||| FROM ELISABETH ROBSON |||
On Friday, March 28, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) sent out notifications that OPALCO has applied for a draft license application for their Rosario Strait Tidal Energy Project; OPALCO posted about this application on Saturday, March 29 here in the Orcasonian. The application is 523 pages long.
It’s unlikely most people in the county have read the entire application, or visited the website of the company that manufactures the tidal energy machine OPALCO would like to put into Rosario Strait, or watched the many videos the company has produced showing this machine. So, many may not realize what the O2X actually is. OPALCO describes the O2X made by Orbital Marine as a “device,” a word that brings to mind something rather small.
This “device” is approximately the size of a 747 aircraft in width and length. It weighs about four times more than a 747, and its blades are 30 times as wide as the engine of a 747—each O2X blade is 49 feet, making the diameter of each rotor at least 98 feet. This machine is massive. An online video shows some of the construction and moving of the O2 and you can get a sense of the monstrous size of the machine when humans stand next to it and are completely dwarfed by it.
OPACLO’s article frames the tidal energy project as a “new source of clean, locally produced, renewable electricity,” one that will “satisfy increased demand for electricity.” Yet, despite the massive size of the O2X, including a total swept area for both nacelles of 7,600 square feet, the machine will generate electricity only for an average of about 400 homes. This is about 4% of the approximately 9,000 households in San Juan County. And how much will it cost us to supply electricity to an average of 400 homes? $40 million for a machine that will last only 25 years.
OPALCO goes to great lengths to tell us the money to pay for the O2X will come from a federal grant. However, the machine will require $300,000 in annual maintenance, $550,000 refurbishment after each 10 years of operation, crew to maintain and inspect the machine, along with a manufacturing plant to put the machine together and get it installed after the parts have been shipped from the UK, along with the people to do that work. Will the grant cover all of that too? A “grant” is money from the US taxpayers, which is still us (although obviously spread out over many more people). Who will pay for the inevitable overruns? Who will pay for the insurance? Who will pay for clean up if something goes catastrophically wrong? Who will pay damages if someone sues OPALCO over this machine for violating the law or for the impacts of an accident? Who will pay if the tidal energy machine becomes a stranded asset?
OPALCO has claimed that the O2X will supply electricity in the event of a grid outage. At one of the town hall events in January of this year, I asked OPALCO about this, and they said that in the event of an outage, the power would be directed to a few emergency sites as of course a machine that can power only 400 homes would not be able to supply the entire county with electricity in the event of a grid outage. This power would be intermittent, as the machine only generates power with the tides; at slack tide, no power is generated at all. So even emergency power would not be on all the time. In addition, do we know if the County has the ability to direct power to emergency locations such as a warming shelter? If not, who will pay for upgrades to our grid to allow this kind of selective electricity supply?
OPALCO has claimed multiple times that they are following the engagement process with the affected tribes in the region. However, we know from a February 26, 2025 letter to FERC from the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community that the tribe is disgusted with how OPALCO has engaged with them. They write in their letter that there appears “to be limited effort to engage the Swinomish Tribe as equal partners in decision-making,” and OPALCO has been “overwhelmingly non-responsive” to the Tribe’s concerns.
The Swinomish previously raised many questions and concerns back in October, 2024, long before our community was aware OPALCO was planning to submit a preliminary permit application to FERC on January 15, 2025. OPALCO’s canned response to most of their concerns was that more information would be forthcoming when the draft license agreement was filed. Now that OPALCO has filed this draft license application, we hope to hear more from the Swinomish Tribe about whether any of their concerns are adequately addressed.
In the meantime, my assessment of the draft license application is that it does not fully address my own concerns, many of which mirror those of the Swinomish Tribe. To take just one of many examples, the Swinomish filed a concern about the deployment of anchors and mooring systems that will likely have a significant impact to the benthic environment. At the time the Swinomish filed their concerns (in fall, 2024), OPALCO responded by saying “A detailed analysis, using the best scientific information, will be used to evaluate potential effects of the anchoring and mooring systems to the benthic environment in the Draft License Application.”
We learn from the draft license application that the catenary mooring system, consisting of four mooring chains and anchors, will drag across the seabed and potentially impact an area up to 1056 feet by almost 2000 feet.
