Could a wind farm comparable in size to Cape Wind be built elsewhere in New England, either on land or offshore?
No land-based sites in New England offer conditions as good as the proposed Cape Wind site (including high-class wind energy resources, sufficient surplus electric transmission capacity, and enough open space to build a wind farm of this size). In its 2004 draft EIS, the Army Corps of Engineers evaluated eight land-based sites in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, and Maine, and nine offshore sites in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Maine as potential alternative locations for a wind farm with a capacity of 200-1,500 megawatts. The only large land site with adequate wind resources and transmission was the Massachusetts Military Reservation/Otis Airforce Base, which is an active-duty military facility. Table 3-4 of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Draft Environmental Statement (ACE DEIS)5 summarizes these land alternatives. The Corps also evaluated alternate offshore sites for a wind farm comparable to Cape Wind, but at most of those locations water depths or wave heights were too l
