Clean energy doesn’t always create synergy

It seems environmental panaceas aren’t for everyone.

Even environmentalists.

A group of Nantucket residents filed a federal lawsuit to stop construction of the nation’s first utility-scale offshore wind project, scheduled to rise 15 miles equidistant between that island and Martha’s Vineyard.

Filed last week in U.S. District Court, the suit by ACK Residents Against Turbines alleges the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management failed to conduct an adequate environmental review of Vineyard Wind, a Danish offshore wind-development company, before approving the project in May.

The group also claims BOEM, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Marine Fisheries failed to ensure the project wouldn’t put the survival of some federally protected species in jeopardy, including the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, of which fewer than 400 remain.

Mary Chalke, the group’s co-founder, said Vineyard Wind’s approval will lead to at least five other wind farms along the East Coast, totaling more than 2,000 turbines across 2,000 square miles of ocean.

“We all want renewable energy,” Chalke told the Boston Herald. “(But) this represents the transformation and industrialization of a pristine natural environment.”

Tom Vinson of the American Clean Power Association, appeared to take a myopic view of the plaintiffs’ case. “While we are still reviewing the complaint, it appears this lawsuit is being brought by residents motivated by aesthetic concerns as much as anything alleged in their complaint.”

We thought protecting an endangered species rises somewhat above an aesthetic concern.

By the 2023 completion date, it’s expected the project’s 62 wind turbines would generate enough electricity to power approximately 400,000 homes, according to Vineyard Wind CEO Lars Pedersen. He also said it would create about 3,600 jobs — half of them permanent.

But some fear that this project and others in the planning stage could also irreparably harm Massachusetts fishing and lobstering industries in the vicinity of these turbine sites.

But that didn’t stop the Biden administration, as part of its aggressive offshore wind and renewable-energy agenda, from issuing final permits for Vineyard Wind in May.

It’s evident that not all green-conscious activists believe wind power’s the optimum clean-energy solution.

The Herald reported in May that Michael Shellenberger, a Time magazine “hero of the environment,” said the Vineyard Wind project would likely produce only half the energy of a nuclear reactor.

“The output from the wind farms would be intermittent,” he said during a Zoom talk organized by the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance. “It actually puts a heavy strain on the (power) grid to have to adjust to highly unreliable, intermittent wind energy. And so, you have to maintain natural gas backup … that’s not something you need if you have nuclear power plants.”

Yes, natural gas. Its availability and reliability, especially when it comes to backstopping will-o’-the-wisp forms of renewable energy, happens to be one of those inconvenient truths environmentalists would rather ignore.

Nuclear energy provides “cheap and reliable electricity that’s also carbon free,” Shellenberger said.

But every energy source, clean or otherwise, has its Achilles’ heel.

A nuclear power-plant failure could generate devastating results. Ten years after an earthquake and tsunami killed over 18,000 people and triggered a nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, more than 40,000 people still can’t return home.

“Nuclear power emits no CO2 but does require significant amounts of water, environmentally costly mining of raw materials, and requires the transportation and disposal of radioactive waste,” said Stu Webster, American Clean Power Association senior director of wildlife and federal lands.

The above two examples appear to show that even supposedly environmentally friendly energy-producing systems have their drawbacks.

That should give pause to those hell-bent on discarding reliable, inexpensive legacy energy sources.