The effort which was put in for getting this bill passed did not even help it to get past the House Economic Matters Committee. But this year, this bill has already managed to get twenty two co sponsors which include the influential Brian Feldman, the Montgomery County Democrat who is also a member of the Economic Matters Committee and Barbara Frush, from the counties of Prince George and Anne Arundel. Kevin Kelley & LeRoy Myers have also signed this bill as co-sponsors. This bill was introduced on Friday and doesn’t attempt at indicating what the performance standards were going to be. Instead of this, Beitzel said that the bill was going to need the Public Service Commission of the state as well as the Department of Natural Resources to join forces and develop standards which would help in regulating tower height, size and number of blades, noise, lighting on or near turbines, rotor diameter & setbacks.

“I had a feeling, I had quite a lot of support the previous year,” said Beitzel. “It finally came down to the fact that the administration did not wish to have anything come in between the development of windmills.” Beitzel also said the the Governor, Martin O’Malley saw these bills as something which would restrict windmill development with all it’s conditions. “But this time, there are many people from both sides which have signed with the bill and this i going to help us a lot,” he said.

Why has this turnaround occured? “The awareness has grown about the need of alternative energy sources but there are cases in which the development of these sources would be adding to electricity cost as well as create problems for the environment which were not considered earlier,” he said.

The spokesman for the industry of wind energy, Frank Maisano says that he is skeptical of the good intentions which Beitzel may have. He said that Beitzel was a leading advocate against new wind projects that came into the state. He also said that it made no sense to get detailed standards of performance as technology seems to be advancing so rapidly.  Maisano also said that any general standards of performance with regard to wind projects may jeopardize companies that develop wind energy from getting the required finance for completing such projects as a few arbitrary standards have been put in place.