Lost in all the hullaballoo over burial grounds and sacred rites is the real issue holding up the Cape Wind offshore wind project in Massachussets: economics.
The project, initially meant to come on line in 2005, has become an unwitting poster child for the hurdles facing alternative-energy projects in the U.S. First, there were the Kennedys and others who complained that offshore wind turbines would ruin the view—and the sailing—in Nantucket Sound.
Just when Cape Wind seemed sure of landing federal permission, local Indian tribes have attacked the project, arguing that it would interfere with their ancestral rites. That’s been manna from heaven for opinion-page types.
Now, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says the Obama administration aims to make a final decision on the project in the next two months—sort of. “It is our hope that…we will be able to get to the point where we would have the final decision to hopefully be made by the end of the year,” Mr. Salazar told reporters, according to Dow Jones Newswires.
The local opposition to the big wind farm obviously exemplifies the not-in-my-backyard rejection of lots of new energy projects, and has been a big reason Cape Wind is taking almost as long to build as a new nuclear power plant.
But the fundamental reason that offshore wind power has yet to take off in the U.S., despite Secretary Salazar’s fervent hopes, or in Europe, despite years of hoping and praying, is because offshore wind power doesn’t make a lot of economic sense right now.
Offshore wind farms require bigger and more expensive turbines than their land-locked cousins. Cape Wind, for instance, is debating between gigantic turbines made by either Vestas or Siemens. But that’s not even the half of it.
What really makes offshore wind power expensive is the additional cost of building wind farms at sea: about 64% of the total cost of offshore projects comes from the platforms to hold the turbines, the need for new undersea transmission cables, and the extra maintenance costs.
All of that more than outweighs the potential advantages of offshore wind—namely, that ocean breezes are stronger and more constant than onshore breezes.
Could Washington make offshore wind more economic? A hefty price on carbon emissions would help—but that would give a boost to all kinds of alternative energy, from onshore wind to solar power to nuclear power. That would still leave offshore wind at a relative disadvantage to other clean-energy sources.
In the end, unless and until there’s a big breakthrough in one of the key parts of the offshore puzzle—most likely the platforms to hold up the turbines—offshore wind power looks to remain a niche source of energy.