FINAL DECISION
I had to take a break from writing, and haven’t said a word since March 18th – too much on my plate. Business is challenging at SMC right now, but all is well, projects are good, everyone’s busy, and we’re all in it together, working hard to keep working.
But the Cape Wind announcement in Boston last Wednesday took my mind off that and inspired me to get back to this.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said a lot about Cape Wind. But the best thing he said was, quite simply, “This is the final decision of the United States of America.” Final Decision. Good decision, great decision, unequivocal decision – by the United States of America! How rare is that?
During the past nine years Jim Gordon and his colleagues at Cape Wind 
have re-defined the words “stamina” and “perseverance.” And I hope – for their sake and ours – that Wednesday’s confirmation gave them a stiff and steady tailwind to propel them to their ultimate destination – the commissioning of the first offshore wind farm in the U.S.
None too soon. The collected intelligence tells us, as Alex Steffen of Worldchanging says, “We have five years to start making big changes, twenty years to finish making them here, and at most forty years to spread those changes to every corner of the world.” Bill McKibben, the longest-running, most articulate chronicler of Climate Change, looks at it differently his new book Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet . 
He says we have already changed the planet irrevocably, and while we try to minimize the damage our new challenge is to learn to live in this unfamiliar place.
In the U.S. we remain stuck. Still no comprehensive energy bill, still no carbon tax, still no feed-in tariffs. We have plenty of catching up to do, and the Cape Wind decision is a good start.
It’s like we’ve been holding our breath, waiting anxiously for this logjam to come loose. Up and down the east coast developers, communities, and government entities have been waiting for Cape Wind. The state of Massachusetts and the federal government have both identified hundreds of wind “plots” off the coast. They’re ready to award them, and there are many takers waiting anxiously. Cape Wind will be the first of many.
I doubt it will be trouble-free; I’m certain there are mistakes to make and learning to do. I remember nine years ago when Cape Wind first started; they hadn’t a clue what they were getting into and they were surprised by the firestorm of resistance that met their plans. There are many things they could have done better, had they only known. There could have been a stronger package of local community benefits. But who knew? And what is ever perfect?
On Martha’s Vineyard, I’m thrilled to see Vineyard Power our very own community-owned cooperative offshore-windfarm-to-be, taking shape and making big progress. As the membership creeps toward 1000, I’m beginning to think this bold effort to create (and manage) a membership of thousands and pull off the biggest development project in the history of the Vineyard truly has a chance.
Meanwhile, we’ll be pulling hard for Cape Wind to leap over each hurdle and for many others to follow suit. Onward we go!!
Here Comes the Island Plan
The Island Plan is complete.
For now.
Four years in the making, this long-term plan for the future of Martha’s Vineyard, initiated by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, engaged hundreds of people in the collaborative process of its production. 
To quote from the plan: “ The purpose of the Island Plan is to chart a course to the kind of future the Vineyard community wants, and to outline a series of actions to help us navigate that course. The Island Plan is both a blueprint and a call to action.”
I served on the Steering Committee and chaired one of the nine work groups – Livelihood & Commerce (the others are Development & Growth, Natural Environment, the Built Environment, Energy & Waste, Affordable Housing, Transportation, Water Resources, and Social Environment).
I spent more time working on the plan than I wished to and less time than I should have.
The Plan is not what I hoped it would be when we first began work. I hoped we could create something that would knock our socks off – a plan that people would embrace wholeheartedly because How Could You Not? So compelling it didn’t even seem like a plan but a great never-ending story. A truly inspiring plan. A mouth-watering five-course meal.
That was unrealistic, of course. It’s not one person’s dream meal; it’s a stew, added to and stirred by many. At times, during the process, I found myself somewhat heartbroken, because the opportunity was so great and I felt we were falling short, but toward the end it got better, and I got better, and it’s not a bad stew.
Here are some important things about the Island Plan:
• It has created a new lexicon and new awareness – obscure terms like “multiplier effect”, “economic leakage”, “ecosystem services”, “minimum viable landscape”, “undevelopment”, and “carrying capacity” have become commonplace.
• It’s an iterative plan, not a Final Solution study that’s going to sit on a shelf collecting dust. There is a commitment to implement, to measure, to assess, to re-work, to “freshen up” the plan and add ingredients as the years go by, and to make alterations as conditions change in our rapidly changing world.
• People are thinking about it as 50 year plan. In a way it really isn’t. Early on we started saying “We need to think long term” – not a five or ten year plan but a 50 or 100 year plan. The local papers started writing stuff like “these guys must be nuts – you can’t do a 50 year plan” but the idea tickled peoples’ imagination. Now people say, proudly, we’ve got a 50 year plan. And the papers refer to “the island’s 50 year plan.” So what if it isn’t? As long as we think we’ve got a 50 year plan we do. And in many ways it really is.
