Wind in the Right Direction

While the failure of Congress to pass any meaningful energy legislation this year has dampened the mood for many environmentalists, a new project in the works has brought some hope to various interested parties; from Melinda Pierce, the deputy director for national campaigns at the Sierra Club, to U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

The project is discussed in a recent NYT article titled "Offshore Wind Power Line Wins Praise, and Backing". The project will create a system, being called the Atlantic Wind Connection, consisting of a 350-mile underwater transmission backbone that will host down-the-road offshore wind farms along the Atlantic Seaboard.

Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, put it in simpler terms, "It provides a gathering point for offshore wind for multiple projects up and down the coast."

According to the NYT article, the energy capacity of this project is capable of reaching the equal output of five large nuclear reactors.

Also according to this article, permits will need to be cleared to just four connection points: southern Virginia, Delaware, southern New Jersey and northern New Jersey . This small number sounds much better when you compare it to the multiple homes that would normally need to be dealt with when dealing with transmission lines on land.

One of my favorite points about this project is it's foresight into solving a potential problem that is likely to be discussed when considering any future offshore wind farms. That problem is the visual aspect of these offshore wind farms. This problem slowed the eventual passing of a wind farm just off the shallow waters of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. The visual aspect many residents from Cape Cod were worried about was the potential for the turbines to mar the ocean vista. But the sponsors of this project have already claimed any projects will have less of a visual impact.

But a worry that can not be immediately solved is the "funding cliff" which I spoke about in a earlier blog. The federal subsidy program for wind will end in 2012 when permits would most likely be passed by the Interior Deparment, according to Willet M. Kempton, a professor at the School of Marine Science and Policy at the University of Delaware and the author of several paper on offshore wind.

Still, a political battle doesn't look very likely. According to the NYT article, nearly all of the East Coast governors, Republicans and Democrats, have spoken enthusiastically about coastal wind, and rather unenthusiastically about transmission lines on land.

Advancing wind energy in the market will continue to be a problem though if we can not create more incentives for investment in its future and a greater preference for this alternate source. With a likelihood of a big Republican influx in Congress, a price on carbon doesn't look very likely. At the same time, with a increase in drilling in such places as the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, natural gas doesn't look likely to lose strength in the market either.

Bottom Line: The hope will be that this project sparks a real interest for investors, and creates an example of an economic advantage that can come with these types of projects.