An environmental permit granted last week for the Cape Wind power project is not the last hurdle facing the most advanced offshore wind farm proposed for the United States. However, wind power technology developers and analysts express confidence that the nine-year-old offshore wind project will get built, and that more like it will dot U.S. coastal waters by 2020.
The drive toward offshore wind, however, may be driven more by politics than economic and energy policy. Offshore wind farms cost up to twice as much as land-based wind installations, but they offer political leaders in densely populated U.S. coastal states a source of local energy other than offshore oil and gas. "They want their energy to be local. They want to harvest it inside their own state. And for the first time they can conceive of that possibility," says Walt Musial, who leads offshore wind energy research activities for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO.
Musial's analyses show that the 28 U.S. coastal states consume 78 percent of the nation's electricity, but only six could meet even one-fifth of their power demand with land-based wind energy--the fastest growing source of energy. Add in offshore wind potential in shallow waters, however, and that number jumps to 26 states; for many it could serve 100 percent of power demand. But achieving favorable economics will be hard.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Technology Review: Offshore Wind: Expensive but Politically Popular
Author: Peter Fairley
