Proponents of the Cape Wind project cite these environmental factors at every opportunity. They also point to the positive economic benefits of the project — up to a thousand jobs created during the construction and installation phases, with several hundred permanent jobs being involved in the ongoing operation of the wind farm operation. The Cape Wind project would produce green power for the benefit of local residents while being able to supply the overage to the rest of the New England power grid as well. As laid out by its advocates, this is a very attractive scenario for Massachusetts on many levels.
The state has taken particularly bold steps on the legislative level in recent years designed to cut back on fossil-fuel usage with its concomitant pollution and logistical problems, and to promote the use of alternative energy sources. It has a commitment to help grow local economies while advancing technical solutions to existing problems in order to create new economic opportunities for Massachusetts residents. The Commonwealth has plenty of good reasons to approve of this wind farm, and many of its residents strongly support its construction. Green power, new jobs, technological advancement — the Cape Wind project would seem to fit the bill perfectly. So where’s the conundrum, then?
The Cape Wind project seems to be ideal on the face of it, but it’s also the subject of intense and long-standing controversy in the region. Advocates of the project have spent the last several years proclaiming what an ideal opportunity this is from environmental and economic standpoints, a perfect chance to make Massachusetts a world leader in progressive alternative energy initiatives while reducing our nation’s dependence on fossil fuels. There’s no doubt that there would be many strong positives to making something like Cape Wind happen, and project proponents provide an impressive list of pluses for it finally coming to fruition. But opponents of the project have been equally adamant in pointing out the problems with putting a huge wind farm in the middle of Nantucket Sound.
They note that the Horseshoe Shoals area where the Cape Wind turbine farm would be placed is in a particularly sensitive location on annual fish and bird migratory pathways, that it’s in an area of high general aviation traffic and is quite close to a military radar installation where its turbines could cause potential interference problems, that its installation plans also include a very large transformer platform that poses serious environmental risks in case of fire or leakage. And they have serious concerns about what will happen to the wind farm’s installations when their useful life is over approximately twenty years after it begins operations.
There is dissension on both sides of the issue. Some major environmental organizations, such as Greenpeace, have decided that the many benefits of the Cape Wind project outweigh its potential dangers. Others, such as Nantucket Soundkeeper, steadfastly oppose it as currently proposed. Virtually everyone agrees that such a project is an excellent idea in theory — there’s every reason to approve of generating clean renewable energy by way of wind-turbine technology, and several parts of Massachusetts lend themselves to successful applications of wind farming. The conundrum isn’t about whether to do this or not. It should be done, and Massachusetts is a good place to do it. The conundrum, though, is about whether it should be done in Horseshoe Shoals.
And it’s not just a conundrum, it’s a conundrum with implications that extend far beyond the borders of one small state. The Horseshoe Shoals location was carefully chosen because it’s a small pocket of federally-controlled offshore property outside the state-mandated regulations of Massachusetts (which would not permit the project as currently configured.) There are a host of conflicting environmental and legislative policies that impact the Cape Wind project, which are gradually being worked out by the agencies involved. But it’s a slow and complicated process. There are a number of other similar offshore wind farm initiatives that are also working their way through the approvals process around the country — including one quite nearby, in Buzzards Bay — but by dint of size, timing, and physical placement the Cape Wind project is the bellwether of them all.
And that’s why it’s so important that the process be worked out carefully when it comes to Cape Wind, because it will be the precedent for all the other projects that follow. It’s a very large proposed privately-owned installation in federal waters, where unlike offshore oil and gas wells it will not be paying any royalties to the government to offset the costs involved. (As currently projected, the approximately 900 million dollar cost of the entire project would be subsidized to the tune of nearly 800 million dollars in federal and state alternative-energy funds.) The extent of its potential environmental risks is a matter of debate among equally qualified scientific and academic groups that disagree on many aspects of their findings. There’s no real question that the Cape Wind project could have huge benefits from a clean-power standpoint, but there are real questions about whether Horseshoe Shoals in Nantucket Sound is the best place that it should be built.
