Wind Over the Water
If George Pataki is remembered for a State of the State address, it won't be last week's. Though he uttered the word "bold" 21 times, future historians are unlikely to dwell on the announced creation of an anti-fugitive watch list or an upstate homeland security-training center. If anyone looks back in a hundred years at Pataki's upcoming business trip to China and Japan, also announced in the speech, it will be to marvel at the sight of the gangly governor gesticulating awkwardly three full heads above his hosts.
The announcement was a bold step into the leadership void left by Pataki's fellow Republicans in Washington. Both the percentage of clean energy required by Pataki's proposal-a quarter-and the deadline set for getting there-a decade-put New York out front in the country's march to energy independence.
Had Pataki chosen to revisit the subject last week, he wouldn't have lacked events to hang his comments on. Against a backdrop of Baghdad body bags and $45 barrels of light crude, 2004 has been crowned the fourth warmest year on record, with the 10 hottest years all having occurred since 1990. Pataki might have noted some or all of this, then pointed with pride to the Public Service Commission's formal adoption of the RPS this September. Only 14 states have self-imposed clean energy quotas; none of them approaches the quarter mark.
New York's 25 percent requirement isn't quite as impressive as it sounds. The state already gets around 18 percent of its energy from renewable power sources, mostly large-scale hydropower upstate. But why be complacent? Adding another seven percent from renewables by 2013 will cut pollution, diversify the grid, reduce long-term electricity prices and stand as a working example to the growing number of states considering setting their own Renewable Portfolio Standards.
One of the reasons Pataki was able to put forward such an ambitious RPS is New York's strong, post-oil shock tradition of supporting clean energy. Since 1975, the New York State Research and Development Authority has kept the state at the head of the progressive pack in terms of alt-energy development and pollution- reduction initiatives. Crucially, this support has held steady throughout the vicissitudes of federal policy. It is because of the groundwork laid by NYSERDA over almost 30 years that Pataki's 25 percent figure is within grasp.
"I'm optimistic about the [25 percent] goal," says Bruce Bailey, president of the Albany wind-power firm AWS Truewind. "The price of renewable energy has gone down, and reliability has gone up. There's also been a groundswell of state initiatives.
"Pataki has been strong," continues Bailey, who has been involved in New York's wind industry since the 1970s. "He's followed through on his commitments and was instrumental in getting the RPS underway. That was not a legislative activity; that was an executive-initiated activity. Pataki also had an executive order a few years ago that state agencies must purchase a certain percentage of their power from renewable sources. He's been very effective."
The nitty-gritty of implementation still presents hurdles, however. "You need market incentives, and penalties for folks who don't meet the goals," explains Bailey. "You've got to put teeth behind the RPS to make it work."
Gordian Raacke, of the advocacy group Renewable Energy Long Island, is one of the people working to sharpen the regulatory blades.
"It's a tall order," says Raacke, "but it's doable. It'll just take another few months before we have all the details worked out. I'm optimistic."
Among the projects that will help New York achieve the 25 percent mark, the most ambitious is quietly unfolding in Long Island-or rather, three to six miles off the southern coast of Long Island.
This June, the board of the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) voted unanimously to move ahead with an offshore wind farm south of Jones Beach and Robert Moses State Park. The proposal involves building a cluster of 30 to 50 windmills within five square nautical miles in the Atlantic that straddles the coasts of Nassau and Suffolk counties. Operational, the wind farm will provide enough electricity to power 42,000 Long Island homes (and a few on Queens' Rockaway Peninsula). Environmental groups estimate that the reduction in carbon emissions will be the equivalent of 500 million car miles driven each year.
When the offshore project is completed sometime in 2008, it will be either the first or the second such wind farm in the United States. The only other offshore project currently being planned is Cape Wind's proposal for Nantucket Sound, which has been slowed by a high-profile battle with that island's beach house elite. Fearing the windmills will disturb their ocean views and ability to yacht, wealthy islanders-including a number of fair-weather environmentalists-have funded the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound to the tune of $4 million. Their campaign against the project is currently in a federal court, where the group is appealing a recent decision by the Army Corps. of Engineers that cleared the project on environmental grounds.
