In your Nov. 28 issue, you quote Paul Pimentel, chairman of the Vineyard Power board of directors as saying: “One of the beauties of renewable energy is it’s not affected by a pipeline or anything like that. It’s free and it doesn’t go up.”

The wind, when it decides to blow, may be free, but turning it into electricity is very expensive. The Europeans are ahead of us in this as in many utopian, left-wing fantasies and they have had to rethink their strategy as their energy costs have skyrocketed. In 2010 Barney Frank and another congressman killed an LNG terminal project for the already-industrialized Fall River that would have lowered regional energy costs. Instead, plans are underway to build hundreds of windmills in the North Atlantic, a pristine natural wilderness, that will raise energy costs. If we build out every possible windmill in the region, the effect on global carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would never reach one per cent. The cost of generating your electricity, in contrast, would likely increase at a compounded double-digit rate for years to come. Counting on endless federal government subsidies to cushion your electric bill from these costs would seem optimistic.

A low-cost energy infrastructure is a safer bet. Green talk is cheap; implementation is going to cost you. A lot.

Samuel Fitting
Redding, Conn.