Rhode Island Right Divides Over Wind Farm
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Groups that in the past have embraced Governor Don Carcieri for his staunch conservatism are now turning against him over one of his signature issues—the proposed wind farm off Block Island.
Their opposition came one week after a personal appeal from Carcieri in a private meeting with him and his staff.
The meeting ended up pushing the Rhode Island Tea Party in the opposite direction, according to its president, Colleen Conley. She warns that the wind farm will saddle Rhode Islanders with higher electricity bills. “With the high unemployment and the recession, that is just not another hit that the people can take,” Conley told GoLocalProv.
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The Tea Party, which is fiscally conservative, has supported Carcieri in the past, Conley said. Indeed, in two terms as governor, Carcieri has stuck to his guns on lower taxes and spending. He has also won accolades from social conservatives for his outspoken opposition to abortion and gay marriage, breaking with the tradition of moderate Republicanism in the mold of John Chafee.
But now, fiscal and social conservatives who once rallied around Carcieri are finding themselves odds with him.
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At a Tuesday press conference, Conley aired her misgivings about the wind farm, flanked by Larry Valencia, the head of Operation Clean Government, and William Felkner, president of the Ocean State Policy Research Institute, or OSPRI. All three had attended the meeting with the governor the previous week, according to Conley.
Conservatives have not always seen eye to eye with the governor, but never before has their criticism been so public or deep, one activist said yesterday.
“Fiscal and cultural conservatives—whether they are Republican or by ideology—have somewhat embraced the governor as one of their own. This is certainly the broadest rift in that coalition,” said Brian Bishop, a prominent property rights activist and research fellow at OSPRI. “There’s been no issue that the Right has been more at odds with the governor than this issue.”
The connections between Carcieri and conservatives run deeper than mere ideological affinity.
His wife, Suzanne Carcieri, sits on the board of directors for OSPRI, which is a free-market conservative group that claims the wind farm development will kill 1,000 jobs and cost Rhode Islanders—unless there is a 410 percent inflation in energy prices over 20 years.
Suzanne Carcieri is still on the board, Felkner said yesterday.
“Mrs. Carcieri has always been supportive of our role of providing a free-market perspective and our contributions to the debate process,” Felkner said. “That doesn’t mean she always agrees with that perspective. She just knows the value of having a vigorous debate and how it usually produces a better intellectual product.”
A sticking point for many is the fact that National Grid will be buying electricity from wind-farm developer Deepwater Wind at 24.4 cents per kilowatt, nearly three times the current retail rate of 9.2 cents per kilowatt. But Amy Kempe, a spokeswoman for Gov. Carcieri said that the first phase of the wind farm will deliver just one percent of the energy supply in Rhode Island. “It’s a very small increase in terms of their monthly bill,” she said.
She said the Ocean State could not pass up the opportunity to become a leader in a new off-shore wind power industry. “This is really a once-in-a-generation opportunity and Rhode Island is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this,” Kempe said. “We have the right resources. We have the right infrastructure. We have the right people.”
In Wind Farm Debate, Conservatives on the Side of Regulation
The wind farm was dealt a blow in March when the Public Utilities Commission, or PUC, rejected a contract between National Grid and Deepwater Wind. Carcieri is backing a bill that would bypass the PUC and allow four other state agencies to approve the contract.
Now, some small-government conservatives are siding with the PUC. “If we had our way, we’d dissolve the PUC tomorrow,” said Will Ricci, a board member of the Rhode Island Republican Assembly, which bills itself as the “Republican wing” of the Republican Party. “However, it just doesn’t smack of good public policy to have special laws created for a single company.”
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Conley suggested the bill goes against everything the Tea Party stands for. “We look at it from an economic standpoint,” she said. “The Tea Party is all about fiscal responsibility, accountability, and transparency and all these issues are strewn across this bill.”
Spokeswoman: Governor Not Worried About Legacy
Kempe said Carcieri didn’t have a reaction to the public opposition from the Tea Party and OSPRI. “If an individual or a group disagrees with a public policy, that is their issue,” she said. “That’s not something we concern ourselves with.”
Kempe also said that the meeting between Carcieri and the three organizations was not an effort to persuade them to change their minds. “Absolutely not. It was not a request for support,” Kempe said. She said the purpose of the meeting was to clear up some misunderstandings and misinformation about the wind farm bill.
Kempe said Carcieri believes the wind farm is right for Rhode Island for a host of reasons—from energy independence to economic development. For Carcieri, she said this was a matter of public policy, not politics. “The governor does not think about legacy issues,” Kempe said. “He thinks about what is best for Rhode Island.”
Comments:
David Pepin
1:59pm on Thursday, May 20, 2010
This issue makes strange bedfellows.
The Tea Party folks love to complain about overregulation, but they don't mind it here. Perhaps they find renewable energy threatening...to who, besides Big Oil and Big Power?
And do they realize that their opposition to wind power puts them on the same side as their late mortal enemy Ted Kennedy? Guess they don't want distant turbines spoiling their ocean views.
I'm just happy to see Carcieri promoting something positive for this state before he leaves office.
eleftherios pavlides
11:16am on Sunday, May 23, 2010
1) The picture above is a gross visual distortion obscuring the fact that offshore wind turbines are located at a MINIMUM 1/3 of mile apart (any closer they block each other's wind). The photo is taken with a very strong telephoto shortening the distance. In real life no one will ever see what this pictures shows and anyone who cannot negotiate 1/3 of a mile in a boat should not be steering a boat.