"It's been a long and arduous process," says Mark Rogers of Cape Wind. "Progress has been affected by the public opposition, but we believe we'll get approval because of the overwhelming public interest benefits." The project, which would provide up to 75 percent of Cape Cod's energy needs, could still be completed as early as late-2007.
Bruce Bailey in Albany sees a lesson in the different paths taken by the Cape Cod and Long Island projects. The problems encountered by Cape Wind, he says, illustrate the importance of public outreach backed by strong state support.
"It's an interesting contrast between two ways to plan an offshore wind project," says Bailey. "One by a private energy developer (Cape Wind) faced with public opposition, and the other by a public utility (LIPA) that early on teamed with local environmental, civic and religious groups who've had a say in the size and placement of the wind farm. LIPA's was a consensus approach. The public has been included from the beginning."
Of course, there is a strong case for overriding public opposition to wind farms even where it's strong. The only real arguments that can be mounted against wind power are esthetic (some consider the massive turbines unsightly), and the slight risk they pose to sea birds.
As the environmental writer Bill McKibben reminds Nantucket's NOMBies (Not On My Beach), the choice to be made is not "between windmills and untouched nature, it's between windmills and the destruction of the planet's biology on a scale we can barely begin to imagine."
Offshore windmills are new to New York; wind power is not. Aside from numerous small-scale windmills of the sort first developed in Ancient Egypt, there are currently five large wind plants pumping energy into residential grids from Buffalo to Rochester to Long Island. Seven more utility-backed New York wind projects are scheduled to go online in 2005 alone. The research and advocacy group Wind Power New York estimates that in the next few years, the state's wind output will jump more than tenfold.
And that's just for starters. The American Wind Energy Association ranks New York 15th nationally in terms of total wind potential. If fully exploited, New York could come to rival wind-happy European states like Denmark, which is working toward a goal of getting 35 percent of its total energy from wind by 2015.
Topography and demographics limit New York's potential for massive wind farms of the sort beginning to dot the Great Plains-America's so-called "Saudi Arabia of wind"-but as the Long Island project illustrates, there is another way. Like other hilly, densely populated states in the Northeast, New York is blessed with coast, where offshore wind plants can take advantage of stronger ocean winds and avoid land-use conflicts.
To build the offshore wind farm, the Long Island Power Authority has contracted FPL Energy, the country's leading wind-energy provider with 40 percent of the national market. FPL will own and manage the actual turbines after they are built, a process that will likely involve the help of foreign subcontractors. With the exception of GE, which has developed a project off the coast of Ireland, U.S. firms have little to no experience with offshore wind.
Once built, LIPA will sign a 20-year contract to FPL for the energy it will send along the ocean floor via a submerged line to LIPA's on-land power substations.
"The long-term power-purchase agreement is crucial for projects like this to move forward on a financially viable basis," explains Bruce Bailey, whose firm was contracted to help LIPA locate the optimal location for the turbines.
"From the outset, LIPA is saying, 'We're going to buy all the power for the next 20 years.' That removes a major hurdle to offshore wind development," says Bailey. "In the eastern U.S., wind development is going to be done primarily by the private sector due to utility deregulation. In order for the private sector to move forward, though, it needs a guaranteed market."
This is where the federal government could accelerate wind development nationally. By providing financial incentives like bigger tax credits, outright subsidies and a guaranteed market for the electricity, Washington could press fast-forward in exploiting America's vast wind potential, just as New York is doing on the state level. If the government shared or took on the full risk of renewable-energy development-as it does with weapons research and procurement through the Pentagon system-America could soon catch up with and even overtake Europe, which is pulling ahead of the U.S. in the exploding global wind industry. The wind-turbine market, for example, is growing by 20 percent every year and is dominated by the Danish firm Vestas.
No decision has yet been made on who will build New York's first offshore turbines, but it could be Vestas. The firm has already provided two New York wind farms with turbines and will likely bid on the Long Island project.
Anyone curious about Vestas' cutting-edge turbines might be able to get their first look while standing on Jones Beach one summer day in 2008. If it's clear and sunny, the off-white turbines will be visible, if only just, on the horizon. Bring your binoculars and you'll be able to see their rotors turning steadily. But you won't be able to hear anything. Just the wind.