WIND INSTEAD OF OIL

Believe it or not, $4-a-gallon gasoline has its bright side. It has finally gotten people’s attention and made them realize that fuel economy is essential. It has caused car companies to cut back on the guzzlers. It may even cause the government to draft a sensible energy policy.

But, possibly more important in the long run, it can help Mainers take seriously a plan by former Gov. Angus King for an offshore “wind ranch,” to produce enough electricity to heat all our homes and power all our cars. Major wind-power projects were almost unthinkable when oil and gasoline were cheap.

Mr. King set forth his proposal in a recent speech at Bowdoin College that can be heard on the Maine Public Broadcasting Network Web site.

He began by declaring that Maine – and the rest of the country – face an energy catastrophe, with the price of home heating oil and gasoline and diesel fuel already at distressing levels and probably due to keep on rising to $10 a gallon or more, with Texas petroleum already peaked, and with foreign supplies eventually dwindling.

His long-term solution: Replace most oil and natural gas with 5,000 megawatts of electricity generated by 1,000 5-megawatt turbines on floating platforms anchored six-tenths of a mile apart 25 miles off the coast of Maine.

The proposal has one clear advantage over land-based wind farms: It will be out of sight. Cape Wind, a $900 million offshore wind farm 14 miles from Nantucket, is finally nearing construction after years of protests and lawsuits by environmentalists, fishermen, shipping interests and nearby residents including Robert Kennedy Jr., whose family’s compound is within sight. The Massachusetts project, hailed as the first offshore wind energy plant in the United States, will have only one-tenth the capacity of Mr. King’s proposal and will serve only most of the needs of Cape Cod and nearby islands. Its turbines will rest on rocky shoals in shallow water instead of floating platforms.

Mr. King foresees the advantage of such a huge energy source close to home yet out of sight, nonpolluting, creating tens of thousands of nearby jobs, and at a fixed price, not subject to shocks or steady escalation.

He acknowledges issues remaining to be solved: design and construction of the floating platforms that will survive ocean stresses, production and widespread use of plug-in electric cars, improved heat pumps for house heating, and refined cost estimates and economic analysis.

He counts on the strong and reliable winds in the Gulf of Maine. In a lull, the electric cars will have storage batteries and houses will have power storage systems.

Tidal power can still be in the cards, but only for local energy production, since surveys have shown that Maine winds far outstrip Maine tides as major potential energy sources.

Better than moaning over fuel costs, the state can consider this project as a way to produce needed energy locally and less expensively.