First U.S. offshore wind farm approved; off Massachusetts

WASHINGTON — Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Wednesday approved the nation's first offshore wind farm, the 130-turbine Cape Wind project off Cape Cod, Mass., and said the power of strong winds over the Atlantic Ocean would be an important part of the U.S. drive to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

European countries have been building offshore wind farms for 20 years, and China is building its first, off Shanghai.

Other U.S. states along the Atlantic coast and the Great Lakes also are looking into building wind farms.

The Cape Wind project, however, has been hung up for nine years as opponents — landowners, two Native American tribes and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation — objected to its cost and its impact on views.

U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, a Democrat who represents Cape Cod, and Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., said they favor wind power as an energy source but opposed Cape Wind.

Brown opposed

Brown said Nantucket Sound was a national treasure that should not be used for wind power, and that the wind farm would harm Cape Cod's tourism and fishing.

The project was long opposed by Brown's predecessor, the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. The turbines would be visible from the Kennedy family compound in Hyannisport, though Salazar said steps have been taken to improve the view.

The decision comes a month after the Obama administration approved more offshore oil and gas drilling. At a news conference, Salazar was asked about an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico from a deepwater rig that exploded last week.

Salazar said the Interior Department was watching the spill carefully. He added that "my own view" is the country needed to move away from fossil fuels.

"Our overdependence on fossil fuels has created a problem we have in this country which has endangered our national security and at the same time has created the challenge we have with responding to the warming of the planet," Salazar said.

Offshore wind farms have been proposed off Rehoboth Beach, Del.; Boston; Atlantic Beach, Atlantic City and Avalon in New Jersey; in North Carolina's Eastern Pamlico Sound; in Lake Erie off Cleveland; off Block Island and Sakonnet in Rhode Island; and off Galveston, Texas.

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound said opponents would attempt to stop the wind farm in court.

"We will not stand by and allow our treasured public lands to be marred forever by a corporate giveaway to private industrial energy developers," the group's president and CEO, Audra Parker, said in a statement.

Plans for Cape Wind call for construction to begin within a year.

Its 130 turbines would be in a grid pattern over a 25-square-mile area of Nantucket Sound. The closest turbine to land would be about five miles from Cape Cod.

200,000 homes

Cape Wind will supply a maximum 468 megawatts of electricity, about the output of a medium-sized coal-fired electricity plant, or enough for about 200,000 homes in Massachusetts.

The Interior Department said it would reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by the equivalent of taking 175,000 cars off the road.

The developer, Energy Management, said the wind turbines would appear a half-inch above the horizon from the nearest beach.

Salazar said the developer was required to reduce the number of turbines from an original plan for 170, reconfigure their arrangement and paint them off-white to reduce their visibility.

Additional information from Bloomberg News