[ Having fallen a decade behind in developing the renewable
energy, the U.S. is priming itself for a space race-style comeback.]
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BIDEN’S NEW MOONSHOT: AN OFFSHORE WIND INDUSTRY TO RIVAL EUROPE’S
 
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Derrick Z. Jackson
April 28, 2021
Grist
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_ Having fallen a decade behind in developing the renewable energy,
the U.S. is priming itself for a space race-style comeback. _

Amelia Bates / Grist,

 

In 2013, I took my first trip to Europe to see offshore wind turbines
spin at the Anholt wind farm, nine miles off the coast of Denmark. The
experience was just as jaw-dropping as my several visits to NASA’s
Kennedy Space Center in Florida, home to the 36-story-tall Saturn V
rocket that sent men to the moon. The turbines were similarly massive,
stretching 46 stories into the air every time the tip of a blade
reached the high noon position.

I was there as a reporter for the Boston Globe, following members of a
Massachusetts trade delegation pondering how to bring similar
technology to their home state. Construction was nearly complete on
the 111-turbine, 400-megawatt complex at Anholt that would provide
enough juice to power 400,000 Danish homes. Our boat tour passed by a
mammoth “jack-up” installation vessel loaded with towers, blades,
and nacelles (the housing for the gearbox and electronics). Despite
rough seas, my excitement to photograph these mechanical skyscrapers
lured me to the edge of the boat. A member of the delegation held onto
my coat to make sure I wouldn’t fall into the deep.    

The Royal Danish Yacht passes by Denmark’s largest offshore wind
farm off of Anholt Island. Henning Bagger / AFP  //  Grist
Back on land, we toured port facilities in Denmark and Germany, where
it was clear that the men and women behind the manufacture and
deployment of turbines as big as a house and blades approaching the
length of football fields were equally in awe of these machines.
“This is our German moon landing,” Ronny Meyer, then the managing
director of WAB, a public-private wind agency in Bremerhaven, told me
at the time. “Like John F. Kennedy’s speech launching the
[American] aerospace industry, we are doing something we’ve never
done before in the ocean.”

At the time, it seemed that the United States would also lift off into
this burgeoning renewable energy space with Cape Wind, a 130-turbine
project in Nantucket Sound. The gargantuan components for the wind
farm would be deployed from a $113 million marine commerce terminal
that then-Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick broke ground on the
same year as my trip. Members of the trade delegation talked about
offshore wind creating “our Cape Canaveral,” and Massachusetts
becoming the “Silicon Valley of wind.”

Seeing how the industry resuscitated German port towns such as
Bremerhaven and Cuxhaven, I wrote at the time that offshore wind gave
new hope to struggling cities like New Bedford, an hour south of
Boston. I added that the industry needed far more support beyond that
offered by Patrick and then-President Barack Obama as offshore wind
still had many detractors. U.S. utilities were skeptical about the
bottom-line costs of offshore wind energy. Fossil fuel and fishing
interests saw ocean wind farms as a threat, and coastal property
owners saw them as an eyesore.

Alas, as Europe ventured into that uncharted universe of renewable
energy, the naysayers kept scrubbing the U.S. launch of the industry.
Cape Wind died under endless lawsuits bankrolled by a Koch brother and
aesthetic opposition by the dynastic Kennedy clan
[[link removed]].

Advocates for offshore wind power gather in Massachusetts near Senator
Ted Kennedy’s office in 2006 to show their support for the Cape Wind
Project. The project was later scrapped due to legal and political
pressure.
Offshore wind’s prospects then underwent hopeful twists and
torturous turns. States on the East Coast began to set aggressive
targets for renewable energy, so offshore wind developers saw an
opportunity beyond Cape Wind and kept bidding on U.S. waters. The
Trump administration, no friend to environmental issues, even held a
record-breaking, $405 million auction of waters far south off
Martha’s Vineyard in 2018.

Then, however, opponents of offshore wind, most notably the fishing
industry, got Trump’s ear. The environmental permitting process for
offshore wind farms suddenly ground to a halt. By the 2020 election,
the U.S. remained stuck at a measly 7 turbines in the waters off Rhode
Island and Virginia, putting out a puny 42 MW, barely a tenth the
power of Anholt alone. That made the election one where the future of
offshore wind in this country hung in the balance.

“It’s a tragedy,” said Seth Kaplan,
[[link removed]] director of external affairs for
Mayflower Wind, a major offshore wind farm that’s being developed in
New England “We basically lost one, two, maybe three generations of
projects.”

Jim Lanard [[link removed]], CEO of Magellan
Wind, which is involved
[[link removed]] in
developing next-generation, floating-turbine technology off
the California coast, [[link removed]] added,
“There’s no question that we’ve missed out on tens of billions
of dollars of assets and thousands and thousands of jobs.”

Today, Europe has 5,400 turbines rising from the ocean with a
capacity of
[[link removed]] 25
gigawatts, of energy – enough to power more than 8 million homes. As
the global manufacturing hub for the offshore wind industry, the
European Union said in 2019 that the sector accounted for 210,000
[[link removed]] jobs
across its 27 member nations and the United Kingdom.