The area where the O2X would be installed is Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) and within the Marine Biological Preserve, and yet there is the potential to completely destroy a large area of benthic habitat due to the sweep of mooring lines as the machine pivots with the tides, twice a day.
From my studies of floating offshore wind turbines, I know that aside from the direct damage inflicted by chains scraping across the seabed, this scraping motion can also raise significant amounts of sediment that can damage an area of marine habitat far larger than the area directly impacted by the chains. OPALCO claims that “while the northern part of the turbine area appears sedimented, this sediment layer is likely very thin.” Perhaps we won’t know about potential sediment disturbance until the machine is in operation unless more studies of the seabed are completed.
In addition to the mooring lines, 4 gravity anchors measuring 36 feet by 36 feet by 8.2 feet and weighing 35 tons each may be used to keep the mooring lines in place, if rock anchors are not used instead. This is another 120 square feet of damage to the seabed.
Other potential impacts to the benthic habitat as well as to all marine life in the area of this machine are the effects of corrosion from the blades and of the antifouling coatings applied to the exterior and interior surfaces of the machine that are exposed to seawater. These antifouling coatings—biocides—typically contain metals, including aluminum, zinc, copper, and indium, all of which are toxic to marine life in high enough quantities. A recent study in Nature’s npj Ocean Sustainability found that metals from the erosion of these coatings from offshore wind turbines can accumulate in marine species.
The O2X’s spinning blades are glass-fiber reinforced epoxy, meaning they include plastic. As we know from offshore wind turbines, these plastics are shed in huge quantities over the lifetime of turbine blades, contaminating the marine environment with thousands of pounds of microplastics over the lifetime of the blades. While the blades of the O2X are smaller than a wind turbine’s blades, we can assume that these blades will likewise be shedding microplastics into the marine environment, an environment already chock full of microplastics that is poisoning marine life and killing plankton.
While OPALCO likes to frame this massive experiment they are planning to perform in the Salish Sea as “clean energy”, this machine is anything but “clean” in its potential impact to the marine environment. It will cost many millions of dollars to produce a tiny 4% of the county’s average electricity use, electricity that will be eaten up by new housing within a mere 4 years at current growth rates in San Juan County.
I would urge all San Juan County residents to read the materials related to this project, which I have gathered and posted at Protect The Coast Pacific Northwest under Tidal Energy Project – Washington.
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OPALCO has noted the concerns of our members including Elizabeth Robson’s extensive concerns. We’ve attempted to address concerns as they come up but there are still many unknowns. This project and technology are still in early phases and our understanding of the impacts and tribal support are unfolding in real time. OPALCO respects the feedback of all the Tribal Nations we have engaged with and continue to improve our efforts as we receive more. It’s our hope that the Draft License Application will provide much of the information that has been requested and open the doors for the next level of engagement.
As a community, we all need to be thinking of solutions to the climate crisis. The potential for the upcoming increases to our population, food production, water scarcity, power grid instability, etc. and the massive amount of infrastructure adjustments that will be required is staggering. Our community is at a crossroads. We need to find a way to balance climate change trade-offs for our community’s essential services so we can ensure our community remains sustainable well into the future. OPALCO feels like we should NOT wait until these things are dire before finding solutions that will benefit our community. We remain committed to finding innovative solutions while also preserving our natural environment. There will be no perfect solutions, so we all need to be thinking about what trade-offs we as a community are willing to make. Please engage with us to address these big issues with realistic and feasible ideas – whether or not this project is deemed to move forward – we will need many different solutions and projects to meet the needs of our energy future.
Thank you for sharing the information you’ve gathered on the OPALCO project, Elisabeth. The website link you provided is a terrific source of additional info on offshore projects throughout the country. What a great resource.
We need to be concerned about the costs of this project – both the financial and ecological ones. We are grateful for the reliable, concrete info and reputable facts you shared that OPALCO seems to be withholding.
Extremely disappointed to hear about the Swinomish tribe being sidelined as a stakeholder. Shame on you OPALCO. Transparency please.
I am all for OPALCO moving forward with tidal generation. There is a long way to go to fully evaluate this machine before OPALCO can make a final decision. Environmental impact and costs are certainly the key issues. If it can be implemented with acceptable risks, a bit of San Juan County needs can be met. We are going to need more.
