NJ Offshore Wind Power Project Clears Permit Hurdles

An offshore wind project near Atlantic City has taken another step towards being the nation's first offshore wind power venture after it cleared federal regulatory hurdles.

Offshore wind developer Fishermen's Energy now has permission to build six offshore wind turbines a few miles off the coast of Atlantic City, the company said, announcing it won its final federal permit.

Fishermen’s Energy, a coalition of fishermen seeking to supply alternative energy, said the project got a Clean Water Act permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

That follows several important permits the project got last year from the state Department of Environmental Protection after a public comment process.

The demonstration-scale wind farm would be built just 2.8 miles from the Atlantic City boardwalk, far closer to the shore than other proposals. Its turbines could produce up to 25 megawatts, capable of powering about 10,000 homes.

It's not the only company hoping to build: last year federal officials announced plans to fast-track offshore wind, and eleven companies filed to stake a claim and construct clusters of huge turbines in federal waters 12 miles off the coast of New Jersey.

Those much larger proposals include a farm off the coast of Avalon proposed by Garden State Offshore Energy and a project by Bluewater Wind off the coast of Cape May.

This particular project is much closer to the shore than the other larger projects, which makes it cheaper to build but increases the potential complaints from those who don't want to see them so close to shore (NIMBY types who complain it would mar their views of the ocean or adversely affect their businesses near or at the shore).

It awaits obtaining sufficient funding before construction would begin.

Here's hoping that they can show these offshore projects can be done in a fiscally prudent manner since this is a huge untapped source of energy and potential profits for the state, businesses and utilities.

NIMBY, The ADA, and the MTA

The New York City MTA has frequently failed to adhere to its obligations under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). Many of its subway stations are not in compliance, and part of the agency's long term capital construction costs are related to bringing stations it renovates up to standards.

So, what happens when the MTA plans on renovating a station on the Upper East Side? Local residents complain that the station's ADA compliance portion would destroy the fabric of the historic neighborhood.

The MTA is planning to renovate the station at 68th Street/Hunter College as part of a federal requirement to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to a presentation made at a Community Board 8 transportation committee meeting on Wednesday night.

An elevator would be added to the northeast corner of 68th Street and Lexington Avenue, and new entrances (just with stairs) would be built on the southwest and southeast corners of East 69th Street and Lexington Avenue.

“It would ruin the fabric of the neighborhood,” East 69th Street resident Nancy Friedman told DNAinfo. “It’s the most beautiful block in the city,” she claimed, describing her street’s carriage houses and townhouses.

Changes to historic districts were usually heavily scrutinized, Friedman added. “We’re not even allowed to change the windows — even on the back of our buildings, and they’re just going to slap this on the block?”

Particularly on the west side of the street, the entrance wasn't needed, she said, because "people to the west don't take the subway. Not to be elitist, but they don't."

The MTA’s plans spurred one man from the ritzy block to accuse the transit agency of using the ADA requirements as a “charade.”

Board members bristled at the accusation, with the committee’s co-chair calling the comment “offensive to disabled people.”

Community Board 8 will put the MTA’s presentation online and solicit responses to provide the MTA. The transportation authority is expected to come back in December with an updated plan.

In support of the MTA’s plans, CB 8 member A. Scott Falk — who said it has taken him up to five minutes to exit that subway when it’s crowded — told the residents at the meeting, “New York City is not a gated community. The whole idea of putting an entrance on 69th Street is going to open you up to marauding down the street seems a bit reactionary.”

This is insanity encapsulated.

The MTA needs to bring its station access up to ADA standards, and that's a costly proposition. When you've got local communities blocking such improvements because they think it's going to increase crime (for a station that already exists mind you), that amounts to nothing more than NIMBY and it also shows that the local community has no regard for the disabled or families that need to rely on the subways for transit.

Subway access for the disabled is far from where it should be, and the agency has been slowly working towards improving the situation. New stations such as at Fulton Street incorporate ADA requirements, and older stations are retrofitted with ramps, elevators, and wider access points but less than half the stations in the system are ADA compliant.

NY Times Jumps On Solar Panel Eyesore Bandwagon

New Jersey papers like the Record and Star Ledger have been full of complaints about PSE&G's nearly $1 billion project to put solar panels on its power transmission poles in the largest distributed power generation project in the US. Each of the panels would generate 200 watts of power, and together the 200,000 panels would generate 40 megawatts of power. Now, the New York Times weighs in with its own piece about the project.

That's power that doesn't have to come from coal fired or gas burning power plants. It means that on high usage days, those coal and gas plants don't have to kick in to provide peak power. Instead, these panels are providing a steady stream of power into the grid on the days when power is most in demand.

