How would Cape Wind affect local and regional air quality?
Wind energy does not produce criteria air pollutants or greenhouse gases as it generates electricity, so by displacing fossil fuel-fired plants from the regional grid Cape Wind would improve local and regional air quality. The Energy Facility Siting Board found in 2004 that operation of Cape Wind would reduce air emissions in the near term by approximately 4,480 tons of SO2, 1,323 tons of nitrogen oxides (NOx), and 1,062,554 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually. These estimates were based on average marginal emission rates for power plants in New England in the year 2000. As older units are retired and more efficient plants (mostly gas-fired) are added to the grid, marginal pollution rates are likely to decrease. Consequently, the Siting Board concluded that Cape Wind would produce long-term reductions in state and regional air emissions, but that the size of these reductions is unknown. Click here2 to read the board’s opinion (Section A-V. A., pp. 165-66).