2) 24.4 cents/KWh includes 6.75 cents/KWh REC (Renewable Energy certificate) that NG by the Renewable Energy Portfolio law that NG WILL HAVE TO PAY whether the RECs are generated in Rhode Island or somewhere else - I say RECs are better generated in RI than imported. The Massachusetts law does not allow out of state RECs while the RI law allows (and the reason Carcieri vetoed this flaw in the law last year.) So the real electricity generation cost is 18. 65 cents/KWH (although this includes a .8 cents/KWh that goes to NG and not for offshore generation that many say it is unjustified gravy given to NG in the long term purchase agreement.)
3) The impact of the extra cost from the offshore wind electricity from this long term contract (or purchase agreement) if you take out the 6.75 cents/KWh REC cost out (that is wrongly included), is about an extra $ 1.1 on the average monthly residential bill.
BUT wind electricity ALSO LOWERS the rates by affecting the auction that takes place every 5 minutes based only on fuel cost. Go to http://www.iso-ne.com/markets/5min_data/fiveMinLMP.do to see right now the 5 minute rate that can change every five minutes. The cost of 1/4 of all electricity is determined but this spot market.
The rate at anyone time is determined by the highest bid needed to meet demand during those five minutes. So nuclear whose fuel is about 1.5 cents / KWh, coal whose fuel is about 3 cents/KWh, natural gas whose fuel is about 4.5 cents per KW/h (but remember only a year ago natural gas was 12 cents/KWh and dropped only because of the global recession) ALL GET PAID AS IF THEY WERE GENERATED WITH OIL fuel that is about 10 cents/ KWh . During anytime that even a drop of oil is used to meet demand in New England ALL FUELS get paid as if they are oil!!!. So nuclear gets an extra 8.5 Cents/KWh coal an extra 7 cents /KWh and natural gas an extra 6.5 cents /KWh during the times that any amount of oil is used to make a electricity. This increases cost to the rate-payer.
Go to the link above and if you see that the current five minute rate is around 10 cents then you know oil is used to meet demand in addition to the other fuels. If you visit http://www.iso-ne.com/markets/5min_data/fiveMinLMP.do at slow time maybe at 3:00 AM and see a five minute price around 3 cents you will know that only coal and nuclear used to meet demand and off course hydro with fuel at zero it is the first to be dispatched to meet demand. Sometimes the five minute price is 4.5 cents /KWh indicating natural gas is used but not oil.
By adding a wind electricity generation in the mix that has 0 fuel costs it changes the cost of the electricity in the entire system for any five minutes that it eliminates the need for oil in the system. People who do not understand how the electricity market works have argued that we use little oil in NE however the impact of using a little oil is gigantic on the cost and the savings from wind will be equally big. For every 5 minutes that we use zero oil nuclear, coal, and natural gas lose money that the rate-payer gains. (this may explain the hatred against Cape Wind that was opposed by Yearley (Marathon Oil) and Koch (mining interests.)
So every five minutes that wind electricity eliminates the need for oil, or natural gas (coal and nuclear are ALWAYS used) there are savings to the consumer. How much will Deepwater save to the consumer from its impact on the spot market? To find out the PUC needs to examine the demand for electricity and find how many five-minute increments per year the electricity from Deepwater will displace oil or natural gas per year. This will generate savings offsetting the increase from the long term contracts.
The PUC does not have the staff to do this sophisticated analysis of the spot market and the savings that will result from wind electricity eliminating the need for oil during some time. For Cape WInd that the math has been done they fount out that it will more than offset the extra cost from the long term purchase agreement at the tune of 4.6 billion over 25 years. Read the report at http://crai.com/uploadedFiles/Publications/analysis-of-the-impact-of-cape-wind-on-new-england-energy-prices.pdf
The new law has been irresponsibly cast by opponents as a law for dirty government but in fact the new law is against dirty energy. The PUC proved totally inadequate in evaluating the economic, environmental, health, and economic development impact of the proposed 8 wind turbines off block island. The new law provides for an informed review that the PUC is not able to deliver.
3) No surprise that the Tea Party that was also known earlier as "energy citizens" are taking a pro-oil and pro-coal position. Aren't these the same guys whose leader Rand Paul wants the government to pay for BP's clean up and called Obama Un-American for threatening to make BP pay for the mess they caused? The same Tea Party leader also defended the Massey Coal for killing the miners by accident without stopping to consider that in fact this was a preventable accident. The Tea Party will stop at nothing in defend big oil and big coal that is bankrolling them.
Remember "BRITISH Petroleum, using a SOUTH KOREAN-built drilling rig flying under a MARSHALL ISLANDS flag, leased to a company named TransOCEAN incorporated in landlocked SWITZERLAND to avoid US taxes, dumping its mess in our ocean and refusing to apologize. And a guy with a British accent telling us that the spill is insignificant compared to the volume of water in the Gulf.
The Tea Party's Rand Paul asking the American tax payer to pick up BP's tab is what I would call un-American.
Carcieri should give up trying to please this un-American crowd by dropping the lawsuit against healthcare reform. This lawsuit has only one purpose, to please this crowd that is responsible for destroying the Republican party. Carcieri is a smart businessman who knows that healthcare reform is here to stay and also knows that affordable healthcare is critical for American business.