cape Wind Project in 2001. The windmills would be as tall as 40 story buildings. And could power hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses.

“Look, it’s not a question of Cape Wind or nothing. It’s a question of Cape Wind or a new nuclear plant or a new coal plant, or a heavy oil fired power plant.”

And that’s where people on Cape Cod get their power now – a power plant that burns oil. Boats making deliveries to the power plant have spilled oil into the water.

Jim Gordon thought it was a no-brainer. Replace dirty power plants with clean renewable energy.

But his plan ran into a bunch of opposition from rich and powerful people.

Roger Whitcomb wrote a book on the Cape Wind Project. Whitcomb said at a recent lecture that a lot of the opposition came from names we’re all familiar with – the Kennedys, the duPonts, and the Mellons.

“Most of these people were summer people. And they basically just didn’t want to look at these wind turbines, or the way they thought would look, because many of them had actually never seen a wind farm or a wind turbine. But they didn’t like the idea of anything violating the visual integrity of their horizon.”

There’s also some opposition from fisherman, some Indian tribes, and some locals who live on the islands. But Whitcomb says the bulk of the money for the fight against the Cape Wind Project comes from the rich and powerful.

Right now, those groups are challenging environmental reviews and permits in the Massachusetts Supreme Court. All these legal challenges – all these permitting hoops – put a damper on big projects.

Roger Whitcomb says we used to be a people who thought big. But that’s changed.

“It’s very difficult to do anything in the United States anymore. We’re way behind everybody else. This isn’t a can-do country anymore. There’s been a huge change. This is not where things are done.”

Energy developers are watching how the Cape Wind Project plays out. It could clear the way for more big wind farms off the coasts of places such as New York, Maryland, and Michigan.

And despite all the legal and political barriers, it looks like the country is closer than ever to seeing its first ever offshore wind farm built.

There’s a lot of popular support for the project in the region.

Ken Salazar heads up the Department of Interior. He told us this past spring he expects projects like Cape Wind will go forward.

“You know I expect that it will happen during the first term of the Obama Administration. I think that there is huge potential for wind energy off the shores of especially the Atlantic because of the shallowness of those waters.”

Siting big wind farms is a new kind of battle in this country. In some cases – like the Cape Wind project – energy development is moving closer to the wealthy.

Ian Bowles is the Secretary of the Energy and Environmental Affairs Department for the State of Massachusetts:

“Many of the dirty fossil plants of a generation ago were sited in cities and many times in environmental justice areas where there’s lower income residents. And I think today, you’ve got in many ways you have more wealthy set of opponents of wind power that is going to relieve the people who live in cities of some of the clean air burdens from siting decisions made a generation ago.”

That means some wind farms can change the game. They move power plants from the backyards of the poor, and into the views of the rich and powerful.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Interview: Cape Wind Controversy

  • The proposed Cape Wind Project in Nantucket Sound is upsetting to some of the resort area residents (Source: Les Salty, at Wikimedia Commons)

The first offshore wind power
project expected to go online
is in Nantucket Sound near the
Cape Cod, Massachusetts resort
area. Some of the residents
of the region are rich and powerful.
They don’t want 130 wind turbines
ruining their view. Lester Graham
talked with the CEO of the Cape
Wind project, Jim Gordon, about why
the wind farm couldn’t be installed
over the horizon and out of sight:

Transcript

The first offshore wind power
project expected to go online
is in Nantucket Sound near the
Cape Cod, Massachusetts resort
area. Some of the residents
of the region are rich and powerful.
They don’t want 130 wind turbines
ruining their view. Lester Graham
talked with the CEO of the Cape
Wind project, Jim Gordon, about why
the wind farm couldn’t be installed
over the horizon and out of sight:

Jim Gordon: Well, first of all, hopefully, in the next ten, fifteen, or twenty years we’ll be able to bring wind turbines further off-shore, and they’ll be commercially and technically viable. But, right now, if you look at the off-shore wind farms in Europe that are commercially and technically viable, those projects are being built in near-shore, shallow waters, lower wave regimes. So, it’s really what’s driving the selection of the Cape Wind site is that it has some of the best wind resources on the East Coast, it’s outside of the shipping channels, ferry lines, and air flight paths, it has a reasonable proximity to bring the transmission line to the shore, and it has shallow depths and a low wave height. And, with all of this, it’s 13 miles from Nantucket, 9 miles from Edgar Town on Martha’s Vineyard, and 6 miles from Hyannis. So, if one were to go to the nearest beach and look out on the horizon, it would have to be a very clear day for you to make out tiny specks on the horizon. People want this project built, because they recognize that our energy security, climate change, sustainable economic development, the clean energy jobs that go with a project like this are important. And, we have to live with trade-offs if we’re going to transition to a more sustainable energy future.

Lester Graham: I wonder what you think of the Kennedy’s, who have been so active on the environmental front, fighting your proposal.

Gordon: You know, I have a lot of respect for Senator Kennedy, and our hope is the more he reads about Cape Wind, and the more he looks at and his staff looks at the final environmental impact statement from the federal government that was extremely positive, as well as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I mean, I’m hoping that the more Senator Kennedy thinks about this project, and looks at how it’s going to address the urgent energy, environmental, and economic challenges facing Massachusetts and the region. You know, I’m hoping that he’ll come around and support the project.

Graham: How do you think what happens with your project will effect other off-shore proposals?

Gordon: I think that this project is going to set an important precedent. If a project like Cape Wind – which has run this exhaustive regulatory gauntlet, and has shown that the public is in favor of it, and that it’s passed muster – if this project is not approved, I think that it’s going to set a terrible precedent. I think that other developers that are looking at moving away from coal or some of the fossil fuels to tap our abundant off-shore wind resources, I think that they’ll have some real second thoughts about investing the enormous amount of time and resources that it takes to get one of these projects in the water.

Graham: Jim Gordon is the President of Cape Wind, the off-shore wind project proposed to be built there in Nantucket. Thanks for your time.

Gordon: Thank you, Lester.

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All Eyes on the Cape Wind Project

  • The Cape Wind Project proposes to build 130 wind turbines miles off the coast in the Atlantic Ocean (Source: Kmadison at Wikimedia Commons)

Offshore wind farm developers are closely
watching a proposed project in Nantucket
Sound. Lester Graham reports the Cape
Wind offshore wind energy project could be
the first in the nation to be approved:

Transcript

Offshore wind farm developers are closely
watching a proposed project in Nantucket
Sound. Lester Graham reports the Cape
Wind offshore wind energy project could be
the first in the nation to be approved:

For nine years, Cape Wind has been working its way through the permitting process.

But some residents in the Massachusetts resort areas around Nantucket Sound have fought against it including Senator Edward Kennedy.

The 130 wind turbines would be miles off the coast, but some residents say it would ruin the view from their coastal houses.

Jim Gordon is the CEO of Cape Wind.

“If this project is not approved, I think it’s going to set a terrible precedent. I think that other developers, I think they’ll have some real second thoughts about investing the enormous amount of time and resources that it takes to get one of these projects in the water.”

Developers are considering offshore wind energy turbines along the mid-Atlantic coast, the Great Lakes and the Gulf Coast, close to the populated areas that need additional power.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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