Cape Wind should have fueled state’s offshore wind industry 20 years ago – Cape Cod Times

Cynthia Stead| Columnist

In May of 2000, Brian Braginton-Smith, local genius, gave a talk at the New England Aquarium about his idea to build 100 offshore turbines to create a wind farm.Only a year later, he met with the local paper to explain how a small piece of federal waters in the midst of state waters called Horseshoe Shoals was an ideal site for a wind farm.

Cape Wind, as it was then called, made a public presentation at a joint hearing with Cape Cod Commission and state environmental officials; the plan had then changed to construct170 turbines that would cost between $500 million and $700 million.What happened in the interim was the interest of a gentleman named Jim Gordon, with access to companies and funders to make it a financially feasible project.

We all know what happened after that. Then-U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedyand Walter Cronkite wholater withdrew his opposition spoke out against the project, and it became toxic for any Democrat to speak out in favor of an ecologically brilliant solution to electricity generation in Nantucket Sound, what one scientist called the Saudi Arabia of wind.This triggered literally decades of public hearings in every imaginable venue, and God help me, I was at most of them.

There was a lot of back and forth about feasibility. Massachusetts and the now-closed General Electric plant in Lynnpassed on manufacturing turbine blades.But Gordon proudly later announced that Siemens would do the manufacturing in Rhode Island, making a friend of Gov. Donald Carcieri.

I wrote several columns insupport of Cape Wind and offshore wind farms over the years.One summed it up this way:I stated that I was a climate change agnostic; while human activity is a factor, climate changes and ice ages happened long before the invention of the internal combustion engine.

Back in 2007, I wrote, My reason to support the wind farm is our debilitating and dangerous dependence on foreign oil as a matter of national security and economic freedom.

In 2009 I wrote: Burning oil is fouling our air, our politics and our economy. As I write this, oil is $93 a barrel, Turkey is preparing to attack Iraq, while Iran is building a nuclear bomb to attack Tel Aviv.Childhood asthma is a national epidemic.The United States needs to achieve energy independence to maintain its ultimate independence.

Literally,decades of debate and litigation followed the Cape Wind proposal. Towns sued Cape Wind, but the federal government did approve the permit for the project.Congress debated bills that would allow governors to veto such a project, however, Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat, supported the project.

In 2008, the Minerals Management Service issued a report that Cape Wind would adversely affect 28 historic and cultural sites, but in 2009 it issued another saying the impact would be minimal.

In 2009, the two most powerful opponents of the project, Kennedy and billionaire Richard Egan, both died.

By 2011, the federal permit was approved, and the projectwas going forward.But by 2014, with financing in place and a contract with NStar, now Eversource,to buy the electricity, the deal just ran out of steam.While winning battles, the war was lost and Cape Wind surrendered its lease in 2017.

But now, we have a week-long series on the virtues of wind power, and a new wind farm sited off Nantucket. The economic, manufacturing and environmental potential of wind is rediscovered, and good jobs at good wages will be lost unless we act soon.So what changed?Maybe the ownership standing.

Coordinating the current push is the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, MassCEC. It is a state publicly-funded agency dedicated to clean energy technology installations, financing for early state companies, and technology development, and investing in training programs to build a clean energy workforce. It is a quasi-public agency funded by a system benefit charge that costs users around 29 cents per month.

But Cape Wind was a private company.Gordon and the others had lined up commercial financing, and if the project wassuccessful, they would all become rich.

Now, 20 years later subsidiaries held by European companies that love the environment are viewed as benign as Massachusetts builds its offshore wind industry with the same promiseof jobs and economic development.

I still support wind energy as the most viable natural resource to power our area.And the dreaded private sector will be kept at bay once more while we enjoy it.

Cynthia Stead can be reached atcestead@gmail.com.

More here:

Cape Wind should have fueled state's offshore wind industry 20 years ago - Cape Cod Times