And the Cape Wind questions come up in conversations with Senator Kerry on a regular basis. He’s always been a staunch environmentalist, of course, dating back to when he was one of the organizers of the very first Earth Day events (in which an unprecedented twenty million Americans stood up and said that they weren’t going to let their planet be needlessly abused anymore). Over the years he’s been a consistent force behind alternative-energy legislation, with a particularly strong commitment to wind power and solar power development. So it goes without saying that he’s firmly behind the development of viable wind-power technologies such as those proposed for the Cape Wind project. In fact, he made a specific point of voting against an amendment that would have made the project impossible from a regulatory standpoint back in 2006.
However, Senator Kerry is also well aware of the need to develop a proper process when it comes to deciding on appropriate sites for massive enterprises involving public lands such as the Cape Wind project. He knows that what happens with Cape Wind will set the precedent for dozens of other such projects in the coming decades, and that it’s critically important to set the bar high enough to make sure that this and other such projects will be sure to create more public benefit than they might produce public harm. He’s been careful not to come out with a personal yea or nay pronouncement on the Cape Wind project while it’s still working its way through the regulatory approval process, not because he’s trying to avoid taking a stand on the issue but because he believes in letting the process proceed to its appropriate conclusion. It’s a cautious stance, but a correct one. That’s why he specifically voted against an appropriations amendment that would have prohibited Cape Wind and similar offshore wind farm projects back in April of 2006.
The Cape Wind project is a conundrum, yes. And it’s a hotly debated conundrum among Massachusetts residents (and to a lesser extent among those residents of other states who are aware of the broader precedents involved here.) Senator Kerry spends a lot of time interacting with individuals both online and off, and the Cape Wind question comes up regularly in those discussions. He’s always been quite direct in stating his position, as you can see from the following remarks that he made during in an interview with the editors of the Blue Mass Group blog on June 6:
“I’m a huge advocate of wind power. I have supported incentives for it. I will be fi
ghting personally for larger incentives,” he began. But, “I think you have to have some kind of a siting process in place that is clear, understandable, universal. You can’t just have someone plunk something down wherever the hell they want. I’ve questioned whether this is the best location. We need a rational, national siting process. It doesn’t strike me as unusual to go through the process with a fine-toothed comb. You do that for a coal fired plant, you do that for a nuclear plant. It took 10 years for Seabrook,” he added. He did say that Nantucket should have more windmills. They have one of note at present, built in 1746.
Senator Kerry also posted a blog entry about alternative energy technologies and took questions in the comments thread on bluemassgroup.com on June 13. While the topic of that thread was coal-to-liquid technology — he as, as he noted there, strongly against it — questions came up in the comment thread about the Cape Wind project and the Senator reiterated his earlier stance on the subject, especially as regards the need to get the process right with this as a critical test case:
As I’ve said before, I’m a strong advocate for wind power, I’ve voted for it, I’ve walked the walk, and it may turn out that the current siting for Cape Wind is the best place to put it. But there’s an Environmental Impact process to decide that – and we have to let the process work itself out. We rightly criticize the Bush administration for putting politics above sound science and careful study, and I just want to make sure this gets the deliberation it deserves. This is a test case for projects like this around the country, so it’s important to get the process worked out satisfactorily. Just think about it this way: if the siting ends up wrong, the opponents of wind power will have a field day for years to come. That’s not good for anyone who believes in alternative energy.
Senator Kerry also addressed the Cape Wind conundrum in a speech and Q&A session that he gave at the National Press Club earlier in the month, which we live-blogged about on the johnkerry.com site, and he’s also gone into more details of his positions on good and bad alternative energy technologies in a diary and comments at Daily Kos on June 14, in other posts at sites like Huffington Post, and in various speeches and public appearances over the years.
