offshore wind power

Washington is starting to wake up to something that's been obvious to marine scientists for years. The winds blowing off U.S. waters could be a key to a national clean energy and green jobs revolution.

On Tuesday, the federal government awarded five leases to three companies that want to develop wind turbines off the New Jersey and Delaware coasts for the production of renewable energy.

They're the first such leases the Department of Interior has ever issued for the Outer Continental Shelf. If this official statement is any indication, they won't be the last:

"We made the development of offshore wind energy a top priority for Interior. The technology is proven, effective and available and can create new jobs for Americans while reducing our expensive and dangerous dependence on foreign oil."

The declaration comes as the U.S. Congress is in the midst of a debate over a proposal that would create a costly long-distance "transmission highway" to carry land-based wind energy (among other clean and dirty sources) from the Great Plains to the power-hungry cities of the American East.

"America's First Offshore Wind Farm" – the tag line of the proposed Cape Wind Project – has been more wishful thinking than fact for eight years. That may be changing.

This week, a majority of the members of the Massachusetts Legislature – 107 out of 200 – signed a letter urging U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to approve the wind farm "as soon as possible."  

What's significant about this letter is not the content per se; it's that far more legislators have signed it since it was first delivered just a month ago – almost 30 more since April 6.

As rumored, New York-based private equity giant Blackstone Group is pouring $1.5 billion into an offshore wind farm in Germany that will power half a million homes and avert 1.6 million tons of CO2 emissions.

It’s being billed as one of the largest wind projects in the North Sea and should spawn a heap of German "green collar" jobs. Says the Blackstone Group:

It is planned to source all technical expertise and substantially all materials from within Germany.

Why would Blackstone choose Germany for its mammoth project? In the company's own words:

Finally some news of an offshore wind power deal in the US that doesn’t end in a project-stomping NIMBY victory.

Bluewater Wind has secured a buyer, Delmarva Power, for part of the electricity that it's planning to generate from its long-awaited offshore wind park, 13 miles off the coast of Delaware.

The two companies signed a 25-year contract for the sale of up to 200 megawatts this week. (The $1.6 billion project could eventually produce as much as 600 megawatts -- enough electricity to power 110,000 Delaware households.)

The turbines are expected to go online in 2012. When that happens, Delaware, the "First State," will become home to America's very first offshore wind farm.

About time.