The realities are we are at the final end of the power transmission system. Our loads are growing. More people are moving here. BPA’s cables are very close to their safe operating limits. Our BPA power supply contract is coming to an end in 2028. What a renegotiated contract will look like is unknown. Loads on the mainland are surging. BPA is not engaging in building new generation. Not enough new generation is being planned and it takes years to get them on line. The cost of power is going to rise rapidly.
So if you value having safe, reliable electricity here in San Juan County, I suggest you get behind OPALCO’s efforts to solve all these electric power issues. Bailer Hill Community Solar should have been approved years ago. In fact, we should be well into the next solar project. Have tidal sources will solve only a small part of our power problems. But we must get on with these efforts now.
If we weren’t here, this project would be unnecessary. But we are here, and we’re expending energy at a historic rate.
So, we’re learning, and learning as we all know is an expensive process. Our numbers increasing, we cannot afford to stop learning how to provide clean energy in the face of increasing demand considering the alternative: business as usual. We have a pretty good idea of where business as usual goes, and we’re doing our best to keep environmental costs down as we proceed down a path that is softer, but far from perfectly soft.
We need to support OPALCO’s efforts else worse befall.
I would urge those supporting the tidal machine to remember two things:
1) new forms of energy (and energy generation) add to the total energy used by the world; they do not replace old forms of energy. This has been true through the recent history of humans, and is true now. A tidal machine will do absolutely nothing to address climate change. It might supply a small amount of energy, but given the growth rate of the county, we’ll be back to where we were before the tidal machine in a few short years, in terms of growth in electricity use and reliance on the main grid to supply energy to X number of homes & businesses.
2) Due to its massive size and the amount of steel used to create this machine, it is appropriate to think of the machine as a floating coal mine. The harms from this machine begin the moment the digger extends its giant shovel into the ground to extract coal, nickel, iron ore. The harm only accumulates from there.
I share Elisabeth Robson’s concerns about the Rosario Tidal Energy Project, but believe they are outweighed by the benefits. Even though it would supply only 4% of the County’s power, that could well serve as a bulwark against the complete power outage we are likely to experience soon — by providing power to essential services like those provided by the medical center. Of course, that would depend on being able to store electrical energy for when the tide is slack, but I imagine that can be done using existing battery storage at the Decatur and planned Bailer Hill photovoltaic arrays. And there would have to be some kind of switching system to direct that power to those essential needs, which I imagine is already in the planning stages.
And we have to recognize that this project is an EXPERIMENT — with the usual unknowns that will (hopefully) be determined better once the project is under way and operating. Those unknown include impacts on the marine environment, at which we are only guessing right now. Somebody has to do such an experiment, so why not Orcas Island, which has an abundant resource of tidal energy waiting to be tapped?
The responses of OPALCO and its advocates all cite the need to meet growing demand, “more people moving here”; and yet, this one tidal project would meet only 4% of our current demand. How many more tidal generators or solar fields will it take to meet the projected future demand (an addition of 1,712 people over the next twenty years for a total population of 19,423 https://www.sanjuancountywa.gov/1079/Comprehensive-Plan-Update) ? This is not OALCO’s problem; it is the County’s. Perhaps, as Ms. Robson and others have suggested in the past, the County should start looking at the real resource limits to it’s carrying capacity: water, power supply, tax-supported public services budgets, and, yes, housing. The County has the power to set limits to residential buildout capacity via permit quotas, just a they have done with vacation rentals; and they likewise can establish quotas favoring permits for “affordable” housing. I would suggest that it’s time to stop relying on increasing supply and start looking at limiting demand.
I’m reminded of a conversation that I had with old Vern Coffelt years ago, (bless his kind soul), when he told me that he was one of OPALCO’s first employees. He said it wasn’t called OPALCO yet and his job was to canvas Orcas Island with a clipboard and try and get enough signatures to sign a petition saying that we wanted electricity out here in order to get the ball rolling. He said that you wouldn’t believe the number of people that looked him in the eyes and said, “Vern, what in the world would I ever need electricity for?” Look at us now, three or four generations later and here we are… we can’t live without it.
Let me say that I appreciate OPALCO for what they do for our islands, and for them listening to the people. Know that I’m on the same page as the rest of you in that I’m supportive of alternative energy production systems that will, hopefully, provide us with low-carbon output, reliable power at an affordable cost, that will improve our self-resilience and lower our ecological footprint. This is the commonality that we all share.
