For an opening general overview report, Oberstar seeking a present delay, see here and here (source of the opening photo). Wikipedia has a "Cape Wind" entry, saying [without all links included], The Cape Wind Project is a $900 million proposed offshore wind farm on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound off Cape Cod in Massachusetts (41°32′31″N 70°19′16″W) proposed by a private developer, Cape Wind Associates. If the project moves forward on schedule, it will become one of the first offshore wind energy projects in the United States. The footprint for the proposed project covers 24 square miles, 13.8 miles from the island town of Nantucket. The project envisions 130 horizontal-axis wind turbines, each having a hub height of 440 feet — higher than the Statue of Liberty, which stands at 305 feet. The blade diameter is 364 feet. The turbines would be sited between 4-11 miles offshore depending on the shoreline. At peak generation, the turbines will generate 420 megawatts of renewable electricity. This is enough to meet the needs of 420,000 homes.
From the Wikipedia page, now when map coordinates are given, you can get locale stuff as for Cape Wind, with this image being from Google Maps/Images, showing the proposed site off Cape Cod:
The Europeans are pioneers in offshore wind farm planning and implementation, follow this Google for background. The idea is the offshore wind is steady, terrain and building effects are non-existant, and the size of wind turbines are less constrained offshore because neighborhood noise is not an impediment to maximizing economies of scale. But then, how is the power brought onshore to the grid, used for electrolysis in a hydrogen economy, or what other details attach as complications?
We know the Cape Wind people say they feel it is worth investing something short of a billion bucks to give it a try, despite opposition; with their website screenshot below showing this (click to enlarge and read):
But, lo and behold, politics plays a hand, and our Oberstar reportedly might be a surrogate player for Massachusetts opponents of Cape Wind. Plus, this is the regulatory power, and its shortcomings gaining media attention (this Google, and reporting) might or might not have been brought to a public focus from the east coast, even when hearing or reading "Minerals Management" makes us think of the Rockies, the Iron Range, and tailings waste problems everywhere that mining interests hold sway.
So, opponents reportedly include Ted Kennedy and Mitt Romney, while propaganda in favor of the project is on the project site [source of the below screen shot image - click the image to enlarge and read it]:
Change in the wind -- Time to OK Nantucket Sound project -- Saturday, December 06, 2008
...Cape Wind will not be a panacea for the region’s energy needs, but it could provide up to 170 megawatts of power annually, or 75 percent of the electricity needs of Cape Cod and the Islands. Whether it proves to be an economic success for its developers remains to be seen, but our nation — and New England, in particular — is in desperate need of innovative, low-carbon, environmentally friendly means of generating power for this and coming generations.
It’s time to let Cape Wind proceed.
Note: Click here to read this Worcester Telegram & Gazette Editorial
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College forum extols virtues of 'going green'-- Friday, December 05, 2008
It’s not always easy going green, but Cape Codders are more than willing to try. It’s just a matter of figuring out the best ways to do so. Ferreting out answers to that dilemma, and others, was the focus of a special green energy forum held Dec. 2 in the Lyndon P. Lorusso Applied Technology Building at Cape Cod Community College. Hosted by 4Cs president Kathy Schatzberg and facilitated by Richard Lawrence, coordinator of clean energy at the college, the event featured local green energy panelists and an update on state efforts from Ian Bowles, secretary of the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.
...Chris Powicki, president of the Cape and Islands Renewable Energy Collaborative (www.cirenew.org), discussed the group’s new CIGoGreen initiative, which includes a regional energy action plan...Powicki also told the standing-room-only crowd that it’s time to move forward with “The Project Not to be Named,” i.e. Cape Wind.“Locally it has to move forward,” he said. “We can’t just put our heads in the sand.” In Powicki’s opinion it’s time for Cape Cod residents to determine how they will leverage the project when it gets built, as opposed to “if.”
