Over the past year, we have read several op-eds and letters to the editor debating the true cost of Cape Wind. After eight years of controversy, the Cape Wind developer has failed to prove that his costly private venture won't raise our electric bills. The Alliance has asked Gov. Deval Patrick to order an independent cost analysis to get Massachusetts ratepayers some well-deserved answers to the looming Cape Wind cost question. In the absence of a formal cost analysis, we can look to Europe, California, and perhaps most importantly, Texas, for lessons learned.

The focus is on renewables, the energy sources that we imagine will displace carbon-based sources in the future as, to make it so, we constrain and tax abundant oil, natural gas, and coal supplies into undeserved oblivion. Good luck to us, I suppose. But, bearing in mind the allure of the renewables, one despairs of what is non-renewable about the near shore waters we have till now enjoyed and exploited so enthusiastically.

The media have obscured the significant dangers of this irresponsibly sited project with careless generalizations and speculation. Headlines like "Key hurdles cleared" and "Cape Wind ready to rev up" would have us think that the construction barges and pile drivers are on their way. Suggestions that Cape Wind's approval for a federal lease is just two weeks away are far from the truth. Cape Wind is nowhere near a done deal - and the fight is far from over.

Green energy has been on the subsidy take for years, including in 2005 when Mr. Delahunt was calling for "an Apollo project for alternative energy sources, for hybrid engines, for biodiesel, for wind and solar and everything else." The reality is that all such projects are only commercially viable because of political patronage. Tufts economist Gilbert Metcalf ran the numbers and found that the effective tax rate for wind is minus-163.8%. In other words, every dollar a wind firm spends is subsidized to the tune of 64 cents from the government.

Something awful happened in a conference room at a hotel in Falmouth on Dec. 18. The U.S. Coast Guard revealed itself to be totally politicized in its review of radar and safety issues arising from the plan of a Boston energy entrepreneur (Jim Gordon) to build a wind farm covering 25 square miles of Nantucket Sound.

In the ongoing debate on these pages regarding Cape Wind's proposal to install 130 towers in Nantucket Sound, facts often have taken a back seat to emotion. ...A key question is: How much will the project cost and what is the impact of the cost and the ongoing maintenance and security on the cost of power produced by the proposed Cape Wind turbines? ...The financial data are easily provided by the folks at Cape Wind. Instead, by withholding vital information about the project, Cape Wind has fostered an atmosphere of mistrust and encouraged circulation of misinformation by proponents and opponents alike. Let's have all the facts.

The Environmental Policy Act signed into law in 2005 called upon the secretary of the interior to promulgate regulations by May 5, 2006 to site offshore renewable energy projects. And still there is no regulatory process under which the Cape Wind precedent-setting proposal for alternative use of the submerged public land, Nantucket Sound, is being reviewed. Therefore, the reviewing agencies are incapable of providing our/their informed consent regarding the Cape Wind application ...The Cape Wind project is being reviewed within the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). ...Absent standards and rules that will apply to the Cape Wind permit review, the public and agencies are denied meaningful participation in this NEPA process.

These letters, and a host of others addressing the Cape Wind facility proposed for Nantucket Sound, were published in the Mar 6, 2008 edition of the Cape Cod Times. The Minerals Management Service, a division of the Department of Interior, has released the draft environmental impact statement of the proposed project. Other letters can be accessed by clicking on the link at the bottom of this page.

Sunday is National Children's Day - and what better gift to our local heirs than to assure they have plenty of clean power, undiminished shorelines and fresh air 35 years from now. ...Speaking of clean power, this column recently favored stalling the proposed wind farm on Horseshoe Shoals and sliding it to the back burner to await signs of new interest on the nuclear side of the wind/nuclear power equation. Wind turbines and nuclear reactors produce clean power, but there is a wide disparity in the amount each can produce, nuclear reactors achieving the significantly higher and consistent output.

But advocates often tout renewable energy not for its economics, but because it's virtuous. Many of those who are willing to impose the costs of various environmental schemes on other Americans based on "ideals" suddenly have started looking more closely at the tradeoffs when something they hold dear would have to be sacrificed, like a nice view. Wind energy is never going to be anything but a bit player in meeting the world's energy needs. The Nantucket tempest is useful mainly as a real-world test of whether some of the world's most privileged liberals wear their ideals all the time, or only when it suits them.

