Offshore Wind Conferences Galore!
Last month our Cape Wind team was spread around covering three offshore wind conferences in the span of three weeks. This underscores how offshore wind power is regarded as an important and growing industry around the world and here in the United States.
The first conference was one that I attended in Rostock, Germany. I flew into Hamburg and rented a car for the two hour drive to the lovely Baltic port of Rostock and on the way saw literally hundreds of wind turbines from the highway. The conference was entitled Offshore Wind: European and American Dialogue, sponsored by German-American Dialogue on Renewable Energy (www.gadore.org). While there I saw a large barge transporting wind turbine blades out of Rostock harbor and at the conference I heard German government officials explain how important wind turbine manufacturing has become to their economy aided by growing demand inside Germany and around the world.
The following week Cape Wind President Jim Gordon and Vice President of Project Development Craig Olmsted attended the European Offshore Wind 2009 Conference in Stockholm, Sweden that drew nearly 5,000 people (http://www.eow2009.info/). Jim reported how struck he was by the considerable interest at the conference that the U.S. offshore wind power market was finally now emerging, eighteen years after it began in Europe. Jim and Craig met with a lot of people at the conference who have been following Cape Wind very closely, particularly this year since we received such a favorable Final Environmental Impact Statement from the Minerals Management Service and we completed State and Local permitting.
A week later there was another offshore wind conference, this time in the United States. I was the luncheon Keynote speaker at the Infocast Offshore Wind Conference held in Washington, D.C. (http://www.infocastinc.com/index.php/conference/offshore09). This was the second U.S. offshore wind conference held by Infocast in 2009! The first offshore wind conference in the U.S. was held by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) in Wilmington, Delaware.
COMING NEXT: BOSTON!
I’m glad to report that there is an offshore wind conference in the works coming to a place near you! AWEA is organizing its next offshore wind conference coming up in December right here in Boston where Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is scheduled to speak. Anyone interested in registering for AWEA’s Offshore Wind Conference in Boston should contact Jennifer Banks at: jbanks@awea.org. The Conference website is: http://www.awea.org/events/offshorewind09/.