Though I’ve read much material relative to alternative energy production (including off-shore wind and tidal generating stations), I’ll admit that I havn’t read OPALCO’s report, and that I’m certainly not an expert on the subject. I do have friends, however, that are, (experts on both sides of the equation), and I’ve listened to them and have read the material that they’ve provided, this allowing me to see some of the pros and cons that are related to the issue.
In relation to this project I feel there’s been a lack of clarity. That is, when selling a product or an idea to the people, a company, any company, will normally push the positives while downplaying the negatives… until they are forced to do otherwise. In this regard it’s good to hear you “Krista” (when speaking for OPALCO) admit that you don’t have all of the answers, and that “there are many unknowns”. As Tom suggested above, this is what a feasibility study is all about. So here we are.
As an island community thinking about OPALCO’s proposed floating tidal electricity production facility one needs to consider the feasibility of initiating such a project (both physically and economically), as well as it’s long-term viability– how will this affect our monthly utility bills, what is the Economic Return On Investment (EROI) throughout it’s 10 year half-life and its 20 year End of Life (EOL) cycle? And when weighing the advantages against the disadvantages one certainly needs to consider the environmental harm done.
When listening to the proponents and reading many people’s comments I hear a lot about the need for “more,” because under our current system we’re going to continue to grow, and that we will consequently be consuming “more.” What I don’t hear much about is “less”, (degrowth and conservation on a mass scale). The industry proponents are continually pushing for “more” power generation, while the environmental proponents are continually pushing for “less” (less growth, less use).
“If we weren’t here, this project would be unnecessary. But we are here, and we’re expending energy at a historic rate.”
The problem isn’t simply because “we are here,” it’s because “we’re expending energy at a historic rate.”
I agree with Elisabeth’s concerns. Everything we do has a cost to the environment and other living creatures … including ourselves. But we have to keep in mind that there is a contest of scale underway: a plethora of small projects reduces the need for a larger and more damaging one. Right now we are competing with oncoming central generation stations running on fossil fuels.
The problem isn’t just the county, it’s everywhere. To save what we have here, do we offload our needs onto the greater world, the consequences of which we all suffer? Yes, there will be consequences anyway, but our thinking really does have to change. We live on islands and feel as though we are in a different world. We’re not. And yes, we’ve left “them” behind, but we have no right to assume that given the same opportunity, “they” wouldn’t ultimately step up. Islands or not, we’re all in this together, and thinking only local is a pointless mind game.
Elisabeth is right. I’m not happy about the price we will have to pay here, but if we step back, the price will be higher and righting the wrongs we have stood by and watched for generations will take longer.
There is far more efficiency in large projects than in small ones, if one is concerned about efficiencies. From that perspective a few large generating stations would be far far more efficient than many small projects.
You say we’re “competing with … stations running on fossil fuels.” This O2 machine is built from fossil fuels. 680 metric tons of steel requires 530 metric tons of coal just to make that steel. More for the plastic blades. Add in the fossil fuels burned in mining the materials to make the machine, refining all those materials, transporting them, manufacturing, maintenance, and more and … are we even sure the EROEI of this machine is > 1? I’m not. Not at all.
Every bite of food we put in our mouths, 9/10 calories in that food is fossil fuels.
Every time we drive a car — no matter what is under the hood — we are driving around 2.5 tons of coal used to manufacture the steel in that car, plus more for the plastic bodies, seats, etc. Massive amounts of coal is burned to make the millions of miles of steel pipes that are required to extract oil that gets turned into gasoline in massive steel refineries, which we then burn in our cars, or used in crackers used to make the plastic that goes into the cars, or to make graphite, the number 1 ingredient in EV batteries.
Every time we drive on a road we are driving on coal and bitumen and concrete made with coal, made with machines made with steel made with coal and fueled by diesel.
There is no escaping fossil fuels without a radical change in how we live our lives, a shift far more all-encompassing than simply changing the technology by which we supply electricity to our homes.
Buying a machine to supply electricity here just frees up a tiny bit of electricity to be used somewhere else in the system. As I said above, more new energy does NOT replace old energy. It adds more energy which leads to more growth, which then requires more energy to maintain. We can power 400 new homes, so let’s build 400 new homes to power! More wear and tear on the roads, more coal and bitumen and concrete to repair those roads. And the cycle of destruction continues.
