OK of offshore wind power along East Coast could have big implications for Midwest

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar approved the Cape Wind offshore wind farm in Massachusetts Bay today, a move that will have vast implications for the wind power industry, not just in Eastern states, Tom Zeller Jr. of The New York Times reports. The installation will be the first offshore wind farm in the U.S. "There are at least 11 other U.S. offshore wind projects in development, off Delaware, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and elsewhere in Massachusetts," Juliet Eilperin of The Washington Post reports.

Further such approvals would allow many Eastern states to produce their own green energy, a move that would have vast implications for Midwestern wind power, Dan Piller of the Des Moines Register writes on the Green Fields blog. "Iowa and other Upper Midwestern states are investing heavily in wind energy not just to power their own homes and businesses, but to generate surplus electricity that can be sold to more populous states east of the Mississippi River," Piller writes. To accomplish that goal the states need a national renewable energy standard and "a 765-kilovolt transmission line that would extend from the Dakotas and Minnesota through Iowa across the Mississippi to Chicago and beyond." A move to offshore wind could reduce or eliminate the need for Midwestern wind power to be sent east. (Read more)