• The 207 recommended strategies are a wealth of possibilities that we can dig into over time, each as its time comes.
One of these – a community owned electrical cooperative that uses local renewable resources to generate a large fraction of the Vineyard’s energy – has become the most immediate and visible direct outgrowth of the plan. A small group of people got so excited about the idea that when they got done with their work in the Island Plan Energy & Waste Group they went right to work on Vineyard Power 
and now, less than a year later, the cooperative has formed and begun to assemble a membership, create financing opportunities, and consider sites for an offshore wind farm.
It’s a bold idea and a challenging project that will take years to implement. It combines the need to create a membership of thousands, and manage it, with the goal of completing the biggest development project in the history of the Vineyard. Big job. But as the nascent membership approaches 500, I’m beginning to think it may be possible.
If the Island Plan stimulates nothing else, it will have been a success.
Here’s something I wish about the plan. I wish it connected the dots more. It is good at recognizing interdependencies, but less good at making them come alive. Here’s the kind of thing that’s not in the Island Plan that I now wish was. It’s an idea – which I’m going to call Hogtied Brewery for the moment – which could work just fine here on the Vineyard:
• People like beer, especially local beer from a place they like.
• So an MV brewery (like Offshore Ale, our local brewery) produces beer & the process produces waste mash.
• The waste mash is used to feed pigs.
• The pigs make meat and manure.
• The meat feeds people hungry for local food – everybody loves that – and the manure powers a bio-gas digester.
• The bio-gas digester makes electricity.
• The electricity is used to run the brewery.
Round and round it goes. Makes sense, doesn’t it? An unbroken circle of synergies. There’s no reason we can’t do things this way. There’s no reason we can’t keep making improvements to the Island Plan. There’s no reason we can’t implement its most promising strategies.
The result?
As Jim Athearn, who chaired the Steering Committee says,
“ In many ways, the Island Plan’s proposals for the next generation will help keep the Vineyard much as it is today – characterized by carefully protected open spaces, vistas, and historic neighborhoods, and provided with great services and recreational opportunities. In many ways, however, it will be different and greatly improved. Although tourism and construction will still be important parts of the economy, many people will have transitioned to well-paying, year-round “green” and knowledge-based jobs, encouraging young people to stay on the island. Farming and fishing will be expanded and feeding more of the population. Our energy will come from a community-owned offshore wind farm. There will be an Island-wide greenway and trail network. New buildings will fit their neighborhoods. It will be an even more vital year-round community, as our families can live here affordably. The Island Plan is a guide to keeping the Island safe, beautiful, healthy, and culturally rich – the best place it can be for our children and grandchildren.”
Doesn’t sound too bad, does it?
All it takes is insisting on the future we want instead of settling for the future we get.
WINDTRIGUE ON THE VINEYARD
While the eyes of the world focus on Copenhagen, here at home on Martha’s Vineyard wind energy has been receiving a mighty dose of attention – more than ever before. Are we making progress? Maybe some. You be the judge.
Wind has been in the local news in four distinctly different regards at once: the release and reaction to the draft Massachusetts Oceans Management Plan, the public coming-out of a new organization called Vineyard Power, the continuing saga of Cape Wind, and the adoption of a new wind by-law in Aquinnah.
Before diving in, some context might be useful.
According to Lester Brown, the president of Earth Policy Institute and the author of Plan B 4.0, 
the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) has identified 1000 gigawatts of potential offshore wind energy on the U.S. East Coast. That’s an extraordinary number. A gigawatt is 1000 megawatts. The size of the proposed Cape Wind project is 420 Megawatts. That means NREL has identified the potential for 2500 Cape Winds on the East Coast. That’s right – two thousand five hundred. Coupled with similar West Coast potential, there is offshore capacity sufficient to power the entire U.S. economy.
How much offshore capacity does the U.S have at present?
None.
Not so in Europe and Asia. Wind energy is growing, worldwide, at a furious rate. Last month, according to “Progressive Investor” , “Spain supplied 53% of its electricity from wind” with more than 10 GW (24 Cape Winds) installed. They are expecting another 5.3 GW (12 more Cape Winds) online by 2012. That’s just Spain, with a coastline roughly one quarter of the length of the U.S. coastline. Will we even have our modest first effort – Cape Wind – installed by 2012??
The U.S. is now a full decade behind the rest of the developed world in the transition to renewable energy and the battle to tame climate change. We’re discovering the shame of following for the first time ever. As David Orr says in his new book Down to the Wire “The global crisis ahead is a direct result of the largest political failure in history.” We have been at the forefront of that failure.
Here in Massachusetts, however, the political commitment to change is strong. The Deval Patrick administration has been stellar, demonstrating serious leadership and investing heavily in diverse renewable energy initiatives.
