Idea of the Day: Offshore Wind Energy Is a Smart Clean Energy Alternative

February 4, 2013

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Since 1896, when Californians sunk the first oil well into the seabed from a wharf jutting 300 feet into the Pacific Ocean, the American offshore energy industry has been all about fossil fuels.

But our potential is so much greater. “Drill now, drill everywhere” is a closed-minded strategy of the past. And with every day that goes by as we continue to focus on fossil fuels for energy, we fall further behind the rest of the world in the quest to diversify our offshore energy portfolio.

By continuing to prioritize yesterday’s technologies, we are locking ourselves into an energy future that dooms our climate, harms our environment, and sacrifices human health. The costs of coal, oil, and natural gas have all been kept artificially cheap by government subsidies and by our failure to make polluters pay for the negative effects of their emissions. Artificially lowering the price of these commodities slants the playing field, making it harder for new clean energy sources to compete in the marketplace.

For more on this topic, please see:

• Filling the Sails of Offshore Wind Energy by Michael Conathan