DOI: Offshore Wind Permits Are a Year Away

05-Sep-2009

Federal permits to build the first offshore wind farms in U.S. waters are on track but still at least a year away, officials of the Department of Interior (DOI) have declared. “We are going to see this commercial development occurring, both offshore and solar,” Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes told the Los Angeles Times on August 28. “You will continue to see tangible progress toward that.” DOI officials told the Times that they are still dealing with “regulatory underbrush” arising from the Bush Administration’s alleged neglect of wind and solar energy development on public lands and in U.S. waters. Projects being reviewed by DOI include initiatives in the waters off Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and other northeastern states and include the controversial Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound off Cape Cod.