Cape Wind Battle Won: What About Wind Power War?

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced today that he is approving the 130-turbine Cape Wind project to be erected in a 24-square mile block of Nantucket Sound.  The nine-year saga for the nation's first offshore wind farm to win governmental approval to move forward with construction may be drawing to a close, but we doubt it.

The decision was hailed by Sec. Salazar with his statement, "This will be the first of many projects up and down the Atlantic coast."  Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick was beaming after supporting the project, as was Ian Bowles, secretary of the Massachusetts executive office of environmental affairs.  Sec. Bowles called the announcement "the shot heard 'round the world for American clean energy."  The only problem with that claim is that Cape Wind, the project's developer, will use wind turbines bought from Germany's Siemens.  So will New York Senator Chuck Shumer's "Buy American" legislation derail the project?

There remain a number of hurdles for the project to overcome before it can move forward.  First, and foremost, is negotiating a contract for the power with the state's main utility, National Grid.  Recently, National Grid's deal to purchase surplus power from a proposed wind farm off Rhode Island's Block Island was rejected by the state's public utility commission as too expensive.  The negotiated price was $0.243 per kilowatt-hour, nearly three times the price National Grid can buy power from traditional power suppliers.  Cape Wind and National Grid were supposedly discussing a price for the Massachusetts power in the same range, but after what happened in Rhode Island, they may have to rethink negotiations.

Cape Wind still has not received final approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, which has rated the wind farm "a presumed hazard" because of potential interference with airplane radar.  Cape Wind still must win legal approval for nine state and local permits that are being appealed in the courts.  Lastly, there are numerous threats of litigation over this decision, including from the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound and other environmental groups.  Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, however, are both supporting the project.  The coastal Wampanoag tribe, which has challenged the wind farm because of its disruptive impact on its daily rituals, said at the beginning of the week that it was preparing to file suit. 

Buried in the announcement of Sec. Salazar's approval were comments that the official record of the decision would be made available later and would spell out ways in which the government could mitigate any negative effects on coastal views by adjusting the number, orientation and color of the turbines.  That statement is ominous since Sec. Salazar tried to negotiate an agreement between the Indians, the National Park Service and Cape Wind earlier by suggesting various mitigating factors.  Given the record of this administration with the Stimulus and Health Care bills, the devil clearly is in the details and one has to wonder whether the project might still fail over these changes.  

The greatest irony of this decision may be that Senator Scott Brown (R-MA), who won the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's (D-MA) seat who violently opposed Cape Wind, also is against the project.  It seems politics and wind farms make strange bedfellows.