A visionary Koch heir
Maybe here's a large walking example of a good reason, aesthetically anyway, to increase estate taxes. He's Wyatt Ingraham Koch, son of Bill Koch, the billionaire who owns a summer mansion in Osterville, on Cape Cod, and killed the Cape Wind renewable-energy project because he didn't want to look at it on the far horizon. You might call young Mr. Koch the face of the GOP tax bill.
To read the piece, please hit this link.
And this one. And this one.
Bill Koch gets his way
From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:
Incredibly, the Cape Wind project, first proposed in 2001, has hung on since then, despite being held up by fierce opposition mostly funded and led by Bill Koch, one of the billionaire right-wing Koch Brothers, who have big fossil-fuel investments. Mr. Koch has a big summer place in Osterville, on the south shore of Cape Cod. He didn’t want to look at the wind turbines that Energy Management Inc., the Cape Wind developers, has wanted to put on an underwater sand bar called Horseshoe Shoal in the middle of Nantucket Sound. On a clear day, the wind farm would be visible on the far horizon from Mr. Koch’s estate. But he’s rarely in Osterville. He has other houses. Still, like most members of the American plutocracy, he’s used to getting his way wherever he is.
Despite seemingly endless obstacles, Energy Management Inc. has continued to make the $88,000 annual federal lease payments on the offshore tract and the Feds recently decided to let the enterprise maintain its long-term lease of the 46-square-mile area. But someone connected with EMI called me Friday to say that the company has decided to give up. They’re worn out by the fight.
Too bad. The site, considering its geology, electric-grid proximity, nearby population density and in some other ways, might have been the best place for a big electricity-generating facility on the East Coast.
The lease would have been valid through 2041!
Offshore windpower: They'll come to love it
Excerpted from the Sept. 1 "Digital Diary'' column in GoLocal24.
It’s too bad that it has taken so long, but the completion of Deepwater Wind’s five-turbine wind farm off Block Island, R.I., is very good news for New England.
The facility, expected to start producing electricity inNovember, will mean that a little more of New England’s electricity will come from the region’s own sources andthat we might be able to use a little less natural gas from fracking. That process, contrary to the corporate publicity and wishful thinking, does not slow global warming because the process releases so much methane from the fracking sites. And the Block Island project will help reduce air pollution: The island’s electricity has been produced by unavoidably dirty diesel fuel.
Further, success in getting this project up will boost, by example, much bigger offshore windpower projects planned for nearby waters, most notably between the eastern tip of Long Island and Martha’s Vineyard. Eventually, this should dramatically improve the reliability of our electricity and in the long run cut its cost as windpower technology improves.
As usual with such projects in places like Block Island, Deepwater Wind had to fend off some affluent summer people who were offended that they’d have to look at wind turbines (which many folks think are beautiful) on their horizon. Most famously, a group of very few rich people in Osterville, Mass., led by Bill Koch (of the Koch Brothers) have managed to block the big Cape Wind project, which was to go up in middle of Nantucket Sound, although the project has been supported by a large majority of theMassachusetts public. Yet again, a few privileged NIMBYs have sabotaged the public interest. (I co-wrote (with Wendy Williams) a bookabout that controversy, called Cape Wind, later made into a movie called Cape Spin.)
The Obama administration and some states, including Rhode Island and Massachusetts have, to their credit, enacted laws and regulations to encourage offshore wind. This is especially attractive in the Northeast, with its reliable breezes and shallow water extending a lot further offshore than you see off the West Coast.
The Europeans have long embraced offshore windpower, for environmental reasons and to reduce reliance on fossil-fuel imports, especially from an increasingly aggressive Russia.
I predict that many current offshore-windpower foes will come to tolerate and even like the turbines’ curious beauty. And the fishermen will come to love them because fish congregate in the supports of such structures.
-- Robert Whitcomb
B.I. wind farm and Lucky Sperm Club on Nantucket Sound
Why is construction starting on a wind farm off Block Island, R.I., while, despite 14 years of effort by Cape Wind developer Jim Gordon, nothing has gone up in Nantucket Sound? And that's even with the Block Island project, Deepwater Wind, about three miles offshore while Cape Wind would be more than five miles offshore -- thus usually out of sight from land in this hazy and windy region. Well, yes, the Block Island project is much smaller.
