Skip to Content

Cape Wind Farm Finally Approved

After nine years of reviews, the Cape Wind project gets the go-ahead.
April 28, 2010

The Cape Wind offshore wind project, which could be the first built in the U.S., has been approved by U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The decision, announced today, comes after nearly 10 years of political opposition, environmental reviews, and most recently objections from local Indian tribes.

Because of these objections, Salazar is requiring that the project be scaled back from 170 wind turbines to 130 wind turbines and that the developer conduct more marine archeological surveys. He is also requiring “other steps” to make them less visible, such as the coloring of the turbines and their lighting.

Salazar acknowledged that the permitting process was a mess. “There’s no reason an offshore wind permit should take a decade,” he said. He’s working on streamlining the process.

Lawsuits could yet delay the project further. But Salazar thinks these can be overcome. “We are very confident that we will be able to uphold the decision against legal challenges that might be filed,” he said.

Massachusetts Governor Duvall Patrick says construction could begin within a year.

Salazar presented the project as a way to help the United States keep up with other countries’ efforts on offshore wind, such as European countries and China. But it might not make sense to “keep up” in this area. Although offshore winds provide an enormous potential resource, there are much cheaper places to generate wind power in the United States. It might make more sense to let other countries drive down costs of offshore wind while focusing on developing the cheapest possible on-shore wind power.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.