A $1 billion proposal to build the first big U.S. offshore wind-power farm has passed a key hurdle by winning permit requirements in Massachusetts.

Cape Wind Associates LLC, a privately funded Boston-based energy company, has proposed constructing 130 wind turbines over 24 square miles (62 sq km) in Nantucket Sound, within view of the wealthy Cape Cod resort region of Massachusetts.

Cape Wind completed its State and Local permitting process with a unanimous vote of the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board to grant Cape Wind a ‘Certificate of Environmental Impact and Public Interest’ . This rolls up all State and local permits and approvals into one ‘composite certificate’.

Completion of the Federal Permitting process for Cape Wind is expected soon when U.S. Secretary Ken Salazar issues a Record of Decision on Cape Wind. The Minerals Management Service of the U.S. Department of Interior issued Cape Wind a favourable Final Environmental Impact Statement in January.

Recently, a majority of the members of the Massachusetts Legislature, 107 in total, representing Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate, including 28 Committee Chairmen, signed onto a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar urging him to approve Cape Wind “as soon as possible.”

The Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board (Siting Board), was created by the Legislature to ensure the siting of needed and least environmental impact energy facilities and was granted the statutory authority to issue a comprehensive approval to an energy facility it has previously approved, where that facility has been denied a permit by any other state or local agency in the Commonwealth.  The Siting Board exercised their statutory authority in their vote which was necessitated by a procedural denial issued from the Cape Cod Commission in 2007.