Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, flanked by Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, announces the approval of the Cape Wind project. (image: examiner.com)

After nine years of environmental and political challenges, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar approved the Cape Wind project, reported the Boston Globe. Cape Wind would be the first offshore wind farm to serve the US, but Salazar promised that many more would follow.

Complaints from two Wampanoag tribes caused the most recent delay in the approval of the plan. The Wampanoag claimed that the wind turbines would impede their religious observances associated with watching the sunrise and could disturb burial grounds that had been onshore before the sea level rose thousands of years ago.

Salazar said he had asked for changes that would accommodate the needs of the Wampanoag and other opponents of Cape Wind:

I am convinced there is a path we can take forward that both honors our responsibility to protect historical and cultural resources and at the same time meets the need to repower our economy with clean energy produced from wind power.

According to Salazar, the Cape Wind project will create jobs (1,000 in the construction alone), reduce carbon emissions, and produce the same amount of energy as a medium-sized power plant.

Politicians in Massachusetts were split on the decision. Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat, said the approval of the Cape Wind project would allow Massachusetts to “lead the nation” into energy independence and a future of clean energy. Sen. Scott Brown, a Republican, opposed the decision on the grounds that “the Cape Wind project will jeopardize industries that are vital to the Cape’s economy, such as tourism and fishing.”

Despite the Interior Department’s approval, the fight over Cape Wind is not over. The New York Times reports that the wind farm’s opponents, including the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, plan to go to court to halt the project. While construction of the wind farm could conceivably begin as early as this year, legal challenges could delay the project for years to come.

Sights like this could become far more common in Europe and the US. (image: PEBondestad via flickr.com)

Offshore drilling has yielded huge oil discoveries in recent years (making countries like Brazil and Angola oil powers), and offshore drilling rights were dangled as a carrot to entice senators to support a climate bill. But oil and gas companies aren’t the only ones looking offshore for energy—so are wind companies, reports the New York Times.

Emerging Energy Research, a consulting firm, predicts that in ten years the offshore wind energy market will grow from $10 billion to $30 billion. Though more costly than on-shore projects, offshore wind farms are gaining traction in Europe, which Emerging Energy Research says will be the primary market for offshore wind energy through 2014, when the US and China may enter the field.

Offshore wind projects have already come up in the US, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has said he will take measures to speed up the approval process for offshore wind projects. The Cape Wind project in Massachusetts has been held back by objections from the Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoag tribes, but a community-owned wind farm in Maine has recently opened and is New England’s largest offshore wind farm.

(image: J.C at peakoilcomics.blogspot.com)

Clean energy is a growing industry—so much so that the Mafia has gotten involved. Sicilian prosecutors are investigating possible Mafia ties to two businessmen arrested for fraudulently obtaining subsidies to build wind farms that never worked. There was a New England connection to the affair as well. Christine McConville of the Boston Herald reports that one of the arrested men was involved with the controversial Cape Wind project in Nantucket.

The recession really does affect everyone. Even oil companies are tightening their belts, reports Tom Fowler at the Houston Chronicle’s NewsWatch blog. For the first time in 45 years, Conoco doesn’t plan to drill any new exploration wells. What are they spending their money on? Developing existing offshore leases—work which costs plenty.

Keeping the thermostat down is an excellent way to reduce home heating bills. But sometimes it’s just really cold, and we have limits. Luckily for us, a company called EcoFactor just won the Cleantech Open award, which gives the company $100,000 to further its work on software that helps heating and cooling systems run more efficiently. As Candace Lombardi writes on the Green Tech blog at CNET News, EcoFactor’s software works “to better maintain stable desired temperature in homes.” You may even be able to shed one of those blankets.

The Senate talks (and talks) about the climate bill, but Sen. John McCain doesn’t like what he sees. He’s not the only opponent of cap and trade, but Politico’s Lisa Lerer explains how much of a turnaround this represents for the Republican senator, who was admired for defying his party on global warming.

What to make of the Copenhagen conference that will take place in December? Is it a chance for real progress, or has any opportunity already been lost? If you ask Eric Roston of Grist, no matter what happens all participants will hail Copenhagen as a success. Too much time and energy has already been invested to do otherwise. However, for Roston the real measure of success won’t be any treaty or agreement arrived at in Copenhagen, but how much it pushes individual nations to invest in clean-energy economies.

An offshore wind farm. (image: meteorologynews.com)

The Associated Press reported Monday that the Wampanoag are attempting to block construction of the nation’s first offshore wind farm on religious grounds. The tribes, the Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoag, are also known as “The People of the First Light” and have religious observances built around viewing the sunrise—a view that would be blocked, or at least adulterated, by 130 400-foot tall wind turbines. The turbines, planned for Nantucket Sound, will stand offshore, but even offshore doesn’t appear far enough out to avoid “NIMBY”—the “not in my back yard” syndrome that has hampered alternative energy.

The Wampanoags frame their challenge in particularly evocative terms:

“We…who opened our arms [to the Pilgrims] and allowed people to come here for religious freedoms, are now being threatened with having our religion taken away for the profits of one single group of investors.”

However, they aren’t the only ones opposing the Cape Wind project, which is the farthest along of the nation’s offshore wind farms. An interest group, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, formed by local towns and businesses affected by the project (such as commercial fishermen) opposes the project, as did the late Senator Edward Kennedy (the Kennedy family compound would have its ocean view affected).

The dispute highlights a problem facing alternative energy. Wind or solar power may not emit carbon, but it is land intensive. Green power tends to have a fairly low energy density, especially as compared to fossil fuels; a lot of land (or ocean) is required to generate meaningful amounts of power. And as much as most people like the idea of green energy in the abstract, few want to live next to solar or wind farms.

Once building alternative energy plants moves from theoretical to actual, opposition tends to spring up. Whether couched in religious or other terms, it tends to boil down to: “We don’t want that here.”