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Benefits vs. Detriments
Newsletter Article - September 2007
Trying to make sense of the proposed wind farm is not easy in any context. The use of wind to generate electricity is new and untested. The scope of the Cape Wind project is large no matter what measure you use including dollars, megawatts, feet, yards, or miles. And the review process itself is so arcane and Lilliputian that even the regulatory bodies have found themselves ensnarled.
So, on an August evening in Brewster, we worked with the Museum of Natural History to bring together the two people who know the most about the project’s strengths and weaknesses, Jim Gordon of Cape Wind Associates, the developer of the proposed wind farm, and Charles Vinick, head of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the group opposed to the construction of an industrial plant in the waters offshore.
The format allowed each to present his thoughts and concerns for thirty minutes without interruption. When they finished, both answered questions submitted by the audience as well as those each asked of the other and those I offered as moderator. The discussion was taped by the Cape Cod Community Media Center, which intends to broadcast it on local television with a schedule to be announced.
Elsewhere in this newsletter, we’ve listed the questions that the audience submitted so that others may review and evaluate them. We’ve distilled the original list down to a few that reflect the areas of interest overall. We intend to ask both Cape Wind Associates and the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound to provide responsive information as they may wish. We will also ask the same of Clean Power Now, which is the grassroots group of 7,000 people, predominantly from the Cape and Massachusetts, who support the proposed wind farm.
As the president of the Cape Cod Center for Sustainability, I’ve been asked on several instances during the past six-year life of this debate whether we would like to advocate a position either in favor of or opposed to the project. We have chosen not to do so because our core mission and overriding desire is to engage people in the civic life of the Cape no matter what their position may be on this or any other specific project. Rather than acting as advocates, we encourage the open exchange of information, ideas, and views about issues that affect the region’s overall quality of life.
As the moderator, my goal was to encourage constructive exchanges between the two principals. The purpose of the discussion was to provide some exposure to the depth of substance that this proposal has conjured up and to stimulate a broad array of questions that might dovetail with the more technical ones presented in the regulatory review process that is gradually getting closer to reaching its conclusions.
After the evening ended, I was left with some lingering questions for both sides. For Jim Gordon, I continue to wonder what is so magical about the size of the project, expressed in megawatts, as roughly 420 net megawatts transmitted to the grid. It's one very significant descriptive indicator that has not changed in any real amount since he first publicly expressed his ambitions. Other specifics have. For example, technology improvements now increase the power that any one windmill can generate, and Gordon has thus reduced the number of windmills that he wishes to install. The number of megawatts has remained basically the same.
The size of the project, as measured in the amount of electricity that it can generate, drives the thinking and the assessment both of the project's economic foundation and, in turn, its overall potential benefit. It affects the number of construction jobs, equipment purchases, maintenance requirements, and other operational considerations of the project. It also affects the scale of the subsidy and other financing questions regarding how the project may raise the capital needed not only in its first phase of construction but also as the plant generates power and then sells that power to raise revenue sufficient to cover its operating, management, and financing costs.
Questions of the project’s financing and its economic impact were at the heart of the questions that people submitted. Detailed responses would help clarify the options that exist in the event that the windmills are damaged in a storm or left standing idle because the company fails. Generally, Jim Gordon stated that a bond or insurance would cover these worst-case scenarios and that the project would not be built without them.
To date, the technology does not exist to place windmills in deeper waters offshore that offer any number of alternative locations. Jim Gordon states that the lessons learned in operating a wind farm in the more shallow waters of Nantucket Sound are necessary in the development of the technology. If so, is it possible to take the concept of a decommissioning fund further and set one in place so that this project could be dismantled if new technology innovations allowed operations in deeper, more turbulent ocean waters? If so, then the project might be viewed to be more transitional in nature and less threatening as a permanent defacing of Nantucket Sound.
In fact, the consideration of other alternative sites for offshore windmills already focuses on ocean depths that are much deeper than those of the shoals in Nantucket Sound. And it's the ocean depth as well as the distance from shore that makes these alternatives less attractive now. Yet if wind power innovations continue to be made such that these sites become more economically and technologically viable in the future, to what extent is it conceivable that we could and would dismantle an outdated generation facility?
After all, it's the aesthetic considerations that are at the core of the opposition to the project. Beneath the water, even the project’s opponents concede that the bed has been dragged, cabled, littered, and despoiled with sludge as well as other debris. And were it not for the fact that the proposed windmills would tower above the watershed, it's fair to say that the proposal would not have rallied as many people to oppose it and to give substantial sums of money to fight it.
