By Mark Rodgers, Communications Director for Cape Wind

Wind energy is clean for two reasons: No pollution is created to make it, and it replaces polluting fossil-fuel energy. This is true of both land-based and offshore wind farms. Cape Wind would produce greater air quality benefits than most wind farms because of the large quantity of wind power it would produce on Horseshoe Shoal.

Folks at the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound don't want people to think about that, and they go to great lengths to change or to confuse the subject. In a May 23 commentary, Audra Parker, assistant director of the alliance, belittles the potential of Cape Wind to produce environmental benefits.

Most environmental organizations and government agencies that have examined the Cape Wind project do not share the alliance's gloomy assessment. Katherine Kennedy of the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, said in February, ''The air quality, public health and global warming benefits of the project are significant and beyond rational dispute.''

The Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board, which recently approved Cape Wind's electric cable interconnection, stated in its decision, ''The record clearly documents significant and lasting air quality benefits resulting from the wind farm's displacement of other, primarily fossil-fueled, generators ...overall, the Siting Board concludes that the air quality benefits of the wind farm are significant, and important for Massachusetts and New England.''

Ms. Parker writes that Cape Wind is overstating how much wind energy it would produce; yet more than two years of wind data from the scientific data tower on Horseshoe Shoal indicate that, if anything, Cape Wind has used conservative estimates of the vast wind resource there. In average conditions, Cape Wind would supply 74 percent of the electricity demand of Cape Cod and the islands.

The alliance wrongly claims national air pollution laws that cap emission levels could diminish or even eliminate Cape Wind's pollution reductions. Cape Wind would produce real air pollution reductions in New England. For local air-breathing citizens, that is the best place to reduce air pollution, as it falls in heaviest concentrations close to its source. As the NRDC noted in its comments to the Army Corps of Engineers, Cape Wind even may help reduce emission caps, which are based upon achievable technology.

Ms. Parker complains that using the most recent marginal emission rates would yield lower pollution reduction estimates than were in the Army Corps report. Though that is true, the pollution reduction quantities resulting from Cape Wind would still be substantial. Ms. Parker then goes overboard by stating, ''Cape Wind would negligibly reduce carbon dioxide emissions.'' Contrast that with the NRDC's written comments in February, in which it stated that Cape Wind ''is, to our knowledge, the largest single source of supply-side reductions in CO2 currently proposed in the United States, and perhaps in the world.''

Ms. Parker writes that wind power is intermittent and requires backup reserve power that creates its own air emissions. Actually, the electricity grid already requires backup reserve power, as no source of electricity is running 100 percent of the time; adding a wind farm to the mix does nothing to change that.

Ms. Parker concludes that Cape Wind is not a cure-all and that the public interest must come first. On those points we agree. Fortunately, the review already under way is using the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires a permit decision be consistent with the public interest.

No single energy project can end air pollution, dependence on foreign energy or global warming. These problems can be solved only if every region embraces initiatives to make greater use of energy efficiency and clean, renewable energy.

Perhaps former EPA New England administrator John DeVillars put it best when he wrote, ''Massachusetts has a proud history of leading the way on America's environmental advances ...time and again Massachusetts has seen the environmental future and seized it. By supporting Cape Wind we can do so once again. It is an all-too-rare privilege to have an opportunity to demonstrate national leadership on any matter, let alone one so profound as national energy policy. The Cape Wind project affords an excellent opportunity to do just that.''

This originally appeared in the Cape Cod Times on May 31, 2005.