According to an article in the Washington Post, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley’s long-sought offshore wind project is positioned to win approval from the state legislature within the upcoming weeks.  Environmentalists have fought hard to encourage States and developers to build off-shore wind projects on the East Coast. At least six wind farms have been proposed in the region. However, owing to the inefficient and costly nature of offshore wind farms, combined with the need for heavy subsidization, none of these projects have managed to gain any traction.

The new bill, known as the Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act of 2013, will designate a “Wind Energy Area”, a zone in coastal waters situated about 10 miles east of Ocean City. It will also establish a $10 million Offshore Wind Business Development Fund designed to provide incentives and support for small businesses entering into the newly created industry.

Past attempts to approve the Maryland project have been met with strong opposition from both the state legislature and developers.

The Maryland legislature in 2010 refused to bring the issue up for a vote, warning that the project would cost Maryland taxpayers twice the initial estimates of $1.5 billion. Further opposition to the project arose after it was revealed that the governor’s former chief of staff was one of eight bidders to develop the project.

Developers of the project have been equally pessimistic.  Many developers have noted the high price and low energy makes the project an unappealing investment.

While developers continue to withhold support for the proposed project, several modifications that have been made to the new bill have managed to garner support from lawmakers.

What are these changes?  The Washington Post article details the following:

To win support from some lawmakers, O’Malley has embraced a financing model involving renewable energy credits that is unproven in the risky realm of offshore wind. To win over others, he has limited the cost of the subsidy to about $1.50 a month per household. The subsidy will amount to $2.5 billion over 20 years.

Also to reduce costs, the project was downgraded from a rated capacity of 500mw to 200MW. Because wind is intermittent, windmills typically generate less than a third of their rated capacity.

Global warming alarmists have seized upon an announcement by NOAA this week that 2012 was the warmest year in the U. S. historical record going back to 1895.  For example, Joe Romm writes on his ClimateProgress blog that, “2012 showed that the record-smashing weather extremes of 2011 weren’t a fluke, they were a pattern.”

According to the NOAA report released on January 8, the average annual temperature for the contiguous U.S. was 55.3F.  This is an increase of 3.3F above the 20^th century average, and makes 2012 the warmest year on record. The report also states that the continental U.S. experienced its 15^th driest year on record.

In a Politico article, Deke Arndt, chief of the climate monitoring branch at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center writes, “The heat that we saw in the U.S. (in 2012) is consistent with what we would expect in a warming world.

However, a previous blog by Joe Romm should be kept in mind when considering the significance of the 2012 record.  In 2010, Romm provided an answer to skeptics who point out that 1934 was the warmest year in the U. S. historical record: “1934 is the hottest year on record in the USA which only comprises 2% of the globe.”

Yes, that’s right, the United States comprises an insignificant 2% of the world’s surface area when we’re talking about the American heat wave in 1934, but it’s a highly significant 2% when we’re talking about last year’s high temperatures.

According to the global satellite temperature record maintained by John Christy and Roy Spencer at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, 2012 was the ninth warmest year globally since 1979.