Here’s some news for those of us who love to cruise on Nantucket Sound. Cape Wind, which was supposed to build the first offshore wind farm in the U.S. with up to 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound, is dead. It isn’t going to happen. Indeed, Cape Wind, based in Boston, has notified the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management that it has terminated its wind development lease covering 25 acres about 5 miles off Cape Cod in the area of Horseshoe Shoal.
The idea had been to develop a 468-megawatt offshore wind farm, creating enough energy to power 200,000 homes in Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. Started in 2001, the project ran into opposition from both sides of the political spectrum – including the Kennedy family and industrialist William Koch. As the opposition and the lawsuits piled up, Cape Wind pulled out of the project. In this story from Bloomberg, developers say the lesson is, don’t try to build a wind farm within sight of land. Read more:
