After
attempting for the past few years to pass legislation for wind turbines in
Ocean City, Maryland governor Martin O’Malley is expected to finally win approval
from state lawmakers in the upcoming weeks. However, Washington Post writer
Aaron Davis explains, that because of the small power potential of the proposed
wind farm (it would only be able to produce the energy of half of one average
power plant) “developers and banks probably won’t take the financial risk,
experts predict." Although at least six wind farms have been
proposed for the eastern shore in the recent past, Davis explains, not a single
one has actually been built because of the bureaucratic, financial, and legal
challenges that they face. Due to the scaled-back plan the governor has been
forced to resort to, as well as the minimal subsidy that Maryland households
would have to pay, leading offshore wind developer Peter Mandelstam has stated
that it “may [be] difficult or, in a worse case scenario, impossible to build a
project off the coast of Maryland” (Davis).
The problem extends to the rest of the nation, where environmentalists
and others have argued that wind energy is a sustainable alternative to coal
and gas. However, the “nascent wind industry” has been proven enormously
difficult to get up and going (Davis). O’Malley’s current bill is his third
attempt to pass offshore wind legislation, which calls to begin the project in
2017.
The article
was a bit on the shorter side and really required further reading to understand
the issues. The amount of power the wind farm could possibly produce and its
possible resulting impact on the state’s nonrenewable energy consumption was
not discussed. Author Aaron Davis also describes one of O’Malley’s financing
tools as a “model involving renewable energy credits that is unproven in the
risky realm of offshore wind”, but does not enlighten the reader on what that
scheme is either. Personally, (I presume many of my fellow classmates probably
feel the same), I would be thrilled to actually see legislation for an offshore
wind farm be pushed through, especially along the eastern shore. This proposed
project reminds me of the common theme surrounding environmental economics and
natural resource economics and policies- that most often, what is tried and
true remains the go-to decision. In environmental economic policy, government
interference and regulations in emissions abatement is usually determined as
the solution, since newer, inventive market-driven programs (like cap and trade
programs and others) tend to intimidate policy makers and the public. I think
that this offshore wind farm proposal follows the same theme, and if the
country is to truly start investing in sustainable energies, we need to
experiment and get our feet wet somewhere.
--Kasey Bolyard
