George H.W. Bush has installed a 33-foot- high wind turbine at Walker's Point, the former president's summer home, in Kennebunk- port, Maine.
(Jack Milton/Portland Press Herald via Associated Press)
His son may be known as a big friend to Big Oil, but George Herbert Walker Bush is showing a green streak these days.
The former president earlier this month installed a 33-foot-high, $14,000 electricity-generating wind turbine at Walker's Point, the Bush clan's Kennebunkport, Maine, summer home.
Bush père hasn't gone completely save-the-Earth, of course. When the time comes to "prudently recreate," as the former president once famously put it, his choice of watercraft remains a 28-foot Cigarette speedboat powered by two gas-chugging 185-horsepower engines.
With steady Maine coast breezes, the Southwest Windpower Skystream 3.7 turbine should produce around 400 kilowatt-hours a month of electricity. That's 80 percent of a typical home's power demand. Not that the 26-room Bush place is a typical home.
Jim Appleby, a spokesman in the former president's Houston office, said "we honestly won't know until this time next year" how much power the turbine will produce and how much it will save the Bushes on their electric bills. With the home largely vacant this winter, the Bushes can sell surplus electricity from the turbine back into the Maine grid, building up bill credits before they return for the summer. The Walker's Point home had solar heating and power panels installed in the 1980s, Appleby said.
"The president and Mrs. Bush do appreciate the savings they'll get," Appleby said of the wind turbine. "It's totally an independent decision on their part. It's not to make any statement."
Mat Lanigan, chairman of the Kennebunkport selectmen, said the Bush turbine has been "kind of a nonevent.
"If you look for it, you see it, but in my opinion it's not obtrusive. I haven't heard any complaints or comments."
PETER J. HOWE
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