Europe: 1,662 turbines; United States: 0. After delays that left the American industry years behind other nations, the first wind farm off the US coast should finally produce electricity by 2015.
With Americans living atop mountains of coal and reserves of petroleum and natural gas, it is little wonder there is resistance to financing a renewable but expensive offshore energy resource that remains untapped in the United States.
Despite several proposals, and the blessing of environmentalists who describe them as sustainable alternatives to coal, not a single wind farm off the Atlantic coast has been built.
Several are in the works, but they have run up against political hurdles in states like Maryland and Virginia, where lawmakers are hesitant to offer government subsidies.
As veteran energy expert Jim Lanard, president of the Offshore Wind Development Coalition, noted, Europeans jumped ahead with heavy subsidisation of renewables like wind because they lacked the oil to meet their energy needs.
With far more indigenous energy supply, “there’s less pressure for the United States to do more in the renewable sector than in Europe, where there’s a greater pressure to achieve energy independence,” Lanard told AFP.