US Government unveils plan to speed up harnessing of offshore wind
In a move towards more effective harnessing of Atlantic wind potential, the US government on Tuesday revealed plans to begin issuing new offshore wind energy leases as soon as next year.
In a move towards more effective harnessing of Atlantic wind potential, the US government on Tuesday revealed plans to begin issuing new offshore wind energy leases as soon as next year.
The scheme aims to accelerate the approval process so that areas off the Atlantic coast that are identified as high priority can begin development as soon as possible. Another objective of the new initiative, named 'Smart from the Start', is to revise regulations and simplify the leasing process.
"To fully harness the economic and energy benefits of our nation's vast Atlantic wind potential we need to implement a smart permitting process that is efficient, thorough, and unburdened by needless red tape," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement.
Last month, the nation's first lease for a major offshore wind farm was issued to Cape Wind. Approval for this $1 billion project came after several years of regulatory hurdles.
Cape Wind propose on their website that if it was operational since it started monitoring data it would have produced 12,295,024 cumulative megawatt hours of clean renewable energy and offset 6,400,806 tons of CO2.
The US Interior Department proposes to speed up wind farm development by designating Wind Energy Areas in the next 60 days. These zones will be elected off the coasts of states including Delaware, Virginia and Rhode Island. Environmental assessments of the elected offshore zones will be initiated in January, and if no problems prevail, the department said it plans to begin offering leases in these areas by early 2012.
The department said it will also push the processing of applications to build offshore transmission lines to bring power from the wind farms onshore.
Without transmission lines, many large-scale renewable-energy projects are stifled. American financier T. Boone Pickens has had to halt plans for a giant wind farm in Texas in part because of a lack of transmission lines at the time. Pickens said in January at the America's Future Series event, that the project is still under review.
The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) praised Secretary Salazar for his leadership in the acceleration of the leasing process promoting wind energy. "As the pipeline of projects begins to move forward more rapidly, the environmental and economic benefits of offshore wind, including manufacturing facilities and associated jobs, can be realized," said AWEA chief executive Denise Bode in a statement.
The initiation of the Cape Wind project in October offers a first beacon of hope, which is anticipated to spark further action. Massachusetts utility regulators on Monday approved a contract under which a utility will buy half the electricity produced by the wind farm. This brings the proposed project, being built in Nantucket Sound off the coast of Cape Cod, substantially closer to the final construction stages.
The newly leased wind farm project has attracted protesters, with residents fearing that the wind farm will ruin the view of Nantucket sound. There are also concerns that Cape Cod will suffer from financial and economic hardships due to high costs, tourism reduction, and the possibility that Cape Wind will decrease property values overlooking Nantucket sound.
However, donations to the project's primary opposition group, Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, have declined to almost half the donation of $2.9 million received in 2008, according to federal tax documents filed this week.
Further evidence of the increased acceptance of the project comes from a survey conducted by the Suffolk University Political Research Center for the Beacon Hill Institute's Economic Indicators project. It was found that seventy-six per cent of Massachusetts voters are willing to pay at least 1 per cent or more for electricity generated by renewable energy.
The drive to advocate offshore wind power is expected to provide a boost to existing proposals, such as the $5 billion offshore transmission project backed by Google Inc and its partners. The accelerated plans offer encouragement towards increased development and harnessing of wind power from the US Atlantic coast as well as encouraging big companies to go green.
Author: Marianna Keen | Climate Action
Image: PEBondestad/ Flickr