Cape Wind projections wishful thinking
Attorney General Martha Coakley was quoted Nov. 17 in The Cape Cod Times: “We are running out of time to look at what we need to do for alternative energies.” The article went on about Cape Wind and wind turbines as if commercial wind turbines are the only renewable energy resource in the world.
Who made the decision to bypass other sources of renewable energy such as photovoltaic, geothermal or heat exchangers?
We have wasted eight years in Massachusetts on the permitting process for 130 commercial wind turbines. That’s eight years of wishful thinking; bogus projections; no accounting restraints or transparency; no meaningful future costs savings; and regulatory agencies changing rules, allowing a few to make a great deal of money at everyone else’s expense while providing no meaningful service.
It will take 2,500 450-foot wind turbines, spread over 500 miles, to mathematically offset a large coal plant like the Brayton Point coal plant in Somerset. This wind business is absurd.
In order reach these objectives, the executive branch of government wants the Legislature to give the Energy Facilities Siting Board through the Wind Energy Siting Reform Act the right to place thousands of wind turbines anywhere in your town regardless of bylaws or zoning.
Massachusetts will only be known for buying trophies while no coal plants will be shuttered and little, if any, carbon emissions will be reduced as a result of this project — or thousands of them.
Frank Haggerty
Mattapoisett
25 November 2009
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
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