Expert answer:short reflection paperk
Solved by verified expert:Three times during the semester you are expected to submit what I call a “short reflection paper.” That paper should make an argument or explore a theme of your choice cutting across the three previous weeks’ readings (e.g. the short reflection paper due at the close of week 6 should address readings from weeks 4, 5, and 6). Your short reflection papers do not need to deal with every single reading from that period, but should address at least one from each week within the period. You can also bring in other readings or data if you wish. These assignments should be in the neighborhood of 1,500 words. Chapter 8,9,10 are from Sparling, Donald W.2014.Natural Resource Administration: Wildlife, Fisheries, Forests and Parks.Academic Press: San Diego, CA and Chapter 13 is from Layzer, Judith A. 2015.The Environmental Case: Translating Values into Policy. 4thedition.CQ Press:Thousand Oaks, CA. I can appropriately cite the reference from Layzer as I have the digital copy of the book.
chapter_8.pdf
chapter_10.pdf
chapter_13_cape_wind_if_not_here.pdf
chapter_9.pdf
Unformatted Attachment Preview
Chapter 13 Cape Wind If Not Here, Where? If Not Now, When?
In the summer of 2001 energy entrepreneur Jim Gordon unveiled a proposal to build 170 wind turbines
in Nantucket Sound, off the coast of Massachusetts. According to its promoters, the development—
known as Cape Wind—could furnish three-quarters of the energy used by the fifteen Barnstable County
towns that comprise Cape Cod, as well as the nearby Elizabeth Islands, Martha’s Vineyard, and
Nantucket; what is more, it would do so without producing local air pollution or the greenhouse gases
that cause global warming. In fact, proponents argued, the shallow waters and stiff breezes of the
sound’s Horseshoe Shoal made it one of the most hospitable sites for an offshore wind farm in the
United States. Yet despite its promise of providing clean, safe energy, Gordon’s proposal met with
immediate and fierce resistance, and detractors capitalized on every procedural opportunity to resist it.
As a result, nearly fifteen years after it was conceived, Cape Wind was all but dead. That said, because it
was the first such project to be seriously considered, the travails of Cape Wind shaped the prospects for
future offshore wind farms.
Many observers attribute the numerous delays in permitting Cape Wind to the objections of the
influential Kennedy family and their wealthy and prominent allies, who simply want to protect the scenic
view from their beachfront mansions.1 In fact, although the Cape Wind saga features some unusually
influential main characters, it is hardly unique: since the early 1990s local groups have thwarted efforts
to site alternative energy projects—from solar and wind to geothermal developments—throughout the
United States and Europe. And many of the detractors of such projects are neither wealthy nor
politically powerful; they are simply determined. Critics have decried such resistance as the “not-in-mybackyard (NIMBY) syndrome,” which they attribute to a selfish unwillingness to bear the costs of one’s
lifestyle. Scholars became intrigued by NIMBYism in the 1980s after local obstruction blocked efforts to
site landfills, hazardous- and nuclear-waste disposal facilities, offshore-drilling facilities, and even
homeless shelters and halfway houses.2 Although many observers characterized such community
activism as uninformed and parochial, a growing chorus of scholars described local resistance to
unwanted land uses as a rational response to perceived risk or inequity, threats to community integrity,
or an improper or arbitrary decision-making process.3 Some argued that NIMBYism actually improved
public decision making by bringing to light factors that had been ignored in the project design or siting
process.4
In the 2000s researchers began to investigate local resistance to wind farms in particular. They were
puzzled because public opinion surveys invariably showed extremely high levels of support for wind
energy, yet only a fraction of the available wind-power capacity was actually being commissioned. That
disconnect reveals some ambivalence within the environmental community. In particular, alternative
energy siting pits two important environmental goals—preserving highly valued landscapes and
combating global warming—against one another.5 More generally, it pits long-term, collective concerns
against immediate, localized sacrifice: neighbors of a development are expected to subordinate their
preferences and interests to the common good, even though their individual contribution to that
societal goal will be imperceptible. Not surprisingly, the prospect of immediate, concrete, and
concentrated loss arouses more intense reactions—and hence political mobilization—than does the
possibility of uncertain and diffuse future benefits.6
In addition to exposing latent tensions within the environmental community, the Cape Wind case
illuminates how both developers and their opponents take advantage of “veto points” in their efforts to
translate their values and interests into policy. Scholars have long deployed the concept of veto points
or veto players—those whose consent is necessary to change policy—to explain policy stability and
change. In his book Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work, political scientist George Tsebelis
