Free Republic

July 25— It's windy enough on Massachusetts' Nantucket Sound — the waters between Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard — that it makes the Sound an ideal idea place for windmills that generate electricity. Wind farms are popular in Europe and California, and environmentalists like them because they're a relatively clean way to produce electricity. It's a reason Jim Gordon proposes to install 130 wind turbines 6 ½ miles off the coast of Cape Cod. But there's a problem. Although the Natural Resources Defense Council, and its attorney, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., support wind power (Kennedy says he's "strongly in...

Not Off My Back Porch Nation's First Offshore Wind Power Project Threatens to Block Kennedy's View and the Senator Isn't Happy By DAVID SCHOETZ March 30, 2007 — - A major battle in the politics of alternative energy has moved to a final phase in Washington, and a senator named Kennedy with a waterfront view and a bone to pick awaits. Friday was a good day for Jim Gordon, the man hungry to build America's first offshore wind farm off the Cape Cod coast. The state environmental office -- one of a battery of local, state and federal agencies reviewing...

(CNSNews.com) - One of the nation's most beautiful seaside resorts is the site of a battle over a wind power project that has drawn opposition from famous liberals like Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy and former CBS news anchorman Walter Cronkite. They oppose the project even though it espouses one of their favorite goals - renewable energy alternatives. Although the New England energy company Cape Wind Associates has won an important victory in federal court on the controversy, a group devoted to preserving the Nantucket Island landscape near Cape Cod, Mass., has a pending lawsuit challenging the Army Corps of Engineers'...

The $700 million project in Logan County will be the third-largest in the nation, producing 400 megawatts with 267 turbines. Developers broke ground Wednesday on a $700 million wind farm in northeast Colorado that will be the nation's third-largest wind generator. FPL Energy and Invenergy Wind will develop the 400-megawatt project, which will yield enough power to supply about 120,000 homes. Xcel Energy will buy the facility's entire electric output. Combined with purchases from three other wind farms, the Peetz Table project will allow Xcel to meet the requirements of Colorado's renewable-energy standard seven years early.

It turns out the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., was right in opposing a wind-energy project in Nantucket Sound, but for all the wrong reasons. There's a lot of that going around — so much, in fact, that it increasingly appears there is no wrong reason for opposing wind-energy projects. Sen. Kennedy, a lifelong Hyannisport, Mass., resident, professed to be a supporter of so-called green energy. But when a 130-turbine wind-power proposal turned up in his watery playground off the Kennedy family's Cape Cod compound, he balked. With Sen. Kennedy safely in his grave and the remaining Kennedys apparently...

Wind-farm backers call on Kennedy, Romney Conservation group wants state leaders to rethink their opposition to project in light of favorable report. By DAVID KIBBEOttaway News ServiceBOSTON - The Conservation Law Foundation has called on Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. Edward Kennedy to reconsider their opposition to the Cape Wind project in light of favorable findings in a draft environmental impact statement released yesterday. Romney and Kennedy have spoken out against the proposal to put 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound. But Conservation Law Foundation president Philip Warburg said wind energy would help Romney's plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions...

FloDesign Wind Turbine, a maker of wind turbines that resemble jet engines, pulled in a $34.5 million second round of funding. The venture capital infusion was led by return backer Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers and had participation from new investors Technology Partners, VantagePoint Venture Partners, and a Goldman Sachs managed investment fund. FloDesign also announced on Wednesday that it named Lars Andersen its new chief executive. Mr. Andersen takes the position from Stanley Kowalski, who will continue as vice president. Mr. Andersen was previously president of the China operations of Vestas, the world’s largest manufacturer of wind turbines. Mr....

BOSTON A leading opponent of the controversial Cape Wind development proposed for Nantucket Sound has come out against a pending move to kill the project in Congress. And there’s a twist. The call for withdrawal of the so-called Young amendment, which would ban wind turbines within 1.5 nautical miles of ferry and shipping lanes, comes from the nephew of one of Cape Wind’s key political adversaries, Sen. Ted Kennedy. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer and staunch public critic of the 130-turbine Cape Wind project, has written a letter to members of a congressional conference committee denouncing the move...

The Federal Aviation Administration is saying “not yet” on the proposed wind farm project for Nantucket Sound, issuing a “Notice of Presumed Hazard” Feb 13. “Initial findings of this study indicate that the structure as described exceeds obstruction standards and/or would have an adverse physical or electromagnetic interference effect upon navigable airspace or air navigation facilities,” the FAA notice issued Feb. 13 reads. “Pending resolution of the issues described below, the structure is presumed to be a hazard to air navigation.” As a “presumed” hazard, Cape Wind will have the opportunity to show the project does not exceed FAA thresholds....

