...The American Wind Energy Association’s conference exhibition hall was full of European and multinational firms that are busy plunging scores of turbines into their waters. German developers talked about how the industry has transformed rusting homeland harbors into bustling ports, while British officials boasted that industry investment in offshore wind will leap from $8 billion in the last decade to $80 billion in the next eight years.

Representatives of American firms could only watch wistfully and wish the US government cared as much about wind energy as Europe does. Peter Duclos and Tim McAuliffe were two of those wistful watchers. Gladding-Hearn, their Somerset, Mass., company, specializes in ferries, patrol boats, pilot boats, and tugboats. They want to make boats to transport workers and equipment out to turbines.

Click here to read this Derrick Z. Jackson column in the Boston Globe

"...The good news is that many of the pieces are falling into place, including here in the Bay State; after 10 years of debate, the Cape Wind project is on track to cross the finish line in 2013. In addition, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has identified two formal wind energy areas off our coast covering nearly 1,000 square miles, with leases to be offered for sale by competitive auction in 2013. As a result of these positive signs of progress, the Commonwealth is moving forward with plans for a new marine terminal in New Bedford to support the delivery, assembly, and installation of offshore wind energy projects."

Click here to read this Op Ed in the Boston Globe

In an Op Ed in today's Barnstable Patriot, 'Dots that need connecting', Cape and Islands State Senator Dan Wolf questions the opposition group & Bill Koch funding of the Town of Barnstable's litigation of Cape Wind permits.

Click here to read Senator Wolf's Op Ed

Considerable backlash and outrage has emerged over the recent comments of Bill Koch, a coal and oil magnate who is a major funder and Chairman of the opposition group to Cape Wind over an article in the Cape Cod Times in which Koch stated that the benefits of clean energy are "B.S. arguments" and that global warming is unproven.

Letter from George Bachrach, President of the Environmental League of Massachusetts, published in the Cape Cod Times:

The Times deserves credit for getting the elusive billionaire Bill Koch on the record ("Politics shape Cape Wind debate," Nov. 1).
It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry. Koch calls Cape Wind "somewhat of an irritant." Pretty modest for a guy who's spent a decade financing the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, his personal front group with no legitimacy in the environmental community.  He talks about "visual pollution" but apparently has no problem with real pollution or the scars caused by his coal mines and industry oil rigs off the coast. He talks about the cost of wind energy, but what's the cost of climate change in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Katrina and the BP oil spill? Bill Koch talks about cost, but he never mentions the decades of government subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, where he made his fortune.  America is decades behind Europe and China in developing offshore wind. It's a tourist attraction in Copenhagen. It's a job creator in China. It is America's future. And Cape Wind will be built.
George Bachrach, President, Environmental League of Massachusetts

Click here for link to Conservation Law Foundation's blog about Bill Koch's remarks on their webpage Cape Wind Now

Click here to read Miles Grant's reaction to Bill Koch on The Green Miles

Click here to view Greentech Media's Quote of the Day on Cape Wind and Joe Kennedy

Click here to read Kit Kennedy at the Natural Resources Defense Council explain how Cape Wind protects Nantucket Sound and has the support of the environmental community and how the opposition group is an environmental phony.

Cape Cod Times' columnist Sean Gonsalves asks if the Barnstable Town Council is 'for sale' to the opposition group to Cape Wind?  He follows the money trail that shows project opponents are paying the legal bill for the Town.  He writes:

"But, it's downright insulting for a town government, which is supposed to represent the entire town, to set up a special fund to accept money from a one-sided opposition group on the most politically divisive issue the Cape has seen in the past decade.  It sets a bad precedent, to say nothing of the slap in the face to the sizable number of town residents who support Cape Wind."

Click here to read the column

There have been several hopeful signs that the decades-long controversy surrounding Cape Wind’s offshore wind farm on Nantucket Sound may finally begin die down – and that is ultimately good news for the alternative energy market in New England and the nation’s efforts toward energy independence.

Click here to read this editorial in the Springfield Republican