Citizens' Task Force on Wind Power - Maine

Never reported by the Maine media: Maine's wind potential is 89% below the national average

The wind industry has told us repeatedly that "Maine is the Saudi Arabia of Wind". Moreover, by enlisting locally known figures to repeat this such as Angus King, they have been able to spread this lie far and wide. Not unlike what they have done in at least 14 other states.

We're taking a moment here to correct this Saudi Arabia moniker by putting Maine's wind potential into proper perspective using data from the NREL (National Renewable Energy Lab). Hopefully one day the Maine media will pick up on facts like this. And hopefully, if and when they do, they will not employ the oft used "Anti-wind activists say that wind industry claims are false", but rather use a more accurate headline such as "NREL data proves wind industry claims in Maine are false".

A copy of our simple Excel analysis can be downloaded here: KW%20per%20Sq%20Mile.xls

It took all of about 45 minutes to complete this simple analysis. These figures have been there all along, had anyone spent any time doing a little bit of research. The media have been repeating wind industry propaganda for years and have not once scratched below the surface of slick wind industry propaganda to report on exactly how poor Maine's onshore wind "resource" is.

Here's the overview:

There are ten states which account for 77.6% of the nation's wind energy potential - Nebraska, Kansas, SD, ND,Iowa, Oklahoma, Texas, Montana, Wyoming and Minnesota.

These states represent only 27.3% of the nation's area. If all states exhibited equal wind energy, you would expect a state with 27.3% of our geographic area to represent 27.3% of our wind potential. The fact that these 10 states represent 77.6% of national wind potential means they exhibit a disproportionately high potential yield. This can be stated in the form of an index number, i.e., 2.85. In other words, the 10 states have 2.85 times more wind potential than what would be expected by virtue of their size.

Now let's look at Maine.

Maine accounts for 0.1% of the nation's wind energy potential and 0.9% of the nation's area. That translates to an index number of .11. In other words, Maine has only 11% of the wind potential that would be expected by virtue of its size.

Stating the obvious, the nation as a whole has 100% of the nation's wind potential and 100% of its area, meaning the nation has an index of 1.0. In other words, Maine's .11 index means that Maine's allocation of wind potential versus area is 89% below the national average.

The correct headline is therefore: Maine's wind potential is 89% below the national average.

Unfortunately, the headline we have had to read one too many times is "Maine is the Saudi Arabia of Wind".

If one picks apart the wind industry propaganda that has the potential to persuade well meaning legislators to unwittingly sacrifice Maine's core essence, our quality of place - increasing electricity rates, transmission charges and creating cumulative impact that will eventually reduce tourism revenues, one will find that almost all of this industry's propaganda is just as false as the Saudi Arabia moniker.

In retrospect, that line about Saudi Arabia was to elicit greed and when people get greedy they drop their guard and fall for things they shouldn't. Confidence gaming 101. Just read any email from Nigeria telling you they have discovered riches they owe you - if you'd just give them access to your bank account. If you'd just give them access to your ridges and hilltops - locally affected residents be damned.

Let's please go back to the very start of the expedited wind law that was never debated in the legislature and with our guard up this time, study every claim anew before we grant this industry unbridled access to Maine. And Maine media - please recognize that the tide is turning, there are reams of new information you can start reporting and that now is the time to start using this information in earnest and begin rectifying the damage that has been done to many of your readers and advertisers by your largely pro-wind bias to date.

Thank you.

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Comment by Long Islander on April 13, 2013 at 1:20pm: Despite the fact that wind power is overall useless and it is particularly useless in Maine, the developers emerge from the woodwork in hopes of not leaving a single federal subsidy penny on the table. For them, it is free money. Why wouldn't they try and vacuum up every bit of free money? They don't care it is confiscated from taxpayers. They like that as there are lots of taxpayers. When they use the word "invest", i.e., that they have "invested" in Maine, they mean pickpocketed.

Very simply, the federal government (driven by the original wind lobbying done by ENRON, past employer of many in wind industry leadership roles today such as FIRST WIND) - has a put a bounty on Maine's ridges and hilltops. The bounty hunters then show up for their "free" money. Why wouldn't they?

Many confidence games stake out some higher moral purpose. With the wind industry con-artists it was carbon. The Maine wind law, written in essence by the wind industry, was built on carbon. Yet we have thoroughly demonstrated that the carbon reductions are useless. We've shown this to the so called Maine environmental groups but these wind industry shameless shilling sock puppets keep using the carbon card, even thought it is a fraud.

The wind industry and their enviro-marionettes makes claims they are reducing electricity prices and try to thwart natural gas, which is the real reason we've seen some generation charges drop and the real reason carbon reductions have been witnessed. But the fact is that wind has caused electrical transmission costs in Maine to skyrocket.

The wind industry makes claims about jobs but in fact their higher electricity prices are unquestionably a net jobs killer with the 300 companies supposedly helped by the wind industry virtually nothing compared to Maine's 34,942 companies. To say nothing of tourism, our key industry.

For years they lied about wind getting us off oil and John Baldacci is on record saying wind turbines will help us beat Al Qaeda by cutting off oil imports. In fact, we use virtually no oil to make electricity. And we do not use electricity to heat or drive, which is where we do in fact use oil. If we did, we'd never use such a grossly expensive source such as wind.

And they lie about everything else, from denying health issues, to claiming an industrial wind complex next to a home in a pastoral setting does not affect the home's property value, that tourists love wind turbines, that wild animals are not affected by wind complexes, that hunters are not affected, that fishermen are not affected because they can just "re-orient" their boats, that anyone who criticizes wind is employed by the fossil fuel industry, that we are funded by anything other than our shallow citizen pockets.

Their core objective is the federal bounty and as Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY) pointed out, their strategy to get this bounty is LIE, CHEAT and CORRUPT.

Comment by Penny Gray on April 13, 2013 at 12:12pm: Agreed! The Maine media has been complicit in promoting wind industry propoganda. Perhaps they were legitimately brain washed, but we now have the ammunition we need to dispel the myth that Maine needs to sacrifice its mountains to industrial wind in order to save the world. Do these machines reduce CO2? Create permanent jobs? Shut down oil or coal fired power plants in the midwest? Provide dispatchable electricity to the grid? We have answers now to those questions which MUST force our legislators to step back and take a critical look at Maine's Expedited Wind Law and ask themselves, "Why ARE we doing this?"

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U.S. Sen Angus King

THE UNTOLD STORY OF RECORD HILL WIND

The Untold Story of Record Hill Wind, continued

Maine as Third World Country:

CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power

Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.

Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********

(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

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