Yet, all too many people are latching on to the fact that the panels are somehow ugly.

Sorry, but they are no more ugly than the transmission poles that deliver the power, and are far less ugly than the endless stream of particulates and emissions from power plants, or the unending stream of coal shipments by rail or barge to power plants.

It may be a harsh realization that these are new panels and installations, but they are going to settle into the background. In reality, this is little more than a rehash of longstanding NIMBY arguments that prevent an honest assessment of power generation and distribution in the US. In other words, these same people claim that they're all for solar power, except when it's in their own backyard so that it would be better if it was located somewhere else.

As for claims that they will somehow unduly influence real estate values, at a time when prices are steady or dropping (as in Fair Lawn where I live - and Bergen County generally), the installation of solar power isn't the driving factor but some homeowners may latch on to the belief that the solar power cells are driving prices down because they can't accept that the real estate market is soft.

NIMBY Behind Local Opposition To PSE&G Solar Power Installations

I've previously reported that PSE&G is embarking on the nation's largest distributed solar power installation. They were in the process of installing 200,000 solar power arrays on light and power poles throughout the state that would be the equivalent to 40 megawatts of power.

These installations - each unit produces a peak of 200 watts - were recently installed in Radburn and they're popping up throughout Northern New Jersey.

You would think that solar power arrays wouldn't find opposition, but you'd be wrong.

Towns and some residents are finding reasons to complain because they think they're ugly or that they may somehow reduce property values.

I think it's nothing more than NIMBY that is driving the opposition. Indeed, some residents think that the solar power units should be installed solely in business areas, rather than residential parts of towns. Never mind that these residents benefit from the power and get to breath cleaner air since it reduces the need for coal powered generators to kick in. They don't want the solar arrays on their block.

The units aren't any more of an eyesore than the light and power poles and lines that string across the towns and communities throughout the state, and in this instance, they're providing a tangible benefit to the state in reduced reliance on coal power.

That isn't to say that PSE&G couldn't have done a better job of notifying residents of impending installations. They should be even more proactive in dealing with communities and education on how and where the first wave of solar power units are being installed (because I expect that with the success of the first wave of solar power units, additional installations will come in future years) and they should provide access on their website to the public to show just how much energy is being generated by the solar installations - so people can see just how much power that this project is generating.

Wind and Solar Power Projects Thwarted By Red Tape; NIMBY Preventing Transmission Line Projects

Accelerating the construction of wind power and/or solar power projects around the country requires having not only the proper sites to take advantage of the wind or sun, but access to transmission lines to deliver the power to where it is needed.

Texas is a huge market for wind power, but much of that capacity is untapped because of opposition to building new transmission lines.

The lack of transmission lines — and the relatively low price of natural gas — has thwarted the ambitions of wind-power advocates to expand the use of this alternative energy source in Texas. The oilman T. Boone Pickens, for example, bet heavily on wind a couple of years ago, ordering hundreds of turbines and announcing plans to build the world’s largest wind farm in the Panhandle at a cost of up to $12 billion. He later scaled back, canceling some of the turbine orders, giving up his land lease and saying he was looking elsewhere to build.

To encourage others, the state is moving forward on a contentious project to erect $5 billion worth of transmission wires to connect the turbines to the cities that need power. On Thursday, state regulators met in Austin and approved the route of a controversial line that will run about 140 miles through the Hill Country, one of the state’s most scenic regions.

Construction of the line — a project of the Lower Colorado River Authority that will run from Schleicher County to a substation near Comfort — should start next year. Last year, vigorous opposition, by landowners, wealthy newcomers and old-time families, succeeded in derailing plans for another line that the state had wanted to build through the area. Instead, the existing electric infrastructure will be upgraded to carry a greater load. The Public Utility Commission, which is overseeing the process, has also canceled plans for an additional segment of the Hill Country line discussed at the meeting Thursday.

“All Texans love their land,” Barry T. Smitherman, the commission chairman, said in an interview a few days ago. During the process of planning the routes for transmission lines, Mr. Smitherman said, “we didn’t please everyone, but I think with each of these we really tried to work hard to make it as acceptable as possible for the landowners.”

Texas embarked on the transmission line project, known as Competitive Renewable Energy Zones, several years ago. The need was clear: in West Texas, home to the vast majority of the state’s wind farms, so many turbines have been built over the past decade that some must be shut down during windy periods because there are not enough wires to transport the power. Texas is the leading wind-power state by far, with nearly three times as much capacity as the next-closest state, Iowa. Once built, the new lines are expected to span more than 2,300 miles.

