In my review of a really great read, Cape Wind, I mentioned Bluewater Wind's proposal for Delaware waters. There was an informative story in yesterday's "NY Times" magazine on this project: Wind-Power Politics. It's got some great inside politics on how the Bluewater project forged ahead, was sideswiped by some key state legislators working with competing interests, and then put back on the rails , although significantly scaled down from the original 600 MW proposal , by another powerful local politician. One of the important themes in this article is the powerful impact of building community support.
Another theme is the idea of the extraordinary wind resource just begging to be used right offshore the most densely populated part of these United States: the Boston-NY-Washington (BosNYWash) corridor. This stretch of coastal cities now, of course, runs far beyond Washington in the South to the Carolinas, and a fair bit up the coast past Boston into New Hampshire and Maine. There are a literally scores of millions of consumers , residential, commercial, institutional and industrial – within 10 or 15 miles of the Mid-Atlantic Bight. How much windpower is there? 330 gigawatts (GW) according to University of Delaware researchers. How much do we use in that part of the country now? 185 GW.
I remember a study from many years ago from Union of Concerned Scientists purporting that all of New England's power needs could be met by offshore wind. I have heard Cape Wind's principal, Jim Gordon, say that all of the electrical needs of the Cape, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket could be met by his offshore development on a normal day, and that on a good day, all the surface transportation could be powered as well , if hybrid plug-ins were being deployed.
What's the problem!? Competing power companies for one, wanting to stick with coal and gas-fired plants. Another stated problem is the "viewshed" issue. Bluewater, very smartly, used computerized graphics to show the folks in Delaware how tiny the "view" issue would be. What I don't get , and I've said it here before , is how you can think of these windfarms as anything other than magnificent. In Europe, as you know, offshore wind is busting out all over. Bluewater's principal, Peter Mandelstam, is quoted in the article to the effect that "The Europeans see offshore wind turbines as sentinels, protecting them from energy domination by foreign powers."
See also the "NY Times" link to other windpower stories and the website of the American Wind Energy Association. See particularly their exhortation for Congress to act now on the Production Tax Credit for renewables. The PTC's critical importance is discussed at some length in the "NY Times" magazine article, and has been discussed a number of times here as well.