Bowles, serving as keynote speaker of the event, seemed to agree with Powicki. “Massachusetts is long on talking about renewable power,” he said. “We’ve allowed ourselves to be in a position where we haven’t done the building we need to do.”
Note: Click here to read this article in the Barnstable Patriot
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In Our Backyard, Please -- Friday, December 05, 2008
Traditional Cape Cod views are inching closer to a little exterior remodeling. The Cape Cod Wind Farm Project, which has been paralyzed in a heated debate between numerous advocates and a few notable protesters, is soon to win the added support of the Bush administration. With this increase in federal backing, the project has reached the point at which talk must end and action must start. Given that the project has been proven to provide a substantial amount of energy with limited environmental impact, the proposal put forth by Cape Wind, the company that would build this wind farm in Nantucket Sound, should be approved quickly.
Note: Click here to read this Harvard Crimson Editorial
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Kennedy family, caught in a NIMBY squeeze?
A different Wikipedia entry [again w/o links] says:
Hyannis Port is a small residential village and affluent summer community on Hyannis Harbor 2.3 km to the south-southwest of Hyannis. Central location: 41°37′56″N 70°18′11″W. It has a small U.S. Post Office (zip code 02647) next door to a small seasonal convenience store, The News Shop and Gallery. It is the location of the Kennedy Compound and other Kennedy family residences and is included in the National Register of Historic Places. It has one of the premier golf courses on Cape Cod, the Hyannisport Club, and is also home to the West Beach Club, the Hyannis Port Yacht Club, and the Hyannis Marina.
Royalty will have its way.
So if NIMBY affects local royalty, and raises hackles, we can presume -- and, for comparison purposes here is the same satellite regional image, showing where Hyannis Port lies relative to the proposed offshore wind farm, make of it what you will:
Also, millions are alleged to have been spent in opposition to this "clean, friendly, tree-hugging" energy proposal, and comment2 to the one online report opines:
Look further into this ploy by the anti-wind-farm group. Who is spending huge amounts of money to delay and prevent this development? It's Big Oil, Big Coal, doing whatever they can to stop the development of clean renewable energy. Shame on them!
Oberstar's letter comes at the request of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, a group backed and fronted by Bill Koch, CEO of Oxbow. Oxbow's primary businesses are the mining and marketing of energy and commodities such as coal, petroleum coke, oil production, and composite pipe manufacturing. The Alliance's central mission is to stop Cape Wind, no matter what it takes, and has spent well over $15 million dollars, primarily on lawsuits, lobbying efforts and deliberate public relations campaigns promoting fear mongering and misinformation.
I don't know that I see the situation that way. That simply.
To me, this entire thing smells of a set-up --- circles within circles --- dirty energy using NIMBY-feeling exposure against clean energy proposals and in its favor, and it would not surprise me if oil and coal interests are on both sides of this fray, behind the proposal to inspire NIMBY emotion, (and possibly without any real good faith intent to actually sink big bucks into making the thing a reality rather than an issue), with the same pack of folks then behind the opposition Alliance in order to publicize the NIMBY-fraught situation.
It would not be a first, for an environmental situation to be astroturfed around town as if grassroot, aimed to split-up the good guys and to benefit dark forces.
Oberstar does represent taconite mining interests in the Arrowhead-Mesabi region, that Boston-area Alliance has its mining ties, and the upshot of all this is the Kennedy family put into the awkward position of opposing green-friendly stuff, on a NIMBY appearing basis.
That politics is at play is easier to see than whose politics are influenced which way by which special interest. It's worth keeping a view on how things enfold, even though it is not directly Minnesota-local news.
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The ultra-GOP Koch family out of Wichita, Kansas, runs the one refinery there is in the Twin Cities. The "Bill Koch" of "Oxbow" mentioned in the one quote above, was born in Wichita. If any reader knows whether kinship exists binding the local refinery people with that "Alliance" in the Boston area, please post a comment.