The Hill Country is not the only part of Texas where resistance to new power lines has been fierce. Landowners near Palo Duro Canyon State Park in the Panhandle also put up vigorous opposition. Their arguments against one of the proposed lines prevailed, so it will be built elsewhere and not cross the dramatic canyon landscape. Nonetheless, another line could still go across the canyon. Residents of Denton County, north of Fort Worth, worry that a proposed line could cross landmarks like a park area called the Greenbelt or a Girl Scout camp.

The arguments against the transmission lines mirror those of the wind turbines or solar collectors - that their presence mars the landscape.

Then, there's the issue of red tape in getting permits and approvals to build solar power projects. The amount of bureaucracy and red tape to build solar power projects - including retrofits on existing buildings, is curbing wider acceptance and implementation because of the added costs.

"Environmentalists" Opposing Renewable Energy Projects

If you want yet another example of why the United States lacks a coherent energy policy, all you have to do is go out West to see how people who claim to be environmentalists sue to block building solar power projects near them.

They like the projects on paper, but once it has the potential of going into their own backyard, NIMBY rears its ugly head and the lawsuits commence. Those lawsuits are time consuming and add significant costs to all energy projects, no matter how environmentally sensitive or green they are touted to be.

The push to create an alternative to carbon-based fuel has hit an unlikely snag: environmentalists.

The split between Peterson and Williams illustrates this awkward state of affairs. To a growing number of environmental advocates, the dozens of large solar plants that are springing up in vast areas of the western wilderness are more scourge than savior.

The upshot is that those who on paper seem to be perfect allies for solar are turning into its biggest enemies.

That includes the Sierra Club, which last week filed what senior attorney Gloria Smith says is its first suit against a solar plant, a giant 664-megawatt project called Calico that is slated to go up in the desert near Barstow, California. It would lie smack in the middle of habitat for rare plants and animals, in an area Smith calls "a very unfortunate site."

The legal brawl comes as the U.S. is racing to adopt renewables. In the United States, renewable energy, including solar, makes up just 8 percent or so of electricity generation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That figure was expected to jump to 13 percent by 2035 -- but that was before the Green vs. Green feud.

Even though Williams and her cohorts support the broad goal of reducing dependence on fossil fuels, they say it comes at too high a cost if it means building on undeveloped land. Helping their case: the proposed plants are often slated for areas with threatened or endangered animals, including kit foxes, kangaroo rats, rare lizards and others.

Now, the groups have gone from complaining to litigating. That means solar companies must take funds and management time that would have been spent on developing their plants and spend them instead on fighting lawsuits. For some companies, the likely result is that plants won't be built.

For the solar industry overall, the situation marks a fundamental shift in attitude. Where previously almost any bare patch of desert seemed like a prospective solar plant, now the reality is that much of the nation's most fertile ground for alternative power and energy independence may well remain undeveloped.

Undeveloped and cheap land near existing transmission lines are ideal for solar power development and yet these groups are suing because they claim that the projects will have a negative ecological impact.

Any construction will have an impact - the idea is how to minimize the effects while providing a cost-efficient and sustainable energy source. By suing, Sierra Club and other environmental groups are showing that they are against energy development of any sort - no matter how green they claim to be. California has a legal requirement to get 33% of its energy needs from renewable sources, which means that the state's ability to reach its goal is threatened as environmentalists fight to stop solar projects around the state.

It also means that solar power companies are not going to get involved in US projects because it isn't cost effective and are looking elsewhere - China for one, where the benefits of solar far outweigh the alternatives of more coal powered plants that emit noxious chemicals.

Yet, it should be pointed out that the footprint of a solar powered project is several times greater than a nuclear power plant of the same energy output.

NIMBYism is killing technological development and a shift from existing energy sources to cleaner, renewable sources. This will have dire consequences in coming years no matter how much money in incentives are thrown at the industry because the underlying fundamentals have not changed. Fix the issues arising from NIMBY types who thwart all manner of necessary and critical projects and it will reduce costs for a wide range of infrastructure projects that will help catapult US infrastructure into the 21st century.

Another issue is that China isn't exactly an environmentally constrained culture as factories continue to belch noxious chemicals and heavy metals into the air injuring those around those factories. Hundreds of children were poisoned by lead from factories making batteries in just the latest of such incidents. China is ramping up production of a wide range of green products, including batteries, wind turbines, and solar power systems, but few are looking at the consequences of China looking the other way as these very factories pollute their localities with all manner of toxic chemicals befouling waterways, the air, and people living downwind.