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Nantucket Winds
Tue Dec 27, 2005
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I’m Bryan Yeaton, and today on The Weather Notebook’s Climate Change Series, Val Wang looks at a wind farm proposed for historic Nantucket.
The 130 wind turbines of Cape Wind will stand in Horseshoe Shoal, a shallow, two-acre patch nestled in the center of the U-shaped Nantucket Sound. In this location, the turbines will get strong winds but also be protected from the harsh Atlantic storm waves.
In ideal conditions, Cape Wind says, it will be able to provide three-fourths of the electricity needed by Cape Cod and the surrounding Islands. Mark Rodgers is with Cape Wind.
"We're very vulnerable to any disruption in supply of those fuels coming into our region. The more we can tap into a local and inexhaustible and clean energy resource like wind, the better off we're going to be for a whole host of reasons."
Cape Wind has been in development since 2001 and has been roiled by protests that the almost 250-foot tall wind turbines will destroy the natural beauty of the Cape as well as harm the area's birds and marine life.
But banish from your mind the image of clunky Dutch windmills or even the madly whirling California wind turbines of the 1970's. The blades of these turbines will rotate at the leisurely pace of four to eight seconds per turn. And the modern wind turbine is nothing if not sensitive.
"So if you could imagine being out there some years from now when the wind farm is up and running and you're in a sailboat and the wind changes direction just as you have to tack and reorient your sails to respond to that, you would notice the wind turbines also responding."
The federal government will be conducting a new environmental review of the Cape Wind project and make their final decision by January of 2007.
Our Climate Change Series is supported by Environmental Defense. Regular funding comes from Subaru of America.
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