PROVIDENCE – Gov. Donald L. Carcieri today announced that Rhode Island has sufficient wind capacity to meet his goal of deriving 15 percent of the state’s electricity from wind-power, and announced plans for a stakeholder group to determine where such facilities could be located.
“To emphasize this goal, I am also announcing that this project will be known as ‘Energy Independence 1’,” he said. “This new brand indicates that this is only the beginning of our efforts to reduce electricity prices and to wean our state off foreign energy.”
Carcieri earlier had commissioned a wind-power siting study, the results of which he cited in today’s announcement.
“In January 2006, I created the [R.I] Office of Energy Resources and tasked it with finding a way to generate 15 percent of Rhode Island’s electricity from wind power,” the governor recalled. “My goal was simple: I wanted to encourage Rhode Island’s energy independence through the use of a renewable source.
“This study ... makes clear for the first time that Rhode Island enjoys enough wind to achieve five times that amount of electricity generation.”
The Ocean State has nearly 100 square miles in which wind power is feasible, 87 square miles of which already are under state control. Much of this area is in water off the coast.
About 75 percent of Rhode Island’s power could come from this source, if it were fully exploited, the study found.
But, Carcieri noted, “the study only shows the areas where wind power is technically feasible at costs that are competitive with today’s market prices, and that have no obvious fatal flaws from a permitting perspective.
“We have made no decisions on where to locate wind facilities,” he said. “We are not looking to load up all these areas with wind turbines, but rather to select the best areas where we can proceed. This will take a lot of community, expert and stakeholder input. The study is just the first step in this process.”
Saul Kaplan, director of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation, said in today’s announcement that “Not only could existing Rhode Island companies provide many of the components necessary to construct the turbines, but Rhode Island could establish a center of excellence around the renewable energy sector.”
A wind-energy conference is planned tomorrow and Friday in Corless Auditorium on the University of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay Campus, the governor’s office noted. It will feature discussions by national and international experts on how best to make wind power a reality.
The conference – “From Local to Global: The Rhode Island Model for Harnessing Wind Power Worldwide”– is free to the first 250 people who register.
For more information or to register, visit www.windri.org/conference.
Additional information is available at ri.gov.
