Watertown Daily Times NYPA will not pay for offshore wind, Galloo Island Wind Farm
From the Buffalo News
September 27, 2011
The proposal for a wind energy farm off the shores of Lakes Erie and Ontario is officially dead.
The New York Power Authority today pulled the plug on the project, citing the high costs of the subsidies that would be needed to make the wind farm economically feasible.
"It's not fiscally prudent at this time to select a proposal and pursue a project in the Great Lakes," said Jill Anderson, a Power Authority staff member who delivered a report to the agency's board of directors.
NYPA's staff estimated that a 150-megawatt wind farm off the Great Lakes shoreline would require a subsidy of $60 million to $100 million a year. A larger project — NYPA officials had said a project could generate as much as 500 megawatts of electricity — would require much larger subsidies.
The Power Authority last year received five proposals from developers seeking to build the offshore wind farm, which would have placed 150 to 170 wind turbines along a stretch of Lake Erie from Chautauqua County to Buffalo. A 500 megawatt project would have generated enough electricity to supply about 130,000 homes and would have reduced pollution by reducing the state's reliance on power plants that run on fossil fuels, like coal and natural gas. The project's supporters also hoped the wind farm would spin off an entire side industry for the region, making it a center for manufacturing many of the 8,000-odd components that go into each wind turbine.
However, Anderson said the high costs of building a wind farm several miles offshore in deep water made the project too costly. She estimated that the subsidies required by an offshore wind farm in the Great Lakes would be two to four times the subsidy needed by a similar wind farm built on land.
NYPA would have provided the subsidy for the offshore wind farm by agreeing to purchase the project's electricity at a negotiated rate that would have been many times higher than the current market price of power in Western New York.
While the Great Lakes project was backed by many environmental groups, it also faced stiff political opposition. County legislatures in at least seven of the nine counties lining the Lake Erie and Ontario shoreline, including those in Erie, Chautauqua and Niagara counties, passed resolutions opposing the wind farm project.
Watertown Daily Times NYPA will not pay for offshore wind, Galloo Island Wind Farm
The authority will focus on an offshore wind project near Long Island with a direct connection to Long Island, New York City and New Jersey. Galloo Island Wind Farm, proposed by Upstate NY Power Corp. for an uninhabited island in Lake Ontario about six miles from shore, submitted a proposal. Its developers said it needed a power purchase agreement through NYPA to secure financing.
4 comments:
Thank God! We just dodged another bullet! And thank all who had the sense to oppose this. Investor banks, "take your money and try another scheme some where else". Hopefully people all over are getting wise to your total disregard for our environment and the people who enjoy it.
Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead, the Wicked Ole Witch. I am so glad someone dropped a house on their sister.
I must have missed something with the rejoicing. How can people like the Masons, Wileys, Stumpfs, the Aubertines, etc. make money if wind turbines are constructed offshore? I don't see where it says they won't try onshore. DEAD in the water maybe, but these mouth breathers will try it the old fashioned way.
ONE STEP AT A TIME
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