Impacts on Air Quality, Climate Change, and Water Quality
What are the most important air pollution concerns in Massachusetts?
Under the Clean Air Act, all states must achieve and maintain National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for so-called “criteria” air pollutants, including sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, lead, carbon monoxide, particulate matter, and ozone. These pollutants cause serious public health problems. Some also damage environmental resources such as lakes, streams, and vegetation. Fuel combustion at power plants and other industrial facilities is a major source of most criteria pollutants. Click here1 to see a 2006 air quality report from the state of Massachusetts that summarizes criteria pollutant health effects.
Air quality has improved in Massachusetts over the past 20 years, thanks largely to increasingly strict state and federal limits on criteria pollutant emissions from large sources. But Massachusetts residents suffer from asthma and other respiratory problems at rates higher than the national average, so there is room for improvement. Massachusetts has attained NAAQS for all of the major criteria pollutants except for ozone, an irritant that can cause lung damage and aggravate asthma and other respiratory diseases.
How would Cape Wind affect local and regional air quality?
Wind energy does not produce criteria air pollutants or greenhouse gases as it generates electricity, so by displacing fossil fuel-fired plants from the regional grid Cape Wind would improve local and regional air quality. The Energy Facility Siting Board found in 2004 that operation of Cape Wind would reduce air emissions in the near term by approximately 4,480 tons of SO2, 1,323 tons of nitrogen oxides (NOx), and 1,062,554 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually.
These estimates were based on average marginal emission rates for power plants in New England in the year 2000. As older units are retired and more efficient plants (mostly gas-fired) are added to the grid, marginal pollution rates are likely to decrease. Consequently, the Siting Board concluded that Cape Wind would produce long-term reductions in state and regional air emissions, but that the size of these reductions is unknown. Click here2 to read the board’s opinion (Section A-V. A., pp. 165-66).
Are Massachusetts and New England major contributors to global climate change?
According to the state’s climate protection plan, Massachusetts emitted about 123 million tons of CO2 equivalent per year (CO2 and other greenhouse gases) as of 2001, a level greater than that produced by many European countries, including Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Ireland, or Switzerland. Click here3 for the Massachusetts climate protection plan.
According to an estimate by the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, a Boston nonprofit organization that analyzes air quality issues for the Northeast states, the six New England states combined produced 224 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent in the year 2000. If New England had been a nation, its greenhouse gas emissions for that year would have ranked eleventh worldwide. Nearly 90 percent of New England’s emissions come from energy consumption. Click here4 to read the NESCAUM report.
What are Massachusetts and New England doing to address climate change? Is Cape Wind relevant to those activities?
Massachusetts and the other Northeast states have taken many steps, both individually and together, to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions. Click here5 to see a 2001 agreement adopted by the Conference of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers (NEG-ECP) setting targets and timetables for cutting regional emissions. Click here6 for information on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), an agreement among 10 Northeast states to cap and reduce CO2 emissions from electric power plants.
Generating more energy from sources that do not emit greenhouse gases, such as wind and solar power, is one of the main strategies that states are relying on to meet the commitments they have made under the NEG-ECP agreement and RGGI. ISO-New England’s 2007 electricity scenario analysis found that meeting the region’s CO2 emissions targets under RGGI will require adding substantial amounts of low-carbon or carbon-free generation, plus other measures such as increasing the efficiency of existing power plants. Click here7 to see ISO-New England’s projections of how various scenarios would or would not achieve the region’s RGGI emissions cap (Section 5.3.1.3, pp. 64-65).
How would wind energy be affected if the United States adopts national limits on greenhouse gas emissions?
If national legislation is enacted that puts limits on CO2 emissions, generators that produce energy from fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas will have to pay a tax or buy an emission allowance for each unit of CO2 that they produce. Fuels that do not contain carbon, like wind, solar, and nuclear power, would not be subject to carbon taxes or allowance systems. These sources thus would become more cost-competitive with fossil fuel. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, CO2 prices of less than $40 per ton would make electricity from onshore and offshore wind farms cost-competitive with fossil fuel as early as 2010. Click here8 for a November 2007 NREL presentation showing the impact of CO2 prices on electricity costs (Slides 12 and 13).
What is the risk of oil spills from the wind park?
Each Cape Wind turbine generator would contain approximately 214 gallons of lubricants and hydraulic and transmission fluids in its nacelle or hub at any given time, for a total of 27, 820 gallons among all 130 towers. In addition, 40,000 gallons of electrical servicing oil would be stored on the electrical service platform. All equipment and storage tanks for Cape Wind would be designed to minimize the possibility of leaks or spills and have secondary containment that can hold their full contents.
The Minerals Management Service concluded that Cape Wind would likely be responsible for 7 percent of the oil spills expected to occur in Nantucket Sound during a 30 year period. MMS estimated that 2 spills attributable to Cape Wind could occur during a 30-year period, and that there was a 90 percent chance that these spills would involve 50 gallons of oil or less. The agency placed the odds of a spill involving 10,000 gallons at 1 percent.
The main risk of oil spills comes from vessels transiting the Sound, and this risk will be there whether or not Cape Wind is built. Click here to read the MMS discussion of oil spill risks from Cape Wind (Section 5.3.1.6.2, pages 5-60 to 5-62).9
1http://www.mass.gov/dep/air/priorities/06aqrept.pdf
2http://www.mass.gov/Eoca/docs/dte/siting/efsb02-2/72cwind.pdf, Section A-V. A., pp. 165-66
3http://www.massclimateaction.org/pdf/MAClimateProtPlan0504.pdf
4http://www.nescaum.org/documents/rpt040315ghg.pdf
5http://www.negc.org/documents/NEG-ECP%20CCAP.PDF
7http://www.iso-ne.com/committees/comm_wkgrps/othr/sas/mtrls/elec_report/
scenario_analysis_final.pdf, Section 5.3.1.3, pp. 64-65
8http://www.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/windpoweringamerica/
pdfs/wpa/wpa_update.pdf, Slides 12 and 13
9http://www.masstech.org/offshore/docs/CapeWindDEIS.pdf, Section 5.3.1.6.2, pages 5-60 to 5-62