Dispatches
Island Institute Summary I
August 31, 2009
To the citizens of Maine, 
familial ties are particularly important. If your family tree spans anything less than four generations of established in Mainers or your family married outside of the state boundaries, you are considered “from Away.” As the saying goes, “A cat can have kittens in the oven, but it doesn’t mean their biscuits!” GLP is still debating this phrase as possibly being relevant to almost any and every situation. But I digress…
So it makes sense that in order for any initiative to develop, communities in Maine must autonomously decide what is best for their vitality. Flourishing around this concept, the Island Institute, a non-profit organization headquartered in Rockland, seeks to establish partnerships with Maine’s year round island and working water front communities to help conserve the island and marine biodiversity for generations to come.
Instead of leading the communities into different projects, the Island Institute provides information as well as guides the communities to resources that can assist them in finding ecological solutions. The projects are entirely developed and owned by, and designed to benefit, the community. In other words, the Institute is not the decision maker but rather a technical information service. Thus, one of the Island Institute’s most current and successful projects has been the Community Wind program.
Two hundred years ago, over 300 island communities around the Gulf of Maine harnessed wind energy to power their vessels and transport several goods across the open ocean. Today due to several factors, including the use of combustible engines and interstates, only about 15 year-round island communities still exist.
Undeniably, island life is one of fragility, and the nature of the island ecosystems is finite. According to statistics provided by the Island Institute, on average the cost of electricity per kilowatt hour in 2008 was around 10 cents nationally, 14 cents in Maine, 28 cents on the Fox Islands, and a whopping 70 cents on Monhegan! With the recent revival of capturing and translating energy through wind turbines, different regions around Maine are reconsidering their most precious and abundant resource. So of course, the answer my friend is blowing in the wind…
