In what is surely the most promising news of the decade for the nation’s burgeoning wind energy industry, the Pentagon has withdrawn its objection to the Shepherds Flat wind project near Arlington, Oregon.
In mid-April, Defense Department officials voiced strong objection to the project, based on their assessment that the turbine blades would block signals from an Air Force radar station. They have since created a workaround that involves upgrading its radar system.
The Shepherds Flat wind project, nine years in the making, valued at US$2 billion, with 845 megawatts of rated capacity, promised to deliver not only huge amounts of clean, renewable electricity to a nation mired in fossil fuel production, but a lifeline to financially beleaguered GE, which has a contract to make the turbines. This contract was GE’s largest for 2009 fiscal year.
(READ the story at EnergyBoom.com)