Offshore wind potential in the US is huge but untapped

https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/1/23815450/us-offshore-wind-potential-berkley-report

by joak • 3 years ago

89 96 3 years ago

In no small part because of the extreme difficulty in building large projects in the US. NEPA is, in the US context, one of the single largest impediments to combating climate change at this point.

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-nepa-works

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-did-we-wait-so-lo...

nine_k2• 3 years ago

I found this chart especially striking:

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr...

The time is in tens of months, routinely.

kibwen• 3 years ago

Before we go blaming environment regulations, all the literature on this topic that I have read points at the Jones Act as the reason that offshore wind is so difficult:

"The Jones Act, passed by Congress in 1920, says that only U.S.-flagged ships can move cargo from one point in the United States to another. The ships must have been built in the U.S. and be crewed by Americans. The offshore wind industry uses big, specialized ships to assemble the turbines miles out at sea, but there is not a single U.S.-flagged ship right now that can do that work."

https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/news/2023/04/03/t...

MostlyStable3• 3 years ago

Jones act is also terrible and it wouldn't shock me at all if it also makes it much more expensive. But the Jones act has nothing to do with why it takes years and years to even get started.

Incipient• 3 years ago

But surely that can't apply to construction? All of the oil and gas; drill rigs, pipe lay barges, and heavy lift vessels, can't all be compliant?

JumpCrisscross4• 3 years ago

Are there moderate proposals for reforming NEPA?

purple_ferret• 3 years ago

There was some language changes in the debt ceiling bill.

Manchin had a bill with some support.[0]

The problem is Conservatives want to make sure fossil fuel projects are prioritized in any sort of reform while Liberals want to make sure they're excluded.

[0]https://www.energy.senate.gov/2023/5/manchin-moves-ball-forw...

MostlyStable3• 3 years ago

Not that I have heard of. And it seems like it's probably a very hard problem to solve (although I admittedly haven't spent too much time thinking about it). There are absolutely certain kinds of development/buildings/whatever that we probably want to restrict building, or at the very least subject to decently in depth review. It's hard to envision a process that blocks those kinds of things while allowing the good things. In part because the line between those things is probably different for just about every single person in the country. I'm sure a lot of people would disgree with my personal view on all the things we should be building.

I've mostly been convinced that, at least for now, the harms that NEPA is preventing are smaller than the goods it's preventing. That probably wasn't true in the past and might not be true in the future though. My hope is that by rabble rousing enough, someone smarter than I can find a good solution that doesn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

ralfd• 3 years ago

For now, the US has just two small wind farms off the coasts of Rhode Island and Virginia.

That is astonishingly disappointing. Why is that?

China and Europe have both more than 25 GW offshore windpower installed.

hulitu• 3 years ago

I would really want to know what is the impact of those wind farms on the marine ecosytem.

We treat the ocean like a big dump place.

MarkMarine• 3 years ago

If putting up wind keeps CO2 out of the ocean, I would think it is net positive. Ocean acidification, less calcium available for making shells, and then the affect of ocean warming on coral and knock on effects of losing those coral ecosystems are pretty terrible for the whole marine ecosystem. A couple pylons for turbines, I doubt that scratches the surface.

Everything thing in the ocean seems to LOVE structure. They build on our detritus as easily as rocks

Analemma_3• 3 years ago

It's probably very positive, actually. Provided you don't do something stupid like make them out of loose tires, structures in the ocean form an anchor around which ecosystems develop which wouldn't exist otherwise. Not to mention the effects on the ocean of rising temperatures, CO2 and deoxygenated dead zones are awful.

dotnet00• 3 years ago

Similar to how rocket launch sites make great wildlife sanctuaries due to keeping away human settlements, I would think that wind farms make great sanctuaries for marine life by keeping the area clear of normal fishing.

micromacrofoot• 3 years ago

there’s some concern in new england about how they could affect the critically endangered right whales, but there’s little practical evidence of risk… and sometimes the risk is overblown by nimbys and fossil fuel companies who will align with anyone that agrees with them

at this point the ocean temperature is a much greater risk

tda2• 3 years ago

At least in the North Sea, wind parks have created large area's in which trawlers fishing is prohibited. This is really significant, as I believe the entire Dutch North Sea EEZ is trawled multiple times per year. This is really a massive undertaking, and is even permitted in the Natura2000 area's. Really nothing could stop the fishing lobby from destructing the bottom life on which the industry depends in a giant tragedy of the commons kind of way. Except now for wind farms. Now huge areas are off limits for fishing boats

ako• 3 years ago

So far seems to be positive for windfarms in the north sea:

* https://www.ecowatch.com/marine-animals-offshore-wind-farm-h...

* https://energytransition.org/2022/02/in-europes-north-sea-wi...

quags• 3 years ago

New Jersey is planning wind farms so that number should continue to rise over time. I grew up in New England but moved out many years ago. I remember wind farms off cape cod being extremely NIMBY and the argument was cape cod is unique and a wind farm should be else where - essentially I assume the argument of anyone living near an area that is going to get a wind farm. These are probably one of the more expensive areas of the state due to being by the water.

