Chris's Comments

I'm not sure where that '400,000' figure comes from. As a founding director of Clean Power Now, the Cape-based citizens' group formed to support this project, I've been close to the data for some years. The developer's claim has always been in the order of "75% of the average needs of the Cape & Islands". That's nowhere near 400,000 homes. Year-round, I think the area has 250,000 - 300,000 residents, so that would work out to maybe 100,000 homes. So that easily satisfies Marv's calculations above.

In reality, the power will be sold through a PPA with National Grid, so it's a semantic issue as to how many homes on Cape Cod the wind farm will power. What's important is how much fossil-generated power it will displace.

It will be interesting to see if the good citizens of the Cape & Islands now get upset because no-one's going to knock on their door to sell them clean energy directly.... to which Jim Gordon, head of Cape Wind Associates, might well respond, "where were all you people when the NIMBY opposition was putting me through the wringer for 9 years, including making personal attacks on my character?"

Seriously, Jim Gordon would never do that. He's too much of a gentleman. I'm not.

A good, balanced article from Scott, showing that the energy/environmental community is indeed split on 2454, with no-one wearing a black hat. Our fears about giving nodding approval to a bill that Mrs. Slocombe would call "as weak as water" is that passage of such a bill allows lawmakers to pat themselves on the back and forget about energy reform and carbon mitigation for five years. By that time it will be clear that the bill had little or no effect on carbon emissions, and assuming the sky has not turned puce or filled up with space aliens by that time, the average Joe will conclude that the whole climate change 'thing' was a false alarm anyway.

Better by far, for Johnny the bright star, to kill it dead -- re-do it instead. And preferably as a carbon tax bill. I have nothing against cap & trade in principal, but if this is what it leads to, let's try something that sends an unmistakable signal to the market about the future cost of carbon. Seems to me John Larson (D-CT) had such a bill in writing, but no-one paid much attention to it. This would be a good time to dust it off and find out if we're really serious about this issue.

To Peter Schlesinger:

Peter, thanks for the comment. No, I'm not advocating an undemocratic trend in our government. Much as I think the mechanism of the filibuster would get a 5th-grader who tried it sent to the principal's office for childish behavior, the notion of a 'super-majority' threshold for legislation does tend to promote compromise and broad agreement in Congress, leading to legislation that will, in theory, represent the interests of large numbers of citizens rather than extremists.

It's when this dynamic is applied to climate change mitigation that I feel it is problematic, because that's not an issue that can be addressed with less than wholehearted measures. You, I'm sure, having spent time in Europe, know well that even with a few years' start on us and with the best intentions, the Europeans are failing to keep pace with Kyoto goals. These are not easy goals to reach, and the effort to reach them cannot be lackluster. If we start down the mitigation road with the idea that we can please all regional constituencies and accommodate all high-spending industry lobbyists while passing 'green' laws, we will be fooling ourselves. As I wrote in the article:

"We look for the 111th Congress to act as a body representing the whole nation, and by extension of influence the world, rather than as a collection of parochial representatives."

So with global warming, Congress has to see itself as a singular, comprehensive law-making body trying to enact measures that have no characteristic Republican or Democratic identity; their scope must be national or supra-national, their foundation stones must be science, not ideology, and their overarching aim must be effectiveness. To achieve all this, Congresspersons may have to rethink who they are, and who they need to represent.

Don, there's an Action live at www.solar-nation.org.

Targets are all senators and representatives (since whatever bill has legs will hit both chambers sooner or later).

You can see it at http://capwiz.com/re-action/go/S6049

regards,

It's also important to understand one important fact about the permitting process - that the far-offshore, semi-submerged or tension leg designs are still in the experimental stage, though this article suggests a lot of promise in adapting lessons from the oil experience.

As we go forward with offshore wind in the US, we should understand that the monopole design that has been used for many years now is pretty mature, and the cost-benefit formula is well known from near-shore installations using such designs. Let's not get it wrong AGAIN and shelve those proposals in favor of designs that are not only far offshore but far off in terms of time. It will be expensive for far-offshore floating installations to match near-shore monopole-based farms in terms of gross power output and delivery to the grid. If and when the 'floaters' can so match their inshore brethren, we can perhaps put all our eggs in that basket, but not until then.

Brian, the MMS extended the deadline to April 20, but comments of all flavors are still welcome!