proposes a formal theory elucidating why the more veto players a country has, the more stable policy is
likely to be.7 Others argue that it is the interaction between the number of veto points and the
distribution of preferences of the officials that populate those veto points that determines how resistant
the status quo is to policy change.8
Any major construction project involves obtaining numerous permits and approvals, each of which
constitutes a potential veto point. At each veto point, opponents of the project typically raise a host of
substantive concerns about the project’s environmental and other impacts. Because Cape Wind was the
first project of its kind in the United States, however, it raised additional concerns about the permitting
process itself, such as who should be allowed to develop resources in publicly owned waters and under
what conditions. Who has jurisdiction over development of the ocean? And should Cape Wind be
allowed to proceed because of the urgency of addressing global warming, even in the absence of a
regulatory framework? Such process questions, while often legitimate, also serve as a proxy for
substantive concerns, and advocates on both sides of a proposed project raise them to delay decision
making. Opponents hope that if they are able to postpone a final decision for long enough, sufficient
opposition will form to derail the project, the cost of developing the project will become prohibitively
high, or the developer will simply become discouraged.9 Of course, developers use delay tactics as well:
because they can pay representatives to attend a seemingly endless series of meetings, they can often
outlast weary citizen volunteers.
The Cape Wind case also brings into sharp relief the different ways that proponents and opponents
characterize solutions and specifically how they frame the costs and benefits of alternative energy
projects. The capital costs of building a wind farm are high, particularly offshore: as of 2014, the price
tag for a fully installed 500-megawatt (MW) offshore wind system was about $5,700 per kilowatt (kW),
more than three times the approximately $1,750 per kW price of a land-based system.10 In addition, the
variability of wind means that integrating large blocks of wind capacity into an existing grid system can
be expensive. Traditionally, utilities have built power systems around generating technologies that are
predictable and “dispatchable”—that is, units that can be turned off and on and whose output can vary
depending on changes in demand, such as coal-, oil-, or natural gas-based technologies. When the
electrical grid is dependent on only small amounts of wind generation, the variations in wind output
generally can be absorbed by the buffer capacity of the existing system. But when wind constitutes a
large part of a system’s total generating capacity—10 percent to 15 percent or more—utilities must
incur additional costs to provide reliable backup for the wind turbines, and building such backup systems
is expensive.11 Wind-power advocates reject the assumption that baseload power plants are necessary
for reliability; they argue that a new paradigm, in which demand and supply are managed in tandem, is
taking hold.12 Other, more objective analysts have weighed in as well with support for the thesis that
integrating large amounts of intermittent power need not be more costly than using conventional
fuels.13
Furthermore, as critics also point out, historically the financial viability of wind power has depended on
government subsidies that are politically insecure. Two federal policies—the five-year depreciation
schedule for renewable energy systems, enacted as part of the Economic Recovery Tax of 1981, and the
production tax credit (PTC) put in place by the Energy Policy Act of 1992—create substantial tax breaks
for renewable energy projects. The PTC has proven particularly effective. Worth 1.5 cents per kWh in
1992 and adjusted annually for inflation, it can decrease the cost of financing needed to build a project
by 40 percent. But wind developers can never rely on it: between 1999 and 2004 the PTC expired on
three separate occasions; it was extended in 1999, 2002, and 2004, and then extended again in 2005,
2006, 2008, 2009, and most recently in 2013. There is widespread agreement that the “on-again, offagain” nature of the PTC has contributed to the boom-and-bust cycles characteristic of wind-power
development to date.14
Defenders of offshore wind development respond that although the PTC artificially lowers the cost of
wind energy, any price comparison between wind and more conventional fuels is nevertheless skewed
in favor of the latter in several respects. First, the cost of generating energy from new wind-power
plants is typically compared to that of running existing coal- and oil-fired or nuclear plants, which have
already been largely or fully depreciated and—in the case of nuclear—have received substantial
subsidies in the form of liability caps. Second, technologies to derive energy from solar, offshore wind,
and other sources are at the early stages of development relative to fossil fuel technologies; costs are
coming down as more generating units are installed and the technologies evolve.15 Third, although
construction and maintenance of wind turbines can be expensive, they are the only costs associated
with power generation; unlike conventional fuels, whose prices are volatile and likely to increase over
time, the cost of wind is stable and certain.
