If Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell does it right, no one will need to fear his plan for big, offshore energy facilities along the state’s fragile coastline. If he does it right, we’ll never see a single oil spill, guaranteed. Even a major hurricane blowing through the region will result in zero pollution.
That’s because, if he does it right, McDonnell will build only powerful, modern windmills off the coast. Instead of “drill, baby, drill” — with the now-vivid risk of black beaches from Virginia Beach to Assateague to Bethany Beach, Del. — we’ll see graceful wind turbines creating 10,000 new jobs and enough power for 3.6 million electric cars. Virginia’s coastline, it turns out, is a mini-Persian Gulf of wind power, ready to provide all the economic benefits of an “oil rush” without any of the pollution risks.
And McDonnell, to his credit, supports offshore wind power. He’s taken positive steps — though small — to make it happen. The bad news is he’s taken much bigger steps to support offshore drilling for oil and natural gas. He wants to drill just 50 miles off the coast, opening up 3 million acres to such companies as Exxon and BP. He’s even pushing for an act of Congress to help make it happen. On wind power, unfortunately, he’s supported only minor incentives and opposes any congressional or statehouse action that would guarantee wind development.
These tragically misplaced priorities — and missed opportunities — were on full display on May 3 when McDonnell flew to Houston for an inconveniently timed conference of offshore drilling companies. Even as satellite photos showed that the Gulf of Mexico oil slick was as big as Puerto Rico, even as offshore fishing was banned from Louisiana to Florida and vacationers were abandoning the coast, McDonnell told the drilling crowd he couldn’t wait to get started in Virginia.
Talk about shortsighted. If the gulf incident has taught us anything, it’s that when things go wrong on a drilling platform, the slope toward catastrophe is short. And sooner or later, something will go wrong. You can’t regulate an end to human error.
Many argue that this is just the cost of doing business. The risk is worth it. But with one destroyed rig threatening beaches from Texas all the way to the Atlantic Coast, the jury is still out on how much “cost” the American people are willing to tolerate for this particular business.
In Virginia, meanwhile, the evidence is crystal-clear: All gambling is absurd. At best, according to government and industry estimates, there is untapped oil off the Virginia coast equal to just six to 24 days’ worth of national demand. It will take many platforms to get to that oil, nonetheless, and any one of them could potentially replicate the gulf disaster, shutting down beach towns, devastating watermen and affecting critical naval operations around Newport News.
Why would we risk all this for a few weeks’ worth of oil? Why can’t McDonnell — at a minimum — acknowledge that serious delays are likely while we get all the facts in from the Gulf Coast? Cautious federal officials have already postponed key pre-drilling procedures in Virginia since the spill.
And why drill at all when a permanent, pollution-free energy source is ready instead? The same week the BP platform collapsed, the Interior Department approved America’s first commercial offshore wind farm in Massachusetts. And just last month, a Virginia panel declared that the commonwealth, using a small area and placing the windmills at a distance barely visible from shore, could provide 10 percent of the state’s total electricity. That’s enough for 750,000 households.
To move forward, the wind industry needs real commitment from McDonnell, creating the “market certainty” for rapid investments. Unfortunately, while McDonnell has worked tirelessly on behalf of the oil industry to secure federal commitments to offshore drilling and changes in federal oil-royalty laws, he has consistently opposed the policy the wind power industry says it needs most in Virginia: a clean electricity standard. Thirty-three U.S. states now require utilities to purchase at least a minimal amount of clean energy for the grid. McDonnell opposes this. He thinks neither Virginia nor the federal government should have a mandatory renewable energy standard of any kind.
Massachusetts and Delaware, meanwhile, equipped with such policies, are moving forward with offshore wind farms set to begin construction in the next 12 to 24 months. One wonders if the long-suffering Gulf Coast will still be covered with oil 24 months from now. State governors, of course, make tough decisions all the time. But for McDonnell, this shouldn’t be one of them.
The writer is executive director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.
