HYANNIS, MA, March 21, 2011 – Hy-Line Cruises and Cape Wind today announced plans for a new Eco Tour & Visitor Center to ferry residents and tourists out to the wind farm.  Hy-Line has been a ferry service to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket for more 50 years and today announced it will augment that service with guided tours of the Cape Wind farm during construction and after completion.

The Visitor Center will educate visitors of all ages about the history of the Cape Wind project and energy use on Cape Cod, the U.S. and around the world.  Specific emphasis will be placed on the history of energy use on Cape Cod and the Islands ranging from historic windmills to whale oil, to fossil fuels and the new transition to a clean energy economy led by citizens of Cape Cod and Massachusetts.

David Scudder, Vice President of Operations at Hy-Line Cruises said, “Hy-Line is confident that the Cape Wind Eco Tour and Visitor Center at Hy-Line Cruises will promote the continued growth of our company and stimulate economic development and job growth and creation in Hyannis, Cape Cod, the Islands, and the Massachusetts tourist-based economy.  The creation of this world class tourist attraction will provide yet another great reason for people all over Massachusetts, New England, the United States and the World to visit Cape Cod and the Islands.” 

Cape Wind President Jim Gordon said, "The Cape Wind Eco Tour and Visitor's Center at Hy-Line Cruises represents more than creating a world class tourism attraction and drawing visitors from around our region, nation and globe.  It will stand as a testament to the spirit, ingenuity and progressiveness of Cape Cod and Massachusetts and how our community harnessed the wind to protect and preserve our environment, to revitalize our economy and to create a healthier more secure future."

Congressman William Keating welcomed the news, “Cape Wind will be the first offshore wind farm in the United States, and with that distinction will come jobs and economic opportunities for Southeast Massachusetts. The Cape's natural resources, rich history and arts and cultural centers all allow tourism to thrive. There is also a history of energy development that can be tapped for an ecotourism market that is burgeoning. Today's announcement of the venture between Cape Wind and Hy-line demonstrates the ingenuity and entrepreneurship I hope we'll see across the Cape. The Scudder family should be commended for expanding their business in the direction of clean energy ecotourism, thereby promoting alternative sources of energy and creating new jobs in our area."

State Senator for the Cape and Islands Dan Wolf said, "My hope is that this creative collaboration helps us realize a long-term energy vision for our region that includes a plan for responsible and sustainable consumption, production and distribution."

Hy-Line officials are committed to developing a green vessel to be used for this purpose and they are exploring the use an innovative hybrid engine and they are also pursuing the possibility of this vessel being made in Massachusetts.

Hy-Line Cruises is working closely with the Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority (CCRTA) and others to tie into the inter-modal transportation system to service its site by using green shuttle buses servicing off-site parking at the CCRTA.

Hy-Line Cruises and Cape Wind look forward to working with Cape Cod Community College to develop a curriculum of credit and non-credit courses that can be used to educate and train students and others in our community so they can attain jobs created both by the Eco Tour Cruises and at the Visitor Center.

Cape Cod Community College President Kathleen Schatzberg said, “The College is thrilled to be the educational partner in this new venture that will have multiple economic impacts throughout the region. We anticipate that students in multiple disciplines will be involved, from providing local historic as well as ecological/environmental information as tour guides, to serving as customer service and operational personnel for tour services. As the business develops, we look forward to creating the workforce training programs needed to build its success.”

February 23, 2011 - While Cape Wind has received approval to build a wind farm in Nantucket Sound it is still trying to sell half of the power the proposed project would generate. On Friday Cape Wind was dealt a setback when Nstar, the second largest utility in Massachusetts, filed contracts with the Department of Public Utilities to buy power from Hoosac Wind in Massachusetts, Groton Wind in New Hampshire and Blue Sky East in Maine. The Cape Wind project may be downsized if another buyer for up to 50% of its capacity cannot be found. Here's more at ABC News.

January 31, 2011 - The temperatures of water flowing north into the Arctic Ocean adjacent to Greenland are the warmest they have been in the last 2,000 years says a new international study led by Robert Spielhagen of the Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Literature in Mainz, Germany. The study showed that water in the Fram Strait between Greenland and the northernmost part of Norway has warmed roughly 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past century. Fram Strait waters today are about 2.5F warmer than during the Medieval Warm Period (900-1300 AD).

Water enters the Fram Strait by way of the North Atlantic Current which is fed by the Gulf Stream. The North Atlantic Current provides ice-free conditions adjacent to Svalbard even in winter. But now, according to study co-author Thomas Marchitto (a fellow at Colorado University-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research), the rate of Arctic sea ice decline appears to be accelerating due to positive feedbacks between the ice, the Arctic Ocean and the atmosphere. As Arctic temperatures rise, summer ice cover declines, more solar heat is absorbed by the ocean and additional ice melts. Warmer water may delay freezing in the fall, leading to thinner ice cover in winter and spring, making the sea ice more vulnerable to melting during the next summer.

Air temperatures in Greenland have risen roughly 7 degrees F in the past several decades, thought to be due primarily to an increase in Earth's greenhouse gases, according to CU-Boulder scientists.

According to NYTimes some scientists say the study is another validation of the controversial “hockey stick” graph that shows a steep rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution.

Here's more at University of Colorado at Boulder News Center.

 January 22, 2011 - Andrew Revkin writes the Dot Earth blog for the NY Times. Last Thursday he posted an anylsis of projections recently released by BP and Exxon regarding the correlation of future energy consumption, economic growth (GDP) and C02 emissions.

Here’s a core graph from the BP analysis, which the company says is not the result of a scenario, but of its judgment based on history, trends in energy and environmental policies (or the lack thereof), markets and supplies. The moral of the story, in essence, is that “future energy” — at least through the next couple of decades — is largely the same as current energy, with gains in efficiency and growth in adoption of renewable sources and nuclear power still not substantially blunting growth in the combustion of fossil fuels.

The implication may be that CO2 output and concomitant global warming will proceed to unacceptable levels for another generation regardless of how much progress the people of planet earth make in deploying alternative energy solutions - unless - we also deploy global engineering solutions that remove C02.The one piece of good news shown in the graph is that BP foresees GDP continuing to grow hyperbolically even as energy usage tapers off.

Here's Revkin's full post.