public comment at the great lakes meeting from Mark Rodgers, Communications Director of Cape Wind Associates

1Testimony to the US Commission on Ocean Policy by Mark Rodgers Communications Director of Cape Wind Associates Chicago, IL September 25, 2002 My name is Mark Rodgers, I’m the Communications Director of Cape Wind Associates. We are working to secure permits to build America’s first offshore wind farm on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound. We would harvest the winds on this shoal five and a half miles off the south shore of Cape Cod, to provide, on average, half of the power used on Cape Cod and the Islands from clean, renewable energy. The United States has a vast supply clean renewable offshore energy resources that can provide us with a cleaner environment, a more stable climate, and a safer energy future. The Cape Wind project is a private sector initiative that embodies many of the policy objectives articulated in the Act of Congress that created the US Commission on Ocean Policy such as “engaging the private sector in innovative approaches for sustainable use of marine resources” and in “investing in technologies designed to promote national energy security”. US offshore wind resources are abundant, inexhaustible, sustainable and secure. Europeans are now greatly accelerating their use of ocean based wind power which they first pioneered twelve years ago. There is no reason why the US should be left behind. Atmospheric pollutant deposition is one of the threats to healthy oceans that I know this Commission is addressing. ...