Most important, defenders note, the nonmonetary costs of extracting, transporting, and generating
power from conventional fuels are not factored into price comparisons. Accidents—such as the disaster
in February 2014, in which Duke Energy spilled 39,000 tons of toxic coal ash into the Dan River in North
Carolina—periodically furnish glaring reminders that using coal to generate electricity is not benign.16
But the chronic, routine environmental consequences of fossil fuel use are actually more severe than
those of the occasional accident. Coal from Appalachia is acquired at the expense of that region’s
mountaintops and valley streams, and mitigation measures do little to restore the local environment.17
Burning coal produces a host of air pollutants—including mercury, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides—
that are hazardous to human health and the environment; in 2009 the National Academy of Sciences
(NAS) estimated that producing electricity from coal plants cost the United States $62 billion per year (or
3.2 cents per kWh) in hidden costs.18 And, of course, coal combustion emits carbon dioxide (CO2), the
primary culprit in global warming. Obtaining natural gas, which has gained popularity as an electricitygenerating fuel because it emits less CO2 than coal, involves cutting well-site access roads into
wilderness areas or through fragile coastal wetlands, fragmenting habitat and weakening shoreline
defenses. In addition, natural gas is often obtained through hydraulic fracturing, a controversial process
in which chemicals mixed with large quantities of water are injected into underground wells (see
Chapter 14).19 Another cost associated with thermoelectric power plants is less widely acknowledged:
in 2005 they required 201 million gallons of water each day for cooling—amounting to 49 percent of all
water use in the country.20 Nuclear energy, often regarded as a clean alternative to fossil fuels because
it produces no greenhouse gas emissions after plants are built, involves mining, transporting, and
disposing of radioactive materials, as well as the risk of accidents. Cooling nuclear power plants also
consumes enormous quantities of water.
Background
In the 1990s growing awareness of the many environmental costs associated with fossil fuel-based
electricity, as well as technological improvements in turbines and a variety of government policies,
spurred renewed interest in wind energy. As land-based installations began to proliferate toward the
end of the decade, developers realized that offshore wind, pioneered in Northern Europe, had the
potential to provide massive quantities of energy. Because of its steady winds, which blow even on the
hottest days of the summer, the coast of Massachusetts was considered one of the best places for wind
energy in the nation. So it was not entirely preposterous when, in 2001, developers proposed Nantucket
Sound as the location of the nation’s first offshore wind farm. Nantucket Sound lies at the center of a
triangle defined by the southern coast of Cape Cod and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.
Created thousands of years ago by the retreating Laurentide Ice Sheet, Cape Cod is a low-lying, sandy
peninsula that emerges from southeastern Massachusetts in an elegant curve. Between four and seven
miles to the southwest lies the island of Martha’s Vineyard, and thirty miles to the southeast lies
Nantucket. Residents of the coastal Cape Cod towns of Falmouth, Mashpee, Barnstable, Yarmouth,
Dennis, Harwich, and Chatham have views across the sound, as do those on the north coast of
Nantucket and the towns of Edgartown, Oak Bluffs, and Tisbury on Martha’s Vineyard (see Map 13-1).
Cape Cod and the islands are no strangers to wind power: in the early 1800s Cape Cod alone had more
than a thousand working windmills, and they were a common site on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket
as well.21 Windmills were an important source of power to pump water in rural America well into the
twentieth century; they were also used to grind grain, saw wood, churn butter, and perform other
tasks.22 By the early 1900s, however, large-scale, centralized power plants fueled by coal and oil were
becoming the norm for generating electricity. During the 1930s and 1940s the federal government
extended the electrical grid to the country’s rural areas, hastening the demise of small-scale wind
power. Then, between 1965 and 1975, plans to build nuclear power plants proliferated, thanks to a
concerted push by the federal government. But skyrocketing construction costs and fears of an accident
brought commissioning of new nuclear plants to a screeching halt in the late 1970s.23
Meanwhile, worries about the severe air pollution caused by coal-fired power plants breathed life into
the nascent alternative energy business. Security concerns also played a role: in 1973 the United States
experienced an oil shortage after the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC)—a
cartel comprising the major Middle Eastern oil-exporting states—placed an embargo on shipments to
the West. Subsequently, OAPEC decided to limit supply to increase the income of its member states;
crude oil prices in the West quadrupled as a result, and a global recession ensued. In hopes of averting a
future “energy crisis,” the U.S. government began funding research and development (R&D) for
renewable energy technologies.
