Offfshore Wind Energy in Danger

Cape Wind Farm and other offshore wind farms will be in danger if the current bill in congressional committee of congress is passed. Representative Don Young, of Alaska, an advocate of ANWR, is trying to kill plans for the first offshore wind farm in America and ALL offshore wind farms within 1.5 nautical miles of any shipping lane, even though oil platforms can be built within 500 feet of shipping lanes.

As I understand it the bill requires the Coast Guard to prohibit any offshore wind farm from being located within 1.5 nautical miles of a shipping channel or ferry route. This will restrict much-needed clean energy development from offshore wind farms but will not provide additional marine safety.

In addition, it conflicts with the intent of the Energy Policy Act of 2005.  According to that act the Secretary of Interior, in consultation with the Coast Guard and other agencies, has the responsibility to develop "any necessary regulations."

The bill is still in committee that may be act on it as early as Monday or Tuesday of next week, this is the place to stop it. It is an amendment, so it would be a little bit more difficult to stop in the House or Senate.  Please contact the following congressmen to express your opinion:

Senators on Committee:

Stevens, Snowe, Lott, Smith, Inouye, Cantwell and Lautenberg

House Reps on Committee:

Young (AK), LoBiondo, Coble, Hoekstra, Simmons, Diaz-Balart, M., Boustany, Oberstar, Filner, Taylor (MS), Higgins, Schwartz (PA); Barton (TX), Gillmor, Dingell, Lungren, Daniel E., Reichert, Thompson (MS), Pombo, Jones (NC), and Pallone.

See here, here and here for more details and opinions on the proposed legislation and the debate over the Cape Wind Farm.

Comments

[JesseJenkins]

Thanks for reporting on this, Jim. I caught wind of this last night but haven't got around to a post yet.

I would like to strongly second Jim's sentiment here: this proposed ammendment is utter hogwash! There is absolutely no reason to keep wind farms that far way from shipping channels. As this article points out, oil platforms can be within 500 ft of shipping lanes, UK wind farms can be within 500 meters of wind farms (and the UK Coast Gaurd ultimately has the ability to decide on a case-by-case basis) and several large windfarms in Denmark operate right next to shipping lanes without any problem.

As the article says: "Young's Amendment also brushes aside the experience in Denmark where an offshore wind farm near Copenhagen sits .25 nautical mile from an extremely busy shipping lane, and another offshore wind farm in the Baltic Sea is 1 nautical mile from the main channel that connects the Baltic Sea with the North Sea. These and other Danish offshore wind farms have had no reports of any problems with sea navigation."

Obviously the 1.5 nautical mile restriction is arbitrary, hurts our nation's ability to advance the use of wind power, takes away the ability of the Coast Guard to decide on a case by case basis (obviously the Coast Guard is better qualified to make these decisions than a Congressman from Alaska) and ignores all reasonable precedent from other countries with developed wind offshore wind power.

Please, especially if one of the above Congressman is a representative of yours, contact the above Sentors and Representatives and tell them to oppose this arbitrary and capricious ammendment!

[GreenGuy]

No matter who you listen to or whatever the topic is, it's almost impossible to get 3 people to agree on anything.

I keep reading about solar power, wind power and all sorts of stories about wind turbines, all with their pro's and cons and someone always finding a way to put them down.

To me, nuclear power is the one greatest stupid mistake of all time. Sure it produces energy, but what about the costs? It still costs a fortune to maintain and it's already proven to be deadly no matter how much we pretend that it's safe.

One little melt down will ruin your whole day for the entire planet.
For what? We still pay rediculous prices for this so called clean energy. Not to mention that it's still supplimented with energy from burning fossil fuels.

We need to take care of our own house and get off the 'grid'. We need to stop worrying about how to supply an entire country with it's needed power and start looking at ways we can individually
maintain our own power supply, without having to rely on and paying for rediculous energy costs that are totally governed and controlled by people who are lining their pockets with our gold.

I've personnaly had enough and did something about it.

So let's talk about free power from renewable energy equipment, along with the energy efficient products to help all our clean energy solutions.

I've created a learning center that I'd like to share. I've researched every type and kind of free energy producing product that interested me, and I invite you all to come learn from what I've discovered.