Analemma_3• 3 years ago

Because oceanfront property, especially on the east coast is almost entirely in the hands of wealthy (read: politically influential) people, who throw a shitfit at the thought of offshore wind farms.

bilsbie2• 3 years ago

Why not just put them below the horizon?

mdorazio• 3 years ago

This is funny to me because off the shore of Southern California (some of the most expensive land in the country), the horizon is dotted with oil rigs and cargo ships.

AniseAbyss• 3 years ago

To be fair the US has vast and practically empty States in which you can do land based wind farms. Nobody cares what people in Nebraska think.

Europe never had that luxury. Offshore wind is our only option.

codewench• 3 years ago

See for example the failure of the Cape wind project, which was stuck in NIMBY hell for years because a few rich assholes were worried they would see the tips of the blades over the horizon

matthewdgreen• 3 years ago

There are two big 800 MW projects going in right now, one off Martha’s Vineyard and the other in Connecticut, both of which will begin generating power in the next year or two (the actual construction speed for these projects is amazing!) These projects were supposed to happen before the pandemic, but the Trump administration delayed them by 2-3 years. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-windpower-offshore/u-...

jacquesm7• 3 years ago

the actual construction speed for these projects is amazing!

Yes, from start to finish in well under a year in some locations depending on whether or not they can set up a nice pipeline and start producing as soon as one of the turbines is completed. The time consuming parts: permitting, infrastructural changes to the grid, environmental assessments + possible delays, foundation work. Once the foundation is in the ground I've seen operational turbines six weeks later.

For a whole windpark from start to finish the times vary from two to eight years, with off-shore the longer part of that. There is a new option called a floating windfarm, which is self evident from the name, that cuts deployment time to an absolute minimum but has some long term risks and maintenance pros and cons. Still, it is a very interesting development.

mastax• 3 years ago

The US permitting process is shockingly bad. It is both far too complex and also overseen by understaffed agencies so projects get delayed by years which is very expensive. NIMBYS can either use political pressure or environmental lawsuits to delay projects almost indefinitely at low cost to themselves because they are upset about any number of things.

Second, the Jones act and other regulations prohibit using most of the knowledge and infrastructure that Europe has built up over two decades. We can't use their ships or sailors. We can't use many of their products while being eligible for federal subsidies. So rather than let their industry build up ours we have to start from scratch. No economies of scale, high risk, less competition, etc.

The size of the subsidies available are so large that it'll probably work eventually, and there are some discussions happening about improving permitting. But it's a bit like one department is spending a lot of money to put concrete barriers in the road and then another department is spending a lot on subsidies to install tank treads to be able to drive over the barriers. "But think of all the jobs created in the tank tread installation industry!"

lkbm• 3 years ago

To be clear, the US has something like 140 GW[0] of wind farms—it's just all inland.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_State...

jncfhnb4• 3 years ago

To meet that demand and hit its climate goals, the report says the US has to add 27 gigawatts of offshore wind and 85 GW of land-based wind and solar each year between 2035 and 2050. That timeline might still seem far away, but it’s a big escalation of the Biden administration’s current goal of deploying 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030.

Isn’t this sentence backwards?

fatfingerd• 3 years ago

Its hard to parse.. I think Biden planned to add less than 4 GW/year on average from 2021 - 2030 to get to 30 GW of offshore added. The 27 GW added per year being required from 2035 means a giant climb from 2031 to 2035.

jncfhnb4• 3 years ago

Oh I see. That is a huge escalation then.

CameronNemo3• 3 years ago

Yeah, when he is out of office and termed out...

Politicians shouldn't promise things they won't be around to deliver on.

bilsbie2• 3 years ago

Let’s say I have ten units of wind coming onshore. What would that change to if they built a wind farm right offshore?

bandyaboot2• 3 years ago

That’s not even close to answerable without many more variables specified.

jacquesm7• 3 years ago

Not in a quantitative way anyway, but in a qualitative way it is actually trivial because the wind at sea level behaves fairly consistently once you know its speed.

Betz basically says you won't be extracting more than 59.3% of the power in the moving air so the remainder will always be available just behind the turbine. Close to the ground wind isn't laminar so what you'll see is that the 'rolling' air will draw in new air from higher layers just behind the machine, a short way inland you'll have a hard time proving there is a windfarm upwind other than through sound and visuals. There is a lot of air moving around (if you could visualize it try thinking of 1 kg bricks spaced out 1 meter in every direction, and all of them are moving except for when there is absolutely no wind) and the tiny little layer that we siphon off some power from is utterly insignificant compared to the whole.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betz%27s_law

talldatethrow• 3 years ago

I live near a ton of windmills in the hills 50 miles east of SF.

In highschool we would go to them, although technically illegal.

You stand on the ground, with the windmill churning away 100 feet above your head. It would obviously still be windy as hell near the ground.

I have a feeling that if you had 10 units of wind, and placed windmills in a linear line for a linear mile as tightly as you could... Just a small distance away you would still have 9.99 units of wind.

The density of wind capture devices relative to the overall mass of wind in the general area is so low I don't think you could make a big difference.