Ironically, the reality is that most Cape residents would have to travel out of their way to see these windmills. Most Cape residents do not sail or swim there. And the commercial fishing industry would cease operations tomorrow if this area were its only available fishing grounds.
Nevertheless, the opposition to the project is strong, well organized, and very well funded, as the discussion revealed. And it’s the Alliance’s financial strength that has lingered in my mind since that evening. It was something that Charles Vinick did not say and did not counter that night in response to the claim put forth by Jim Gordon that the opponents of the wind farm have spent more than twenty million dollars so far in their effort to defeat it. This is a staggering sum when you consider that Cape Cod’s county government lacked funding this year to provide human services grants to outside agencies that totaled $520,000 and were recommended by the county's Human Services Advisory Council. Last year, the county granted $435,000 to outside human services agencies. And while the comparison of the need for human services funding is clearly apples and oranges with regard to the spending by wind farm opponents, it’s dismaying to consider that twenty million dollars equates to forty years of the county’s desired support for outside human services agencies. It’s disheartening to consider what such a level of opposition funding might otherwise have provided as a public benefit in another context.
In the moderated discussion, I asked Charles Vinick if he would act with greater transparency regarding the make-up of the group that funds the Alliance. Publicly known to be involved are people who have headed major energy companies, have very high personal net worth, are technically knowledgeable about renewable energy trends and innovations, are politically connected and experienced, and have been involved in many large-scale battles regarding other developments and the regulatory process. In short, this is not the type of NIMBY group that usually assembles when a community learns of a project that may personally and directly affect it.
Vinick commented that it was incorrect to think that the business interests of some of his group's supporters, steeped in oil and other energy-related enterprises, would be significantly affected in any way by a small project involving a new and untested renewable energy technology. And though that may well be the case, my point is not to say that people directly affected should not rally or press a developer for sufficient detail or mitigation of a project’s impact. Rather, the question is whether the personal property and lifestyle of this group are any more valuable than similar concerns that would be expressed by people whose vistas and interests would be affected were the wind farm asking to locate windmills off the shores of New Bedford or Fall River, or Barnstable Village for that matter.
The lingering question is simply this: If the opponents are so accomplished in business, knowledgeable about renewable energy, technically savvy, politically wired, influential, and committed to killing this project, how is it that they have not done so after having spent twenty million dollars?
News reporters who covered the discussion in August concluded that there were no revelations or new information presented by either side. The Patriot-Ledger described the conversation as “lackluster.” And it was clear at the museum that both sides were locked in to their positions, which leads to a last, overarching question: Does the review process we use to consider large, publicly affecting projects such as the wind farm actually achieve outcomes that result in projects that benefit the public as well as the directly interested parties, or is the process simply one that pits two sides against one another until one wins and the other loses.
As an example of this question about the process, consider that Charles Vinick acknowledged that the Alliance had opposed the offshore installation of a single test tower as a way to obtain accurate information regarding wind data and data regarding bird migratory paths. And though the tower has since been used to gather data that the Alliance would like to see made publicly available in greater detail, and while there have occurred no boating mishaps or other negative environmental consequences, the Alliance does not concede that the benefits of installing this single tower outweigh its detriments.
Yet, it’s the application of this type of "net benefits standard” that is how the Cape Cod Commission assesses a proposal and conducts its review considerations. It’s the type of standard applied as well by other governmental review bodies. It’s a standard that considers a number of specific indicators, some eighteen in all with regards to the Commission’s review. And yet, although each one of these elements may be quantifiable to some extent, their combination is not easily quantifiable or particularly objective. It's a little like asking whether my shopping cart full of vegetables, fruit, eggs, cereal, and ice cream is better or worse than your shopping cart full of fruit, vegetables, eggs, wheat crackers, and frozen yogurt.
The bottom line is that each one of us will assess the merits of the wind farm based in part on our own individual preferences. The discussion between Jim Gordon and Charles Vinick was interesting because while it highlighted their opposing positions regarding this project, it also presented some noteworthy similarities regarding the values of the two. Cynics aside, both men have exemplary records of civic engagement and innovative thinking. Each has pushed constructively at the edges of practices that benefit our environment and improve our overall quality of life. No one should question the commitment of either one of them. What we might ponder instead, however, is how it is that our system of review and the public consideration of large-scale projects tend to push people apart rather than defining ways to integrate shared interests, mutual benefits, and positive outcomes. It’s not clear that the review process at work here that involves the circling of opposing sides that have spent in the tens of millions of dollars overall to further their interests will have invested their resources and energy in a way that leads to a broadly felt and positive community benefit. That’s a net detriment that extends far beyond the specifics of this single project.
Allen Larson, President
Cape Cod Center for Sustainability
