Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Mass. Seeks to Sieze the Ocean

Massachusetts is building a plan to garner power from different energy sources - offshore wind, tidal and wave farms:

Massachusetts released a draft of a plan Wednesday that would govern the permitting and management of projects such as tidal and wave energy farms.

Touted by the state as the first comprehensive ocean management plan in the country, it aims to support renewable energy and other industrial operations
in the state waters while taking care to protect marine resources, the state
said.

But creating a management plan would help to ensure a more careful planning and permitting process. Other states might follow Massachusetts' step as more renewable energy project developers express an interest in building wind
and ocean power farms up and down the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

The federal government also has taken steps to set up the regulatory framework, especially because the current administration is keen on promoting renewable energy production and job creation.

The state is now collecting public comments on the plan, and hopes to finalize it by the end of the year.

- Brewskie

2 comments:

  1. It is hard to believe that this endeavor by the "peoples republic" will be any more productive than anything else they have done in the last 20 years or so.

    Hang on, it is impossible to believe a bunch of bureaucrats sponsored by politicians, who are mainly lawyers, will ever achieve anything worthwhile with this scheme.

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  2. Perhaps, but give them a chance. America didn't become the world's leader of wind power without government help (though our percentage of wind-generated power per capita lags); nuclear power requires decent government subsidies. Sweden - a haven for big government and a country already loaded with energy generated through renewable means - wants to carbon neutral, that is, they want to generate 100% of of their energy needs through renewables by 2020 (not that I'm advocating we adopt the Swede paradigm, of course).

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