Federal authorities has presented a draft Request for Interest (RFI) map to a renewable energy task force meeting of state, local and federal representatives which identifies a vast arc of ocean, extending from the Rhode Island border, southwest of the Island, across to the south of the Vineyard and Nantucket, then running north and east to the entrance to Nantucket Sound.
According to the plan the Cape Wind project is planned to cover 24 square miles of ocean in the middle of Nantucket Sound; the area covered by the draft RFI is 160 times larger. It includes almost all the federal waters off the Massachusetts coast which are accessible under current or near-future wind turbine technology. It is told that the whole area could be accessible within five to seven years.
It is also said that areas within the buffer zone, extending from the three-mile outer limit of state-controlled waters out to nine miles could be opened to municipal or so-called innovative energy generation proposals. The MMS plans for offshore wind are developing fast. Held at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Buzzard’s Bay, Wednesday’s meeting was the second of the task force, set up last November.
Steven Textoris, the acting program manager of OAEP, also assured task force members the map was just “a first cut, a first shot” at delineating a wind power zone, and that it would be refined down. Deerin Babb-Brott, assistant secretary of the state Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, said the buffer zone had been set at nine miles after consideration of developments in Europe.
The energy bureaucrats, state and federal, stressed repeatedly that the fact that the map covered such a large area did not necessarily mean it all would be developed. But there are concerns among those close to the process that the state and federal energy authorities are moving too fast to get large-scale wind projcts up.
