It’s a great day for alternative energy enthusiasts across America. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced today that the proposed wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod has finally been approved. The 130 turbines, to be installed in Nantucket Sound, will be the country’s first offshore wind farm.
Benefits of the wind farm include numerous new jobs and generated power that will account for 75 percent of Cape Cod’s, Martha’s Vineyard’s, and Nantucket’s energy needs. Although almost every environmental group in the country, including Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, supported the farm, the project did have strong opposition. American Indians from the Mashpee Wampanoag and Aquinnah tribes, native to the Cape Cod region, fought the project because the location of the turbines, on sacred ancestral land, would disrupt daily ceremonies. Other opponents of the wind farm included the late former Sen. Ted Kennedy (the wind turbines will be seen from the famed Kennedy Compound), and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
Although the energy produced by the wind farm will not necessarily be cheaper than current options in Massachusetts, it will definitely be cleaner and if successful could encourage other areas of the country to follow suit.
The announcement couldn’t come at a better time for the Obama administration, which is likely hoping that the approval of a new clean energy project will divert attention from the news today that the coast guard is planning to set fire to the oil spill off the coast of Louisiana in an attempt to stop the oil from reaching coastal marshlands and wildlife. The spilling oil, which “has grown to about 48 miles long and 80 miles wide at its widest,” is a result of last week’s oil rig explosion, in which 11 workers were reported missing and are assumed dead.
Ironically, the Obama administration also recently made the announcement that they intend to expand offshore oil drilling efforts. How many more oil spills need to happen before we decide to shift our energy spending to cleaner, safer options?