Several months ago the Patrick administration released their draft Oceans Management Plan for Massachusetts waters. Although pleased by this pro-active planning, I was disappointed to see that the competing matrix of uses left very little area available for offshore wind development. The only areas identified as suitable are near the Vineyard and the adjacent island of Cuttyhunk. I assume there must be others.
But that was not the primary concern for most Vineyarders. The designation of our waters drew a swift and negative reaction from local community and political leaders, and a demand for local control. Some accommodation has been reached, but at this point, it seems that the state government’s resolve remains firm. They may add to the area (that’s good!) and they may award a stronger voice and greater community benefits to the Vineyard (that’s good!) but they will not let NIMBYism rule the day (that’s good too!).
A group called Let Vineyarders Decide formed to demand alterations to the state plan. Meanwhile, the real good news is that during the last two years a new organization called Vineyard Power 
has been in the design and formative stages and has now completed a business plan and formal incorporation. This is a citizen-owned cooperative that will “secure our energy future and keep control in our community.” Electricity will be generated from offshore wind turbines and distributed to co-op members through the existing grid. Go here to join now.
This exciting development is the perfect Let Vineyarders Decide vehicle. We’ll own it and we will make the decisions. Where will the turbines be? We will decide. Fortunately, one of the Let Vineyarders Decide organizers also serves on the Vineyard Power advisory board. This promotes important dialogue.
When it comes to wind turbines, location always seems to be the rub. The current debate, it seems to me, is missing the point. Sometimes, when we’re busy formulating an answer, we fail to identify the right question. For years people have been debating the location of Cape Wind – is this the right place for it or should it be at Otis Air Force base, or someplace else? Now we’ve got the same thing going on with the Oceans’ Management Plan. Right place or wrong place?
Wrong question, it seems to me. We need as many locations as possible, as much investment as possible, as much political support as possible, as much local support as possible, and as many local community benefits as possible. We need, finally, to end spurious arguments about birds and fish and instead do the best possible job of mitigating environmental harm that we can. We need to learn from the rest of the world, which has addressed the issues thoroughly; we are not the first people ever to contend with this. The town of Aquinnah missed that boat; they created an impossibly long, confusing, obstacle-filled wind by-law, which may effectively outlaw wind energy in that town. I hope not. Read it here, if you can.
We need to stop running around in circles, get off the dime, and move forward.I think we will. Initial perceptions can change dramatically, as they have in so many places.
Years ago, after the first large wind turbine in Massachusetts was installed in the town of Hull, 
I drove along Nantasket Beach and through town with my daughter and a friend. Suddenly the immense wind machine, owned by the local municipal utility, came into view. My daughter Sophie gasped: “It’s huge. Scary.” We parked in the parking lot just steps from the machine and walked to it. The tower is 165’ high and the blades extend 75’ above that. It is almost noiseless – it makes a gentle whooshing sound. As we walked away we turned and stared back at it. Sophie said, “It’s quite beautiful, isn’t it? Especially because of what it does.”
That’s my girl. Perceptions can change in a heartbeat.
The Hull machine, right on the beach, adjacent to the high school and a residential neighborhood, and in plain view of downtown Boston, was so successful that the town wanted to do another – three times the size. They polled the residents who live in the shadow of the beast. Of the five hundred respondents, 480 supported more turbines. That’s 96 percent. You tell me: when are 96% of people positive about anything?
This degree of support is a common reaction, world wide, in areas that are making the commitment to large-scale wind energy. Not before development, when many are scared, but after development, when consciousness seems to shift.
Remarkably, the citizens of our small sister island Cuttyhunk, whose waters the draft Oceans Management Plan also designated for wind development, are pre-development supporters. Yes, in my backyard, the citizens say! 
They are attracted to the economic benefits, but they also say that they would favor wind development even if there were no potential financial benefits, because “we all have to do our part”. Because if they’re not in our backyard they’re in someone else’s. I expect this attitude to become pervasive in the years to come – a collective un-tethering from the urge to reactively say no to change.
Because as some do battle with large-scale turbine development, many others are battling, as author Bill McKibben says, “to see them not as industrial eyesores, but as part of a new aesthetic. The wind made visible. The slow, steady turning that blows us into a future less hopeless than the future we’re steaming toward now.”
I’m glad for all the discussion, for the intensity of feeling, and for the widespread community involvement. While I may not agree with all that’s being said, it’s essential that everyone is heard. I hope that ultimately we’ll realize that we, as stewards of an area with an inexhaustible resource, have an obligation to find comfort with its use.
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JOHN ABRAMS is co-founder and CEO
of South Mountain Company and the author
of COMPANIES WE KEEP read more
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COMPANIES WE KEEP is published by Chelsea Green Publishing
read more -
