The Department of the Interior has approved a 300-megawatt solar farm in Arizona and a 200-megawatt wind farm in California. It is also pushing for offshore wind farms on the Atlantic coast. That’s according to the Wall Street Journal.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told the WSJ the new projects will produce the equivalent of nearly 18 coal-fired plants.
The Arizona project is being developed by NextEra Energy Resources and will power about 90,000 homes, the WSJ says. The project in California is being developed by Iberdrola Renewables and will power around 65,000 homes.
But, the WSJ notes, while onshore projects move forward, offshore projects are a different story. No wind power is yet produced there.
In 2010, Salazar approved a project in Massachusetts that would create the first offshore wind farm in the U.S. He said the department is also moving forward on a transmission project that would carry electricity from offshore wind farms in Virginia up to New Jersey.
Google and others have pledged up to $5 billion for a network of transmission lines for offshore wind farms, the WSJ says.
High-voltage transmission lines along the Atlantic coast could deliver up to 7,000 megawatts of wind turbine capacity, Salazar told the WSJ.
To read the full article by The Wall Street Jounral cited in this story, click here