The Cape Wind conundrum is indeed “an intricate and difficult problem.” There are many factors to consider and very few hard-and-fast answers at hand when one is looking at the many pros and cons involved in putting such a huge wind turbine farm out in the middle of Nantucket Sound. We encourage you to spend some time using The Googles and learning more about all the complex aspects of the Cape Wind project, but here are a few links to get you on your way to knowing more about it:
Cape Wind project developers’ official website
Wikipedia entry on Cape Wind project
Cape Cod Online’s special Cape Wind project section
Nantucket Soundkeeper’s advocacy site about Cape Wind project
Energy Central Network article on Cape Wind project
New York Times op-ed about Cape Wind project by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Greenpeace issue statement on Cape Wind project
Massachusetts Audubon Society issue statement on Cape Wind project
I thought the reason for oversight being transferred from the Corps of Engineers to the MMS was that the 2005 energy Bill DID require a lease payment?
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Nantucket Sound has been an industrial area since the inception of the Commonwealth. First fishing, then whaling, back to fishing, and now perhaps wind. We have used the Sound throughout our history – it’s just the industries that have changed.
I’m embarrassed for Senator Kerry. I’ll go a bit at a time.
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Citing M-W in the first sentence is sophomoric. Get a better lede.
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Nonsense. Cape Wind provides power cheaper, cleaner, and with none of the foreign policy implications. It’s as controversial as evolution or Global Warming — keep saying it’s controversial and suddenly it is? Bah.
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Yeah, and the hot dog vendors in Manhattan are in an area the size of Manhattan Island. In fact, they very well may take up more room than the turbines, which have monopole diameter of 16 feet at the base. So:
130 turbines * (16/2)^2*pi = 26,138 square feet
I’d bet there are a few homes on the Cape with more square feet than that. We’re talking about 0.6 acres. I’d hope that’s the last of the intellectual dishonesty, but I’d be wrong.
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No, set at a minimum of 5 nautical miles, by definition and edict. If the minimum is 5 nautical miles, and they’re set in a grid [not a line], the average can’t be approximately 5 miles. It must be more than approximately 5 miles. It’s funny how all numerical hand waving always helps make this more contentious than it really is… and I’m sure there’s more of this dishonesty to come.
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Well that didn’t take long. The nearest two monopoles are to be 0.34 nautical miles apart, or 6.88 hundred yards apart. 6.88 is only “several” when you want it to seem small. These babies are at minimum over 2000 feet apart.
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For reference, the Statue of Liberty stands less than a half mile from the shore of NJ and from Ellis Island, and less than 2 nautical miles from the southern tip of Manhattan. The turbines will be 5.2 miles from Point Gammon, a private island in South Yarmouth, 5.6 miles from Cotuit, 6.5 miles from Craigville Beach on Cape Cod. Cape Wind will be 9.3 miles from Oak Bluffs and 13.8 miles from the town of Nantucket. Cape Wind will be farther away from the nearest home than any other electricity generation facility in Massachusetts.
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That means that if you’re on shore and you stick out your arm, they’ll appear smaller than the size of your thumbnail.
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Sorta-kinda. The engineering behind it is far less than what is necessary for a “standard issue” coal, natural gas, oil, or nuclear power plant. Each of the 130 turbines is a fairly small project, and each quite similar to the ones next to it. Wiring 130 of ’em together isn’t particularly challenging either. The engineering and construction for this project is trivial compared to fossil or nuclear power plants, and the risks during construction and operation are far lower too.
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Bold? We use more coal to generate electricity [in terms of percentages of course] than 13 other states, including more coal than Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, New York, and New Jersey. We’ve got a plan that will wean us off of fossil and nuclear power by… 2105. On July 1 we start using 5% biodiesel [95% fossil-based] for state vehicles, and will be using B15 [15% bio, 85% fossil] by around 2011. That isn’t bold. It’s progress, and I’m happy we’re moving in the right direction — but it is not bold.