Robert Sullivan's review of "Cape Wind" (June 17), about the battle over the development of a wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod, made me wonder why a majority of Cape Cod and island residents would oppose a project that promised them clean, cheap, non polluting renewable energy at a time when everyone is focused on making America energy independent. You can start with the fact that this project won't deliver lowercost energy because offshore wind is by far the most expensive form of energy. You can then wonder what all the fuss is about when you understand that at its optimum operating efficiency (an average of 170 megawatts, according to Cape Wind's own Web site, and not the 468 megawatts its proponents claim) it would produce just 1 percent of New England's electricity supply. And because wind energy is inherently unpredictable (it depends on when the wind is blowing and cannot be stored), fossil fuel plants would always have to be online as reserve power to keep our lights on. Concluding his review, Sullivan mentions the growing opposition to a wind farm proposal off the coast of Long Island. This opposition is bolstered by the economic facts of the project - according to previously confidential documents obtained by Newsday, energy from the proposed wind plant would cost Long Island ratepayers as much as double the wholesale cost of energy.

Sorry, Ms. Williams, but you have no right to classify us all as ‘narcissists'; we hold our anti-wind positions for a wide variety of reasons. Mainly, though, those who oppose wind do so because we've taken the trouble to learn the technical details, and we realize that wind power is in fact an expensive scam, driven solely by developers eager to cash in on the concerns over climate change. Were subsidy money and incentives to be removed, these folk would decamp overnight.

A Boston weekly newspaper once described the movie Z as a "comic book for liberals." The line implied that the film's hero was portrayed as nothing but heroic, and his foes as nothing but evil. In Cape Wind, Wendy Williams and Robert Whitcomb have written a comic book for supporters of the Cape Wind Energy Project. Their hero, developer Jim Gordon, resembles a pleasant Peter Parker bitten not by a radioactive spider but by the wind power bug. Energized, if you will, he battles a clutch of super villains including Sen. Ted Kennedy as well as Rep. Bill Delahunt's chief of staff, Mark Forest (referred to in true comics style as the "fixer.") And just as Spider-Man can't get a break from J. Jonah Jameson's Daily Bugle, so Gordon suffers at the hands of the Cape's daily paper.

Few are aware of the staggering profit by way of contracts payable to avian specialists in an industry borne from wind towers that kill birds. This service industry is referred to as "Adaptive Management," and/or "long-term environmental monitoring." Its value is $2 million to $3 million first year startup for a wind project, based on the value of Altamont, Calif., wind tower monitoring contracts. These contracts represent $1 million per year paid to the monitor during construction phase, and impose terms as Mass Audubon has in their "Challenge" press release: "We also propose adoption of an Adaptive Management Plan that includes a rigorous monitoring program beginning at the construction phase and continuing for at least three years post-construction." ..........Mass Audubon is in a position to profit by counting bird carcasses, "monitoring," while attempting to "solve" this problem; the industry term for this is "mitigation," if Cape Wind is permitted and construction begins.

It’s time for the Times to catch up with the truths about “wind energy.” In fact, “wind farms,” including the Cape project, make little sense from a national and public interest point of view.

Editor's Note: Submitted to the Washington Times on July 7, 2006. The Washington Times editorial follows Glenn Schleede's response.

...coal power plants provide over a quarter of our energy in Massachusetts (and over half of our energy nationwide). So while researching alternative energy sources is important, cleaning up our existing plants will have a much bigger and more immediate effect on the environment.

Instead of destroying the mountains that make the Berkshires unique, let's focus on sensible alternatives that will be a true sign of success, not for the investors, but for us.

....mayors and towns across the country saw a domestic crisis that our leaders were doing nothing to solve. In frustration and fear of devastating budget crises they responded as residents did, by taking action.

The Kennedy neighbors on Cape Cod have traditionally opposed the Kennedys politically, but they are all in bed together in opposing Cape Wind.