MoCo Coal Power Plant Sued by MDE…Time for Wind Power!
A good sized crowd braved the cold on a weeknight to hear a number of speakers from the fields of business, advocacy and government discuss the prospects for Offshore Wind Generation in Maryland. Need, feasibility, aesthetics and wildlife, cost and political challenges were all concerns for those in attendance and each speaker spoke to these concerns in turn.
But First…Wind Power’s Impact on the Ag Reserve
MCA partnered in the Wind Power Summit with Friends of Frederick County, Sugarloaf Conservancy and the Sierra Club because the County’s largest generator of carbon dioxide (three million tons a year of C02 – approximately 25 percent of total county emissions), the Mirant/GenOn Power Plant in Dickerson, is located in the top of the Ag Reserve.The facility, including 162 acres in “fly ash storage cells,” occupies more than 1.2 square miles along the Potomac River and associated stream shed, forest and farmland. It is also located entirely within the watershed of the federally protected Piedmont Sole Source Aquifer. That’s the single water source for all area wells. The Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) has taken Mirant to court because dangerous elements in said fly ash are leaching into area groundwater.
This is a troubling development, and it leads us to call for a type of power generation that does not pose serious threats to our water supply, air and working landscapes. Offshore Wind Power could be part of the solution. Read MCA’s Press Release Here.
On to the Wind Power Summit… Speakers covered:
Need
Keith Harrington of CCAN (Chesapeake Climate Action Network) only had to point to last years oil spill in the Gulf to demonstrate the necessity of cleaner power. Not only could spills be a thing of the past, but adding wind generation to our state power portfolio will drastically reduce pollution: adding a moderately sized windfarm (600 MegaWatts) would have the same effect on mounting pollution as permanently taking 1 in 10 cars off Maryland’s roads. With the large amount of wind off our coast, the Abel Foundation of Baltimore has reported that at least one third of Maryland’s energy needs could be filled by wind with current technology, with the potential to fulfill all our energy needs as technology improves. Add to all this that new wind farms would produce thousands of Maryland jobs that can never be outsourced and the case for offshore wind is clear.
Feasibility
Accepting that we need offshore wind power in our energy mix, how likely is it that we can make it happen?
All speakers touched on the fact that the very best wind power generation conditions exist along the Mid-Atlantic coast in an area stretching from North Carolina up to New England called the Mid-Atlantic Bight (all the best wind spots are red in this map). 
While offshore wind power is more expensive than generating wind power on land, considering the cost (and inefficiency) of transporting wind power from the windy Mid-West to the Eastern States, offshore power comes out cheaper.
Enter the evening’s second speaker, Bob Mitchell of Trans-Elect, a company working with Google to build a”transmission backbone” that would carry power from wind farms 10 or more miles out to sea back to the existing electric grid.
The red dots are turbines, each black line is a tracked bird flight
Aesthetics and Wildlife
Keith from CCAN showed the audience a picture of existing offshore wind turbines from the shore of a New England beach. The turbines were so far out you had to squint to see them, and this was his point; the further out you go, the windier it is, opponents of offshore wind often assume that wind farms will be in plain sight while they are enjoying time at the beach, this is not so. Lise Van Susteren of the National Wildlife Federation remarked that offshore turbines in Europe have even become a tourist destination. Speaking to the concerns of animal advocates, she debunked the idea that many birds, bats and sea mammals die because of wind turbines. In fact, scores more die as a result of the air and water pollution caused by our current fossil fuels. To that point, a long term study of bird migration in the vicinity of European offshore turbines show that the birds seem to alter their paths slightly to avoid the large structures (picture at right).
Cost
Bob Mitchell of Trans-Elect said that adding offshore wind to the power grid could make electric bills go up by a little less than 3%. In his remarks at the end of the evening, State Senator Rob Garagiola put this increase in perspective by highlighting the increases in fossil fuel derived electricity bills over the past few years, most notably a 50% hike by BG+E some years ago. Senator Garagiola reminded all present that wind energy can offer price stability to the consumer because consumers are paying the known, upfront cost of constructing the turbines and after that the “fuel” is free, prices can be locked in for 25 years, the life span of a turbine. Our current reliance on fossil fuels keeps prices wildly fluctuating based on market forces and geopolitical happenings across the world from our state. These fluctuations have lead to a 75% increase in electricity costs in Maryland from 2002-2009.
Political Challenges
Senator Garagiola related a story of how hard it was to get a $130,000 solar grant bill passed in 2004 and how uncomfortable some people can be with change. In this economic climate, this sort of proposal could be a tough sell but the Senator was hopeful given Governor O’Malley’s leadership and the wide coalition of support behind establishing a wind power bill in the 2011 session, including business and labor, most notably the United Steelworkers Union. The Senator is committed to working on such a bill in this session and invited all in attendance to work along side him with phone calls, emails and lobby visits to Annapolis in support of offshore wind power.