Blowing cold and hot on wind energy
The Portland Press Herald, www.pressherald.com 23 November 2010
Barbara Durkin’s “Another View” on wind power (Nov. 15) provided much-needed factual information about the faulty premise upon which wind power is built, and as someone who is not an expert on the topic, I applaud her viewpoint. She convinced me.
So imagine my surprise when I read the very next day that your editorial writers support wind power and urge the new governor to support it, too.
Did they not read Ms. Durkin’s comments?
Throughout the green energy effort, one very valuable economic concept – economy of scale – has been overlooked.
Simply stated, using an example in the case of electric power, it is more costly (and less economical) to build a series of small power plants, and it is less costly (and more economical) to build a single large power plant that can produce the same amount of power as the smaller plants combined.
There are always going to be carbon footprints. Just take a look at the human race, which is the single greatest contributor of carbon dioxide in the world.
Yet the generation of wind power without subsidies seems doomed, according to Ms. Durkin. To that I would add economy of scale, which cannot be applied to it.
Floyd Folsom
Alfred
I stand proudly with the courageous Mainers who have recently stepped forward to stop the destructive industrialization of Maine’s mountains by out-of-state companies (“Wind-power protesters arrested,” Nov. 9).
Without massive taxpayer subsidies, First Wind of Massachusetts and TransCanada, to the north, would not be devastating Maine’s precious mountaintops and ridge lines.
These taxpayer-subsidized corporations are first and foremost out to get millions of our federal tax dollars.
They are tearing apart Maine’s fragile mountain ecology with false promises driven by greed.
Maine is not South Dakota or the Texas plains, where the wind blows hard and strong much of the time. Industrial wind is absolutely wrong for our mountains and is the wrong clean-energy choice for Maine.
Much of our housing stock is poorly insulated. As a result, a community-based, statewide energy-efficiency project would be the very best and most cost-effective way for Maine to significantly reduce its consumption of fossil fuels.
We can insulate every home and business in Maine, while creating thousands of jobs, and for a much lower cost than taxpayer-subsidized industrial wind.
We can then avoid the terrible environmental cost of tearing up our mountains with an unnecessary and destructive industrial wind scheme.
Every citizen who treasures our beautiful mountain landscape should speak up against this taxpayer-subsidized corporate assault. Together, we can stop it.
We must not devastate Maine’s mountains or any other special place in order to save it. If Mainers allow this corporate assault on our mountains to continue, we will be filled with regret for what we have lost.
We must stop industrial wind right now, invest instead in an effective energy-efficiency campaign and preserve the Maine we love.
Robert Goldman
South Portland
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2010/11/23/blowing-cold-and-hot-on-wind-energy/