Isra-Mart srl : US signs lease on 'pioneering' Cape Wind offshore windfarm

www.isra-mart.com

Isra-Mart SRL news:

The US renewable energy industry passed a "crucial milestone" yesterday as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar signed a lease for the country's first offshore wind farm.

The lease authorises developers Cape Wind to construct 130 turbines on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound, off the Massachusetts coast, and gives it the rights to operate the $1bn facility for 25 years.

Jim Gordon, president of Cape Wind, said the project would act as a "pioneer " for further US offshore wind farms, particularly given President Obama's recent commitment to make the accelerated roll out of low carbon energy technologies a priority for 2011.

"The signing of this lease sends an important market signal to the offshore wind industry that the United States is ready to move forward and that Cape Wind will be the first of many offshore wind projects in this country," he said. " This crucial milestone opens a new chapter of clean electricity production and a new source of jobs for our nation."

The lease brings to an end a drawn-out planning process that took nine years for the project to approved and saw the plans face numerous lawsuits and repeated local protests.

Last month, the US Department of Energy unveiled a draft plan that called for 54,000MW of offshore wind power capacity to be installed by 2030, equivalent to more than 100 Cape Wind-sized projects. The move prompted wry suggestions that the plan would face 900 years of planning delays unless the government moves to streamline the planning process and face down opponents to offshore wind farms.

But speaking at the American Wind Energy Association's (AWEA) Offshore Wind Conference in Atlantic City, New Jersey, yesterday, Salazar attempted to reassure the industry that the mistakes that dogged the Cape Wind planning process would not be repeated.

"Our responsibility now is to take the lessons learned from that process - and from the growing pool of experiences with offshore wind development around the globe - and build a smart US program," he said.

Denise Bode, AWEA chief executive, emphasised the economic benefits for the US of removing barriers to developing offshore wind energy.

"The Cape Wind lease represents progress toward… keeping not only construction jobs, but also wind manufacturing jobs, right here at home instead of having to watch them go to China and Europe," she said. "With the kind of leadership that people like Secretary Salazar and Jim Gordon have shown, our industry will capture the jobs and manufacturing potential of offshore wind power."