Rep. Keith Ammon (R-New Boston) released the following statement today in response to House Deputy Democratic Leader Mary Jane Wallner’s (D-Concord) appearance on WMUR’s Close Up discussing windmills on Block Island, RI.
“On WMUR’s CloseUp over the weekend, Rep. Wallner called on New Hampshire to replicate using windmills to power the state such as the windmills powering Block Island, RI. Was she serious? Block Island, RI is three times smaller than the city of Manchester at 9.7 square miles and has a population of 1,410. She said it takes 5 windmills to power the island. Manchester alone is 35 square miles and 116,000 people. Using tiny Block Island as a credible example is fantastical.”
“Offshore wind in a remote, corrosive marine environment is expensive to build and even more expensive to maintain. The blades kill an untold number of seabirds each year. The power is intermittent; no electricity is produced when the wind doesn’t blow, so power generation would need to be stop-gapped by a reliable source of baseload power, typically carbon-emitting natural gas. This session, Republicans in the House and Senate passed HB543, which would foster next-generation nuclear power in our state. Nuclear is the only safe, reliable, carbon-free, and realistic source of energy that isn’t weather dependent, and doesn’t behead our fine feathered friends.”