US Cape Cod wind turbine struggle: 16 years lost, no marine planning, one hundred million USD in damages, exit

Cape Cod is located on the southeastern edge of Massachusetts in the United States. It is a cape peninsula extending into the Atlantic Ocean, famous for seafood and also a well-known beach vacation destination, with abundant marine ecological resources and a well-developed whale and dolphin watching industry.

However, this is also the "classic failure case" of the first batch of offshore wind development in the United States. In 2001, the "Cape Wind" offshore wind project triggered resistance themes so diverse and so frequent that it was even made into a film: Cape Spin: An American Power Struggle.

As Taiwan's third-stage wind power development is about to be opened for developers to choose sites on their own, "Upstream and Downstream" specially interviewed Lu Xiaoyun, associate professor in the Department of Marine Environment and Engineering at National Sun Yat-sen University, who has deeply studied this case, to use the lessons from elsewhere -- the painful lesson of Cape Wind at Cape Cod -- to issue a warning and take each step in Taiwan's wind power development prudently. (Background reading: Letting wind power enclose land at will will turn the ocean into an era of warring states! Environmental groups call for suspending the opening of third-stage offshore wind turbine development)

Improper site selection: the wind power company went through 16 years of litigation and exited with heavy losses

What was originally an ideal renewable energy development plan became a surreal script for an environmental protest because of improper development site selection. This battle of green versus green, a head-on collision between "green energy development" and the "environmental movement," was commented on as "a surreal and fascinating tragic story."

In 2001, continental Europe had already seen a wave of wind power generation, while the United States was just beginning. Jim Gordon, founder of renewable energy developer EMI (Energy Management Inc), launched Cape Wind: the Cape Cod offshore wind project. However, the company's unilateral planning successively triggered resistance from fishermen, shipping operators, small aircraft operators, ecologists, and residents, forcing it onto a long road of litigation.

After 16 years of litigation and resistance, the Cape Wind project was declared a failure, and EMI exited with heavy losses. The wind power development plan at Cape Cod was forced to be completely redone. The Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM) drew a hard lesson and, in addition to formulating marine spatial planning, also had the government select offshore wind development sites, so as to reduce the environmental impact of wind power development and try to let it coexist in its proper place with other space users.