Time Sensitive: Dept of Energy Seeking Public Comment on Maine Offshore Wind

Comment

Comment by Jim Lutz on February 28, 2017 at 6:53pm

I wrote this using some of the data and writings from our Website to submit to the DOE.  Please comment and let me know if I should make changes or additions.

Thanks, Jim

Comments on Vinal Haven Wind Installation

In 2008, Governor John Baldacci and his subordinates in Maine put forth a bill called “The Expedited Wind Energy Act” and passed it through the Maine Legislature with absolutely no debate and no objections.  Their reasoning had many errors and outright lies in the proposal and got broad support based on those statements.  In the time since, most of those have been proven to be false and yet they continue to try and put through more and more industrial wind projects in the State of Maine and offshore. 

The bill constituted one of the most significant changes in the state’s land use laws in a generation:

• It weakened longstanding rules that would have required wind turbines “to fit harmoniously into the landscape.” LURC director Catherine Carroll said, “That’s a huge change.”

• The bill cut off a layer of appeal for those protesting state permits for wind power.

• It set ambitious goals for the development of wind power that could result in 1,000 to 2,000 turbines being constructed along hundreds of miles of Maine’s landscape, including the highly prized mountaintops where wind blows hard and consistently.

• It opened every acre of the state’s 400 municipalities to fast-track wind development.

Baldacci said all this could be done without hurting Maine’s landscape or the tourism industry.  The law is still largely in effect today.

According to Chris O’Neil, a former state legislator who now works as a public affairs consultant to groups opposing wind power development in Maine’s mountains, said that the governor’s vision was fundamentally flawed. “To fulfill the charge of making Maine a leader in wind power development and to simultaneously protect Maine’s quality of place is impossible,” O’Neil said.

Vinal Haven is one of those idyllic places, a place that has been treasured by visitors and artists, residents who ply the waters as have their ancestors for generations and putting wind turbine towers in their waters, towers that are taller than any building currently in the State of Maine would be just another blight on our environment. 

Power from our wind turbines does not support the people of Maine and would not exist except for the vast subsidies and tax incentives given to the developers of these projects. In fact, the politicians who put these projects through have become some of the wealthiest people in Maine as they left their political positions and morphed into management with the developers. It is a financial and political boondoggle that has managed to raise the rates and taxes of common people and businesses here in Maine. It has not provided one electron of power to Mainers, and has only hurt our health and property values as well as our viewsheds. The companies involved have changed hands so often it is going to be hard to track down who will be responsible for decommissioning them when the time comes. First Wind was the original owner who sold out to SunEdison, now bankrupt, who passed them on to TerraForm, where John Baldacci is Executive VP, but itself is in trouble. Our energy provider is Emera who is owned by a Portuguese company, Energias de Portugal, who has just sold part of their interest to China Three Gorges because of debt problems. Wind and solar have not made a cent in profits except for the subsidies and tax benefits they get. When the subsidies have been suspended, there has been no development.

Our National Energy policy is in a terrible turmoil, and most of it is because of ill advised “renewable energy” standards imposed on us by politicians, not scientists. We need to reanalyze our future and the costs that have been involved in creating this nightmare. We have spent more than $2 trillion dollars nationwide chasing a belief that something other than energy we already know is viable for our future. The costs of bringing offshore wind power to the grid are going to be high and it is not reliable. Wind commonly only produces 25% of its rated output, though offshore might push 40%. The DOE would be better off investigating a way to get more gas to Maine so one or two new gas generating power plants could be hooked up to the existing grid at a much reduced price. It really comes down to reliability and economics.

  

 

 

  

 

 

Comment by Jim Wiegand on February 25, 2017 at 12:59pm

Keep in mind that these comments are posturing or fraud because the Department of Energy is corrupt. Wind energy outputs reported by them are embellished and their website info about wind energy looks like it was taken directly from wind energy propaganda.