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is headed to Boston Wednesday to make an announcement about a controversial wind farm project on Cape Cod that could put the Obama administration at odds with one of the president's biggest supporters: the Kennedy family.

The senior senator from Massachussetts, Edward Kennedy now finds himself in something of a political dilemma. At stake is a proposal to build a massive wind turbine farm - right in the middle of historic Nantucket Sound near Cape Cod, the so-called `Cape Wind' project. As usual, such a project will bring ruination to the landscape and the seascape but this is the logical outcome arising from the pro-Kyoto policies that Kennedy himself has promoted. So first, Kennedy the environmentalist speaks - "I strongly support renewable energy, including wind energy as a means of reducing our dependence on foreign oil...

The battle over the venture -- dozens of public hearings and nine years long -- has split members of American Indian tribes and pitted some of the nation's wealthiest people against each other. Liberals have squared off against fellow liberals. The most notable opponent was the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, whose family compound would have a view of the wind farm. The late Walter Cronkite also raised objec

The United States faces a clear choice of pushing forward quickly to refine solar, wind and other renewable energy sources or continue to ignore the less obvious costs of reliance on oil, coal, and nuclear energy, Robert Kennedy Jr. told a group of environmentalists Sunday afternoon. In discussing other costs that are often ignored, Kennedy cited the process of transporting coal from West Virginia. The government spends millions of dollars per mile to fill thousands of miles of road in the state with 22 inches of asphalt, Kennedy said. "Coal claims to be cheap but is probably the most catastrophically...

Amid the maelstrom of controversy over the nation’s first offshore wind farm, one truth is as plain as the proposed 440-foot turbines in Nantucket Sound are tall: Its energy will be very expensive. That’s not just compared with power from coal and natural gas, but with renewable power from other sources. Once the 130 turbines begin rotating, the energy produced will cost up to 50 percent more than energy today from some land-based wind farms and twice as much as some hydroelectric dams. The cost will increase customers’ monthly electric bills about 2 percent, and for many that is too...

Boston Globe / July 31, 2010 >> Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office, signed an agreement in May to purchase 50 percent of Cape Wind’s 130-turbine's power, at prices more than double the current cost of electricity from fossil fuels...Snip & fast forward… Coakley -- whose office recently negotiated a 10 percent reduction in how much Cape Wind and National Grid can charge customers for wind-generated electricity -- submitted official justification of her rate settlement. The report includes "redacted" words, numbers, sentences, paragraphs and charts. It even blanked out a question asked of an energy expert hired by Coakley's office --...

I (we) ask that you consider what has happened in the last 53 days. The most recent government estimate suggests that the Gulf oil disaster is spewing the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez every 5 to 12 days with no definite end in sight. You do the math. Our country is facing an environmental disaster of unknown proportions and characteristics. And no, a wind farm couldn’t have prevented that. But at least it will take a tiny step or two in the right direction.

As New Englanders await a decision in Massachusetts on a bitterly contested proposal to build the nation’s first offshore wind farm, the State of Rhode Island is forging ahead with its own project in the hope of outpacing — and upstaging — its neighbor. Crucial to its strategy is dispelling worries that economics will trump the environment, or the broader public good. Instead of having a private developer dominate the research on potential sites, as Massachusetts has, Rhode Island embarked on a three-year scientific study, to be completed in August, of all waters within 30 miles of its coast. It...

Energy: The government says wind power could supply the eastern half of the U.S. with a fifth of its electricity by 2024. Just don't try building wind farms where someone might see them. A claim is contained in a new study released by the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and technically it might be true. But we've heard these overblown predictions before, and experience around the world with heavily subsidized alternative energy has not worked out well. The area in question, called the Eastern Interconnection, is a grid extending roughly from the western borders of the Plains states through...

Great IBD Editorial Regarding My "Cap and Tax" Article Yesterday at 7:20pm The political death of Sarah Palin has been greatly exaggerated. In a devastating op-ed in the Washington Post, Alaska's governor exposes the cap-and-tax fraud that has nothing to do with earth's temperature and everything to do with government control of the economy. She also exposes the stealth socialism ambitions of the Democratic left and once again points out the availability of abundant "shovel-ready" resources under America's soil, off America's shores and even in America's rocks. Judging from the reaction from Sen. Kerry and the political arm of George...

Palin Vs. Kerry (And MoveOn.org) By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, July 15, 2009 4:20 PM The political death of Sarah Palin has been greatly exaggerated. In a devastating op-ed in the Washington Post, Alaska's governor exposes the cap-and-tax fraud that has nothing to do with earth's temperature and everything to do with government control of the economy. She also exposes the stealth socialism ambitions of the Democratic left and once again points out the availability of abundant "shovel-ready" resources under America's soil, off America's shores and even in America's rocks. Judging from the reaction from Sen. Kerry and...