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One at a time: * Birds? The Audubon society studied the problem and gave it the green light. The Hancock Tower will result in more birdkill than the Cape Wind project each year — it takes up more surface area, has clearish windows which birds haven’t evolved to notice, and is far harder to avoid at night and in higher winds. * Fish? Puh-lease. I haven’t seen a single study from MIT’s Woods Hole or any oceanographer citing legitimate concern for fish, migrating or otherwise. In fact, it’s expected that mollusks will grow on the pilings, and the fish will enjoy eating them as much as I do. Got a study that claims otherwise? Let’s have it. * Aviation traffic: these guys are 426 feet tall, not 4260 feet tall. Planes don’t fly into buildings in the Finanical District, and they won’t fly into the turbines. They’ll be mapped, plotted, and noted. The Air Traffic Controllers will know where they are too. It’s a non-issue. * Radar is another non-issue, as they are located outside the envelope necessary for Otis. * The transformer? Good grief. Any transformer could leak or catch fire, and the Cape Wind transformer will be located farther from people than most. The standards for transformers are high, both for safety and cost reasons. Another non-issue. * What will happen in 20 years? Try this mental exercise: will the price of energy [electricity in particular] rise or fall in the next 20 years? Will the operator still want to make money 20 years from now? If the answer is yes to both [and it is], then wouldn’t the operator do everything in his power to maintain, repair, and replace the turbines and monopoles to continue making [even more] money? After all, there’s tremendous sunk costs to the poles, the pilings, the wires, etc. It would make economic sense to fix a turbine in 2008; it will certainly make economic sense to do the same in 2028.
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I should hope Nantucket Soundkeeper opposes it — they were created in 2001 with the sole purpose of preventing Cape Wind from being built, and take on other environmental issues [CF bulbs on their homepage, yay!] as cover. They’re funded by a small number of abutters and use environmentalism as a cover, and are about as fair and balanced as Fox News.
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No, the Horseshoe Shoals location was chosen because it’s got high consistent wind, shallow water, and is located near enough the grid. The initial plans included turbines within state jurisdiction, and when it was clear that Mitt Romney was going to be less than helpful, the project was scaled back to exist only in Federal waters. Had Senator Kerry shown some leadership a few years ago, the project would indeed be bigger, closer to shore, result in MA getting royalties, and generate even more green energy. His leadership failure [and he was, by no means, the only failure w.r.t. citing] created the current citing.
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They’ve really been worked out, most of them for quite some time now. Furthermore, it’s entirely legitimate to say “I’m for the Cape Wind project” and then, should new information come up, say “Given the newly discovered information, I’ve got to withdraw my support.” That’s called learning.
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Again, you’re cherrypicking information to the tune of intellectual dishonesty. This isn’t a court case — state and federal laws are quite able to be changed by legislators. The Federal Energy Policy Act of 2005 finally established requirements for royalty payments by wind energy projects in federal waters. It’s true that wind energy is subsidized, but it’s also true that oil, coal, and nuclear power is subsidized to far greater dollar amounts [and as it turns out, approximately the same amount per kWh] as wind. So, enough with the halfwitted talking points, and try some apples-to-apples comparisons here. This is all about NIMBYism, and trying to latch on to any seemingly rational excuse to justify it. The fact is, each of the excuses you present are like fish in the same barrel, and their all quite easy to shoot.
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Again, not so much. The Civil Society Institute, a Newton-based non-partisan non-profit think tank, asked jes’ folks what they thought about Cape Wind during the end of May, 2007. More than four out of five people across the state – 81 percent – and 61 percent of Cape and islands’ residents are in favor of Cape Wind’s proposal to build the nation’s first offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound.
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That’s not contentious. That 81 percent is more than Kerry’s 80 percent in 2002. Was Kerry’s election contentious?
So, please, cut the crap. This entire diatribe is written from the prospective of someone who is taking as anti-Cape Wind a stance as possible without sounding like a complete ass. The entire essay (a) exaggerates to the anti-CW position in every number mentioned, (b) tells half truths, always in the anti-CW position, ignoring published data that counters the claims here, and (c) emphasizes that the CW issue is contentious in a classic Fox News style, as if claiming that it’s contentious [and then backing it with intellectually dishonest claims] makes it so.
