Last week I saw an image of nosecones for those giant turbines. Hundreds of them lined up in a vast parking lot waiting for assembly. Can you guess where the lot was?
China.
This isn’t just about whether or not we have wind farms (and we must have them SOMEWHERE… more on that farther down) it’s about WHO produces the machines. Right now Maine rests on the cusp. We have some of the best researchers in the business working hard on developing the next generation of wind, wave, and tide generators. If we incentivize companies to move here and BUILD those generators Maine might be the next Halliburton of energy development. If we hem and haw and debate ourselves into second place we will be sorry and our children will be sorry.
That is the first issue. The second is actually energy itself for Maine and New England. Yes, we need wind generators and we need them now. We also need to move quickly into tide and wave energy. Last year wind energy in this country increased an exciting 39% in the middle of the worst recession in living memory. And yet wind only makes up a tiny percentage of all our energy use. We don’t need to increase it by 39%. We need to increase it by 300% and do so regularly! But we have to do so with the support of those whose communities supply the wind. Spindletop made a handful of oilmen in Texas rich. But it also made the community which surrounded it successful, and people were happy to see the oilmen coming. My stance is that it is the responsibility of the energy company to sell their product. A community that feels they are being fairly treated by the company and getting a good deal will be easier to work with than one that feels they are being forced into something.
That being said there will always be people who do not want wind energy in their backyard no matter what. I sympathize with them, although I don’t feel the same way. I do recognize that there are places where the majority of the community will never see the value of wind energy to them, and government should do all in its power to assure that they don’t have something shoved down their throats.