Dominion Says It's Moving Forward With Wind Farm Off Virginia

On the same day the Obama administration announced streamlined permitting process for offshore wind energy, possible turbines off the Virginia coast took a big step forward:

Dominion Virginia Power is interested in building up to 400 wind turbines in Atlantic waters in what could be a powerful message for a slowly emerging domestic source of clean energy.

"If everything aligns and it makes good sense and we have our regulators on board, yes, we would be moving forward on a wind farm," Mary Doswell, Dominion's senior vice president for alternative energy solutions, said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press.

The article doesn't say how much electricity will be produced, but Cape Wind only has 130 wind turbines and will produce up to 420 megawatts, so we could be looking at several coal-fired power plants worth of electricity. That power will come with none of the millions of tons of deadly air pollution the equivalent coal plants would produce each year. Additionally, Cape Wind is expected to create up to 1,000 construction jobs and support 150 permanent jobs. While Doswell said offshore wind energy costs 28 cents per kilowatt hour, Cape Wind is set to be sold for less than 19 cents per kilowatt hour and I'm not sure why there's such a wide disparity in Dominion's estimate.

Down the road, conservationists will need to get behind the plan to tell regulators they're happy to pay a little more on their power bills to keep our air & water clean and preserve Virginia's mountains for future generations to enjoy. For now, email Gov. Bob McDonnell to let him know you want wind turbines - not oil drilling rigs - off Virginia's beaches.