President Obama’s Earth Day announcement of new rules to regulate the offshore wind-power industry was hailed yesterday as a major development that will allow Rhode Island to move forward as a national leader in developing its own offshore wind-power projects.

The new regulations released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Interior establish a framework for leases and easements, according to the agency, that will provide for “orderly, safe and environmentally responsible renewable energy development activities, such as the siting and construction of off-shore wind farms on the Outer Continental Shelf.”

Offshore wind-power generation has been slowed because the Interior Department and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission have disagreed over who would regulate wind turbines in federal waters. With their agreement three weeks ago that the Interior Department would regulate wind projects, and the release of proposed regulations this week, many uncertainties were removed.

State officials, and executives at Deepwater Wind, the company picked by Rhode Island to build a $1.5-billion wind farm off Block Island, said Thursday they were relieved. They were among more than 200 people attending a conference sponsored by the Rhode Island Natural History Survey at Quonset Point focusing on the ecological impacts of wind farms.

“It’s very significant. It opens the door,” said Grover Fugate, executive director of the state’s Coastal Resources Management Council. The council is conducting an unusual multimillion-dollar study of Rhode Island’s coastal waters to determine the best locations for wind turbines.

Without the rules, Fugate said, wind farm developers could not even erect meteorological towers that are needed to gather the three years of wind data that lenders require before they will finance wind projects.

Chris Wissemann, managing director of Deepwater Wind, called the rules “an important step forward toward the development of Rhode Island’s offshore wind energy industry. Regulatory uncertainty had been a major hurdle that had to be overcome.”

“We now know the application and permitting regime under which we must operate,” said Wissemann. “We will now begin to prepare our applications and to perform all studies and analysis that the federal and state governments will expect from us.”

Wissemann said that by simply announcing the new rules, the federal government has raised the prospects of new jobs for Rhode Island. Deepwater has agreed to stage its wind farm operations out of Quonset Point.

Governor Carcieri called the new rules a “major milestone in our nation’s path towards the realization of a responsible energy policy.”

Carcieri set the goal of generating 15 percent of the state’s energy with wind power several years ago. He and others learned from the precedents set by the Cape Wind project, which has been trying to develop a wind farm in Nantucket Sound in the face of strong opposition from local and national politicians and in the absence of federal regulations. The company has spent millions of dollars on environmental impact studies.

Rhode Island is using scientists from the University of Rhode Island to do extensive studies of federal and state waters to determine the best sites for wind turbines. The state also picked one company, Deepwater, to develop a major wind farm.

Deepwater is following two tracks. It is planning to erect five turbines in state waters southeast of Block Island, to provide power to residents of the island. It has already installed a bird radar system at the Southeast Light to monitor bird activities. Soon it will erect a 60-meter tower near the entrance to Great Salt Pond to measure wind speeds. It plans to start construction of the five turbines next year and complete them by 2012.

Later, the company plans to erect about 100 turbines in federal waters 15 to 20 miles offshore.

Fugate said the use of offshore waters may be put out to competitive bids at auction and he wasn’t sure how that would affect the state’s plans for Deepwater. But a company spokesperson said an auction would be held only if more than one party intervenes, and Deepwater feels its work with the state will give it a leg up against competitors.

During Thursday’s conference several experts said they found that wind turbines in Denmark had minimal effects on bird populations, and they predicted similar minimal effects when Cape Wind builds near Nantucket.

Biologist Tony Fox said his studies with radar, human observations and video cameras showed birds avoided wind turbines in Denmark. He cautioned that while a few turbines have little ecological consequences, Europe is reviewing proposals for thousands more, so more study must be done of its cumulative effects.

plord@projo.com