Energy Opportunity for Delaware: Part II
January 5th, 2007 by PerryRonR, asked that I comment on last nights meeting at the Lewes Library on Wind Power, so here it is.
The meeting was very well attended, including Representatives Gerald Hocker and Joe Booth. It was standing room only. A Representative from the MD legislature was also in attendance, as well as representatives from other interested citizen groups, plus the general public.
The film Kilowatt Ours speaks for itself, a documentary that highlights all the negatives of using coal to generate electricity, from strip mining off mountain tops in WV and KY and the resultant waste, floods and mud slides that destroy towns and negatively impact people’s lives, to the emission of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, and worst of all to the emission of mercury. We here who are down wind of the Indian River Power Plant get sprinkled with the mercury, as do the fish.
UD Professor Willett Klempton’s excellent presentation covered the advantages to Delaware if we sign on to off shore wind farms to generate electricity. Obviously it is clean, would not contribute to global warming, can generate more electricity than DE needs thus can be sold at a profit to the state, will withstand a Cat 3 hurricane, and can be easily positioned not very far out as to be invisible from the beaches. The downside is that the cost to the user would be about 3 cents more per kwh than coal, but much cheaper if the environmental costs are added to the cost of coal.
He also included an update on global warming, which is increased by the burning of fossil fuels like coal. The most striking and dramatic and worrisome part were the maps indicating the impact of the melting of Greenland’s ice on our Delaware and the Delmarva Peninsula with the rise in sea levels. (By the way, the melting of the arctic ice caps does not raise ocean levels, because the ice is already part of the ocean. Greenland ice is over land, therefore not part of the ocean.) Even by 2040, there will be significant inundation of our coast, and by 2100 Delmarva will become an archipelago! Lewes, Rehoboth, Dewey, Bethany and Fenwick will be submerged, and the Chesapeake will inundate portions of western Delaware.
People have to begin to accept this and act upon it, with the rest of the globe, right now. The longer we wait inactive, the closer we get to the point of no return in this rather sudden global crisis that we people have wrought upon ourselves.
Now we understand what to do: Minimize the emission of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels. Wind, solar and geothermal energy, and CO2 recyclable fuels like ethanol from trees and plants, all then become no-brainers, except to the brainless!!!
January 5th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Thanks Perry. Very thoughtful synopsis. The additional 3-4 cents /kwh is nothing in comparison to environmental costs, which, when the negative effects are not immediately seen, tend to be quickly dismissed by the opposition…sort of, we’ll worry about that some other day syndrome.
So 2100 is the magic year? Time to put the house on the market. Is any of that water spilling into NJ?
Of course, the argument will be now, “Well we will be under water in less than 100 years so why bother doing this.” May be better to invest in boats.
January 5th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
RonR, you are correct about the environmental impact costs of burning coal, which according to Dr. Kempton make the overall cost of coal generated electricity far more expensive than wind. Problem is, the consumer does not directly pay those higher costs.
And yes, much of NJ, middle to south, faces the same consequences as DE due to global warming and the resultant melting of the Greenland ice cap.
And yes again, sell your house for a good price and invest in a house boat or retreat to higher ground. I understand that land is very cheap in the strip mining areas of WV and KY!!!
January 5th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
WV? KY? I don’t think so. I’ll go to Lowes tomorrow and start pricing sump pumps.
January 24th, 2007 at 11:49 am
In an effort to continue to explore the wind power opportunity for Delaware, about a dozen of us went to Dover yesterday to make public statements to the House Energy and Natural Resources Committee meeting in Legislative Hall, chaired by Representative Gerald Hocker, who had agreed to grant us 15 minutes. Three of us came prepared to make statements of support for wind power generation of electricity. The meeting was arranged by Common Cause and Citizens for a Better Sussex, with an agreement from Representative Hocker which he now denies.
We were not permitted to speak by Representative Hocker in a disgustingly political move on his part. Granted, there may have been some misunderstanding, but to deny the public the right to speak for 15 minutes is unconscionable, in my view.
At the meeting at the Lewes Library several weeks ago, Hocker spoke out in favor of the NRG bid to construct another coal fired electrical generation plant at the current site of the current Indian River Power Plant. That’s fine, but it is dead wrong for him to use his power as Chairman of the appropriate House Committee to squelch the voice of the public.
Let us not let the ‘Hockers’ of our state squelch the voice of the wind power advocates because he stands for another solution. The wind power option deserves very close scrutiny in order to determine if this technology is viable for Delaware!
Speaking personally, I find it very difficult to not be attracted to the use of ‘free’ fuel to generate our electricty cleanly with zero pollution and with price stability independent of the Middle East, Venezuela, and the like, not to mention the elimination of greenhouse gas emissions. How can we possibly ignore this opportunity?
January 24th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
As I understand it there are companies chomping at the bit to start deploying this stuff. I find it surprising that it is not LESS expensive rather than more. While I haven’t investigated the ongoing maintenance costs of the equipment etc, it would seem that it would be no more than for current methods. Turing the country by car this past year I saw these windmills on hillsides everywhere, unfortunately many of them were not spinning. But here at the beach I would expect quite a different results.
As a conservative with a beach view, I’m all for it, particularly if private companies are willing to take the risk in exchange for future profits. I also think at some point we will figure out how to use tidal and geothermal forces more effectively too. Part of the problem is that the natural (relatively) cost of fossil fuels is still too attractive to pass up. Not likely it will stay that way forever though and it doesn’t seem too soon to at least start supplementing those old methods.