Gone With the Wind

 Governor O’Malley remains undaunted in his attempt to get Maryland ratepayers to help pay for an offshore wind farm. After failing to get his wind power initiative passed in last years General Assembly he was right back at it again this week when he appeared before the Senates Finance Committee. According to this article by Michael Dresser, Tim Wheeler and Annie Linskey in The Sun, “he took tough questions from senators about the cost, feasibility and employment potential of his wind energy bill. For the governor, it was a return trip to a committee that heard his testimony on a previous version of the bill last year — then decided to shelve it because of the same concerns.”

I think someone should show the guv the March issue of Wired Magazine. In an article by Juliet Eilperin  entitled “The Clean Tech Meltdown”  he’d read that “a confluence of factors -- including fluctuating silicon prices, newly cheap natural gas, the 2008 financial crisis, China's ascendant solar industry and certain inescapable technological realities -- the clean-tech bubble has burst, leaving us with a traditional energy infrastructure that is still overwhelmingly reliant on fossil fuels.”

“Wind has also taken a hit. Not only can the turbines not match the current costs of gas-fired plants, the flood of cheap Chinese solar panels can make them less attractive as a green option, too. The pace of new wind-turbine installations in the US has declined by more than half since 2008.”

And the guv still thinks it’s a good idea to add two bucks to every ratepayers bill each month to back his wind farm?

That wind doesn’t blow. It sucks.