by Jonathan Hiskes
Turbines like these will likely be coming to Cape Cod.Photo: Andjohan via Flickr
It’s been the mother of
all NIMBY battles, but now it’s closer to resolution: The Obama administration OK’d
the nation’s first offshore wind farm in the Nantucket Sound today, with
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar making
the announcement in Boston.
“I am approving the
Cape Wind project,” said Salazar. “This will be the first of many projects up
and down the Atlantic coast.”
The $1 billion project
will include 130 turbines off the coast of Cape Cod. It’s expected to produce
enough electricity to meet 75 percent of the demand on the Cape and the nearby
islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.
Local
opponents—including the Kennedy family—have opposed the project during a siting
dispute that’s lasted more than nine years. They’ve argued that the project would
disrupt the marine environment, mar ocean views, create too much noise, and
hurt commercial fishing. Many clean-energy advocates, on the other hand, have
argued that it’s an important flagship project for a fledgling industry that
needs to succeed if we’re going to put up a serious fight against climate
change. The result has been a public
intra-movement dispute among environmentalists, the most prominent example
of wilderness conservation priorities and clean-energy infrastructure running
into conflict.
Massachusetts Gov. Deval
Patrick (D) and Ian Bowles, secretary of the Massachusetts executive office of
environmental affairs, have long championed Cape Wind and are claiming the administration’s
decision as a victory. Bowles called the
announcement “the shot heard ‘round the world for American clean energy.”
Of course, other
countries are already far ahead of the U.S. in offshore wind: farms are churning off the coasts of Denmark, the U.K., and other coastal European
nations. In fact, Germany’s first offshore farm was just launched.
And even now, it’s not
clear how quickly the U.S. will catch up. Cape Wind faces several more regulatory hurdles and court challenges
that could take years to resolve. And
other offshore-wind proposals are likely to face serious scrutiny and
opposition too.
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