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By Jim Tankersley |Washington Bureau April 22, 2009 WASHINGTON— The Interior Department has finalized sweeping rules that clear the way for the first offshore wind turbines to be erected along the Atlantic Coast, the most aggressive move yet from an administration that hopes to shift the nation's offshore energy goals from oil to wind power.
The rules will set long-awaited guidelines for offshore leases, easements and royalty payments, which the Bush administration worked on for years but did not complete. Without the guidelines, potential wind projects in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and several other coastal states could not begin construction.
The department will announce the rules Wednesday, Interior Department officials said, and President Barack Obama will mention them in his Earth Day appearance at an Iowa wind turbine factory.
Offshore wind power is currently used to generate electricity in Europe, where land for traditional onshore turbines is hard to come by. But there are no offshore wind farms operating in the U.S.
States are already seeing incrementally higher energy costs due to wind energy and the cost to cable that energy from remote wind farms to the population.
the environmentalist will, in many places, try to stop the wind farms and tidal energy plans because they are finding out that to get enough energy to matter you have to pretty much destroy an ecosystem on the local level. Oh and people don't want more transmission lines from wind farms messing up the pristine coastal environment or running out to the desert to bring back energy from a valley covered in solar cells.
this is a placebo that takes resources and brain power away from real alternatives to the ubiquitos, cheap energy from fossil fuel that modern life is built upon.
what a waste of government money.
we need a moon-shot level of effort for a real new source of energy, either that or it's going to take a mini nuke plant in every neightborhood once the dino-fuel is gone (peak oil theory) or regulated out of use (man-caused climate change theory)
States are already seeing incrementally higher energy costs due to wind energy and the cost to cable that energy from remote wind farms to the population.
Be careful what you wish for.
Somehow we managed to run cable for our other types of plants.
Hey I'm a Conservative and I'm totally fine by this. Bush was too. So are most Conservatives. The maddest was the former King Liberal, Ted "Chappaquadick" Kennedy.
What's wrong with finding a new source of energy? All Conservatives are for this if it comes from private money. Face it, if private companies can't find a way to exploit it and make it profitable, you think the government can?
I'm all for it, what I'm against is Obama's $2b that he is giving to this.
Are these the same wind farms that they wouldnt let be build when Bush was president?
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