The recession and new regulation are the prevailing winds preventing the windmill energy industry from picking up speed, the Washington Post's Jonathan Starkey reported in his July 11 story, "Wind Projects at a Standstill."
Yet Starkey omitted a third reason that can be summed up in three words: Sen. Edward Kennedy.
The senior Democratic senator from Massachusetts has long opposed a wind farm in Nantucket Sound. Yet while Starkey mentioned the planned project, spearheaded by the Cape Wind Associates, has faced "fierce opposition" he failed to discuss Kennedy's role in efforts to scuttle the project:
Fierce opposition has all but consumed a plan to build a wind farm in Nantucket Sound that was proposed in 2001 and has since become the subject of legal challenges and a multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign.
Cape Wind Associates is still awaiting federal approval to move forward with its $1 billion-plus plan to build 130 turbines -- each as high as 440 feet from sea level -- six miles off Cape Cod, Mass. Renewed legal challenges, however, could further delay the project.
[Wind energy analyst Matthew] Kaplan said Cape Wind's troubles send bad signals to an industry attempting to grow out of infancy.
"That in itself makes investors cringe, when they see the first offshore wind project has taken this long and is still not over the hurdles," Kaplan said.
So not only does Sen. Kennedy's NIMBYism threaten the Cape Cod project, it throws a wet blanket over private capital formation for projects elsewhere. Couple that with Kennedy's eager support of Obama in the 2008 campaign, and the omission is curious, especially given how Starkey opened his article by insisting that the "Obama administration has made offshore wind energy a priority and an important part of its plans to create jobs and combat climate change."
