When an offshore wind turbine shattered 15 miles southwest of Nantucket earlier this month, it sent thousands of shards of fiberglass and foam into the sea, shutting down Massachusetts beaches and alarming local residents.
It also presented a ready-made metaphor to critics of “Green New Deal” energy policies they say would collapse the U.S. economy by limiting consumer choice and drive up costs on behalf of unreliable technology.
Among those aggressive green energy advocates: Vice President Kamala Harris.
Harris made headlines when she became an early co-sponsor of the Green New Deal initiative, a proposal that would have ended the use of gas-powered cars and shut down all natural gas electricity generation by 2030. According to co-author Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) the price tag was $16.3 trillion. But a nonpartisan analysis puts the ten-year cost at closer to $66 trillion.
And the Biden- Harris administration rushed through the permits for the Vineyard Wind project where the turbine failed.
“The scariest thing about this incident is that it could happen again,” said Jerry Leeman with the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association. “I know how powerful and volatile the North Atlantic is. If this blade fell off on a beautiful summer day, what will happen during a winter squall or a hurricane?”
The crack up caused the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement to issue a suspension order for Vineyard Wind and call for an investigation.
“Offshore wind will not only fail to make a dent in New Hampshire energy costs, it will have the opposite effect,” state Rep. Michael Vose (R-Epping), chairman of the House Science, Technology, & Energy Committee, told NHJournal. “Forgetting about the lost whales and littered beaches, offshore wind looks like a good deal only for the foreign companies that will benefit from these bloated contracts.”
Is an offshore wind farm in the Gulf of Maine worth the trouble, and will the progressive energy policies touted by the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee translate to windmills dotting the sea off the New Hampshire coast if she’s elected in November? Will they lower monthly electric bills?
A press release from the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative (NHEC) appears to answer the latter question. They are offering customers “an optional Renewable Energy Rate for members who wish to support the development of renewable energy in the region.”
The rates for their 50 percent renewable option is 1.861 cents higher per kWh than their basic rate, and going 100 percent will cost Granite State customers 3.861 cents more.
The current NHEC basic rate is 16.7 cents, according to the NHEC rate schedule.
This rate increase “tells us what we already know, that renewable electricity is more expensive than conventional,” said State Rep. Michael Harrington (R-Strafford), who formerly served on the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission.
Yet if the federal government has its way, offshore wind farms will become the reality for the Gulf of Maine. In March, the Bureau of Ocean Management finalized a 1 million-acre zone off the New England coast. BOM has since moved ahead with plans to auction off pieces of the zone to companies bidding for a slice of the wind farm pie.
Both Democrats running for governor, former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig and Executive Councilor Joyce Craig, support offshore wind for New Hampshire.
Warmington has pledged to make the Granite State carbon-free by 2040, meaning home heating oil, natural gas, and internal combustion engine vehicles would be banned. Warmington’s approach is shared by bordering states like Massachusetts, which has called for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Craig has also thrown her support behind offshore wind energy development. On her campaign website, Craig includes Manchester’s production of the “largest municipal solar array in the state” as one of her top accomplishments during her stint as mayor.
And she declared herself the “Climate Mayor” of Manchester after signing a pledge to uphold the Paris Climate Agreement in 2017.
Marc Brown, vice president of state affairs for the ratepayer advocate Consumer Energy Alliance, told NHJournal that the high amount of capital needed to jump-start major wind farm projects means that ratepayers need to know up front what the total cost will be.
“There are hurdles, but every energy choice should be available and brought forth if the local circumstances allow it to provide affordable, reliable energy,” he added.
New Hampshire ratepayers currently shoulder some of the highest energy costs in the country.
Meanwhile, climate change concerns rank at the bottom of Granite Staters’ priorities as election season steams toward a November finale. According to the results of a recent NHJournal/Praecones Analytica poll, fewer than nine percent of respondents listed “fighting climate change” as a top priority for New Hampshire, far behind addressing the state’s housing shortage (23.9 percent) and putting a halt to illegal immigration (17 percent).
Among independent voters, just three percent named climate change their top concern.
Former Senate President Chuck Morse, who is running against former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, has been a vocal opponent against the construction of wind energy farms off the New Hampshire coastline.
“Who would want this going on off our shores and contaminating our oceans?” Morse told NHJournal in May. “There are people that don’t understand that this will make electricity cost double what it does today.”
“They’re going to put portable windmills into the ocean and daisy-chain them together. I can’t understand the federal government trying to jump into New Hampshire.”
On Tuesday Ayotte came out forcefully against offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine.
“When I say don’t ‘MASS up New Hampshire,’ that includes protecting our proud Seacoast fishermen from Massachusetts’ disastrous energy policies,” she stated. “This offshore wind project is not cost effective, harmful to the livelihoods of New Hampshire fishermen, and not right for our state.”
Harrington noted that floating wind farms are a relatively new technology. He also theorized a potentially disastrous scenario if floating turbines are constructed in the Gulf of Maine and have to weather the storm of a winter nor’easter.
“There are times when there’s no wind, but let’s just say it’s the beginning of January in 2035 and a nor’easter comes up the coast,” he said. “With winds sustained at over 40-50 miles-per-hour, they have to shut down and you lose that energy.
“But it’s January and it’s snowing, so solar goes to zero, where do you get the power? Until the project shows it can operate, I don’t see anything going in up there.”
Harrington also mentioned another factor he said that doesn’t get much attention from environmental circles.
“Nobody has ever built an offshore wind farm using their own money,” he pointed out. “If people aren’t willing to invest their own money in an idea, then it’s probably not a good idea.”
