The Boston Herald has an article titled, “Ex-partner of Boston wind exec charged,” about the business ties between the Massachusetts native who helped found controversial wind-energy developers Cape Wind and First Wind, Brian Caffyn, and the arrest in Italy of his ex-partner, Oreste Vigorito.  A National Wind Watch post says Vigorito, head of the IVPC energy company and president of Italy’s National Association of Wind Energy, was arrested on Tuesday in Naples. Vito Nicastri, a Sicilian business associate, was arrested in Alcamo, Sicily.

Speaking from Hong Kong, where Mr. Caffyn is now building wind-energy farms in China and the Philipines., he said, “I know of no fraud with (former partners) Oreste (Vigorito) and IVPC.”

The Boston Herald article centers more on Mr. Caffyn, a Massachusetts native who worked with Vigorito for seven years in Italy and, according to the article, even lived next door to each other for a time.

It seems, “Caffyn, who has amassed a fortune starting wind-energy companies, sold his interest in Cape Wind in 2002. He sold his interest in IVPC in 2005, according to First Wind spokesman John Lamontagne. Caffyn remains a shareholder and director with First Wind, Lamontagne wrote in an e-mail statement.”  Darn, it seems there are more wind companies than there are wind turbines!

But the little gem tucked away in the article that caught my eye was this, In 2006, the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University undertook the most comprehensive review yet of Cape Wind’s public subsidies.

“What we found was quite remarkable,” David Tuerck, the institute’s executive director, said at the time. “Cape Wind stands to receive subsidies worth $731 million, or 77 percent of the cost of installing the project and 48 percent of the revenues it would generate. The policy question that this amount of subsidy raises is whether the project’s benefit is worth the huge public subsidies that the developer gets.”

Yeah, we’re wondering the same thing here in the Allegheny Mountains.

(used with permission of Windtoons.com)

Related links:  “Chugging soon into your home town – “The Green Energy Subsidy Express” – be careful not to play on the tracks!” … “West Virginia’s Pinnacle Knob Wind Project – So many questions, so little time!” … “If the wind is free, why do we have to pay you to take it?” …  “AFL-CIO, upset about China/US Wind venture, says, “Hell No! We Won’t Send Our Tax Dollars to China!”