The lesson of the 16-year fiasco of the US Wind Turbine struggle against Cape Cod: without ocean planning, Green Energy Dream lost US $100 million instead.

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Cape Cod, located in the southeast of Massachusetts, is a promontory peninsula extending into the Atlantic Ocean. It is famous for its seafood and beach resorts. It has rich marine ecological resources and well-developed cetacean tourism industry.

However, this is also one of the first "classic failures" in the development of offshore wind power in the United States. In 2001, the "Cape Cod Offshore Wind Project" (Cape Wind) triggered such a variety and frequency of protests that it was even filmed into a movie: Cape Spin: An American Power Struggle (the Wind Power Battle of the United States).

At a time when Taiwan's third phase of wind power development is about to be opened for manufacturers to choose their own sites, "upstream and downstream" specially interviewed Lu Xiaoyun, an associate professor in the Department of Marine Environment and Engineering at Sun Yat-sen University, who had studied the case in depth. Using ── Cape Wind's painful lesson in Cape Cod, ── issued a warning and cautiously took every step in the development of wind power in Taiwan. (background reading: if the wind power is left unchecked, the ocean will become the warring States period! Huantuan calls for the suspension of the opening of the third phase of offshore fan development)

After 16 years of dispute over Cape cod, the manufacturer finally made a disastrous exit (Photo / Associated Press AP). The wind power company made a disastrous exit after 16 years of litigation.

The originally ideal renewable energy development plan has been reduced to a surreal environmental protection struggle script because of the improper location of the development. This green battle between the "green energy development" and the "environmental protection movement" train collision has been commented as "a surreal and fascinating tragic story".

In 2001, there was a wave of wind power generation in Europe, and the United States was just about to start. Jim Gordon, founder of renewable energy developer EMI (Energy Management Inc), has launched the Cape Wind: Cape cod offshore wind power project. However, the unilateral planning of enterprises has successively triggered protests among fishermen, ship operators, small aircraft, ecologists and residents, forcing them to embark on a long road of litigation.

After 16 years of litigation and struggle, the Cape Wind plan failed and EMI withdrew with tragic compensation. The wind power development plan at Cape Cod was forced to start all over again, and the Massachusetts Marine Administration Office (Coastal Zone Management, MA, CZM) learned from the bitter experience that, in addition to formulating marine regional plans, offshore wind power development sites were also officially selected to mitigate the environmental impact of wind power development and try to find its own place with other space users.