Short-term thinking on energy is going to cause some long-term problems Ask Paul Edmonds, vice president of National Semiconductor in South Portland. In August, he wrote in the Portland Press Herald, "An inefficient regulatory system and lack of long-term energy strategy are conspiring against Maine citizens and businesses." I was intrigued. So I called him. He told me, "High electricity costs are a threat to manufacturing competitiveness in Maine."

The romantic view of wind power is a stand of wind turbines atop a ridge gently spinning in a breeze generating clean electricity in place of an emission-producing power plant. Another view is a natural landscape defaced by huge structures whose operation annoys its neighbors, produces power randomly and does not reduce pollutants because fossil-fueled plants continue to operate as backup. The "pop" culture support and promotion of wind power is all based upon conceptual or theoretical constructs which do not reflect the physical, financial or regulatory realities of operating our electric grid system.

At the center of the back-and-forth between the Maine Public Utilities Commission and warring energy developers is a question of whether industrial-sized wind farms are feasible in Maine. ...The transmission line issue is not new to the PUC or to state and industry leaders who promote wind-power development in Maine. But it may come as a surprise to much of the public who see wind power as a clean form of energy that comes with little or no environmental cost.

Last week, the New England Governors' Conference raised green fantasy to new heights with the release of its Renewable Energy Blueprint, which said the region "has a significant quantity of untapped renewable resources, on the order of over 10,000 MW combined of on-shore and off-shore wind power potential." Neither the report nor the news articles about it bothered to do the math. At 7 MW, New England would need 1,429 E-126s to tap that potential. Though the turbines likely would be clustered in "farms," that's an average of 238 per state, or more than one for each town in Connecticut. The cost would be $221 billion that the states don't have, though they might get a bulk-purchase discount of a billion or two.

In a June 13 OpEd, "Maine power project will deliver," George Loehr, a consultant to Central Maine Power Co., argued that the $1.5 billion CMP has proposed to spend on its transmission grid is necessary to ensure that Maine's electric grid remains reliable. ...The point is whether or not spending $1.5 billion as CMP has proposed to spend it is a wise use of Maine ratepayer money.

Those of us who live close to power lines are concerned about the governor's and CMP's claims of the project's cleanness, greenness, price reliability and general value for Maine. We have met with the Lewiston City Council, our state legislators, attended hearings with the Maine Public Utilities Commission and tried to get CMP to listen to us. We are worried about our own backyards, but we are not interested in having the project simply moved to other people's neighborhoods. We want solution

Today we are faced with many issues regarding the previous ecological misuse of our planet. In our mad dash to correct the maligning of our environment we are grasping at alternative sources of energy: mainly wind, solar and hydro. Wind power is the concern of this letter, and Harley Lee's project on the Redington Range is the center of that concern. I wonder if, in our rush to seek alternatives to foreign oil, we may be overlooking our most valuable local natural resources.

We think the Waldo County Commissioners should convene a high-level forum on wind energy and invite people from all over the area. That way, Freedom residents who have experience with turbines and those from other communities that may well decide to welcome them can confer with both experts and each other. The goal could be a countywide approach to wind energy, though that might be getting ahead of ourselves. After the talk is over, at least we'd all be on the same page.

Wind is the latest Maine resource whose value has been identified by outsiders. In the emerging post-petroleum economy, wind is valued for its potential to produce cheap electricity, and Maine's undeveloped ridge lands provide prime locations for towers and turbines. This has the potential to make businesses building those towers and turbines a lot of money. ...Measuring that benefit is a complex analysis, and difficult to explain.

What happened in Roxbury, though contentious, needed to happen. Community-changing projects cannot be built without debate, scrutiny or emotional outburst - it comes with the territory ...What should resonate from Roxbury into the ears of public officials and wind developers across Maine is this: Residents affected by wind projects care deeply about their communities and will fight doggedly to ensure their interests are heard and their demands met.

The Maine Legislature has voted that there should be 3,000 megawatts (a megawatt equals a million watts) of wind power in Maine by 2020. That is something like voting for free ice cream. ...What the country and the state need is a long-range, comprehensive energy policy for the gradual but steady transition away from imported fossil fuels. If there is a magic word, it is "plan."

