Cape Wind responds to false and misleading personal attack newspaper ads from the Alliance

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound (also known as Save Our Sound), which was formed as a single-purpose organization to oppose Cape Wind has been spending an enormous sum of money on highly misleading newspaper ads in the Boston Globe and other regional newspapers in recent weeks. This email examines one of their ads that has appeared several times in the Boston Globe and sets the record straight by exposing the Alliance's use of false or misleading information in their attacks against Cape Wind and Jim Gordon. One interesting irony is that while one series of the Alliance ads claims Cape Wind will make vast sums of money, another series of Alliance ads claims the project is a bad investment and will lose money.

A brief look at the "Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound" (Alliance)

Two recent articles in the Boston Globe and on Cape Cod Today describe internal Alliance fundraising documents that offer a revealing glimpse of an organization that receives 94% of its funding from donations of $20,000 or more.
Boston Globe Article 
Cape Cod Today Article 

Cape Cod Voice has a revealing recent article on Alliance lobbying activities

Greenpeace has extensively researched the Alliance, which Greenpeace describes as an “Orwellian group.” Greenpeace has documented several instances of the Alliance spreading false information about Cape Wind as well as descriptions of key Alliance players, see: www.greenpeaceusa.org/alliance

Alliance claims about "taxpayer subsidies"
The Alliance newspaper ads feature a crude caricature drawing of Cape Wind President Jim Gordon with money in his hands and a dollar sign on the bottom of his shoe that had just crushed a boat, under the caption "Why is this man smiling?" The central claim most highlighted in the ad is that Cape Wind would "get $1.3 billion in taxpayer subsidies". This claim is false.

Here are the facts:

Federal Incentives
There is a Federal program designed to encourage greater commercial investment in wind power called the Federal Wind Production Tax Credit (PTC), but it is set to expire before Cape Wind could benefit from it. If the PTC is extended by Congress at the current rate Cape Wind could be eligible to receive up to $28 million in tax credits per year for up to ten years. The cost to the Federal government, however, will be offset by the new taxes upon the income generated by the project, both directly and indirectly, as well as the “fair return” to be paid by Cape Wind to the Federal government through lease payments on the site. The PTC also ought be considered in the context of a myriad of government programs that directly and indirectly subsidize conventional sources of energy such as fossil fuel and nuclear. The US Department of Energy stated in their 2005 Fact Sheet entitled "Wind Myths,” that "...every energy source receives significant federal subsidies; it is disingenuous to expect wind energy to compete in the marketplace without the incentives enjoyed by established technologies."

State Incentives
There is a public policy mandate in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to develop more renewable energy called the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), which requires that minimum percentages of our electricity supply must come from new sources of renewable energy. The cost of purchasing renewable energy, however, is paid by Massachusetts electric consumers, without any involvement of tax dollars. This program exists whether or not Cape Wind is built.

Here’s the crucial point about the Massachusetts RPS and Cape Wind: If Cape Wind is built, RPS costs will be lower, creating savings for Massachusetts electricity consumers. This is because Cape Wind would vastly increase the supply of renewable energy, thereby reducing RPS implementation costs, a fact confirmed by the Massachusetts Energy Commissioner at a conference on Cape Cod in 2002.

In addition to saving Massachusetts electric consumers money in the RPS program, Cape Wind would also reduce the cost of electricity by $25 Million dollars per year, according to the order issued by the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board.

It is also worth considering that the Massachusetts RPS and the Federal PTC both exist because our Federal and State Governments recognize the public interest benefits in encouraging increased commercial development of renewable energy. Ironically, the Alliance claims to support both programs even as they vilify Cape Wind for responding to the incentives established by such programs.

Notably, the leading architects in the Massachusetts State House who created the RPS in 1997 have stated that, "Cape Wind is exactly the type of project we envisioned when we enacted the Restructuring Act. The 420 MW Wind Park proposed by Cape Wind Associates will provide affordable, efficient, reliable and clean energy." -- Massachusetts State Senators Michael Morrissey and Susan Fargo and State Representatives Daniel Bosley and John Binienda.

For more on this subject, see this page from Cape Wind's website.


Alliance claim that Cape Wind got "a sweetheart, no-bid deal from Congress"
This is a misleading claim often repeated by Cape Wind opponents.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 granted authority from Congress to the Minerals Management Service of the Department of Interior to regulate and approve commercial offshore wind proposals and to charge lease payments to these projects in amounts that ensure “a fair return” to the Federal government, a portion of which would be shared with the nearest coastal state.

The Senate Energy Committee, in an open and transparent legislative process, thereby sought to ensure that the two pre-existing offshore wind proposals (Nantucket Sound and offshore Long Island) not be penalized or required to start over, by providing that these projects did not have to re-file applications or be subjected to competitive bidding.

In the case of Nantucket Sound, Cape Wind had already spent millions of dollars in the analysis of the suitability of Horseshoe Shoal for wind power development. In contrast, when MMS uses competitive bidding for offshore oil or gas developments, they do so before any company has spent years and large sums of money going through an environmental impact review for that site. Notably, the Alliance remained silent on these points while the Energy Policy Act was pending last year.

To read more on this subject, see this page from Cape Wind's website.

Alliance claim of "Economic Loss" to Cape Cod from reduced tourism
There is not a single documented example, anywhere in the world, of a wind farm harming tourism. Quite the contrary, wind farms have been show in many instances to increase tourism by providing a new point of interest that fascinates visitors. Denmark has wind farms offshore their two largest tourist destinations, their Capitol Copenhagen, and the beach resort town of Blaavandshuk, with no harm to tourism reported.

Alliance claim of harm to mobile-gear commercial fishing
Nantucket Sound is over 550 square miles in size, of which Horseshoe Shoal is 24 square miles. Much of Horseshoe Shoal is already not usable by mobile-gear commercial fishing because it is too shallow. Of the area of Horseshoe Shoal that may be deep enough for this type of fishing, Cape Wind is proposing to locate wind turbines 6 to 9 football fields apart from one another, leaving the rest of the 99.9% of the shoal open to boating. When the demonstrated "artificial reef" effect of locating structures in water is factored in, it is possible that a net increase in fishing activities will occur on Horseshoe Shoal.

Alliance claims of navigation safety risks
Offshore wind farms have been successfully operating in much busier European waterways without posing any problems to sea or air navigation for several years. Cape Wind has already received a Determination of No Hazard from the FAA, and the US Coast Guard is conducting an ongoing review of Cape Wind on marine safety. Passenger ferries and commercial shipping do not operate in Horseshoe Shoal due to its shallow depths and this site is also not under any flight path.

Alliance claim of threat to birds
Studies of birds and offshore wind farms in Europe have found that there are very few bird collisions. Most birds have been observed by cameras and by radar to fly around the wind farms, and those birds flying through the wind farms have been observed flying through the open corridors between turbine rows. Several offshore wind sites in Europe have been in areas heavily used by seabirds. Improvements in wind turbine design, including a much slower rate of rotation of the blades and a smooth tower base instead of perchable lattice towers, have helped reduce bird mortality at wind farms around the world.

Ongoing Cape Wind Response to opposition misinformation
Stay up-to-date with Cape Wind's responses to ongoing efforts of project opponents to mislead the public, by going to our Response Page:
www.capewind.org/article115.htm#response