It's All About the Benjamins... and Sometimes That's Okay

By Andrew Turco, Research Associate

In September 2008, Rhode Island Governor Donald Carcieri announced that Deepwater Wind would build a 100-turbine offshore wind farm to supply about 15% of the state's electricity needs. In addition to this larger wind farm further offshore and about 15 miles to the east of Rhode Island's Block Island, a smaller wind farm of five to eight turbines, each 240 feet tall, would be built three miles off the southeast coast of the small New England island.

In contrast to many of the coastal communities in its neighboring state, support for the project on Block Island is strong. The Block Island Residents Association, representing 550 year-round and seasonal residents, has thrown its support behind the project. Additionally, a mail-in survey conducted by Roger Williams University last summer showed that 86% of homeowners support wind power either on-or off-shore in the abstract. More significantly, a majority of homeowners would still support the installation of wind turbines, even if they were visible from their homes. And when prompted to react to the specific Deepwater wind farm proposal three miles from the island's shore, 66% of homeowners indicated their support.

How did this project, which is poised to become the nation's first wind farm, proceede so smoothly? The process and details of this project, especially when compared to the mired Cape Wind proposal, show how green infrastructure projects can move forward when they are structured in ways to gain the support of surrounding communities.

As someone who knows Block Island well, I'd like to say that this high level of support stems from the community's strong conservation ethos. It's certainly true that residents and visitors alike take pride in the island's designation by the Nature Conservancy as one of the 12 Last Great Places in the Western Hemisphere. The community has worked hard to preserve 40% of the island's land as open space.

Yet, Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket have similar natural beauty, fragile coastal environments, tourism-based economies, and migratory bird habitats. In these locations, various constituent groups, including environmentalists, have spoken out against the proposed wind farm in Nantucket Sound. So what led these communities to take such different stances?

While the natural landscapes are similar, electricity prices and the structure of existing power generation on Block Island differ greatly. Block Island is saddled with some of the highest electric rates in the country. The 65-cents-per-kilowatt-hour rate reached during part of the summer of 2008 made Block Island's electricity the highest priced in the continental US at the time, and more than four times the rate that nearby mainland residents were paying. The fact that Block Island's size has prevented investment in an electric cable connection to the mainland has led to its reliance on an on-island diesel power plant. With oil prices constantly in flux and with the added cost of having to ship diesel to the island by ferry, electricity consumers on the island are weighed down by erratic and often expensive rates.

The Deepwater wind project, would connect Block Island by cable to both the nearby turbines and to the mainland. As a result, the comparative price drop for island residents will be dramatic, and will bring rates down to near mainland prices. All of this is achieved for island residents at the cost of two wind farms still at least three and 15 miles off shore. Though both groups of turbines will be visible from the island, they won't be so close to shore as to burden one group of island residents or homeowners significantly more than any others, and all those on the island stand to benefit substantially. The cost for each resident is minor and relatively equitably distributed -- small turbines on the horizon of most viewsheds. The rewards for each homeowner, on the other hand, are immense -- dramatic savings in energy costs.

In fact, though the survey shows strong support for the Deepwater wind farm proposal, when asked whether they would support a wind farm off of Block Island if no cable link existed, 62% of homeowners said no. Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket are already connected by cable to the mainland and, like Cape Cod, wouldn't stand to benefit more than other electricity users in the state from having their viewshed interrupted. Nonetheless, these places would bear the brunt of the cost, with no other coastal areas identified as potential windmill sites.

For big infrastructure projects to succeed, as many constituents as possible must feel that they stand to benefit from the project while as few as possible must feel that they have been singled out to bear the cost. Keith Revel's description of the construction of New York's subway system illustrates this same principle. He writes, "Differences of class, ethnicity, and geography discouraged taxpayers from footing the bill for public amenities that did not directly benefit them [... so] experts became deal makers, finding ways to link the short-sighted demands of socio-economic groups with the long-term interests of the city as a whole."

In moving forward with alternative energy generation, we must find those projects where the investments' benefits include everyone's long-term interest of mitigating global warming but also encompass some kind of direct, near-term benefit for the communities involved.