Offshore wind power meets the power of local politics

New York Times : Wind entrepreneur Peter Mandelstam had his eureka moment when he released how much power was associated with the Mid-Atlantic Bight. This coastal region running from Massachusetts to North Carolina contained up to 330,000 megawatts of average electrical capacity. This is, in other words, an amount of guaranteed, bankable power that was larger, in terms of energy equivalence, than the entire mid-Atlantic coast’s total energy demand âmdash; not just for electricity but for heating, for gasoline, for diesel and for natural gas. Indeed the wind off the mid-Atlantic represented a full third of the Department of Energy’s estimate of the total American offshore resource of 900,000 megawatts.

Building offshore turbines to exploit it however, would leave Mandelstam against the local power companies, who didn’t want the competition, and holiday resorts who didn’t want their coastline view spoiled with windmills in the distance. It would lead to millions of dollars spent fighting one of the most protracted political battles in Delaware history, and the proposal to build a 200-megawatt wind farm off the coast of Delaware.

Mark Svenvold looks at the politics behind wind power , why states are shaping the state of the national energy grid, and the need for federal regulation and subsidies for renewable energy.