“[D]o we offload our needs onto the greater world”? Always. The footprint of San Juan County is *massive*. I don’t know what percent of our “needs” are met here, but I’m guessing it wouldn’t be far off to say less than 1%. 99% of our “needs” are met by the greater world. Powering a tiny fraction of SJC homes with a massive machine that will do damage to the Salish Sea won’t change that AT ALL. Indeed, we may be directly responsible for increased deaths in parts of the world we barely think about due to the extra coal mining, extra pollution from refining nickel and iron ore. A lot of iron ore comes from the Amazon rainforest in South America, where the forest is dying for our electricity and other steel “needs” right here.
The floating coal mine called the O2 will not solve any of our problems. 4 years and 400 new homes after installation we will be exactly as dependent on the grid as we are the day we install it. And how many pounds of toxics will be released into the Salish Sea during that time? How many marine species will be killed by those chains and those blades?
We are indeed all in this together. Including the people who’d rather not have their land, water, and air polluted by a coal mine and a nickel mine and an iron ore mine and refineries and steel blast furnaces and factories to build this machine so we can pat ourselves on the back and pretend we’re doing something good.
No one is claiming that we can meet all of our own energy needs. As I read the target, it is to assure the county that emergency needs can be met … with non-fossil power. The county’s growth is a factor in many equations, but not so much in meeting triaged emergency needs.
As for the amount of metal in a project, nothing beats a coal plant in dedicated metal mass, gas plants coming in second. Yes, there will be plenty of metal in OPALCO’s projects, but the intention is to reduce the CO2 and natural destruction.
We all know that a zero score on both of these counts is not going to happen, but if with energy, fortitude and messaging OPALCO cannot get the necessary permits, what follows will be worse, though on our islands we may be blissfully unaware of the carnage on the mainland. This is part of the problem of island mentality (which I share but am aware of): “What happens there doesn’t, thank heaven, happen here.” Well, it does and it will.
We have a part to play and it won’t be fun. Many of us will feel grief. We’re in for a long trip, and things aren’t going to be the same in our lifetimes if ever. Life will adapt with or without us. I’d rather it were “with.” We, and the rest of life, will take losses on the way. OPALCO’s projects are on a learning curve, and so are we.
I laid out why the machine is a financial risk.
I laid out why it will not help mitigate climate change in any way.
I laid out why it will be destructive to the Earth (mines, etc.) and the Salish Sea specifically.
I laid out how in a brief four years we’d be back to where we were in dependency on the mainland grid after growth eats up the new electricity.
I simply do not understand your most recent response, Bill. Can you possibly restate in some other way, because I am at a loss. Thank you!
To Brian: I agree; I have suggested the county consider degrowth as a foundation for future planning, but no one seems willing to contemplate this in the slightest. There is a growing degrowth (yes, I know!) movement around the world, that the county is blithely ignoring. As I’ve laid out before, degrowth *is* our future, whether we choose it ourselves, now, or wait for it to be forced upon us. My preference would be for us to choose it ourselves, and begin today.
All investments are financial risks. This is inherent in investment, not an argument.
Saying that the power produced is insufficient to power the whole county implies a misstatement of the project’s purpose. OPALCO seeks to fulfill a requirement of resilience: necessary triaged power., not full county power requirements.
All manufactured materials involving metals, involve mines. Every act has consequences, requiring benefits against burdens. Does the fact that a project imposes burdens automatically doom the project? How the entire Salish Sea is burdened is not disclosed.
We will always be dependent on ties to the mainland to provide our full energy requirements. No one is pretending otherwise. See the second line of this response.
Degrowth is not a rational option, and will either or both not attract sufficient support upon which a long term economy can be based, or be short-lived, as to which read “Utopias on Puget Sound” by Charles LeWarne. Degrowth is responsive to a transient (longer for some than others) human mood, but is not congruent with the creatures that we are and so resides in the annals of academia.. I read it too.
