Following a recent offshore wind energy seminar hosted by the Island Institute and attended by a motly mix of 40-or-so Midcoast residents from Boothbay to Belfast, one of the participants, a new (year-round) resident to Maine, asked me what in my wildest dreams I might hope for the future of offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine. I stumbled through an incoherent answer, not only because it is not the sort of question you get asked very often, but also because along this hard and harsh coast we do not dare to let ourselves dream very much. We know Maine is for realists, not for dreamers.
But let us dream a little.
The dream is that just 10 miles offshore we have discovered an enormous treasure box, inside of which are the keys to an alternative energy future for Maine—a wind power resource so huge that, if converted to electricity, could produce the equivalent of the output from scores of nuclear power plants. Because this new energy source is in deep water, we would need to develop new floating platform technology on which to mount wind turbines.
But wait!
In the dream we recall that the offshore oil and gas industry has been using floating platforms in deep water to drill and pump energy for some time—although sometimes with disastrous results. So in our dream, we need a big multi-national offshore energy company with experience in deep, cold maritime regions to get interested in our little corner of the ocean in order to help us harness this enormous power potential. In the dream, there would be jobs for coastal people to make blades from new composites developed by university professors, and for fishermen, tug operators and engineers to service the giant offshore rigs, like the industry that developed around offshore oil in northern Scotland and Norway.
Also in the dream, we would need there to be no fishermen already using the area; no birds, bats, whales or endangered species transiting through the area; and no environmental activists beating drums and darkly warning that we cannot trust big energy corporations not to irreparably harm the lobster fishery with underwater electric fences in order to sow fear among tens of thousands of Maine families that depend on this sustainable resource.
This is where the dream ends and we wake up.
In the light of day, we know there is not a single vacant square mile of the Gulf of Maine that fishermen do not already use. Some communities ashore might not much notice an array of enormous wind turbines offshore, but fishermen who form “communities at sea” surely would—and some will be displaced. Second, there will be activists, researchers and environmental regulators, many of whom are highly thoughtful and skilled at what they do, who will demand years (perhaps decades) of time to collect additional environmental impact information before they can be convinced that the known risks justify the potential rewards. There may also be deep-pocketed coastal property owners who have their own dreams of a lightly inhabited coastline with no unsightly industrial towers ruining their views and decreasing their property values, who are willing to hire lawyers to tie up the permitting process for a decade, such has happened with Cape Wind in Massachusetts.
Then there is the whole incredibly complicated issue of energy economics. Every time this country has crossed a new energy frontier, the casualties among the early pioneers make cowards of us all. Many islanders remember the days of merchant sail 100 years ago when captains of trading vessels knew hundreds of ports around the Atlantic and indeed all the way to the Spice Islands and South China Sea. Many islanders perished in storms, ships foundered and fortunes were made and lost and rarely made again. But when coal-fired steamships replaced wind power, and then diesel replaced coal, as our energy source in Maine, all of this state and indeed all New Englanders became energy importers. The last time we successfully harnessed a local source of energy was over a century ago when we in fact controlled our own energy destiny. Today we export $5 billion a year from our economy to import 85 percent of the energy we use and we are poorer for it. Every year. Poorer.
At the recent offshore wind seminar, several people complained about the government subsidies for wind power, as if we had forgotten that oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries continue to benefit from taxpayers’ help in the form of oil depletion allowances, favorable offshore lease agreements, and air pollution and other clean-up costs we all help pay for. All industrial energy choices have costs and the benefits are always distributed unequally, usually to the industries that can out-lobby their competitors for favors from Congress. And lest we forget, the most successful lobbyists are those retired Congressmen and women who make their real fortunes once they leave Capitol Hill.
But we need not be entirely gloomy. The good news is that support for local wind power remains strong among a large majority of Mainers, despite a steady drumbeat of negative publicity from a small handful of wind power opponents—perhaps a few hundred residents across the vast reaches of Maine—who are abetted by a media culture that thrives on controversy. The former governor of Maine, Angus King, still respected among a large swath of Maine residents, remains a strong voice for offshore wind development. Another former governor, John Baldacci, pushed the legislature to set an ambitious state goal of five gigawatts of electricity from offshore wind by 2020. The current governor has so far only commented on the high cost of renewable energy, which would be an entirely defensible position if we were pumping our own oil from the Gulf of Maine.
Our energy choices are stark, even if you believe that climate change from our carbon economy is an elaborate hoax. It comes down to this: we can continue to export money, jobs and technology to other parts of the world and remain a lovely but impoverished energy colony, or we can invest in an indigenous source of energy we harnessed a century ago and become independent energy exporters. The great thing is we still have a choice.
Philip Conkling is president of the Island Institute.