Wind Forum Attendees Want Numbers

Marylanders appreciate the feel-good arguments for offshore wind energy, but they want to see hard, cold numbers as well.

Offshore wind energy proponents faced an audience at the November 3 town hall forum that was eager to hear about the environmental benefits of installing gigantic wind turbines off Maryland’s Atlantic coast---but skeptical of the politicians’ economic promises.

The town hall forum, called “Offshore Wind Power Works for Montgomery County,” met at the Mid-County Community Recreation Center and featured a panel with legislative, labor, energy, environmental and health expertise.

The panelists presented offshore wind not only as a safer and more responsible alternative to fossil fuels, but also as a source of jobs for Marylanders.

Maryland has lost 85,000 manufacturing jobs since the 1990s, but building and installing wind turbines could bring some of those jobs back, said Mike Tidwell, founder and director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and author of The Ravaging Tide: The Race to Save America’s Cities.

“We’re tired of seeing us lose jobs to China,” said panelist Jim Strong, sub-district director for the United Steelworkers of Maryland. “We’re supporting this legislation because we think it will put people back to work.”

State Senator Roger Manno (D-Dist. 19) spoke to the political complexities of building a wind energy market in Maryland. “Bringing new generation online is difficult in an unregulated environment,” Manno said. He explained that in 1999, when the state deregulated utilities, those same utilities got out of the business of generating electricity and focused instead on transmission.

Another panelist, Markian Melnyk, president of the Atlantic Wind Commission, conceded that offshore wind has high up-front costs, “but it’s quickly going in the direction of becoming more efficient.” Melnyk envisions a coastal system of wind turbines that connects strong wind energy zones and reinforces the region’s transmission grid.

State Delegate Ben Kramer (D-Dist. 19) said that some of the language in the proposed Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act, which failed in September, needs to be modified so that the taxpayer subsidies bring jobs and energy to Maryland instead of to neighboring states.

A recent poll by Gonzales Research and Marketing Strategies showed that 61.7 percent of Marylanders would be willing to pay an additional $2 per month on their utility bill if they knew that more power was derived from clean, local energy sources.

Kramer cautioned that the $2 would rise with inflation and that this arrangement would require a monthly commitment for more than 20 years. In addition, if the resident used more than 1,000 kilowatt-hours per month, that resident would pay more.

Some Marylanders would not be able to afford even a modest increase in their energy bill, and Kramer said there has been discussion about a pool to help low-income residents.

Steven Lapham of Gaithersburg challenged the panel during the Q&A to provide a side-by-side comparison of the overall costs of wind energy with those of fossil fuels, nuclear energy and more.

“That would be a valid economic analysis,” Lapham said, to widespread applause.

Others in the audience agreed that they wanted to see more financial statistics.

“I think there are some basic economic realities left out of the discussion,” said Joshua Wolf of Kemp Mill after the forum ended. “I’m very open-minded to alternative energy, but it’s got to make economic sense.”

Audience member Stan Klein asked panelists if they would consider focusing on the capacity market and subsidizing an energy storage facility instead of concentrating efforts on energy generation. Melnyk responded that focusing on the energy side of things with wind power makes sense because there is little cost once the wind turbines are paid for--after all, wind is free.

“It’s a problem of a new technology trying to make its way in an old market,” Melnyk said.

But should taxpayer money support this new technology in Maryland?

“Projects like these should be left to the private sector,” Wolf said.

Tidwell pointed to the 41 existing offshore wind farms in Europe and the ongoing construction there and in China as examples of how the United States has fallen behind.

“We have to invest,” Tidwell said. “It’s not happening fast enough by itself.”

And while the U.S. stalls, Americans pay the externalized costs, Tidwell added.

“I wish that my Pepco bill would reflect the cost of the Iraq war every month,” Tidwell said.