No no no no no. This is not how it works. Earlier this month, two major power companies backed out of their agreements to buy clean wind power from the planned Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound. The ostensible reason was that the offshore wind farm’s developers had missed deadlines for raising money and starting construction. The reason, said Cape Wind president James Gordon, was the “extended, unprecedented, and relentless litigation” by the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound--whose chairman is William I. Koch, lesser known sibling of the more famous Charles G. and David H. “If the vast wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound is ever built, William I. Koch will have a spectacular view of it,” wrote the New York Times in 2013. “Of course, that is the last thing he wants.”

It appears that Koch’s efforts to preserve the view from his 26-acre summer compound may spell the end of Cape Wind. With 130 3.6 megawatt turbines, it would have been the first offshore wind farm in the United States, providing 75% of the electricity for Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket. Cape Wind is not yet throwing in the towel, but the withdrawal of its two largest customers is a tremendous blow.

Not to be outdone by Massachusetts, energy regulators in New Jersey have thrice rejected plans for a Chinese-backed wind project off Atlantic City. "Once again the [Board of Public Utilities] took the side of the Koch brothers and tea party over green jobs and the environment," Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. So no wind farms off New Jersey anytime soon either.

Last September in Copenhagen, I visited the Danish Wind Industry Association. Chief operating officer Jakob Lau Holst had just concluded a meeting with then-Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, and all parties appeared certain that Cape Wind would proceed. (The Danes were especially pleased, as Cape Wind was modeled on their own Anholt project.) Today offshore wind power in Denmark is forging ahead, but sputtering in the United States. Last year was the hottest year in 1,200 years, the ten hottest years in the historical record have occurred since 1998, and we are quickly running out of time.