The announcement will be made at 2 pm, US east coast time at the Ft. McHenry National Monument in Baltimore, Maryland.
Also expected to be joining Salazar for the announcement are Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) Director Michael Bromwich, Delaware Senator Tom Carper, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and Jim Lanard, president of the Offshore Wind Development Coalition.
While the US Interior Department has been mum on the details, it is believed the event will at least in part be related to a significant streamlining of the permitting process for off- and near-shore wind projects.
That assumption is based on a letter Carper sent to Salazar last summer in which the Senator suggested that developers could shorten leasing and permitting times by using a single environmental impact analysis on executing the lease and approval of construction and operation plans.
The Hill also noted that Carper’s letter went on to suggest that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management could reduce the time required for companies to be competitively awarded a permit given that companies already go through that at the state level.
It currently takes more than seven years for an offshore wind project to receive approval to begin construction, according to BOEMRE.
“The current structure of the offshore wind permitting process closely resembles the process for the oil and gas extractive industries. We believe that a tailored permitting process would serve the offshore wind industry better,” Carper’s letter said.
Massachusetts approves power purchase from first US offshore wind farm
In other significant US wind energy news, Massachusetts’s Department of Public Utilities approved a 15-year power purchase between the developer of nation's first proposed offshore wind farm and its first client, National Grid.
Developers still need to secure permits from the US Army Corps of Engineers and the US Environmental Protection Agency before they can actually build the wind farm, but the state decision is nevertheless seen as a significant milestone in the project’s development.
“It is abundantly clear that the Cape Wind facility offers significant benefits that are not currently available from any other renewable resource,” Ann Berwick, chair of the state utilities department, said in a written statement. "These benefits outweigh the costs of the project."
The Cape Wind project will consists of 130 wind turbines to be located off the coast in the state’s Nantucket Sound; that location led to opposition from many rich and powerful Massachusetts’s residents, including the late Senator Edward Kennedy, whose family compound would over look the turbines.
However, the project also has the support of many, including the state’s governor, Deval Patrick, and the Obama Administration.
Last April, Salazar gave his support to the project, predicting it would be “the first of many ... up and down the Atlantic coast.”
The deal approved by Massachusetts’s utility regulators Monday states that 50 percent of the power generated by the Cape Wind Associates' project will be bought by National Grid, one of the main electricity providers in Massachusetts.
The rates would start, in 2013, at 18.7 cents per kilowatt hour, with the price pegged to go up 3.5 percent annually over the next 15 years.
After that, National Grid would have a one-time right to extend the contract for another 10 years on terms that could be below market rates.
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