If anything, I'd worry more about solar farms that cause massive heat soak by placing black solar panels near ground level, where instead it would be light color dry dirt and dry greens that are a lot more reflective.

jacquesm7• 3 years ago

Nothing would change from about a mile behind the line of windmills, but in the immediate wake of the machines you'll have a calming effect, though flow will be more turbulent than laminar. Spiral shaped vortices coming off the back of the rotors would eventually dissipate in the air that gets added from above. Note that windshear is such that any kind of disturbance in an otherwise open field would create a wake that eventually dissipates because wind rolls across the terrain. You can see similar dissipation effects in the wake of an ocean going vessel but it dissipates far faster because air has less mass, and on the ocean there is less flow to have that kind of windshear effect (but then from the water interacting with the bottom, which usually happens much further down).

elric• 3 years ago

Read a pretty dishartening article recently, about how offshore turbines reduce water oxygenation, and in turn probably have a negative effect on sea life. I guess there really is no free lunch.

adhesive_wombat4• 3 years ago

Modern turbines can extract at most about 50% of the energy passing though the disc. The physical limit is the Betz limit, just a shade under 60%. Even if you could arrange them just so (which you can't, because circles don't tessellate and wind directions vary), you'd only be able to get that from the wind at the height of the discs, from a single rank. Mixing from air that went over (or under) the turbine entirely would restore quite a bit of the wind after some distance. The biggest turbine in the world, installed about a month ago off the Fujian coast, has a disc 250m across, centred about 150m from the sea, so it's still only a small fraction of the depth of moving air.

By one estimate there's about 250TW of "extractable" power (after which you can add turbine capacity but the whole ensemble doesn't produce more power, and the global wind speeds after saturation would be 50% lower). Humanity uses roughly 10TW, so even if we used wind for everything, it would only be a small fraction of the energy in the moving air.

That paper also has calculations of the effects of a single wind turbine averaged across a 5km area (tl;dr: sub-0.5% downstream wind speed change)

https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/SatW...

seanmcdirmid4• 3 years ago

Rather than plant the gobi with trees (which need lots of water), could China just put in a bunch of wind turbines to prevent erosion? Like, is a wind turbine better than a tree at blocking the wind (well, it also doesn’t have a root system to keep dirt in place).

In eastern WA, we have special trees planted to block wind (mostly to reduce erosion), I wonder if those could be turbines instead? (Although, as long as water isn’t a problem, we should probably still use trees)

gok• 3 years ago

One reason is that on-shore wind in the US is really good. The Great Plains are so windy and big that it's not really clear the added expense of marine turbines gets us much. Texas already has wind capacity factors of 40%, similar to many offshore projects.

bobthepanda4• 3 years ago

The Plains isn’t close to every population center though, so unless some serious new transmission capacity to the coasts opens up, offshore is still a decent component.

nine_k2• 3 years ago

Wait a few years until superconducting transmission lines based on LK-99 will be everywhere!

Only half-joking. I suspect that transmission may be a large part of the total cost, and it could be more efficient to build turbines in less windy places but closer to a major transmission station and / or major consumers. Coastal cities have a lot of electric infrastructure in place, and are hungry for more electricity.

riku_iki• 3 years ago

energy demanding businesses can be moving closer to energy sources with population and infra following. It can be continues evolution.

rootusrootus• 3 years ago

Isn't the HVDC loss from the center of the country to either coast going to be under 10%? Balancing that against the maintenance and construction challenges of offshore wind, is it really better to construct offshore projects just to save a few percent?

kevin_thibedeau2• 3 years ago

The main impediment is wealthy people with coastal retirement properties who don't want to gaze out upon a vast expanse of blinking red lights at night.

japanuspus• 3 years ago

If you want to follow the details of offshore wind projects, you can consult the the map published by 4C offshore [0] which is used as a reference by everyone in the industry.

[0] https://map.4coffshore.com/offshorewind/

meristohm• 3 years ago

Emergy-demand reduction potential in the US is huge but untapped.

CrzyLngPwd• 3 years ago

That's definitely a karma-reducing opinion on HN.

JumpCrisscross4• 3 years ago

Because it’s in the same category as crossing one’s fingers and hoping for fusion. People don’t voluntarily reduce their living standards en masse without a fight.

Zigurd• 3 years ago

I agree with what the commenter is saying. But it's off topic. More offshore wind energy has no effect on demand reduction.

voisin• 3 years ago

Where do you see the low-hanging potential?

H8crilA• 3 years ago

Moving Las Vegas to the other side of Sierra Nevada. So that it is no longer in the middle of the desert, requiring lots of power to keep people alive and not boiled. Deserts were not meant to live in!

bryanlarsen• 3 years ago

Huge? An overall ten percent reduction in demand would be massive and unprecedented. Meanwhile on the supply side we're adding renewable energy at about the rate of 5% of demand per year.

ForestCritter3• 3 years ago

so now we are going to kill off the sea birds...

ForestCritter3• 3 years ago

So, as with the danger of oil spills, will we now have the danger of electric spills.

Offshore wind potential in the US is huge but untapped

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