Issue Position: Natural Gas and Atlantic Ocean Windmills

Issue Position

Natural gas is a very clean form of energy, and recent break-throughs in extraction techniques have identified enough easily extractable (hence cheap) natural gas to supply U. S. energy needs for many decades to come. Current expectations are that the known supply of extractable natural gas will continue to increase for at least the next thirty years. This suddenly plentiful and cheap natural gas is nothing short of a miracle. Currently, most of the electricity used in Maryland is generated by burning coal. There is no greater source of air pollution than burning coal to generate electricity. For example, China has turned its country into something out of Dante's "Inferno" by building hundreds of coal-powered power plants, and many Chinese citizens walk around wearing face masks daily as a consequence of China's egregiously polluted air. The State of Maryland should work with our local utilities to phase out our coal-powered generating plants and replace them with natural gas-powered plants.

Instead of acting intelligently and embracing the new world of electricity generated by using clean natural gas, Governor O'Malley has embarked on a scheme designed to give him a great talking point when he runs for President but that otherwise makes no sense. Through a lot of power politics in Annapolis, he has obtained legislation authorizing the construction of 40 eighty story high windmills, to be built 20-30 miles out in the Atlantic Ocean off of Ocean City. Collectively, these windmills are projected to produce one tenth of one percent of the electricity used in Maryland. The cost of this electricity will be four times higher than electricity generated by normal means. Because the electricity will be so uneconomical, O'Malley decided to pay for this grandiose scheme by hiking the monthly utility bills of all Maryland ratepayers by $1.50 each month. And our commercial businesses are going to see their electrical bills rise by 1.5% each month. For heavy users of electricity such as supermarkets, this is going to be a big hit, and of course the shoppers will end up indirectly paying this extra charge through higher food prices. This windmill scheme is the very definition of wasteful government spending. I would like to kill it.

For years, U. S. wind farms have received a federal tax credit worth 2.3 cents for every kilowatt hour of electricity produced. Those tax credits expired at the end of 2013. While they will continue to be available to wind farms that began construction in 2013, the Maryland offshore wind farm did not begin production last year. The loss of this federal tax credit may make Maryland's wind farm non-economically viable. Hopefully, this will lead to a reconsideration of Maryland's energy policies.

The bottom line: I will work to convert Maryland's coal-burning electrical power plants to natural gas, and I will oppose the wasteful O'Malley windmill project.

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