Some wrong assumptions were made above.
First of all, the Georges Bank is 100-220 miles East of Nantucket in the Atlantic Ocean. The Horseshoe Shoal is between Nantucket and the Cape in Nantucket Sound. The Georges Bank is the spawning ground of about 2/3rds of the North Atlantic fish species, but the wind farm is hundreds of miles away and would not have impacted them. In fact in 2013 a sea floor power cable was laid between Nantucket and the Cape, and no discernable impacts were ever monitored even though the area disturbed was comparable to that from 130 wind turbines. The Georges Bank itself is in International waters and is heavily fished by both US and foriegn fishing boats including the Japanese who must travel from the Pacific to get there. The major endangered species in the area at this time are the top of the food chain, predator species such as Bluefin Tuna (95% gone) and swordfish (75% gone). Overfishing is the prime cause, no measurable impacts were ever noted from many offshore wind farms in Europe.
The NIMBYism is primarily from sport sailers, the yachting crowd. JFK loved the area, and his sailing yachts were painted the same dark blue as he painted the White House limosines. His younger brother Ted (more recently deceased and the subject of the current film
Chappaquiddick) was more fond of his Father's vintage wooden hulled cigarette racer
Rum Runner, the source of the Kennedy family wealth which was alcohol smuggling during Prohibition when their father was a member of the Irish Mob.
There is no unused real estate in the overcrowded East Coast. Nevertheless, the first offshore wind farm was constructed there offshore of Rhode Island, and with the prevalent power pricing is extremely profitable. The economic impacts of the two dozen odd NIMBY lawsuits are what killed Cape Wind, had it been constructed the legal costs alone would have made the power very expensive. In this sense where the legal costs exceed the construction costs, wind farms are akin to Nuclear energy. There are a few wind turbines on Nantucket island, because NIMBYism is alive and well, anybody trying to build one meets lots of resistance. The actual Horseshoe Shoal is in the red area of this chart:
The primary impact of Cape Wind would have been to decrease the death rates from respiratory disease, assuming that the FF power plants and their emissions could be throttled down after it was built, which is admittedly a large assumption. In spite of the beauty of the area itself, those FF power plants, which include both coal and oil fuels, are located in a crowded area and the air quality of the Cape and Islands is the poorest in the state.
Note also from the chart above that the inland/onshore wind resource is very poor when compared to offshore. This is not Texas and the economics of real estate and the terrain itself are very different. The offshore winds are created by the warm Gulf Stream currents.
Which is why I am looking to replace the 20+ year old oil burner that heats my Nantucket home with something more environmentally sound. The neighbors surrounding my place are the vacant lots to the N owned by me, the lot to the S owned by my Brother In Law, and a Horse Farm behind me. All the neighbors will have the opportunity to object to my plans. Solar energy has the same NIMBY problem in this area. The BIL has a plastic rowhouse style greenhouse and a half dozen direlict trucks parked on his lot, plus an old decaying boat. I never had any chance to object to those, they all existed when the wife inherited, and my FIL was the prior owner of those same trucks.