But the main answer is that Block Island project doesn't have as rich and ruthless a billionaire opponent as Bill Koch, from whose summer house in Osterville (which he only uses a very few weeks a year) you could see Cape Wind's turbines on a crystal-clear day. Mr. Koch, another member of the Lucky Sperm Club (his father founded the industrial empire from which Bill Koch hugely benefits), has been willing to spend tens of millions of dollars to stop Cape Wind because he doesn't ever want to look at it.
He can take great pride in single-handedly stopping a project that would have provided about three-quarters of southeastern Massachusetts's electricity.
--- Robert Whitcomb
Robert Whitcomb: Another trap in the energy cycles
A few years ago I co-wrote a book, with Wendy Williams, about a controversy centered on Nantucket Sound. The quasi-social comedy, called Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Energy, Class, Politics and the Battle for Our Energy Future, told of how, since 2001, a company led by entrepreneur James Gordon has struggled to put up a wind farm in the sound in the face of opposition from the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound — a long name for fossil-fuel billionaire Bill Koch, a member of the famous right-wing Republican family. An amusing movie, Cape Spin, directed by John Kirby and produced by Libby Handros, came out of this saga, too. Mr. Koch's houses include a summer mansion in Osterville, Mass., from which he doesn’t want to see wind turbines on his southern horizon on clear days.
Mr. Koch may now have won the battle, as very rich people usually do. Two big utilities, National Grid and Northeast Utilities, are trying to bail out of a politicized plan, which they never liked, forcing them to buy Cape Wind electricity. They cite the fact that the company missed the Dec. 31, 2014, deadline in contracts signed in 2012 to obtain financing and start construction. Cape Wind said it doesn’t “regard these terminations as valid” since, it asserts, the contracts let the utilities’ contracts be extended because of the alliance’s “unprecedented and relentless litigation.” Bill Koch has virtually unlimited funds to pay lawyers to litigate unto the Second Coming, aided by imaginative rhetoric supplied by his very smart and well paid pit-bull anti-Cape Wind spokeswoman, Audra Parker, even though the project has won all regulatory approvals.
It's no secret that it has gotten harder and harder to do big projects in the United States because of endless litigation and ever more layers of regulation. Thus our physical infrastructure --- electrical grid, transportation and so on -- continues to fall behind our friendly competitors, say in the European Union and Japan, and our not-so-friendly competitors, especially in China. Read my friend Philip K. Howard's latest book, The Rule of Nobody, on this.
With the death of Cape Wind, New Englanders would lose what could have helped diversify the region’s energy mix — and smooth out price and supply swings — with home-grown, renewable electricity. Cape Wind is far from a panacea for the region’s dependence on natural gas, oil and nuclear, but it would add a tad more security.
Some of Cape Wind’s foes will say that the natural gas from fracking will take care of everything. But New England lacks adequate natural-gas pipeline capacity, to no small extent because affluent people along the routes hold up their construction. And NIMBYs (not in my backyard) have also blocked efforts to bring in more Canadian hydro-electric power. So our electricity rates are soaring, even as many of those who complain about the rates also fight any attempt to put new energy infrastructure near them. As for nuclear, it seems too politically incorrect for it to be expanded again in New England.
Meanwhile, the drawbacks to fracking, including water pollution and earthquakes in fracked countryside, are becoming more obvious. And the gas reserves may well be exaggerated. I support fracking anyway, since it means less use of oil and coal and because much of the gas is nearby, in Pennsylvania. (New York, however, recently banned fracking.)
Get ready for brownouts and higher electricity bills. As for oil prices, they are low now, but I have seen many, many energy price cycles over the last 45 years of watching the sector. And they often come with little warning. But meanwhile, many Americans, with ever-worsening amnesia, flock to buy SUV's again.
Robert Whitcomb oversees New England Diary.
Wind wins on Block Island
With surprisingly little fanfare, except in the glorious Block Island Times, what would be the first offshore wind farm in America has received its final major regulatory approval, from the Army Corps of Engineers. It's on schedule to be up and running in two years. The Block Island Wind Farm -- Deepwater Wind's five-turbine , 30-megawatt operation -- would lower Block Island's sky-high electricity costs and would act as an encouragement for backers of other, much bigger projects, such as the Cape Wind project, in Nantucket Sound. That project has been held up for years by Osterville, Mass., summer resident and fossil-fuel mogul Bill Koch.
How difficult it has become to do big projects in America, especially when a few local rich people don't like them!