Tim Lasker Equivocates & Deceives on Wind

Tomorrow, Tuesday Sept. 16th, we have an election here (I am a resident of West Tisbury on the island of Martha’s Vineyard). It’s to nominate the Democrat who will run for an open seat in the State Legislature.

Last week the paper of record for the locals, The Martha’s Vineyard Times, had a useful review by Steve Myrick of the available candidates’ views on three questions: 1) should we open a local gambling casino; 2) Cape Wind, good or bad and what are you doing for renewables; and 3) what are your legislative priorities?

I was pleased to note that at least one candidate (Dan Larkosh) boldly supports the Cape Wind project, yet was flabbergasted at the lack of sophistication and dishonesty embedded in the reasons the demurring candidates give for opposing Cape Wind.

2. Do you support or oppose Cape Wind, and what action will you take to meet the future energy needs of Martha’s Vineyard?

Roger Wey:

I oppose Cape Wind because of the adverse economic, environmental, and public safety impacts it would have. I would support other wind programs …

This rote litany is a typical response among local opponents of Cape Wind: ‘I favor renewables and wind in general but do not like Cape Wind and especially do not like its location because …’ So socially acceptable are certain green ideas and behaviors (regardless of personal action) that the response is like answering the when-did-you-last-beat-your-wife-question. An opponent is best served answering a different question, or simply lying.

Mr Wey would be dismayed to hear that the “reasons” are not reasons at all; and they give just as much rationale for having a Cape Wind …

Economic: Cape Wind creates jobs, saves fossil fuels, helps reduce long-term energy costs;

Environmental: Cape Wind may reduce the fishing-out of the Nantucket Sound (the damage to fish has been historically done BY THE FISHERMEN! There are, for example, no Cod left in the waters around Cape Cod!) and certianly will reduce the risk of oil-spill holocaust around the Cape & Islands;

Public Safety: I honestly don’t know what to say here. Does Mr Wey fear some risk that a turbine could fall on someone’s head? If so, the problem remains sophistic & ill-defined.

Mr Wey has just said the equivalent of, “I favor clean energy, but I do not favor clean energy.” And we are left to wonder why, in truth, Mr Wey doesn’t want Cape Wind.

But at least in Tim Lasker’s case, there are enough clues that we don’t need to speculate …

Tim Lasker:

I strongly favor development of sustainable energy resources such as wind, but in its current formulation I have to oppose Cape Wind. The electricity from Cape Wind would go into the national grid and be sold to the highest bidder. The project may profit venture capitalists, but it will certainly not benefit the residents of Martha’s Vineyard. [emphasis added]

I support the creation of a municipally owned wind utility that would supply the Vineyard with electricity. Dukes County could create a wind farm on Nomans Land, with 12 giga-turbines, on approximately a fifth of the land, and generate enough electricity for the entire island. Our bills would be at least 25 percent less annually and our carbon footprint a lot smaller.

A utility of this kind currently operates in Hull, Massachusetts, where the city owns wind turbines. Unlike Cape Wind, Hull’s wind farm was readily embraced by the citizens. This shows how local control and tangible economic benefit can lead to broader acceptance of alternative energy sources.

Let me repeat that rhetorical howler for its principal misstatement of fact and its paradox: Tim Lasker said, “The electricity from Cape Wind would go into the national grid and be sold to the highest bidder. The project may profit venture capitalists, but it will certainly not benefit the residents of Martha’s Vineyard.”

This is not the way electricity or finance work and Tim Lasker — a wind energy entrepreneur — knows better. It is a lie designed to pray on common ignorance through repetition of a meme to which many local individuals have known sensitivity: “corporations and rich men are going to take advantage of you, steal your electricity which belongs to you, spoil your environment and wreck everything.”

Firstly, the electricity from Cape Wind will not go into “the national grid”; while it can do (and that’s a good thing) most electricity is consumed in the region of its source. And yes, electricity is a commodity the price of which is discovered through orders crossing on an orderly, open and free market. These are all to the good. We should be proud of this. Anyone who is not is either a socialist, a communist or a knave.

In fact, electricity from Cape Wind will enter the grid at Barnstable on the Cape where it will be allocated regionally by the New England ISO (New England Independent Systems Operators, according to a highly complicated system involving long-term contracts and the purchase and sales of electricity day to day on the spot market). The difficulty and obscurity of this mechanism (see Cape Wind’s “How the Electric Power Pool Works“) enables Tim Lasker’s disinformation to emanate with impugnity.

Also of fact, the electricity from Cape Wind will most likely be used locally on the Cape and Islands. What Tim Lasker doesn’t want you to know is that the presence of a new source of electricity coming from Cape Wind (that’s renewable energy with a zero-cost input) will enable other electricity that’s generated from regional utilitities up-state to be traded on the spot market and sent away if supply and demand here and there so accord. When electricity is sourced here, it frees capacity elsewhere in the state which used to come down here; Cape Wind will reduce the risk of rolling blackouts here and up-state like, for example, on those hot summer days when the New England ISO couldn’t find enough natural gas on the spot market. Cape Wind will enable the NE ISO to meet our needs and those of the region better AND with lower exposure to fossil fuel costs and cost fluctuations.

This impacts us directly. Electricity, like money, is fungible: a dollar is a dollar, a kilowatt a kilowatt. The stuff can move around freely, so who cares where it comes from? Well, actually we care a great deal that the power coming from the turbines in our Nantucket Sound benefits us. Wind power now is still expensive but it brings an important indirect cost-benefit by reducing our exposure to fossil fuel cost volatility (assuming wind power gets at least as much subsidy as fossil fuels continue to receive). This we experience here in our homes on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. Perhaps it requires more sophistication than we generally possess to understand the direct and indirect mechanisms in play to our benefit on a large scale wind project.

Tim Lasker knows this (and therefore knows his opposition to Cape Wind stands on soft ground) because among the many interesting and valid business activities on his CV is a recent enterprise called Swift Wind Energy LLC, “a company focused on new wind technology for commercial and home use.”

True to his word on this small point, Tim Lasker is evidently a genuine & sincere supporter of (local) wind energy. So what are the real reasons for his opposition to Cape Wind? Is it (mis-)perceived competition? And what in particular is objectionable about venture capitalists in this context? Are those the same guys who haven’t recognized the viability of Mr Lasker’s roof-top turbine concepts? Is he praying on the common jealousy of the start-up financing class?

I guarantee you that without substantial profit incentives associated with these large-scale renewables projects our nation’s adventure with the renewable energy revolution will pan out to have been a mere flirtation.

Notwithstanding his interesting ideas for local wind facilities (which should and must be explored), Tim Lasker is wrong about Cape Wind and he’s lying about about the facts.