US Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar delivered a keynote address at the North American Offshore Wind Conference, held in Atlantic City, when he invited representatives of Cape Wind Associates to join him in the signing of the first lease for a commercial wind energy project in US waters (the Outer Continental Shelf).

After several years of clearing necessary reviews, followed by a period of establishing offshore wind development rules, the Cape Wind Project, to be located in the middle of Nantucket Sound, finally gets development approval. The project has had several set backs in the past years, but most had to do with the preservation of natural resources of Nantucket Sound.

The lease is for a period of 28 years, during which the developer company will pay a 2-7% operating fee. In many ways, the Cape Wind project will beat the path for future offshore wind projects in the US, setting standards, but also identifying possible issues that may arise that need to be resolved in the future. It will have 130 wind turbines installed once completed.

Cape Wind is just one of several offshore wind projects in line for development off the Atlantic coast of the United States.

[source: US DoI]