Floating Turbines Eyed to Ease Offshore Wind’s Permitting Woes

Jun 09, 2023

Offshore wind supporters hope nascent floating turbines backed by the Biden administration can ease legal conflicts while building a US supply chain to harness most of the renewable energy potential along the country's coastlines.

The testing ground is in Maine, where a coalition of lawmakers, environmentalists, construction unions—and, lately, lobstermen—are pressing state lawmakers to pass legislation to procure 2.8 gigawatts of offshore wind, enough to power nearly 1 million homes, by 2035. A second bill allows for the construction of a port to build those wind farms. Supporters hope the bills can cross the finish line before the legislative session ends on June 21.

A key to success is turning a technological challenge into a permitting advantage.

The waters are too deep for the current turbine technology planted directly into the ocean floor. The buoyant design required to access the East Coast's best wind can be assembled and constructed onshore and then towed out to sea—beyond the view of shoreline communities, away from the most productive fishing zones, and with potentially lower impacts on birds and whales.

The use of a floating turbine "makes it easier to find sites that would be acceptable to multiple users of the ocean," said Habib Dagher, an engineering professor and executive director of the University of Maine's Advanced Structures & Composites Center, which has been studying a floating turbine design for more than 10 years.

The Biden administration wants 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030 and eventually to erect turbines off every coast. Meeting that goal will require bringing down the cost of floating turbines. The costs of early floating offshore wind projects are estimated to be 50% higher than offshore turbines attached to the ocean bottom, the Energy Department reported.

Two-thirds of the wind potential of the US exists in deeper waters. This includes waters off the West Coast, where the administration last fall announced plans to auction five leases spanning 373,000 acres off California, which could hold more than 4.5 gigawatts of capacity. On the East Coast, the Gulf of Maine features the highest, most consistent wind speeds of any East Coast area.

The Energy Department wants to reduce the cost of floating turbines by 70% by 2035 to $45 a megawatt-hour through what it calls its Floating Offshore Wind Shot. Lower costs will enable 15 gigawatts of floating turbines—enough to power 5 million homes, the administration said last year. The turbines have floating hulls and are held in place by mooring cables, akin to a ship anchored at a port, Dagher said.

The US doesn't have the same mature international supply chain that has been developed for fixed-bottom turbines, said Jocelyn Brown-Saracino, offshore wind lead in the department's Wind Energy Technologies Office.

"We really see this window of opportunity for US leadership in manufacturing and development and deployment," Brown-Saracino said. "That's part of the moment we’re trying to seize with releasing the Floating Offshore Wind Shot now."

The flexibility of floating turbines and their potential to provide US jobs have helped along painstaking negotiations in Maine. The state's offshore wind roadmap published in February outlined a need for 2.1 gigawatts to 2.8 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2050, meeting a state goal to source power from 100% renewable energy by 2040.

The state's lobstering union, which staunchly opposes offshore wind, has called for the procurement bill to pass because it provides financial incentives to encourage wind development outside of a busy lobstering area.

The provision would put pressure on the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Management (BOEM) to exclude Lobster Management 1 from leasing when it finalizes its wind energy areas later this year. In April, BOEM defined a 9.8 million-acre section of the Gulf of Maine for potential leasing, including the lobstering area. The bureau is accepting comments on its plans through June 12, and it could further reduce that footprint into wind energy areas. BOEM expects to hold an auction in 2024.

"Do we like this? Absolutely not. Do we have control of leasing in federal waters? Absolutely not," Ginny Olsen, director of Maine Lobstering Union Local 207, said in testimony last month to a state committee. "We will all give a little to make Maine's energy goals a reality and still protect the heritage fishery that has served our state and been its identity for generations."

Olsen, in an interview with Bloomberg Law after testifying, said, "BOEM is trying to figure out how to make this process a better process, and I thank them for that."

"We do need something that looks vastly different than what's happened to the south of us," Olsen said.

In Massachusetts, the federal approval of Vineyard Wind has faced a trio of lawsuits from fishing groups, shoreline residents, and environmentalists.

Last month, a federal judge tossed a suit claiming federal officials failed to consider environmental impacts on North Atlantic right whales and declined to impose an injunction sought by fishing groups. Those groups argued the wind farm's construction makes "fishing in the lease area impossible" and that commercial fishers will "suffer irreparable harm."

But if lobster boats can coexist with wind turbines in Maine, industry supporters see a fortunate marriage of labor and environmental goals.

While fixed-bottom turbines are constructed on the water, floating turbine components can be fabricated, assembled, and maintained onshore before they are towed out to sea, revitalizing port communities.

"Offshore wind could be a game-changer for Maine—not only the climate and energy potential of the Gulf of Maine's world-class winds, but the possibility of bringing high-quality jobs back to communities that have been hollowed out by decades of job loss," said Francis Eanes, executive director of the Maine Labor Climate Council.

The procurement bill also addresses concerns over the industry's effects on humpback whales and birds. The bill requires bidders to file environmental and conservation reports, and funds the scaling up of the Offshore Wind Research Consortium, which monitors the industry's ecological impacts.

Anthony J. Ronzio, a spokesperson for Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, said the bills could still change as they work through the legislative process, and so it's too early to say if she would sign them.

The deployment of floating turbines could ease some of the competition for space in heavily fished areas closer to shore, said Edward Roggenkamp, a partner at Nossaman LLP who has worked on environmental reviews for offshore wind projects. Still, developers have made concessions to fisheries in other states, such as changing the alignment and spacing out their turbines, only to be sued.

"It has the potential to reduce conflicts with fishing and conflicts with shoreline communities for visual impacts," Roggenkamp said. "Does that mean it's going to reduce them to zero? Probably not."

To contact the reporter on this story: Daniel Moore in Washington at [email protected]

To contact the editors responsible for this story: JoVona Taylor at [email protected]; Renee Schoof at [email protected]

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