Wind Power Gets a Boost

  • The government's Recovery Act spending led to enough new wind turbines to power about two and a half million homes. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

2009 was a bumper year for new
windmills. But Mark Brush reports,
if it weren’t for government money,
it might have been a bad year:

Transcript

2009 was a bumper year for new
windmills. But Mark Brush reports,
if it weren’t for government money,
it might have been a bad year:

Companies normally have to borrow money from banks or investors to build big wind projects. And money was tight last year.

But the government stepped in with Recovery Act spending. It led to enough new wind turbines to power about two and a half million homes.

Even with government spending, experts say there’s still a lot of uncertainty in the wind business. The wind industry says the federal government should set mandatory goals for renewable energy. That way utilities will know what to expect over the long term.

Denise Bode is the CEO of the American Wind Energy Association.

“That kind of assurance sends a signal to a utility that they need to diversify their portfolio. That it’s in the public interest. And that gives them the support they need to go and make 20 and 30 year decisions. Right now, most utilities are making very short term decisions.”

A lot of the growth that happened last year happened in states that required a certain percentage of their power come from renewable energy.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Wind Power Potential

  • In this study, researchers wanted to see what it would take to increase wind energy enough that it could provide 20% of power for the eastern United States. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

A new study says wind power
could meet 20% of
the energy needs of the eastern
United States. But to get there,
the nation needs to invest in a
lot of infrastructure. Samara Freemark reports:

Transcript

A new study says wind power
could meet 20% of
the energy needs of the eastern
United States. But to get there,
the nation needs to invest in a
lot of infrastructure. Samara Freemark reports:

The study was released by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. That’s a federal lab that develops green technologies.

Researchers wanted to see what it would take to increase wind energy enough that it could provide 20% of power for the eastern United States. What they found was, we need a lot more transmission infrastructure.

David Corbus worked on the study. He says transmission lines would connect turbines offshore and in the Midwest to cities on the east coast.

“You have to get all that wind energy to where people can use it. So you have to build a lot of transmission. Which can be difficult to build.”

Difficult, and expensive. Corbus says those investments could cost more than fifteen billion dollars. But he points out that that’s actually a relatively small amount compared to the total that the nation spends on energy.

The lab will release a similar study on the western states in a few months.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

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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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Wind Turbines and Property Values

  • An author of the report says they accounted for the housing bubble burst, and they still found that being close to a wind turbine did not affect how quickly a home sells. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

A new study finds living near
a wind turbine does not have
a noticeable impact on the
value of your home. Rebecca
Williams has more:

Transcript

A new study finds living near
a wind turbine does not have
a noticeable impact on the
value of your home. Rebecca
Williams has more:

Researchers looked at the sale prices of almost 7500 homes around the country over eleven years. The homes were as close as 800 feet to a turbine or as far as 10 miles away.

Ryan Wiser is a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He’s an author of the report. He says being near a wind turbine did not have a widespread impact on property values.

“There may be still some sense that the aesthetics of a place has been impacted either positively or negatively and that may affect one’s impression of value, even if it doesn’t affect actual home sales prices.”

Wiser says they accounted for the housing bubble burst, and they still found that being close to a wind turbine did not affect how quickly a home sells.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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The ‘Tres Amigas’ Project

  • The project would send power - like wind or solar - across three electricity networks. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

Wind and solar power farms are sprouting
up, but they have reliability problems.
Wind doesn’t always blow, and sun doesn’t
always shine. To keep the lights on,
utilities want to grab power from any
solar and wind farm that is working.
Shawn Allee reports one transmission
project could help out:

Transcript

Wind and solar power farms are sprouting
up, but they have reliability problems.
Wind doesn’t always blow, and sun doesn’t
always shine. To keep the lights on,
utilities want to grab power from any
solar and wind farm that is working.
Shawn Allee reports one transmission
project could help out:

It’s not easy to send California’s solar power eastward. Same goes for sending Texan wind power westward.

A proposed transmission project called Tres Amigas hopes to change that.

It would let utilities send power across three electricity networks.

Michael Giberson researches utility economics at Texas Tech University. He says the Tres Amigas project could go in just the right spot.

“The area where it’s locating in Eastern New Mexico close to the Texas borderr, is an area where there’s great renewable energy potential and this is gonna make it much easier for the grid to accomodate that.”

The Tres Amigas power project would need federal approval. It would also require Texas to link its grid with its neighbors’.

That’s something the Lone Star state might not do.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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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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Hurricane Season Is Here

  • Monday, June 1 is the official start day of hurricane season (Photo courtesy of NASA)

Today is the first day of the Hurricane season,

but we’ve already seen a tropical depression off

the Atlantic coast. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Today is the first day of the Hurricane season, but we’ve already seen a tropical depression off the Atlantic coast. Lester Graham reports:

The Weather Channel noted that tropical depression was farther North earlier than any potential hurricane in the 159 years of storm records.

You can’t help but wonder whether climate change is having an effect here.

Jeff Masters is a former hurricane hunter, now with Weather Underground.

He says that’s not what’s happening. He says this storm was getting stronger by following the the gulf stream.

“There just happened to be a little blip of warm water associated with the gulf stream that this storm took advantage of. It was a very small storm so it was very lucky. It was able to stay over the warmest part of the gulf stream.”

Masters says it’ll be decades before we’ll be able to tell if climate change is actually affecting hurricanes.

Forecasts this year call for a pretty average hurricane season.

Masters says an El Niño event could occur later. That’s important, since the number and intensity of Atlantic storms are usually reduced during an El Niño year.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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