After 16 Years, Hopes for Cape Cod Wind Farm Float Away
By Katharine Q. Seelye
Dec. 19, 2017
BOSTON — At the height of the oil embargo in 1974, Jim Gordon was sitting in a line for gas that extended two blocks, frustrated that the United States had become so dependent on foreign oil. That led him into the clean energy business and, decades later, to plan the nation’s first offshore wind farm, to be called Cape Wind. It would provide clean power to 200,000 homes on Cape Cod and spur the building of other such farms up and down the East Coast. But after 16 years — and $100 million of his own money — that dream is, well, gone with the wind. Mr. Gordon has pulled the plug, stymied by endless litigation and a series of financial and political setbacks that undermined Cape Wind’s viability.
After so many years in limbo, he said, he wanted some finality. “In a football game, if you have a tie, there’s an overtime period, a sudden death period,” Mr. Gordon, 64, a clean energy entrepreneur and president of Energy Management Inc., said in an interview at his office here. “We were kept in a repeated sudden death period, and the goal posts kept moving.”
Over the years, the highly effective opposition included Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who died in 2009, and was led by William I. Koch, a billionaire industrialist who made his fortune in fossil fuels and is the brother of Charles G. and David H. Koch, who have underwritten conservative causes. The opposition was so relentless, well funded and determined that in all this time, no turbines were ever anchored to the ocean floor, no blades ever spun, no power was ever generated.
“The project unfortunately demonstrated that well-funded opposition groups can effectively use the American court system to stop even a project with no material adverse environmental impacts,” said Ian Bowles, who was the state secretary of energy and environmental affairs under former Gov. Deval Patrick, who supported Cape Wind. So did several national environmental groups. That said, the significance of Cape Wind “has become less each year as wind and solar have exploded in the Northeast, and offshore wind is now also set to emerge shortly on the Eastern Seaboard,” said Mr. Bowles, who is now managing director of WindSail Capital Group, which invests in innovative energy projects. Indeed, just as Cape Wind’s obituary is finally being written, the offshore wind industry in this country looks more promising than ever.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/us/offshore-cape-wind-farm.html 
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