Survey Shows Strong Support for Offshore Wind Power
in Delaware
newswise.com
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Description
Delawareans are strongly in favor of offshore wind power as
a future source of energy for the state, according to a
survey conducted by University of Delaware researchers.
Image Gallery
Jeremy Firestone, University of Delaware
This is the Nysted wind farm in the Baltic Sea off
Denmark, photographed from a boat in November 2006.
Photo by Jeremy Firestone
Newswise - Delawareans are strongly in favor of offshore
wind power as a future source of energy for the state,
according to a survey conducted by University of Delaware
researchers.
When asked to select from a variety of sources to help the
state increase its energy supply, more than 90 percent of
the 949 Delaware residents responding to the survey
supported an offshore wind option--in which whirling wind
turbines as tall as 40-story buildings would be erected off
the coast to generate electricity--even if wind power were
to add between $1 and $30 per month to their electric
bills. Fewer than 10 percent voted for an expansion of coal
or natural gas power at current prices.
The results are highlighted in an interim report released
today by the study's authors, Jeremy Firestone and Willett
Kempton, who are both marine policy scientists on the
faculty of UD's College of Marine and Earth Studies, and
doctoral student Andrew Krueger.
Their research was supported by a Green Energy Fund grant
from the Delaware Energy Office in the Department of
Natural Resources and Environmental Control and by the
college.
The policy scientists began the project last February,
developed and pilot-tested the survey questions in the
spring and summer, and then mailed the 16-page booklet-
sized questionnaire to 2,000 Delaware residents in
September, with remailings to individuals who had not yet
returned their surveys in late October. Of the 1,839 valid
mailings to Delaware addresses, 949 were completed and
analyzed, for a response rate of better than 50 percent.
"Based on our results, Delaware could become the Denmark of
the United States when it comes to relying on offshore wind
power as a major energy source," Firestone said.
"Delawareans are amazingly supportive of it."
And that came as a surprise to the policy scientists.
In 2004 and 2005, Kempton and Firestone had conducted two
surveys of residents of Cape Cod about the controversial
Cape Wind project, in which Energy Management Inc., a
Massachusetts-based company, proposes to establish a wind
farm of 130 423-foot-tall wind turbines in Nantucket Sound.
They first interviewed 24 Cape Cod residents face-to-face,
then did a larger survey of 500 people.
"The Cape Wind project has been under considerable public
debate," Firestone said. "We found that a plurality of Cape
Cod residents was opposed to that project." However, the
researchers found that nearly 78 percent of Delawareans
statewide would give a project identical to Cape Wind a
thumbs-up if it were located in Delaware, and only 4
percent would oppose such a project, with the remainder
unsure.
To compare the Cape Cod and Delaware studies, the
researchers included matching questions about the Cape Wind
project in the Delaware survey and included photo
simulations of how a wind farm at sea would appear at
various distances, including from six miles from shore, the
approximate distance from Hyannis, Mass., to the proposed
Cape Wind project.
"Even in the ocean area, where respondents live, on
average, about a half-mile from the coast, support for wind
power outnumbers opposition by more than 3 to 1 in
Delaware," Firestone noted.
"Interestingly, Delaware respondents who can see the ocean
from their home were more supportive of a wind farm, at 59
percent, than all residents of either Cape Cod, at 25
percent, or New Jersey, at 41 percent," he added, noting
that the New Jersey statistic is from a recent poll by non-
UD researchers.
What accounts for Delawareans' positive opinions about
offshore wind power?
It could be due to a range of factors, the scientists say,
from "a well-financed opposition" to the Cape Wind project
on Cape Cod, to increasing public awareness and concern
about changing climate and "global warming," to health
impacts and the recent electricity rate hikes in Delaware.
"The short answer is we just don't know yet why Delawareans
are so much more supportive," Kempton said. "That's
something we're hoping to determine in the more detailed
statistical analysis we'll be doing next."
The Delaware survey also included questions to determine
any potential effects on beach visitation by in-state
residents if a large, 500-turbine wind farm were installed
6 miles off the state's coast.
"Our questions first placed the wind farm off the beach
that an individual last visited and asked whether it would
cause the individual to switch to another beach," Kempton
said.
While 88.6 percent would continue to go to the same beach
they last went to in Delaware even if a large wind farm
were constructed offshore there, 5.6 percent said they
would "switch" to another beach in Delaware, another 3.5
percent said they would go to a beach outside Delaware and
2.4 percent said they would visit no beach at all.
"A 5-6 percent loss of tourism could be a serious impact,"
Kempton said. "However, we also asked if people would be
inclined to visit a Delaware beach that they did not
typically visit, at least once, where a wind farm was
visible offshore. The high response, at 84 percent,
suggests that the wind turbines would actually draw
visitors instead of drive them away."
This summer, the scientists and their graduate students
will survey out-of-state visitors to Delaware's beaches to
further explore how an offshore wind farm would affect
tourism. That project is funded by the Delaware Sea Grant
College Program--a partnership of the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, the state of Delaware and the
University that conducts marine research, education and
outreach projects throughout the state.
The scientists said one of the reasons they sought to
conduct a survey of offshore wind power in Delaware is
because there has not been a lot of public debate about the
topic here.
"We wanted to study a place along the East Coast where
there hadn't been much debate about offshore wind power and
compare the results to places like Cape Cod," Firestone
noted.
As the UD survey was being administered and analyzed this
past fall, Bluewater Wind, a company from Hoboken, N.J.,
announced that it planned to submit a proposal to Delmarva
Power & Light, in response to the utility's solicitation
for bids to line up new long-term energy supplies for the
state.
The Delaware state legislature had mandated that Delmarva
Power & Light solicit the energy bids before the end of
2006 and included preferences for nonpolluting sources of
electricity.
"I think interest in wind power and other renewable energy
sources is now growing not only in Delaware, but nationally
due to the rising cost and long-term supply issues
associated with traditional energy sources, as well as
other concerns such as global warming," Kempton said.
Kempton and Firestone are part of a research group at the
UD College of Marine and Earth Studies that is exploring
the science, resource and policy implications of offshore
wind power. The group offers a graduate course on offshore
wind power, including science, engineering and policy.
Kempton said UD students are interested in the topic, and
he has seen increased enrollment across campus in the
course.
"We now have a number of graduate students working in this
area," he said.
The interim report on the survey and a one-page executive
summary are available at the Web site of UD's Offshore Wind
Power Group [ http://www.ocean.udel.edu/windpower/ ].
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