Photo from Siemens. Offshore wind farm Nysted, Denmark.
It is not the usual green suspect. But it hopes to build a 5-gigawatt, deep-water wind farm – the largest in the world, equal to the output from five nuclear plants.
Matthew Simmons, investment banker to the energy industry and early believer in peak oil, wants to put a mammoth wind farm off the coast of Maine. 80% of Maine homes are heated with heating oil, and that can be expensive. The Gulf of Maine has gale force winds in winter and wind farms there could create enough power to heat all those homes. They would be mounted on floating platforms similar to those used by the oil industry.
Simmons, referring to the proposed wind farm, said, “If we don’t do this, we’re going to have to evacuate most of Maine.”