The Massachusetts Governor’s Office signed a letter of intent this week with three large offshore wind farm developers to lease the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal as a staging ground for wind turbine components.
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The departments of Energy and Interior are planning a joint effort to support offshore wind farms over the next five years, a move aimed at reducing cost and development risks and easing the regulatory constraints that have hindered construction to date, according to a statement Friday. Such information could significantly benefit the offshore wind community by informing state policies critical to supporting development.
In a Friday statement, NOIA President Randall Luthi said the plan was “a good start”, but called for a plan that combined nontraditional energy sources, such as offshore wind, and traditional ones, such as oil and natural gas.
The strategy details the current state of offshore wind in the US, presents actions and innovations needed to reduce deployment costs and timelines, and provides a roadmap to support the growth and success of the industry, according to the DOE and DOI.
“For example, it will track community responses to these projects longitudinally, from development through operations, to determine the factors that make a project more or less acceptable to affected communities, and begin to suggest development practices that are most likely to create acceptance of and support for offshore wind in locations around the country”. Among them are plans to improve data gathering on the meteorological and sea floor conditions that are ideal for locating a wind farm, improving wind turbine designs and building full-scale offshore wind farm demonstration projects.
The Department of Energy has estimated that developing 86 gigawatts of offshore wind would support 160,000 jobs. That project is expected to generate 30 megawatts of energy, or enough to power 17,000 homes. “Many of the lessons learned from the Block Island project – e.g., facility design, fabrication and installation – will inform future projects to be developed on the Outer Continental Shelf”.
A wind farm off the shore of the United Kingdom.
The full offshore wind report can be found here. The EBRD estimated Georgias wind power potential could reach two GW, while other industry sources estimated the countrys wind potential could reach five GW – nearly half the nations annual energy use. The European Bank provided a loan of $24 million for the project the first of its kind in Georgia. According to the EBRDs Renewable Development Initiative, hydro power was Georgias most dominant energy resource but wind and geothermal energy sectors were promising resources.
“It is a clear marker that offshore wind can happen in the USA”, he said.
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Jeremy Firestone, the director of the Center for Carbon-free Power Integration at the University of DE, said the Block Island project will teach future developers how offshore wind turbines withstand hurricanes and nor’easters, how migrating whales react to the turbines, and it gives the public and lawmakers an opportunity to see what an offshore wind farm looks like without having to travel to Europe. The bureau is considering opening 485,000 acres of water near Oahu for offshore wind leasing.
