...the MEA Report can be used to estimate the value (avoided emissions) of Renewable Energy Certificates (REC) by providing both REC suppliers and stakeholders with information that can be used to communicate the environmental benefits of RECs and works to enhance the overall REC marketplace.

Editor's Note: As noted below under Methodology [emphasis added], this report appears to substantiate the point that wind energy would not backdown "baseload" generation.

The Hawley Wind Study Committee was established by town meeting vote and was directed to issue a report to the selectmen. Interested citizens were asked to submit a letter of interest to selectmen who then selected the committee. The committee first examined potential positive financial benefits to the town. Community based wind development was explored for a piece of town-owned land with the assistance of the UMass Renewable Energy Resource Lab. The committee determined that development of the site was not feasible. Lengthily discussions on the associated various negative impacts of wind plants followed. It was determined that our current bylaws would not require any form of local review to minimize these impacts. A report outlining the above was provided to the selectmen concluding that the appropriate course of action was to establish a wind power bylaw.

The purposes of this wind-generated energy production facilities section are to: A. Protect the scenic, historic, environmental, and natural or man-made resources of the community without prohibiting alternative energy technologies to be developed. B. Provide standards and requirements for regulation, placement, construction, monitoring, design, modification and removal of wind facilities. C. Provide a procedural basis for action within a reasonable period of time for request for authorization to place, construct, operate, or modify wind facilities. D. Preserve property values. E. Locate wind facilities so that they do not have negative impacts such as, but not limited to, attractive nuisance, noise, falling objects, general safety, welfare and quality of life, wildlife and the environment in the community. F. Require owners of wind facilities to configure them so as to minimize and mitigate the adverse impact of the wind facilities.

When considering local bylaws regulating wind turbine development, towns need to consider whether and to what degree they should be encouraged. The question of how much revenue they might generate for the town will be among the first issues raised. To determine this, there are many things a town with land suitable for commercial wind development needs to consider. Particular attention needs to be paid to long-term trends as well. This paper explores some of these factors and their implications.

This map is also available in NWW's photo gallery.

"Today, the task before the Joint Committee (regarding Bill S40) is to hear from the public on what would appear simple

- the giving and taking of “driveway” easements between the Commonwealth’s Wachusett Reservation (Stagecoach Trail) and the Town of Princeton’s legal “right of way” for its wind power site. As well, the town is offering the to transfer to the Commonwealth, ownership of, five acres of their 16-acre wind site.

I urge the Joint Committee for Bill S40 to carefully consider the following with regard to your recommendations an for easement exchange and accession of land from Princeton:

1. The Wachusett Wind Site is a 16 acre parcel wholly surrounded by the Wachusett Reservation and flanked within few feet, on three sides, by the well traveled Midstate, Harrington and Stagecoach trails. This portion of the state park is accessible and popular.

2. The present eight windmills are 120-feet high and are proposed to be replaced with two windmills as high as a 35- story building and with blades that stretch as wide as a football field - windmills whose elevation will come with 150- feet of the mountain’s elevation.

3. In the wintertime Wachusett experiences unusual ice storms in number and severity

4. In the wintertime, the windmills accumulate ice - then release it when it melts and falls, when it is blown off by wind or is thrown it off by the rotating blades

5. This ice has put holes in the roofs of utilty buildings on the wind farm and scattters itself across the fully accesssible wind site, the state reservation and hiking trails, threatening state park viisitors The risk associated with being struck windmill ice can be quantified and is relative to one’s distance from the windmills and will increase geometrically with the proposed windmills.

6. Windmills and wind data collection towers at Wachusett have structurally failed five times in twenty years on the Town of Princeton (PMLD) site. This also threatens the state park visitors as well with collapsing metal structures and flying blades. Proposed windmills and data towers will not be installed in compliance withthe manufacuturer’s recommendations and safety warnings."......

The Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University has studied the Cape Wind proposal in considerable detail, and offers the following comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) Reference file no. NAE-2004-338-

1. A systematic cost-benefit analysis – missing from the DEIS – shows that, with 90% confidence, the costs of the project outweigh the benefits by between $83 million and $333 million, with a mean measure of net cost of $209 million (equivalent to 2.0 cents/kWh produced). This breaks down as: a. Cost of 9.06 cents/kWh (close to the DEIS estimate of 9.00 cents) b. Benefit of 7.06 cents/kWh, of which the savings are: fuel (4.95), capital and operating costs, (0.98), improvements in public health (1.02) and greater energy independence (0.10). The project is of interest to a private developer only because of subsidies of 4.04 cents/kWh, via accelerated depreciation allowances, Massachusetts “green credits,” and a possible Federal Production Tax Credit.

2. The DEIS conclusion of “no adverse impacts to tourism and recreation” is not supported by the data. a. The only tourism study considered in the DEIS, from Scotland, used a biased sample and does not report the most relevant results (i.e. how many would be deterred, or attracted, by the windmills). b. A Beacon Hill Institute survey of 497 randomly-selected tourists, undertaken in the relevant Cape Cod towns in summer of 2003, found that 5% would visit the Cape less, and 1% would visit more if the windmills were built. Using spending information, and an estimate of the number attracted to the Cape, the BHI study found a net loss in spending on the Cape of at least $57 million annually.

3. The DEIS conclusion that the project would not adversely affect property values is based on a flawed study, ignores other research, and is untenable. a. The DEIS discussion relies primarily on a study by the Renewable Energy Policy Project (whose goal is to “accelerate the use of renewable energy”) in 2003. Its conclusion that wind farms elsewhere in the United States did not harm property values relies on the use of an inappropriate counterfactual, and is largely based on much smaller projects. b. Even if wind farms are associated with higher property values, this is likely attributable to increased tax payments and royalties to local communities and owners – which makes them not comparable to the Cape Wind case (no royalties, minor local tax payments).

4. The DEIS estimates of the value of health improvements are greatly exaggerated (at $53 million annually). Our own estimates show health improvements of $7 million, and even this may be overstated. a. The DEIS assumes that the Cape Wind project would offset the dirtiest power plants in Massachusetts. This is incorrect, and it would be more appropriate to use the marginal emissions numbers from ISO-New England, which show avoided emissions that are one fifth as high for NOx and one seventh as high for SO2. b. The DEIS uses outdated emissions data (from 2000 rather than 2002). c. Even the $7 million may overstate the health benefits. BHI assumed that all of the output of the Cape Wind project would offset fossil fuel generation and its associated air pollution. However, it has been argued, convincingly, that the caps imposed by law and regulation on SO2 emissions would continue to be binding, and so the wind farm output would not lead to a reduction in SO2 emissions overall.

The Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University has studied the Cape Wind proposal in considerable detail, and offers the following comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) Reference file no. NAE-2004-338-1:

1. A systematic cost-benefit analysis – missing from the DEIS – shows that, with 90% confidence, the costs of the project outweigh the benefits by between $83 million and $333 million, with a mean measure of net cost of $209 million (equivalent to 2.0 cents/kWh produced).

2. The DEIS conclusion of “no adverse impacts to tourism and recreation” is not supported by the data.

3. The DEIS conclusion that the project would not adversely affect property values is based on a flawed study, ignores other research, and is untenable.

4. The DEIS estimates of the value of health improvements are greatly exaggerated (at $53 million annually). Our own estimates show health improvements of $7 million, and even this may be overstated.

Scope of Project: Offload windmill components from rail cars to trucks, for transporation west along Route 2 approximately 7.5 miles up Florida Mountain, for final installation as part of the Hoosac Wind Project in Florida and Monroe, MA.