O'Malley readies new offshore wind bid

Legislation likely to pass on third try, but impact uncertain

After being thwarted the past two years by skittish lawmakers, Gov. Martin O'Malley is preparing once again to introduce a bill aimed at planting mammoth wind turbines off Ocean City - and the measure may finally pass, thanks to a shake-up in a committee that stifled it last year.

Whether turbines ever get built off Maryland's coast remains to be seen, though. The wind industry faces significant financial hurdles in its attempts to build the first offshore electricity generator anywhere in the United States.

"I think there's just no doubt that a bill is going to the governor's desk this year," predicted Mike Tidwell, founder of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, one of offshore wind's most ardent advocates.

Observers say this is a potential watershed year for offshore wind. Congress recently extended federal tax breaks meant to encourage renewable energy development. Three wind projects along the coast in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Jersey stand to benefit from that one-year extension, and construction could start by year's end. In an industry struggling to launch its first project, such government subsidies and incentives are vital, advocates say.

The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is expected to invite bids later this year for leases in a 124-square mile swath of the Outer Continental Shelf off Maryland. Eight wind developers had expressed interest in the area, though one has since dropped out. What happens in Annapolis this year could be critical, observers say.

"I think the timing [for the governor's bill] is better now than it was last year or the year before," said Jeremy Firestone, a professor of legal studies at the University of Delaware and an expert on renewable-energy policy.

O'Malley's bill won't be introduced for another week or so, but Abigail Hopper, his energy adviser, said it would be "very similar" to the one the House of Delegates approved last year. That measure, whittled down from the governor's original proposed, would have offered a limited subsidy to place dozens of turbines 12 to 26 miles off Maryland's coast.

Under the bill, state households would be projected to pay up to $1.50 a month on electricity bills to support a modest-sized project capable of generating up to 200 megawatts. Depending on the size and design, the number of turbines could range from 30 to 70.

O'Malley and his supporters in the environmental community say the state should act to reduce climate-warming greenhouse gases and to put Maryland in the forefront of what they believe is a promising clean-energy technology. Lining up a wind project off Ocean City would give a boost to the state's economy, they contend. It would support hundreds of jobs - not just in building it, but in manufacturing and servicing turbines and related infrastructure all along the East Coast and even nationwide, as more projects get going.

"We think this will be the first step in a much larger movement," said Hopper.

But opponents, including state Sen. E.J. Pipkin, a Republican representing the upper Eastern Shore, argue that offshore wind is prohibitively expensive, and its higher-priced electricity could cost jobs rather than create them.

"This is like the dumbest project ever," Pipkin said. "Each year the governor brings it back, and the economics get worse."

Pipkin questions why the state should commit ratepayers to nurture a fledgling industry when Western Maryland is sitting on potentially rich reserves of natural gas.

Under the governor's bill, the state would require Maryland's electricity suppliers to furnish up to 2.5 percent of their power from offshore turbines by 2017. And it offers a subsidy to encourage the construction of enough turbines off the coast to generate 1 percent of the state's energy needs, by guaranteeing developers a fixed price for the power they produce.

That power is expected to be much more expensive to produce than what's cranked out by coal, gas or nuclear plants, or even land-based wind turbines. But under the O'Malley bill, offshore developers would sell their electricity at whatever the market will pay, and state ratepayers would make up the difference. Using a complicated financing system of energy "credits," the House-passed bill last year would have authorized a maximum price for offshore-wind electricity of 19 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is roughly double Baltimore Gas & Electric Co.'s current standard residential rate.

The bill would also direct the state Public Service Commission, which regulates energy suppliers, to approve a wind farm proposal only if it meets certain criteria, including capping the projected extra costs to residential ratepayers at $1.50 a month.