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Trading away a wild place 

Credit:  The Martha's Vineyard Times | www.mvtimes.com 27 June 2012 ~~

If you are one of those who favor a clean, plentiful, growing, cheap supply of energy to support the growth of the American economy – and, naturally enough, its many sub-parts, including this tiny, remote (but not remote enough) outpost we call home – you cannot but despair.

The state of Massachusetts, in its loopy devotion to industrial wind-powered generating plants deployed, in cooperation with the federal government, in a strangling circle around the Vineyard, does not feel your pain. The illusion of cheap, plentiful electric power from wind has captured the political imagination, and wild places such as Horseshoe Shoal, Nantucket Sound, and the ocean south and west of Martha’s Vineyard will pay the price for this folly.

And, we learn this week that the the Martha’s Vineyard/Dukes County Fishermen’s Association (MVDCFA) does not feel your pain either. The fishermen are also willing to see these wild places trashed. MVDCFA and Cape Wind Associates have made a deal under which the fishermen will sell their support for the Cape Wind project in exchange for a promised, but unspecified, benefit for the fishermen members of the association. The deal was based upon the fishermen’s willingness to end a federal lawsuit they had filed in opposition to Cape Wind.

“The Martha’s Vineyard Fishermen have agreed to support the Cape Wind project as a sustainable source of clean energy for the future, and Cape Wind and the Martha’s Vineyard Fishermen together support a vibrant and sustainable local commercial fishing community on Martha’s Vineyard,” according to a press statement.

State government, the Cape Wind developers, and now Island fishermen are co-conspirators in efforts to advance the project and to elbow aside valid economic and environmental concerns expressed by Islanders over wind factories to the east, west, and north of us. It’s a plan whose benefits are immeasurably small compared with its drawbacks.

Among the drawbacks, and the Cape Wind deal with National Grid draws this out plainly, are the state’s policy determinations to allow the expansion of wind generation, no matter what the cost to residential and commercial customers and no matter whether the local targets agree to the intrusion. Wind-driven power will be significantly more expensive than energy produced by any other source, but the state and now Island fishermen endorse it, and would protect its higher costs by attempting to block energy suppliers from buying less expensive power – even power from renewables – created out of state.

The argument here is that the energy future of our economy will be built on electricity and transportation fuels. Oil, whether produced here or abroad, does not figure significantly in electricity generation now and will certainly figure only marginally in the equation as we move forward.

The Cape Wind deal to sell the electric power that the planned Nantucket Sound wind farm may one day produce will cost electricity end-users billions more than conventionally produced power. That’s not because wind-driven electricity is better electricity, or more dependable, or more easily scaled up to meet growing demand, or less demanding of the natural environment – consider the undisturbed land and water acreage to be consumed – but it’s because the political climate insists on it, no matter the costs.

It’s a very high price for a low-quality idea.

Source:  The Martha's Vineyard Times | www.mvtimes.com 27 June 2012

This article is the work of the source indicated. Any opinions expressed in it are not necessarily those of National Wind Watch.

The copyright of this article resides with the author or publisher indicated. As part of its noncommercial educational effort to present the environmental, social, scientific, and economic issues of large-scale wind power development to a global audience seeking such information, National Wind Watch endeavors to observe “fair use” as provided for in section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law and similar “fair dealing” provisions of the copyright laws of other nations. Send requests to excerpt, general inquiries, and comments via e-mail.

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