Gov. Martin O?Malley wants to green the state by reducing energy use and requiring power companies to increase the amount of alternative supplies used to power homes and businesses.
With oil more than $110 a barrel and likely to stay high because of global demand, a weak dollar and declining production at many large petroleum fields, many of these technologies will become economically competitive in addition to Earth-friendly.
But meeting his target of 20 percent renewables in the power mix by 2022 will be difficult, if O?Malley refuses to give companies the tools to supply that energy.
His recent decision to reject putting wind turbines on public land managed by the Department of Natural Resources is a case in point.
That move eliminates projects in Savage and Potomac state forests that a Pennsylvania-based company wanted to develop and removes 449,000 acres across the state for future use. It also forfeits the millions in potential fees the state could have captured from renting the land.
Not all of those acres would have been suitable for wind farms. But the land in Savage is particularly amenable to them. According to a 2002 report prepared for the Maryland Energy Administration by Albany, N.Y.-based TrueWind Solutions, the hills in Western Maryland “concentrate the wind resource exceptionally well because they are oriented perpendicular to the prevailing westerly and northwesterly winter winds.”
What?s clear is the decision does not make it easier to build turbines in the state ? even though O?Malley said, “This is not a rejection of wind power.”
His caving to the demands of those who find wind turbines ugly should energize opponents in other parts of the state who don?t want them in their backyards for aesthetic reasons.
And it shows how willing he is to compromise on one of his core principles of making Maryland more environmentally friendly.
Reducing energy demand and switching to alternative fuels is no small task. As a 2007 Government Accountability Office report noted, “Key alternative energy technologies currently supply the equivalent of only about 1 percent of U.S. consumption of petroleum products, and the Department of Energy projects that even by 2015 they could displace only the equivalent of 4 percent of projected U.S. annual consumption.”
O?Malley?s decision helps to push back that date and makes it more difficult for wind companies to win a foothold in the state, which has no operational wind farms, according to the American Wind Energy Association.
If O?Malley truly wants to shift to renewable power sources including wind, he must stand up to opponents who care more for their views, whether inland or offshore, than ensuring the state?s electric supplies. Otherwise his energy targets will collapse along with his moral authority.
