At a meeting May 20 at Indian River High School, complaints were raised about the U.S. Wind and Ørsted wind farm projects planned to be built in the waters near Ocean City, Md., and Bethany Beach/Fenwick Island, respectively.
The mayor of Ocean City said the view of wind turbines would wreck tourism. Another speaker said the turbines would harm birds. The spokesman from the Caesar Rodney Institute said wind energy is “exceedingly expensive.”
Can we please step back a bit and look at the context and history of where we are now?
Burning fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution has warmed the earth’s atmosphere by almost 2 degrees Fahrenheit. Arctic ice is melting fast. Delaware has the lowest mean elevation of any state and is a sea-level rise hot spot, according to the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, which estimates up to 5 feet of sea-level rise by 2100. We face dramatically increased risk of destructive flooding events like Hurricanes Sandy and Ida.
If we want our grandchildren to be able to live on the mid-Atlantic seaboard as we do now, we need to take immediate action to turn down the heat.
Offshore wind provides energy without the carbon emissions that warm our planet. Reducing fossil fuel emissions is the only way to correct our precipitous rush toward warming, flooding and species extinction.
As for the visual impact, the wind turbines will be located approximately 17 miles from shore. My daughter said, “They will look like small silver pinwheels.” Far from repelling tourism, the offshore wind farm off the coast of Block Island in Rhode Island attracts eco-tourists and boosts the local economy, according to an April Smithsonian article.
Are birds harmed by wind power? On the contrary, the Audubon Society strongly supports wind power, stating it is global warming – not wind power – that poses an existential threat to two-thirds of North American bird species. Specifically, the Audubon Society “strongly supports wind energy that is sited and operated properly to avoid, minimize and mitigate the impacts on birds … [to] achieve 100% clean electricity.”
The big picture is the harm that might occur to bird life is dwarfed by the harm to bird species that is increasingly caused by the inability of many species to adapt to global warming.
And the cost of offshore wind, it is flatly wrong to characterize it as expensive. Rather, the Special Investigation on Offshore Wind developed by the University of Delaware concluded that offshore wind prices fall within the range of wholesale power now being purchased by Delaware. More importantly, offshore wind costs less than half of Delaware’s current electricity when the costs of healthcare and climate mitigation are included.
Let’s not haggle about views and mislead about birds or price tags. Let’s give our grandchildren and great-grandchildren their chance to enjoy Delaware – a Delaware that is powered in part by the cooling gift of wind.
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