Both the E.U. and U.K. – which left the E.U. last year — are
planning for far more offshore wind power. Tracking with ever
more aggressive greenhouse gas reduction targets,
[[link removed]] the
E.U. wants to reach 60 GW by 2030 and 300 GW by 2050. British Prime
Minister Boris Johnson pledged last year in a speech that the U.K.
would install enough turbines over the next decade to power all of its
30 million homes: “Your kettle, your washing machine, your cooker,
your heating, your plug-in electric vehicle — the whole lot of them
will get their juice cleanly and without guilt from the breezes that
blow around these islands.”

Prior to the 2020 election, most observers believed that a President
Biden would put the U.S. offshore wind industry back on the launching
pad in some form. And he has – with ambitious targets that rival the
boldness John F. Kennedy offered in his speech about putting a man on
the moon (which came while the Russians were way ahead in the
manned-spaceflight race). “To be sure, we are behind, and will be
behind for some time in manned flight,” President Kennedy said in
1962. “But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we
shall make up and move ahead.”

In late-March, the Biden administration announced a national goal
[[link removed]] of
30 GW of offshore wind energy by 2030 – which could power over 10
million homes
[[link removed]].
That would give the U.S. the same capacity of offshore power over the
next 9 years that it took Europe 30 years to build. While Biden is
unlikely to deliver a speech on offshore wind to rival JFK’s moon
speech, there is no doubt that we suddenly have a White House
possessed with a futuristic vision akin to what I saw on that 2013
trip to Anholt.

Aerial photo of an offshore wind farm in the Irish Sea in 2013.
Derrick Z. Jackson
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm had the honor of laying out the
Biden administration’s target, and she rattled off
[[link removed]] a
litany of direct jobs, totaling 44,000, that the department estimates
would be created along the way: “We’re going to send a gust of
growth reaching from coast to coast,” she said. “This isn’t just
about the engineers and construction workers that are installing these
turbines and the technicians that are maintaining them. Think of the
miners and smelters producing the steel and iron for the towers and
foundations of the turbines, and the legs and the platforms of the
jack-up rigs. Think of the shipbuilders assembling the hulls of the
installation vessels.”

She also noted that another 33,000 jobs could be created to support
the burgeoning industry. Then cutting to the chase, Granholm
proclaimed: “This is a can’t-miss opportunity.”

Her assessment is bolstered by efficiencies
[[link removed]] developed
in Europe that have made offshore wind financially competitive
[[link removed]] with fossil
fuels. Turbine power per machine has exploded in the last decade, for
example, and is four times greater than what I saw on display at
Anholt – meaning each turn of the blades generates more energy.

Longtime and often long-suffering industry experts certainly hope so.
“I see the landscape as totally set up for success,”  Stephanie
McClellan [[link removed]], founder of the
University of Delaware’s Special Initiative on Offshore Wind, told
me, ahead of the announcement of the 30 GW goal. “We’re on the
precipice of a revolution that we’ve been waiting for, for too
long,” added Bill White,
[[link removed]] head
of offshore wind at Avangrid Renewables, which is a partner in
Vineyard Wind, the first scheduled major offshore wind farm on this
side of the Atlantic.

Developers say Vineyard Wind will generate enough power for 400,000
homes and cut emissions equivalent to taking 325,000 cars off the road
each year. And Massachusetts energy officials estimate that it
combined with Mayflower Wind
[[link removed]], another
800 MW project south of Martha’s Vineyard, will save
[[link removed]] ratepayers
a combined $3.8 billion over the 20-year life of their contracts
compared with consumer’s current energy sources.

Add to that the findings of researchers at the U.S. Department of
Energy and the University of Massachusetts Amherst who estimate
[[link removed]] that
the future costs of onshore and offshore wind combined could be cut by
a third by 2035 and nearly halve by 2050. “All else being equal,
these trends will enable wind to play a larger role in global energy
supply than previously thought while facilitating energy-sector
decarbonization,” said Joachim Seel of Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory, who was part of that team.  

Of course, the revolution has been so long in coming that, McClellan,
White, and most other proponents still are crossing fingers on both
hands. Alicia Barton
[[link removed]],
CEO of New England’s FirstLight Power and former head of clean
energy efforts in both New York and Massachusetts, used a football
analogy about closing in on scoring a touchdown: “You hold your
breath a little bit,” she said. “We’re in the red zone. But the
red zone is not the end zone.”

For the U.S. offshore wind industry, getting into the end zone will
require penetrating the gridlock that is currently the biggest
challenge it faces.
[[link removed]] Over
the past few years, East Coast states have laid out nearly 28 GW worth
of offshore wind goals, led by New York, New Jersey, and
Massachusetts. The backlog of project proposals nearly achieves that
capacity. 

“You don’t want to see a project accidentally in jeopardy because
it can’t move fast enough along the queue,” said Doug Pfeister, a
longtime consultant [[link removed]] for
offshore wind siting, permitting, and regulatory matters.

