Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today approved the Cape Wind renewable energy project on federal submerged lands in Nantucket Sound, but will require the developer of the $1 billion wind farm to agree to additional binding measures to minimize the potential adverse impacts of construction and operation of the facility…. A number of similar projects have been proposed for other northeast coastal states, positioning the region to tap 1 million megawatts of offshore Atlantic wind energy potential, which could create thousands of manufacturing, construction and operations jobs and displace older, inefficient fossil-fueled generating plants, helping significantly to combat climate change. At the press conference, Salazar said he expected this would be the “first of many projects up and down the Atlantic coast.”  He said America was leading  “a clean energy revolution that is reshaping our future” and that “Cape Wind is the opening of a new chapter in that future.” The announcement could not have been better timed.  Offshore wind taps the clean, safe energy of the 21st century that never runs out , in contrast to that other offshore energy resource, the not-so-clean, not-so-safe energy of the 19th century that can’t sustain the human race (see Spill Baby Spill and ‘Safe’ offshore oil rig explodes, 12 missing, seven critically hurt ). The DOI news release is here , project fact sheet here . The project calls for 130 turbines of 3.6 megawatts, each with a maximum blade height of 440 feet, to be arranged in a grid pattern in 25 square miles of Nantucket Sound in Federal waters offshore Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket Island. The projected maximum electric output would be 468 MW (average of 183 MW)

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Salazar approves Cape Wind, first U.S. offshore windfarm: “This will be the first of many projects up and down the Atlantic coast.”