FYI: the Swinomish Tribe has asked FERC for an extension to comment on the Draft License Application. In their letter, they write:
“… it is only with the DLA filing last week that the Tribe has been made aware that the Applicant seeks an expedited – and significantly truncated – public review and comment timeline. At no point in the past two-plus years of conversation has the Applicant ever mentioned that it would bypass the normal Integrated License Process under §5 of the Federal Power Act to shorten the public engagement timeline. … despite the Tribe’s repeated requests to participate in study and monitoring plan creation and to receive substantive information about the Project far ahead of the Applicant’s DLA filing, no substantive information was shared and no opportunities to collaborate on study and monitoring plans were granted by the Applicant. The Tribe believes that the pilot project timeline waivers that Applicant seek present an unreasonably short timeframe in which meaningful review and government-to-government consultation can occur.”
“… the tidal turbine technology that Applicant proposes to deploy in Rosario Strait is new technology that has not been tested in Washington waters. The Project, which will have a footprint of several dozen acres, is proposed for the middle of designated “critical habitat” for four (4) Endangered Species Act-listed (“ESA-listed”) species.”
“… the Applicant seeks a 10-year pilot project permit for this new in-water technology. That is a significant amount of time to merely test a new technology. And, while this may be designated a “pilot” project the reality is that the Project would be a full-sized tidal turbine operating in the waters. Applicant has indicated that it intends to seek a full, formal license from FERC after the pilot permit ends, meaning that once the technology is deployed, it may not leave the water for several years or decades. As a result, it is imperative that if this new technology is to be given the privilege of operating in adjudicated usual and accustomed fishing areas of eight (8) tribal nations, including Swinomish, the DLA review and comment period must allow time for thorough and thoughtful review. Indeed, before the Tribe can support up to a 100-acre incursion into its adjudicated Treaty fishing area, it must fully understand the risks and be afforded the opportunity to ensure that all proposed PM&E measures are adequate to protect the Tribe’s resources and interests.”
You can view the Tribe’s full request to FERC here: https://www.protectthecoastpnw.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/SwinomishRequestTime_April2025.pdf
OPALCO began outreach with the Tribal Nations in 2022 including the Swinomish. We have just gotten their two latest letters to FERC and are working to respond to them through FERC and address the concerns they have. We are supportive of their feedback and will address the concerns accordingly. The short timeline to file the DLA was set by our grant funding through DOE. As this is a pilot project, a shorter timeline is built into the process. We did not file any specific waivers to speed up the project or comment period, that is just part of the nature of this sort of filing. OPALCO is supportive of extending the comment period as requested by the Swinomish.
Tidal energy is without a doubt one of the most underdeveloped energy sources in the world. If a wealthy county composed of islands with significant tidal flow doesn’t advance the technology then who will? Who has more to gain than us?
There is a reason this is called a PILOT project; it’s not intended to solve the problem, it’s intended to help us LEARN how to solve the problem. Tidal power generation of course has unique challenges, but so did every other non-fossil fuel technology when it first started. It’s very easy to sit behind a screen and explain at great length why something won’t work; surely it is better to focus our attention towards creating something that might help, rather than tearing down other’s efforts?
Ken, I’m not trying to “tear down others efforts”. I’m trying to point out that none of the arguments FOR tidal (regardless of who makes them) make sense.
Could you explain how the tidal machine will “help”? Help what, exactly? As I’ve explained:
* it will not do anything to mitigate climate change;
* the power it produces is tiny in comparison to the demand by San Juan County, and growth will likely far outstrip any short term gain in electricity produced within just a few years;
* it will certainly hurt many, both human and non-human, with the destruction and pollution created to mine the materials, refine those materials, ship the materials, build the machine, and once it’s in the water the pollution and potential destruction of what is supposedly a protected area (although “protection” doesn’t seem to mean much these days);
* it may financially hurt rate payers significantly.
So if you could explain how it will help, I’d definitely appreciate it.
The reason OPALCO is in this position to be looking at hugely expensive “solutions” to our demand, is because we here in San Juan County refuse to decrease our demand. That’s on us. I can’t even get a decent conversation about degrowth going because everyone just dismisses it out of hand. I am laughing as I write this because I’m thinking of something I recently heard from a friend of mine about how he’d just installed heated outdoor sidewalks for someone. Presumably for the 3 days we have icy sidewalks here in the county. Heated outdoor sidewalks? Are you kidding me? We’d rather spend $40 million for a machine + a whole lot more for all that goes with it rather than take a long hard look at all the things we waste energy on? I’m sorry, but how is this sane in any way?