Maryland Wind Power Opponents Admit They're 'Motivated by Fear'

Fear and money, as these past few years of recession have made abundantly clear, are two very powerful political forces especially when combined. And as we’re seeing right now in places like Wisconsin, powerful political and corporate players are hard at work exploiting fears over money to advance their political agendas. It’s the worst form of cynical political ploys – a stratagem that attacks vital public services in the name of public service, and that ultimately only serves private moneyed interests.

And it’s a stratagem that was on full display by critics and opponents of Governor Martin O’Malley’s Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act at the bill’s first hearing in the the state's General Assembly this past Thursday.

Undoubtedly stoked by somewhat misleading media reportage about the costs of the legislation for Maryland electric rate payers, certain members of the House Economic Matters Committee set the tone for the hearing by showering the Governor and his administration officials with questions about how the bill would affect their constituents’ pocketbooks.

The best, simplest answer to that question was supplied by the Maryland Energy Administration which, looking at a similar wind energy project in Delaware, found that the average rate payer could expect to pay about $1.44 more per month as a result of the project. As Gov. O’Malley put it, that’s the amount that you could save by replacing two 60 watt incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents.

That’s hardly a formula for economic Armageddon.

But just add fear and a few more dollar signs to the picture and all reason goes out the window. For instance, the Maryland Public Service Commission, while remaining officially neutral on the legislation, helped confuse committee members by offering a scale of potential monthly price hikes that ranged from $1.44 all the way to $8.70.

Never mind that the upper end of that scale was, as wind developers pointed out, gleaned from an offshore wind project in Rhode Island that was far smaller than and thus lacked the economy of scale of the proposed 500 MW Maryland project. The figure was enough to raise alarm, and appeared to overshadow other facts in the minds of some committee members – like the fact that rate hikes wouldn’t kick in “during the recovery” but five years down the road; or the fact that stable wind prices could help offset higher fossil fuel costs at that time.

Of course it was the cabal of polluters and business interests that came to testify against the bill who took top-prize on money fear-mongering. A representative of the Maryland Industrial Energy Alliance readily admitted that he was “motivated largely by fear”, but what appeared to outrage these opponents the most was that the bill offered offshore wind a “great deal” that they didn’t think they were getting in on.

The lobbyist for the Maryland Petroleum Council decried what he called the double standard of fast-tracking and “subsidizing” offshore-wind energy, while delaying gas “fracking” in western Maryland. Of course the point of that delay, as he conveniently forgot to mention, was to protect Marylanders from having to subsidize natural gas extraction with higher health costs, contaminated drinking water and other environmental impacts.

And as Kristen Welker-Hood of the Physicians for Social Responsibility pointed out, no energy source has gotten more subsidies than the coal industry, which passes on a $62 billion tab to the American public every year in pollution-related medical costs. Including environmental damage, that number could be has high as $345 billion. Compared to that “great deal”, the offshore wind industry is getting majorly short-changed by the Maryland wind bill.

Fortunately, despite the best efforts of opponents, the bill still enjoys the support of a number of influential members of the committee, and such attempts to scare the committee members don’t have such a hot track record. As Chesapeake Climate Action Network director Mike Tidwell articulated in his testimony, the committee has “heard this rhetoric before” regarding the state’s renewable portfolio standard.

That’s good news for the offshore wind bill, but we can’t take it for granted that such tactics will fall flat in this current political climate. We’ve got to do all we can to make sure the committee members have the popular support and courage to pass another great victory for our clean energy future. Please stand against the power of fear and money and sign the petition in support of the Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act of 2011.

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Photo Credit: Phault via Flickr