This week, the state of Rhode Island selected a New Jersey-based company, Deepwater Wind, to finance and construct a 100-turbine windfarm between 15 and 20 miles off shore. The project is estimated to cost $1.5 billion. ...Maine's approach to wind power development - land and offshore - is different. Instead of directing the process, this state has allowed firms to develop their own plans. The process is slow and the results, so far, mixed. Site-by-site proposals from companies have resulted in uneven regulatory reviews and divergent opinions on its gains or drains.

After years of our begging the state to do something to bring clean industry and quality permanent jobs to the area, along with a highway, the governor has instead gone ahead and lowered environmental standards while using his bully pulpit to push an industry - wind power - that will irreversibly degrade the same "quality of place." Through federal subsidies and "double accelerated depreciation," we all pay for behemoth wind farms. As ratepayers of ISO New England, we will also pay for the needed transmission lines to southern New England. "Carbon credits" will be sold to polluters, enabling them to keep polluting. The electricity will be sold at a premium to the Boston-New York corridor. The profits of the venture will leave the state and the country, in the case of Portuguese-owned Horizon Wind Energy.

The Sun Journal editorial about T. Boone Pickens' wind power development (July 13) was right about the potential of wind power in the Great Plains states, but wrong about the feasibility of transmitting that power across the country to New England. ...While there is some wind potential in Aroostook and Washington Counties, there is less than most people seem to think. Many of the blueberry barren and potato farm field sites that were originally planned for development have proved to lack sufficiently strong winds to make turbines a good investment.

There is ample evidence America's future for wind energy is mainly on the plains, not atop its peaks. If so, projects like TransCanada's 132-megawatt windfarm in northern Franklin County is perhaps the last of its kind. Maybe it should be. ... Turbines at high altitude just seem to attract controversy. Contested wind power plans for peaks in Roxbury and Byron, Redington Pond Range and Black Nubble Mountain were all proposed for above 2,000 feet.

The millions of people who live south of Maine in the region from Boston to New York create huge demands for electricity. But because supplies are so limited, they have the highest power costs in America. ...Existing power lines running from central Maine to the south can't carry any greater peak load, either from within Maine or from our Canadian neighbors. As one economist put it, Maine is sandwiched between 6-cent power to our north and a 10-cent market to our south. That price gap is creating pressure to build a new $1 billion transmission line to move electricity from northern generators to southern customers.

The [New England] region's power system has had a long history of dependability, but electricity costs have been an issue for businesses and residents for decades. As the region plans ahead, New England's policymakers face a series of decisions that will have an abiding impact on our energy future. ...Economic, reliability and environmental goals are not always perfectly aligned when it comes to electricity generation and transmission. Whatever path policymakers choose to take will require trade-offs. How New England officials balance these sometimes conflicting goals will demonstrate our priorities, impact the regional economy and determine which objectives we can realistically achieve.

But, as Angus King knows too well, proclaiming Maine's potential for energy production through wind is easy to say, and near-impossible to achieve. Unless a project is sited in an out-of-the-way, unvisited, unremarkable corner of the state, potential for wind power has gone unrealized. Environmentalists bitterly disagree on projects, as do neighboring towns. King's own firm, Independence Wind, only earned a split decision for its turbine projects in Byron and Roxbury. Yet the state has designated Maine's rural towns as for expedited reviews of future wind power plans, in the interest of meeting lofty energy benchmarks. These forces are on an inevitable collision course. An offshore project would be a supernova.

By giving organized Maine expedited status for wind developments, the state's task force has invited developers to consider these areas for projects. It's an incentive, plain and simple, to know where planning reviews will have priority, and where they will not. Reaction in Byron indicates towns and cities won't take to this designation, even if they think alternative energies are necessary. The belief somewhere else, or some other energy technology, is more appropriate is just too strong. It was in Byron, and if a reputed repeal effort in Roxbury gains strength, there, too. And these are emblematic of the towns wind companies should target - rural, mountainous and with low populations, and therefore low impact. But it's a choice to accept wind power, as communities and commissions have myriad reasons to reject proposals.

What is an appropriate wind-power site? It is understandable that a disappointed wind-power developer would sing the song of sour grapes regarding the rejection of its proposed wind- power project on Black Nubble and the previous rejection of the larger Redington Mountain proposal. The suggestion that the citizen commissioners of LURC do not understand wind power and that they are basically incompetent to judge such projects is, of course, ludicrous.