Map 13-1 Cape Cod, Nantucket Sound, and Proposed Cape Wind Site
Figure 10
Source: Map and Cape Wind site compiled by author from ESRI, TeleAtlas, and AP.
Backed by federal financing, between 1974 and 1981 engineers tested and refined several new windturbine designs. But in 1981, at the behest of wind-energy entrepreneurs and the banking and
investment sector, federal policy shifted from supporting R&D to providing tax credits, loans, and loan
guarantees that would foster the commercialization of existing technologies. In response to these
incentives, developers erected a slew of wind turbines, particularly in California. Many of those turbines
failed, however, giving wind energy a reputation for being unreliable. As one journalist describes it,
“Giant blades would shear off, entire rotors would fall to the ground, or the machines would just shake
themselves to death.”24 And when gas prices fell precipitously in the mid-1980s, investment in wind
energy dried up altogether. Meanwhile, R&D languished until 1989, when the administration of
President George H. W. Bush resumed funding of wind-energy innovation through the National Wind
Technology Center, operated by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), near Boulder,
Colorado.
A host of technological advances during the 1990s ensued, rendering contemporary turbines more
powerful, efficient, and reliable than their predecessors: in the early 1980s a wind turbine typically
produced 100 kW of electricity; in 2003 the average was closer to 1.5 MW, a fifteenfold increase.25
Thanks to these technological advances, the cost of generating wind energy fell by 80 percent between
1980 and 2000, so that it was far more competitive with coal and natural gas.26 Meanwhile, new statelevel policies changed the calculus for wind developers as well. In the late 1990s many states adopted
some form of renewable portfolio standard (RPS) that required electricity providers to obtain a certain
(minimum) percentage of their electricity from renewable sources by a specific date.27 States began
providing other renewable energy incentives as well, such as tax credits and exemptions, rebates,
grants, loans, green labeling requirements, green power purchasing programs, net metering, fuel-mix
and environmental disclosure policies, and tradable renewable certificates in the form of green tags or
renewable energy credits.
Fueled by changing economics and a more favorable policy context, in 1999 the U.S. wind industry
began a rapid expansion. By the early 2000s wind was the nation’s fastest-growing energy source,
increasing at a rate of 25 percent to 30 percent each year, according to the American Wind Energy
Association (AWEA). The potential for wind in the United States was astounding: the Department of
Energy (DOE) reported that only 0.6 percent of the land area in the lower forty-eight states would be
needed to produce 560,000 million kWh—enough to supply more than 45 million average American
households or nearly 200 million households if Americans consumed electricity at the same rate as
Europeans.28 Despite this promise, in 2000, the year before Cape Wind was proposed, the United States
produced only 2,554 MW of wind energy out of a world production of 17,300 MW.29 As a result, only 1
percent of electricity in the United States was generated from wind, compared to 52 percent from coal,
20 percent from nuclear, 16 percent from natural gas, and 3 percent from oil.30
The Case
Even as wind energy was losing its luster in the United States during the 1980s, the northern European
countries of Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands continued to pursue it. Recognizing that
ocean breezes were stronger and more consistent than those on land and that ocean-based turbines
could be larger and therefore more powerful than those assembled on land, the northern Europeans
began looking seriously at offshore wind.31 In the 1990s they installed small clusters of between four
and twenty wind turbines in offshore waters. The first of these was built in 1991 near the village of
Vindeby, Denmark, where developers placed eleven turbines with a combined capacity of 4.95 MW in
shallow water a little more than one mile offshore.32 By 2002 there were ten offshore wind farms
operating in Northern Europe, with a combined generating capacity of 250 MW.33
Intrigued, the DOE began mapping U.S. offshore resources, and in 2004 the agency released a report
showing that more than 900,000 MW of unharnessed wind capacity existed offshore within fifty miles of
the nation’s coasts—an amount roughly equivalent to the generating capacity of the coun …
Purchase answer to see full
attachment
How it works
- Paste your instructions in the instructions box. You can also attach an instructions file
- Select the writer category, deadline, education level and review the instructions
- Make a payment for the order to be assignment to a writer
- Download the paper after the writer uploads it
Will the writer plagiarize my essay?
You will get a plagiarism-free paper and you can get an originality report upon request.
Is this service safe?
All the personal information is confidential and we have 100% safe payment methods. We also guarantee good grades