Republican weekly radio address
For weekend of December 13-14, 2008

Greetings, this is Josh Tardy, leader of the Republicans in the Maine House of Representatives.

When the new Legislature convenes in January, it will confront some serious issues, starting with the financial situation. Tax revenues are shrinking as this recession takes its toll, and we’ll have to cut state spending by at least $500 million to keep the upcoming budget in balance. Most likely we’ll also have to deal with Maine’s dysfunctional health insurance system. And the governor has promised to lower the state income tax rates, which are among the highest in the country and have become a huge drag on job creation and economic growth.

I’d like to say a few words about another issue that must be addressed before the state gets into real trouble -- Maine’s energy situation. Right now, we’re all feeling good about the falling price of gas and heating oil. That’s a welcome development for as long as it lasts, but we know that the price will shoot back up once the world’s economies recover. We’ll be right back where we started, only in worse shape than before.

Let me give you a few facts to put our predicament in perspective. In 1998, the average Maine family spent five percent of its income on energy – including electric power, heating fuel and gasoline. Five percent. Today, that same family is spending about 20 percent of its income on energy. And make sure you’re sitting down for this next one. By 2018 – just 10 years from now – energy costs will take up about 50 percent of an average Maine household income.

Imagine spending half of your family’s income just to heat your house, turn on the lights and drive your car. That’s doesn’t leave a whole lot left for other critical needs, from food and shelter to health care and saving for retirement. Clearly, a scenario like that would wreck Maine’s economy and force more people to leave the state, as long as they could sell their houses and afford to rent U-Hauls.

I know this sounds hard to believe, but according to a top engineering professor at the University of Maine, that is exactly the future we are looking at unless we take dramatic action. We had decades to devise an energy plan to keep Maine viable as a place to live, and we did nothing. Now we have no choice, but we do have an opportunity.

As the governor mentioned in his radio address this week, he has formed a group called the Ocean Energy Task Force. It’s a group of 21 people and includes some of the best minds in Maine. Their job is to examine our energy alternatives and deliver their final recommendations next October, in time for this new Legislature to examine their findings and hopefully decide on an action plan.

The Task Force held its first meeting last week. The general consensus from those who spoke is that Maine will need to make a sweeping transition to electric heat and electric and hybrid vehicles to maintain our way of life. As one of the speakers said, Maine is in the eye of the heating hurricane. Among all the states, we are the most heavily dependent on oil-based fuel for heating and transportation. The switch to an electricity-based energy infrastructure would liberate us from overseas oil producers and all kinds of potential disruptions of supply.

Clearly, we will need to generate massive new amounts of electricity to make this transition possible – about three times as much as we produce today. Some key members of the Ocean Energy Task Force have a plan on the drawing board. Former governor Angus King, a member of the group, has proposed placing 1,000 wind turbines off the Maine coast. We already have wind turbines on land, such as the wind farm on Mars Hill, but the serious potential is off-shore. The Gulf of Maine has some of the strongest winds on earth during the winter, which is why it’s sometimes called the Saudi Arabia of wind.

The proposed turbines are big – over 300 feet high, not counting the blades, which run to nearly 400 feet in diameter. Each turbine would produce 5 megawatts, and when the project was completed, by 2020, we would have a total of 5 gigawatts of wind power. That is the equivalent of the power we would get from two nuclear power plants. But we would still need backup energy supplies to kick in during times of low wind, because the juice from the turbines cannot yet be stored for later use.

None of this will come easy or cheap. Angus King’s plan for an offshore wind farm carries a price tag of over $10 billion. It also would be complicated by concerns about transmission capacity, fisheries, shipping lanes, whale exclusion areas and overall habitat for marine life and birds. And the technology for floating turbines in deep water has not yet been perfected. Engineers also have to ensure that the turbines could survive a hurricane.

Nuclear power obviously is another option to generate the power we will need, but it involves other problems. Even one plant would cost about $12 billion and the permitting could take 10 years. There’s still no permanent repository for the nuclear waste. And in Maine, any plan to build a nuclear plant would trigger fierce opposition, no matter that nuclear plants are being built in large numbers all over the world.

As you can see, we’ve got problems as well as opportunities. But very soon, we will have to decide which way to go.

This is Josh Tardy. Thank you for listening.

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