An offshore wind farm off the coast of the Netherlands. Image courtesy of Nuon @ flickr

From California to Craigsville Beach on Cape Cod, nearly twelve hundred people joined together over the past week to voice their support for Cape Wind’s clean, renewable energy and to oppose the ongoing delays depriving our country of its first offshore wind project. Their comments were directed at the Department of Energy (DOE), which was seeking the public’s input as the agency considers a federal loan guarantee for Cape Wind. The immediate issue before DOE is whether to accept the project’s Final Environmental Impact Statement in its consideration of the loan. The rigorous environmental review has been deemed more than adequate by the country’s leading national, regional and local environmental organizations, including Greenpeace, the National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Mass Audubon, Conservation Law Foundation and more.

In a letter sent to DOE on Monday, more than two dozen environmental, clean energy, public health, business and labor stakeholders urged the agency to proceed without delay to consider and grant a loan guarantee for Cape Wind. The letter stated, “Cape Wind will concretely advance the nation’s objectives in addressing the challenge of climate change while promoting energy security and economic development. Following an extremely lengthy and rigorous environmental review, the Cape Wind project should proceed for consideration and grant of a loan guarantee without further delay. Such action will help lay the strongest possible foundation for offshore renewable energy development in the United States.”

Cape Wind Now’s petition to DOE activated Cape Wind supporters across the country who invoked everything from protecting their children’s future to much-needed jobs to national pride in calling on DOE to approve a federal loan guarantee for the project and unleash the potential of offshore wind, one of the country’s most promising, but as yet untapped, sources of clean, renewable energy. Supporters railed against the decade of delay perpetuated by fossil fuel billionaire Bill Koch and his Cape Wind opposition group, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. In yet another delay tactic, the Alliance and a couple of House Republicans recently sought to distract DOE and wrap up the loan guarantee process in red tape by questioning the completed, thoroughly researched and vetted environmental review. “No more delays!” was the common refrain from petitioners, including many Cape residents, who pleaded with DOE to do everything in its power to get the wind turbines built now.

DOE announced in November 2012 that it was considering a federal loan guarantee for the project. The DOE loan guarantee is a key component of Cape Wind’s financing, lowering the cost of the project’s debt and ultimately the cost of Cape Wind to Massachusetts ratepayers. DOE will issue its decision in the coming months.

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An offshore wind turbine in England. Cape Wind is ready to go -- and should be built. Now. Credit: phault @ flickr

11 years. That’s how long we’ve been waiting for the promise of Cape Wind: clean, renewable energy; new, green jobs; reduced air emissions and carbon pollution; energy at a predictable price over the long-term; and energy security. At a time when the evidence of global warming is overwhelming, and the need for jobs critical, unleashing the potential of this home-grown offshore wind project can only be a good thing.

So, why isn’t Cape Wind up and running? Because the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, a pseudo-environmental organization backed and led by fossil fuel magnate Bill Koch, is hell bent on blocking it.

Today we say: enough is enough.

Let’s be clear: this is one of the decisive struggles in the fight for a clean, sustainable energy future, a battle against the fossil fuel industry whose wealth and power have controlled America for far too long.

That’s why CLF is joining with members of the environmental, labor, clean energy, business, scientific and public health communities in support of Cape Wind Now – a campaign to expose Bill Koch’s dirty-energy funded opposition to Cape Wind.

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Cape Wind is ready to go! It’s cleared every federal and state review, passed environmental muster, been given the go ahead by the Department of the Interior, has long-term contracts for more than three-quarters of its electricity, and has the support of Governor Patrick and 80 percent of Massachusetts citizens. And yet, a Koch-funded and led group is continuing its tactics of deception and delay.

Koch’s Oxbow Corporation is engaged in some of the dirtiest energy activities known to man, including coal mining and the worldwide distribution of petroleum coke, a highly polluting by-product of the oil refining process. As chairman of the board and a major funder of The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, Bill Koch’s dirty fuel fingerprints are all over the opposition to Cape Wind.

With millions of Koch’s billions still filling its coffers, the Alliance is angling to continue to fight Cape Wind to the death. That’s not just a threat to Cape Wind, but to all renewable energy projects that have the potential to loosen the fossil fuel industry’s grip on our country and move us toward a clean and prosperous energy future. And you can bet that if the roles were reversed – and an opposition group was fighting one of Koch’s oil or gas projects – he would do everything in his power to crush them. Ironic, isn’t it?

Bill Koch and his Alliance must not be allowed to determine the future of Cape Wind, when the project has cleared exhaustive environmental and permitting reviews, when a large majority of Massachusetts citizens support it, and when this pioneering offshore wind project promises jobs at such a critical time for our economy and clean energy at a critical time for our planet.

Those who say that coal is cheap and wind expensive need to check their math. The evidence shows that Cape Wind will save electric customers money over the life of the project as it displaces the most expensive dirty power supplying energy to the electric grid.  And if you consider all the costs we pay for dirty energy – environmental, national security, and public health, to name only a few – offshore wind energy is far less expensive than dirty coal energy.

This is a battle where powerful, entrenched dirty energy interests have pitted themselves against emerging clean energy. It is a fight for the citizens of Massachusetts to have the green energy jobs they want and the home-grown energy they need, when they need it.

To be sure, the fight is more than symbolic. For Massachusetts, Cape Wind is the most important clean energy project. For the nation, it’s a bellwether of what’s to come. Will we choose to create a clean energy future, or to repeat our dirty energy past.

We can’t allow dirty energy interests to thwart our clean energy revolution. Not now – not when we’ve come so far. So please, stand with Cape Wind. Stand with Cape Wind Now.

Simulation of view of Cape Wind from Cotuit, MA. Photo credit: http://www.capewind.org

When three leading environmental organizations seek to get involved in a federal court case about a proposed development project, it’s not usually on the side of the developer. But, this week, CLF, NRDC and Mass Audubon filed a motion to participate as “Friends of the Court” in support of the defendants in five pending federal cases challenging federal approvals of the Cape Wind offshore wind energy project. The plaintiffs, unsurprisingly including the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, are seeking to overturn the federal government’s 2010 approval of the landmark offshore wind project, the first to be approved in the United States.

Our federal court filing comes after more than a decade of exhaustive review undertaken by state and federal authorities, and by CLF and our colleagues in the environmental community – review that served to ensure Cape Wind’s approval was based on sound science and data, and that the project was thoroughly vetted through an open and transparent public process. Our support for the project reflects our findings that Cape Wind’s benefits far outweigh its impacts.

Between CLF, NRDC and Mass Audubon, we pack a couple hundred years of environmental advocacy and stewardship experience.  Collectively, we represent hundreds of thousands of Americans, from nearby Hyannis to far-flung Hawaii, who believe our country should prioritize a true clean energy agenda and move more quickly to deliver on the environmental, public health, energy security and economic benefits of responsible renewable energy. Backing the developer in the Cape Wind case may, at first blush, go against the grain of environmental advocacy history. But in this case, it is fully consistent with our longstanding missions to protect natural resources and public health – here, by advancing a key project that will begin to unleash the tremendous potential of offshore renewable energy, allowing Massachusetts and the region to dial back polluting fossil fuel power generation.