Wind break

GOVERNOR Mitt Romney yesterday added the Mirant Canal Power Plant in Sandwich on Cape Cod to the list of Massachusetts oil- and coal-burning facilities that have agreed to reduce their polluting emissions under his watch. These cleanups are long overdue; the nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide that will be curbed cause smog, acid rain, and respiratory ailments.

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Still, the action doesn't make much of a dent in the greenhouse gas emissions that the state -- along with others in the Northeast and the Canadian eastern provinces -- is committed to reduce.

On this score, Romney is part of the problem, not the solution. He opposes the Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound that would supply 75 percent of the Cape's electricity without producing any of the pollutants that even cleaned-up fossil fuel plants still emit: nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, mercury, and carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is the most common manmade source of greenhouse gases that are the cause of climate change.

This spring, the Romney administration unveiled its Climate Protection Plan, which recommitted it to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2010. That plan specifically calls for state support of renewable energy projects. The climate plan also calls on state agencies to reduce barriers to renewable energy development. But Romney's Energy Facilities Siting Board has delayed action for months on an uncontroversial part of the wind project -- its cable connection to the power grid on the Cape.

The wind farm's 130 turbines are planned for federal waters and thus are under the purview of the Army Corps of Engineers, not the state, though the project is still fulfilling both state and federal environmental requirements. Romney is right to lament that there is no federal regulatory framework for offshore wind development similar to the leasing system for oil and gas drilling on the outer continental shelf. Congress has been delinquent in not creating such regulations.

But Romney has made it clear he would oppose Cape Wind even if there were such a framework. Speaking to Globe editors and reporters yesterday, he said he feared the project would harm Cape tourism. But a wind farm off the western coast of Denmark has been well received by both locals and tourists, a point made by two speakers, including a Dane, at last Thursday's hearing on the project in Cambridge.

The hearing was one of four the Army Corps has conducted, including three on the Cape and islands, to gather public views on the draft environmental statement it has compiled. That draft said the project would have little effect on the environment. It would, however, make the state a world leader in renewable energy, a goal that a technology-minded governor like Romney should embrace.