NIMBY
The State House News Service reports (subscription required):
"Wind energy projects across the country raced ahead in the third quarter, but Massachusetts is barely registering among states competing for the electricity, jobs and environmental benefits available through the industry.... Nationally, Texas is the runaway leader with nearly 8,800 megawatts of wind energy installed, according to a report released Tuesday afternoon. The other top states, as measured by installed capacity, are Iowa (3,053), California (2,787), Minnesota (1,805) and Oregon (1,659). Those states are outpacing Massachusetts, which Gov. Deval Patrick envisions as a leader in wind power, but which has only 9 megawatts of wind energy in operation, largely through small, single turbine wind facilities."
Swell. But there's hope. Ted Kennedy, may he rest in peace, was the primary political obstacle to progress on the 420-megawatt Cape Wind project proposed for Nantucket Sound. All four of the Democratic candidates to succeed him support it. (Republican candidate Scott Brown is opposed.)
Still, the NIMBY crowd and its allies are determined to fight to the death, and so far the Obama administration - pro-wind energy campaign rhetoric notwithstanding - hasn't shown the nerve to go forward. And yet another long, cold winter of increasingly-unaffordable heating bills for beleaguered working-class Massachusetts residents lies ahead.
Maybe the president will announce final approval for Cape Wind during his newly-scheduled clean-energy speech at MIT on Friday. Now that would be change we can believe in.
