Cape Wind Advances -- Again
Cape Wind Associates this week beat back another in a series of seemingly endless challenges to its plans to build an offshore wind farm.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld the ruling of the state Energy Facility Siting Board (EFSB) that had granted all state and local permits to Cape Wind. The court split 4-2 in favor of Cape Wind.
The court's decision affirmed a May 2009 decision of the EFSB that had granted Cape Wind the first-ever "composite certificate." Cape Wind had been denied a local permit from the Cape Cod Commission and thus applied to the board for a single permit that would consist of all state and local permits for the Cape Wind project.
While the project is in federal waters, without permission to connect to land-based transmission the wind farm would be killed.
As often is the case, the local commission was the last, best hope for opponents to stop the permitting process. Cape Wind proponents would argue that that would be to the detriment of the state's overall energy needs. The siting board agreed.
People may not like it, but that's why state siting boards exist, and why legislatures gave them authority.
What's left at the state level, and what's more interesting over the longer term, is the fate of the power purchase agreement with National Grid. The key question is how much higher power prices for offshore wind can be compared to those charged by traditional, land-based generators.
That is a story for another day.
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