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.

If we really need "green power" so badly then we might as well rebuild the Edwards Dam across the Kennebec River in Augusta. Sound absurd? Well it is no more absurd than promoting industrial wind-power development in the protected mountain areas of Maine. The Land Use Regulation Commission created mountain protection areas above 2,700 feet in 1972 for the simple reason that industrial development was not environmentally acceptable in the fragile alpine and subalpine areas of the Maine mountains.

"Maine is prepared to host thousands of megawatts of generation capacity from wind and biomass" to serve southern New England's "insatiable appetite for energy," Gov. John Baldacci wrote in a letter to the state's congressional delegation. "However, the development of these resources for New England must not harm Maine consumers or adversely impact our environment, which is the cornerstone of our economy," he wrote. Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are working with Sen. Thune to ensure the intent of the amendment - to ensure wind power projects have access to transmission lines - is met without overruling the interests of host states and maybe even assuring that such states' ratepayers benefit as well.

If we focus on just the United States, with 300 million people and 100 quadrillion Btu of energy, the consumption per person jumps by a factor of five: 100 100-watt light bulbs. To be sure, this energy is not consumed in the form of electricity, but in the form of gasoline, coal, hydro power, etc. Yet many people project that this magnitude of energy consumption can be sustained by energy sources such as solar collectors on roofs, biofuel from switchgrass, and wind farms. These people simply can't do arithmetic.

The executive order creating the task force notes that "wind resources occur in various areas of the State that may have important ecological, natural resource, remote resource, and other values that are important to Maine people that can lead to conflict regarding the siting of wind power facilities." The group is to recommend ways to resolve such conflicts, to improve and streamline regulation and siting, and to encourage wind power in Maine. The order does not say that an important value is being able to turn on lights, televisions, computers, coffee makers, computers, and on and on.

Although the approach is too late for projects that have already begun a federal review process, a dozen New England congressmen and senators have asked for help from the Department of Energy in coordinating a regional approach to siting liquefied natural gas facilities. Reps. Tom Allen and Mike Michaud have both signed on to this request, which makes sense for future energy projects.

Chandler Woodcock, Republican candidate for governor, has done Maine citizens a great service by calling attention to the fact that wind power is an inefficient and expensive way to generate electricity (”Blaine House hopefuls square off,” BDN, Sept. 15).

Can't anyone see the hypocrisy of acknowledging the crisis of global warming while at the same time advocating removal of functioning hydroelectric facilities, which quietly produce totally renewable electricity with zero greenhouse gas emissions and, unlike wind turbines, with very little visual impact?

Energy efficiency is by no means a permanent solution, but it should be a permanent part of the solution. Sensible energy use, combined with new power resources, is the only workable answer for New England.

All renewable energies have a common fault: They are very dilute. Massive areas are needed to produce small amounts of energy. Solar and wind have strong periodicity and do not match actual electricity use.