Massachusetts To Pick Developer Of Nation's 1st Industrial-Sized Offshore Wind Farm
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How much power would get generated?
The 1,600 megawatts is about two and a half times the output of the Pilgrim nuclear power plant, and when it's totally built out that will meet the electric needs of more than 1.5 million homes.
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So, what kind of jobs, and how much money are we talking about?
The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center has estimated that the emerging offshore wind industry could inject up to $800 million directly into the state's economy over the next decade.
And construction could employ about 2,000 people. Wind turbine technicians are in very high demand.
But the real employment is in operating and maintaining the hundreds of turbines at sea, and developing an infrastructure for a large industry on land. All the projects promise to use the state's new port staging area in New Bedford.
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The energy is supposed to help wean the state away from fossil fuels. But what about sea life and birds?
Offshore wind farms can kill seabirds -- hundreds of thousand a year -- but it's nothing like the tens of millions killed by fossil fuel plants. So the Audubon Society, for example, has embraced offshore wind.
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Off shore wind has been happening for a long time, and those people there had all the same concerns than some people here, are now having. Like concerns about fishing - and what we have now learned, is that there are many, many more good things that result from wind farms, than there are bad things.