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The president of Cape Wind Associates urged a room of top-level executives Wednesday to advocate that NStar, the state’s second-largest utility, buy power from his planned wind farm off Nantucket Sound.
Speaking at a forum for the Progressive Business Leaders Network, Cape Wind President Jim Gordon said he would “greatly appreciate” if any NStar customers in the room would get in touch with the utility’s CEO, Tom May.
Gordon suggested writing a letter asking May to “seriously consider taking the same visionary step that Tom King has taken at National Grid to buy power from Cape Wind.” Gordon spoke at the forum in Cambridge alongside an official from National Grid, the state’s largest utility, which has agreed to buy half of the power from the 130-turbine wind farm.
Among the 50 attendees at Wednesday’s forum were area law firm partners and CEOs from Akamai Technologies Inc., Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Tufts Health Plan and EnerNOC Inc.
Following the event, held at Akamai’s headquarters, Gordon told Mass High Tech that Cape Wind officials have not met with NStar since their first meeting in May. Gordon declined to discuss the status of the negotiations but said there was nothing unusual about his appeal for help with getting NStar’s attention. “I ask for help all the time,” he said.
Cape Wind must sell the remaining half of its power output from the 468-megawatt wind farm before the state Department of Public Utilities can sign off on the project, a key step toward securing financing.
Gordon previously said he expected to have no problem selling the remaining power at the same rate agreed to by National Grid, and he promised that the rate will not be reduced for other buyers. National Grid agreed to pay 20.7 cents per kilowatt hour for power from the project in the first year, which opponents and some experts have said is too high. The rate would rise by 3.5 percent per year to cover inflation and other cost increases over the life of the 15-year contract.
During Wednesday’s forum, Gordon said he expects fossil fuel prices will rise sharply as the national economy recovers from its downturn, and that this will make the average utility bill increase of $1.59 per month from Cape Wind seem small. Gordon also said customers don’t consider the costs to human health and the environment from fossil fuels when they look at their utility bills.
The National Grid official who spoke during the forum, senior vice president Richard Rapp Jr., acknowledged that “it’s clear that costs will go up” for ratepayers with Cape Wind, but National Grid believes the “benefits outweigh that higher cost.”
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