Untitled Document

Wind proposals sweeping region

Some worries remain on aesthetic impact

By David Arnold, Globe Staff, 3/4/2003

LONDONDERRY, Vt. - Well-financed energy companies have now proposed more than half a dozen major wind farms in New England, potentially bringing 270 towering wind turbines to the mountaintops and coastal waters of the region that could generate enough electricity for as many as 250,000 homes.

Unlike in the past, when wind power relied on government subsidies and the idealism of alternative energy gurus, today's wind power entrepreneurs may tout environmental motives, but their eye is on the bottom line. Increasingly efficient turbines are making wind a serious competitor with fossil fuels, leading wind developers to spend tens of millions of dollars on proposals alone.

In one of the latest projects, Catamount Energy of Rutland wants to build a $50 million generating plant with as many as 27 200-foot-tall turbines stationed like sentries along a 3-mile ridge of Glebe Mountain overlooking a quintessential Vermont hamlet.

''Wind has become a serious way to make money,'' said John Zimmerman, a wind turbine consultant from Waterbury, Vt.

In the past two decades, the cost of generating a kilowatt of electricity from wind has dropped by more than 80 percent, prompting some utilities to invest heavily in the technology. The nation's largest wind harvester, Florida Light and Power, plans to increase wind generation this year by at least 25 percent, a project that upon completion would cost $4.7 billion, according to industry estimates.

In New England, proposed wind developments are now valued at $615 million, bringing the energy industry to some of the most beautiful places in the region - from the shoals of Cape Cod to the Maine wilderness. In the process, they are sparking intense debates over the merits of altering gorgeous views in exchange for pollution-free electricity.

Virtually everywhere the wind farm proposals turn up, they seem to divide communities between those who see the aerodynamic towers as blights and those who consider them a kind of kinetic sculpture.

In Londonderry, Bob Cowles, chairman of the Board of Selectmen, is worried about the Catamount project.

''I'm really concerned about the impact these are going to have on our pristine Vermont scenery,''

said Cowles, a retired executive from Attleboro who moved here a decade ago. ''For what this power is going to add, I say: Make up the difference in the hydro and nuclear we already buy.''

But Selectwoman Claire Trask argues that Glebe Mountain looks more pristine than it is. There are farms and stonewalls, roads and power lines. On the north end of the proposed site is the Magic Mountain ski area, it's rivulets of white trails and ski lifts cutting through the evergreen face of the mountain. And a century ago, the area was completely cleared for sheep farms.

''I have less trouble with 27 windmills up there churning out clean energy than a house every three acres,'' she said.

The two selectmen agreed that their mission was to collect as much information as possible about the project for the town's 1,700 residents, and that they never dreamed they would be debating the merits of windmills.

After an initial wave of interest in wind power in the 1970s and '80s, much of it in California, the industry was hamstrung by limitations of the early technology. But new building materials and sophisticated electronics have allowed wind developers to go higher and bigger, exploiting a dynamic learned early in geometry: A longer blade has an exponentially larger total surface area for capturing the wind, allowing it to generate more power.

For the past half year or more, the wind debate has focused on Nantucket Sound, where Cape Wind Associates hopes to build a 130-turbine, 420-megawatt farm. But a proliferation of land-based proposals has gone relatively unnoticed. Proposals include a 19-turbine, 30-megawatt facility straddling the Western Massachusetts towns Florida and Monroe; and a 29-turbine, 52-megawatt facility in Redington Township, Maine. There are also four projects in Vermont: a 50-turbine, 75-megawatt facility in East Haven, a five-turbine, 9-megawatt faciltiy in Manchester, a 20-megawatt expansion in Searsburg, and the Glebe Mountain proposal.

The New England builders come to the scene with established track records, many of them entering the field in the mid-1980s, when deregulation allowed independent power producers to compete with the major utilities. For example, Jim Gordon, president of Cape Wind Associates, previously made millions building gas-fired plants. Catamount Energy has been building alternative generation plants powered by fossil fuels or water since 1986. More recently, the company has built wind turbines in Germany, and two years ago sold all other assets to focus on wind, according to spokesman Robert Charlebois.

In the American West, farmers generally earn $2,000 annually for each turbine sited by a power company on their land. Harnessing wind power has become a second crop constrained mostly by the lack of infrastructure available to transport the electricity.

But the limitation in New England is aesthetics, a point driven home by the entrance of Walter Cronkite, who owns a home on Martha's Vineyard, into the campaign to stop the turbine farm in Nantucket Sound. As one upcountry developer put it, ''I don't envy Cape Wind. As [President Johnson] learned during the Vietnam War, you lose Walter Cronkite, you lose the war.''

But if aesthetics is part of the balance, Seth Kaplan, a lawyer with the Conservation Law Foundation, points out that people should consider how the landscape will look in a century or less after factoring in climate change from global warming. Spurred by the carbon emissions from fossil fuel power plants, warmer temperatures are expected to give New England the climate of the Carolinas.

The largest obstacle to acceptance of wind turbines may be fear of the unknown. In Searsburg, Vt., the site of the biggest wind farm in New England, Gerry DeGray, said he was a vocal opponent when 11 turbines were slated to be built within view of his driveway.

''I went on and on about what an eyesore and how noisy they would be,'' DeGray said, until the turbines were built in 1997. ''Now I think they are quite entertaining, I almost never hear them, and they sure are better to look at than another kind of plant.''

Close Window