The Challenges to Offshore Wind

Photo by Rob Farrow, some rights reserved.

Mother Jones has a succinct piece on the challenges facing offshore wind projects, challenges that explain why the U.S. still doesn’t have a single offshore wind turbine. The UK has 870, and Germany has 416, for comparison. Now that has Congress extended the wind Production Tax Credit (after a long battle detailed here and here) and outgoing Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he is optimistic that the Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound will begin construction in 2013, it is a good time to look at the roadblocks that remain.

Though offshore projects benefit from the Production Tax Credit, worth $1 billion a year, and the Incentive Tax Credit, which pays 30% of wind projects’ constructions, higher construction and transmission costs make electricity from offshore turbines twice the price of electricity from more traditional sources. While in the U.S., states and utilities are understandably hesitant to embrace it, Germany, for example, fully subsidizes the offshore wind system.

The opponents of offshore wind that have gotten the most press are “stakeholders” in areas near potential projects, those who organize groups like the Alliance for Nantucket Sound in opposition to the Cape Wind project, which to date has fought a dozen lawsuits over the turbines’ effect on interfering with boat traffic, desecrating sacred sites, and harming avian and marine life (the GM has covered this here and here). Not surprisingly, these wildlife worries have been hijacked by waterfront homeowners; meanwhile, the National Wildlife Federation, Greenpeace, and the Sierra Club are all in favor of the project.

The strangest problem offshore wind is facing is a 1920 law requiring ships sailing between ports in the U.S. to be U.S.-flagged. This is apparently a problem because the small fleet of ships capable of installing a 400-foot turbine in the ocean floor is based mostly in Europe – and once one of those ships installs the foundation for a turbine, it qualifies as a ‘port,’ and cannot proceed to dock in the U.S. A shipbuilder in New Jersey is building a turbine-installation ship, but until its completion at earliest in 2014, the cost of bringing in ships from abroad can be prohibitive.

Finally, our beloved federal system of government means that states award utility contracts, while the Interior Department manages the deep water where wind turbines can be built. Developers worry that even if they get a contract with a state to buy their power, Interior could award the ‘land’ rights to someone else.