A champion of green projects passed away suddenly August 7th. Matt Simmons, well known for his views on peak oil in his book Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy apparently drown after suffering a heart attack. Here in Maine, however, he was 
best known for championing green energy projects (Green By Definition from our book). He had big plans for some big projects, particularly trying to harness the ocean’s energy. He founded The Ocean Energy Institute in Rockland, Maine, whose grand opening was in July, a “think tank” focused on tidal energy. It is both a not-for-profit research facility coupled with a for-profit venture capital enterprise to fund the alternate energy.
From an article by Michael Corkery in today’s (Aug 9th) Wall Street Journal Blog, Matt Simmons is quoted as saying that, “When it comes to alternative energy, wind is perfectly commercial today. But when you try to scale it, it just doesn’t work. I suspect the cost of solar will finally come down, but you’ll never have solar be anything more than an intermittent source of electricity.” To him, the ocean was the logical place to capture energy. In the same article he is quoted as saying “The Gulf Stream is essentially the largest river in the world … and there are devices being developed that are anchored in a current and end up having a rotor that turns because of the current. It might be perfectly viable to create a floating dry dock. Or you combine the water in a boiler with ammonia, and once you have boiling you have steam, and steam powers a turbine and creates electricity. This doesn’t sound nearly as complicated as creating fuels cells, for instance, which is still a real bugaboo.”
Matt believed that “Oceans are the last energy frontier, yet we know so little about how to harness them. The Ocean Energy Institute’s mission is to quickly fill this knowledge void and let our oceans supply us the energy that fossil fuels have provided for the last hundred years,” a direct quote.
A press release today from the Institute indicated that the work of the Institute will continue. We hope so. We didn’t know him personally, but he was on our list of “get to knows” because of the potential projects he was involved with. We’ll be watching the work of the Institute, that’s for sure. Matt Simmons was 67.
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In our 
With apologies to 
Wind Power Super Highway
The project is dubbed the Atlantic Wind Connection and is intended to provide the transmission lines for a series of offshore wind turbines capable of supplying 1.9 million homes without taxing the already overburdened electric grid. It is very ambitious project covering an area of 350 miles with on-shore transmission nodes in Norfolk, VA, Lewes, DE, the proximity of Manasquan, NJ, and Newark, NJ. The article goes on to say that the water remains relatively shallow 10-15 miles offshore, far enough so as not to be seen from shore, one of the issue plaguing the Cape Wind Project.
How exciting to be a project manager on that project. One of the risks would certainly be that since it is the North Atlantic, there is always that possibility of the “prefect storm”. The timeline for the project looks like a deliverable in 2013 of construction start, complete in 2020, but with an interim milestone of the initial stage of construction complete in 2016.
Interestingly, Ken Salazar, Interior Secretary, said last month “Rather than develop transmission infrastructure on a piecemeal basic, we should – in close coordination with the private sector, states, and tribes – lay out smart transmission systems upfront.” Gee, a strategy for a change (sorry-editorial comment).
Anyway, we’ll keep an eye on this project and this is just another reason for PMs to be “surfing the green wave“.