Letters to the Editor: Wind Power 03.31.16

Most at Stake

Amagansett

March 28, 2016

Dear David,  

As you well know, East Hampton is a unique town in a unique area. The East End is an irreplaceable treasure, and East Hampton sits at the farthest reaches of this coastal wonderland. We are different from the mainland; we have different resources, different goals, and different challenges. 

There’s a good reason that we’re the first town in our state to set a goal of being powered by 100-percent renewable energy: We have the most at stake from rising seas and changing weather patterns. We are most at risk for isolation from the mainland by storms. And we pay some of the highest electricity rates in the country. Energy independence is the key to overcoming these challenges, and it’s well within reach, thanks to the refinement of technology like solar and wind power generation, microgrids, and high-tech battery storage. 

Our town can be independent — independent from the high energy bills imposed by LIPA/PSEG, independent from the miles of transmission lines linking us to UpIsland power plants, independent from reliance on coal and gas that threaten the future of our waters and coasts, independent from the economic losses suffered by spending our hard-earned money on electricity that comes from out of town. 

The recent push for increased renewable energy infrastructure is what we need to reach this goal by 2020. But to meet peak energy needs in the summer we need a system that includes various types of power generation and storage. Solar is growing, but we need to harness our incredible wind resources, and the Deepwater One project is the best way to do that right now.

Solar can provide a lot of energy, but only during the day, and it can’t provide the extra boost we need for summer afternoons when demand is highest. Luckily, offshore wind turbines generate the most power during those peak times because they happen to coincide with the strongest coastal winds. 

As the sun heats the land in the morning, it warms faster than the water, which creates a temperature and pressure differential, pulling air from offshore. As the sun sets and the land cools faster than water, the pressure difference pulls air out to sea, again causing increased wind speed. 

Our solar resources are also huge on Long Island, and if we can store the energy well, distribute it through a microgrid (which is being tested for feasibility in East Hampton), and supplement it with wind energy to meet peak demand, we can provide 100 percent of our town’s electricity needs without relying on fossil fuels or the profit-driven companies that continually bill us for doing something that we can do ourselves.

Deepwater Wind is a well-designed plan to secure an environmentally and economically stable future for not just our town, but many in the Northeast who need power but want to move past the age of reliance on fossil fuels. Reducing reliance on oil and gas reduces the need to drill for it, and while fossil fuels are finite, wind and sun will be here at least as long as we will. 

At full power, Deepwater One could produce as much energy as 5 billion barrels of oil in the next 20 years. If all the available oil and gas in the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf were harvested, it would only meet energy needs for less than a year.

The environmental damage prevented by decreasing the extraction and burning of oil and gas is far greater than any environmental impacts from the offshore turbines (which are being addressed and minimized by planning construction around the seasons of various animals and natural cycles, as well as reducing noise and planning the placement of cables with ecosystems in mind). 

I have my concerns about impacts on marine life and birds, too, but those impacts are better understood now and are being greatly minimized and considered in this project. The environmental benefits from East Hampton’s support of our renewable energy goals outweigh the risk, in my mind, and also provide huge economic benefits, plus we can set the stage for other communities to follow suit. 

Let’s make progress toward our 100-percent renewable goal. Let’s work together to achieve energy independence through an approach that uses our unique set of wind and solar resources. 

Our town sets an example for others, and people come from all over to visit here, so let’s show them what we can do. Let’s show them the independent and self-sustainable community that we are and always have been. 

TYLER ARMSTRONG



Mr. Armstrong is an East Hampton Town Trustee. Ed.

Need Offshore Wind

East Hampton

March 27, 2016

Dear David:

The East Hampton Star’s excellent reporting on the wind energy March 19 forum and your editorial “A Commitment to Wind Energy” have generated increased public support in our community for offshore wind energy. Thank you! 

The next two weeks are critical, as the clock continues to tick until the Long Island Power Authority trustees’ May decision on the Deepwater Offshore Wind Farm proposal. The trustees are considering proposals to meet the growing need for what PSEG-L.I. calls current and future  “load growth” on the South Fork. Will the trustees continue business as usual with their support for the fossil fuel industry, emitting carbon dioxide into an already choking atmosphere, or will they reach to the future with a historic transformation to clean renewable energy solutions, including offshore wind, to power our community’s future?

This week, Dr. James Hanson, director of the Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions program at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, who has not yet been wrong on the science of climate change, in particular warming oceans, melting sea ice, rising sea levels, and the frequency of extreme weather events, has made public the latest study he co-authored with a team of 19 international scientists. The study concludes that “multimeter sea rise could happen within a matter of decades, rather than centuries as previous estimates suggested.” Deeper cuts in fossil fuel emissions are a “scientific conclusion.” And, the challenge to coastal communities like East Hampton continues to escalate.

In East Hampton, we have committed to meeting 100 percent of our community’s electricity needs with renewable energy sources by 2020. We need clean renewable energy options, including offshore wind. The town’s Department of Natural Resources has been working through funded state programs in locally distributed solar opportunities, microgrids, demand-response upgrades, and energy efficiency programs like Long Island Green Homes to meet this target. But we need the offshore wind farm proposed by Deepwater Wind to reach the town’s laudable historic 2020 goal. And LIPA and PSEG-L.I. must know this now.

South Fork residents still have an opportunity to publicly support clean renewable energy options in meeting future demand without the fossil fuel industry. Last Monday, at the LIPA trustee meeting, I presented 406 copies of a letter to Governor Cuomo from local residents, in support of renewable energy resources including wind. A copy of this letter to the governor is still available for signature on the Renewable Energy Long Island website: RenewableEnergyLongIsland.org. 

LIPA trustees and PSEG-L.I. need to understand, no more overhead transmission lines in our town, and no more fossil fuel “peaker” plants in our neighborhoods!

LINDA JAMES

Stop Burning Fossil Fuels

East Hampton

March 25, 2016

Dear David,

It was most gratifying to read of the positive groundswell of effort from citizens of East Hampton in support of the proposed offshore wind farm beyond the horizon off Montauk. Particularly encouraging was the action of students in town, who have the most to lose as the waters rise and storms intensify. They are right to protect their future by demanding that the Long Island Power Authority face scientific facts.

 As observers of the political battle we are witnessing on the national scene, however, we can predict that there will be those who object. It is very rare to achieve unanimity on anything that requires change.

I can think of one exception to that rule. The exception is that 195 countries, many of which are at war with each other, and each of which is relying on its own national science hierarchy, have unanimously agreed in Paris at COP21 that burning fossil fuels causes climate change, climate change poses a dire threat to civilization, and we must work together to stop burning fossil fuels. Imagine just how ironclad the scientific evidence would need to be to get every industrial country on earth to agree to such a radical change! Then be dumbfounded, along with me, at the combination of arrogance and ignorance necessary to believe that one has some secret source of scientific certainty proving all those scientists wrong.

There are downsides to using our land for solar farms, and downsides to wind farms on land or sea, but the problem remains: How do we stop burning fossil fuel? Do people prefer nuclear power? Should we pretend the problem will go away, and passively submit to global catastrophe? This is not a problem that can be solved down the road. Scientists have warned that we are approaching tipping points beyond which it becomes a runaway. The transition will take 30 years, and we must start now. Proverb: “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”

I hope we will face the fact that there are no perfect solutions. If we don’t begin the transition to non-carbon energy now, we will be remembered by history as the generation that understood the problem, but sacrificed the future of its children by refusing to act because of short-sighted, self-serving objections. And this proposed wind farm, which would supply more electricity than is used by all of East Hampton Town, is a giant first step!

DON MATHESON