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I’m sorry if I’ve been rude in this post, but frankly, I expect far better than the essay above from someone who posts on John Kerry’s website. The above arguments are old, tired, and wrong.
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Feel free to contact me if you’d like to discuss this matter via voice or text; I’m not hard to find. In fact, Kerry for Senate is welcome to hire me as a consultant; I’d be happy to help Kerry articulate why Cape Wind is a fantastic project, benefiting US foreign policy, union and non-union labor, the environment, and electric ratepayers.
…to go over to the Cape Wind web site. I was hoping to find a site layout plan over there, but was unable to. Do you have a link to a diagram showing the layout plan?
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Preliminarily, I’ll merely point out that your calculation
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In fact, they very well may take up more room than the turbines, which have monopole diameter of 16 feet at the base. So: 130 turbines * (16/2)^2*pi = 26,138 square feet
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is more than a bit irrelevant, in large part because that “diameter of 16 feet at the base” is nothing more than the bases of the windmills, which are under water, and the calculation ignores the portions of the windmills that are above water. It should be obvious that the windmills will be separated far more than 16 feet, if for no other reason that (i) the turbine blades are much longer than 8 feet (16/2), and (ii) for maximum efficiency, the turbines will have to be separated sufficiently so that turbulence from adjacent windmills will not degrade the efficiency of respective windmills in the project. Probably hence the 24 sqmi siting.
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As far as I’m concerned, as long as the environmental concerns are met (and they seem to have been), I certainly won’t oppose the project merely because of NIMBY. I’ll put it more bluntly. If the Nantucketeers and Cape Codderans wanted to preserve their sound, they should have bought it from the federal government.
was only to counter the irrelevant “cover an area the size of Manhattan Oh noes!” comment about footprint. I agree, the footprint is irrelevant. The total area formed by the perimeter of the project is also largely irrelevant.
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As for the layout, it used to be on the site. It’s roughly rectangular lattice, and the nearest monopoles are a smidge farther than 5 miles away from the nearest rock sticking out of the water. IIRC, the rectangular shape has the longer side parallel to the coast, but that’s just from memory.
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As I mentioned elsewhere, they are “several” hundred yards apart, where several is defined as more than 8.6 [hundred yards apart]. As to their distance from each other, there’s all kinds of good reasons to place these things as close to each other as possible without losing efficiency, so presumably their layout is designed to do just that.
Another excellent post by stomv on the topic. Thank you.
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I would like the opponents of Cape Wind to live down at Brayton Point in Somerset for a while. My dad grew up there next to a farm that was replaced by one of the filthy five plants. He worked at both. I have family that still lives down there.
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The plant appears larger than the size of your thumbnail. It creates a lot of loud noises, including the trucks that barrel past O’Neil Rd to carry the fly ash out.
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It sends coal dust to cover the homes and cars in the neighborhood. (Sure they give out car wash coupons and occasionally will swing by to powerwash homes).
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And though people go down there to fish, I’m not sure it’s done any real long term favors to the fish stocks and plant life in the Taunton river.
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So forgive me if I’m unconvinced by the arguments that the plant would be an eyesore or have negative environmental impacts because of where it’s located. This is NIMBY, pure and simple.
I didn’t think I could bear to wade through the post, point by point.
The Cape Wind Project should have been built 3 years ago.
Kerry should know better. ( Now I sound like my mother! and she, at age 97, would agree with me!)
Either build the god damn thing or don’t. This pussy footing around is getting old. How about we can the idea, build a Wampanoag Casino in Middleborough rivalling Vegas and apply the states portion of the take toward green credits. We can plant trees in Israel, as long as it’s still around.
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That way ted Kennedy will be happy, Ted’s prat boy, Willy Delahunt will be happy, Al Gore will be happy, the Wampanoags will be many times more financially solvent and the only people who get screwed will be the Massachusetts taxpayers! Why should things change?
You come here to Middleborough and say that…
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And of course, the Wampanoags never got screwed ever around here…