Getting the queue moving starts with restoring staffing at the Bureau
of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM, which will handle the processing
of offshore wind environmental reviews, lease sales, and construction
permitting. That is an urgent concern as the Biden administration has
begun a massive fast-tracking of environmental reviews, beginning with
Vineyard Wind; South Fork Wind
[[link removed]],
a 15-turbine, 130 MW project off the eastern tip of Long Island;
and Ocean Wind
[[link removed]],
a 1.1 GW project off the coast of New Jersey. BOEM was one of many
agencies where Trump appointees crippled environmental science. It
lost nearly 50 of its 450 scientific staffers, a high watermark during
the Obama administration, according
[[link removed]] to
the Union of Concerned Scientists. BOEM also lost one out of four of
its oceanographers.

“As of today, BOEM does not have the resources to streamline and get
what needs to be done,” said Magellan Wind’s CEO Lanard. “We do
not want to be asking again down the road what should’ve been.”

There is logistical gridlock, in addition to the bureaucratic kind.
Take the issue of ports. The U.S. does not have the vast space old
European ports. Thus, the question arises: Can New York, New Jersey,
Maryland, Virginia, and Connecticut, which all have plans in the
works, provide enough dock space and infrastructure in time to support
the explosion of projects – as well as the possibility of major
manufacturers building factories here to further catalyze the
industry?

Willett Kempton, founder
[[link removed]] the
University of Delaware’s Center for Research in Wind, is optimistic.
“There’s going to be glitches,” Kempton said. “We can work
around a lack of ports, if we have to. I think what is more important
is that now we finally have strong pressure from government and public
sentiment to get things done.”

Photo of a beach community with wind turbines in the background. Many
coastal towns along the U.K.’s North Sea have learned to live with
the permanent visual presence of wind turbines, like these seen near
the British coastal town of Bridlington in 2013. Derrick Z. Jackson
photo
White, who prior to Vineyard Wind spent years at the Massachusetts
Clean Energy Center trying to jumpstart the industry, believes supply
chain hiccups are simply a part of scaling up. “To borrow from John
Lewis, we’ve got ‘good trouble’ now,” he said. “These are
solvable problems.”

The groundbreaking
[[link removed]] this
month of a factory in New Jersey for 2,500-ton turbine foundations,
the plans
[[link removed]] for
a tower plant in Albany, the talk of a blade facility
[[link removed]] in
Virginia, and the building
[[link removed]] of
installation vessels in Texas seem to suggest that Kempton and
White’s optimism is founded. Perhaps, soon we might begin to realize
some of those 44,000 direct jobs and 33,000 indirect jobs in goods and
services that the Biden administration claims will sprout up in
offshore wind hubs.

Still, the trouble that grounded the offshore wind industry hasn’t
disappeared. Some East Coast communities are still fighting
[[link removed]] the
developments, especially in locales where transmission cables from
wind farms could make landfall. And commercial fishing groups complain
that Biden’s fast-tracking of offshore wind will inflict heavy
damage on their industry.

Fishing groups in New England have enough political support, from both
sides of the aisle, to ensure their concerns are heard. “There’s
no reason to come into this like a bunch of gangbusters ready to take
the whole place over — it’s a public ocean for Pete’s sake,”
Democratic Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse recently warned
[[link removed]] offshore
wind advocates. “Have a little humility for people who’ve been in
it for generations, when you’re just showing up.”

Environmental advocates, of course, are applauding the suddenly
promising future for offshore wind. That includes New York City-based
environmental justice groups who see a planned wind turbine
assembly facility
[[link removed]] at
the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal as a means to boost racial
diversity in offshore wind jobs. “The history of New York City was
written at the water’s edge,” Elizabeth Yeampierre and Angela
Adrar, two prominent figures in grassroots environmental
advocacy, wrote
[[link removed]] in
an op-ed. “How we leverage our waterfront at this inflection point
will define our era’s response to the dual crises of growing climate
disruption and mounting inequality.”

Matt Morrissey, head of U.S. market affairs and strategy for the
Danish-based energy company Ørsted is convinced it is truly offshore
wind’s moment. “We’ve got a president who realizes that climate
change is a crisis and a team in Washington that understands what this
industry can do at scale,” Morrissey told me. “We’re now a long
way away from that dark period of no market and no activity.”

I recognize that optimism. Back in 2013, Morrissey was on that trip to
Anholt as the head of economic development for New Bedford,
Massachusetts, trying to secure that struggling city’s bid to be an
offshore wind hub. Eight years later, and now thousands of turbines
behind Europe, the question is whether the new activity will see
offshore wind finally scale the gantry on the launching pad, let alone
reach toward the skies with machines that are now twice the height of
the Saturn V.

As John F. Kennedy said, “The exploration of space will go ahead,
whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of
all time.” The same is true of offshore wind.

_[DERRICK Z. JACKSON is a Pulitzer-finalist journalist, a Union of
Concerned Scientists fellow, and an environmental consultant. He is
author of “Environmental Justice? Unjust Coverage of the Flint Water
Crisis,” a 2017 paper for the Shorenstein Center at Harvard
University’s Kennedy School of Government. He is a member of the The
American Prospect’s board of directors.]_

_Thanks to the author for sending this to xxxxxx._

_Grist is a nonprofit, independent, media organization dedicated to
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