Fifteen years ago, developers of Cape Wind sought to jump-start the U.S. offshore-wind industry with an ambitious $2.6-billion plan for a 130-turbine farm, off the lower Cape Cod, Mass., coast, to generate 468 megawatts of new clean power. High-level opposition, on issues from blocked views to Indian burial grounds, stretched out its approvals, mired it in lawsuits and cost it key utility customers that made the project a distant bad memory.
But Cape Wind may turn out to be a blessing in disguise, setting the foundation to complete a smaller-scale operating farm, America’s first, and spurring coastal states to boost offshore wind as a power-supply and economic driver.