9 ms·

Offshore wind potential in the US is huge but untapped

89 points by joak 3y ago

MostlyStable 3y 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/how-nepa-works https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-did-we-wait-so-long-for-wind-c51 https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-did-we-wait-so-lo...
- nine_k 3y ago
  I found this chart especially striking: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6e7099a8-9073-4a83-a4f1-56a1e2a9bce5_779x425.png https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr... The time is in tens of months, routinely.
- kibwen 3y 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/the-jones-act--how-a-100-year-old-law-complicates-offshore-wind-projects https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/news/2023/04/03/t...
  - MostlyStable 3y 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 3y 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?
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  Are there moderate proposals for reforming NEPA?
  - purple_ferret 3y 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-forward-on-permitting-reform https://www.energy.senate.gov/2023/5/manchin-moves-ball-forw...
  - MostlyStable 3y 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 3y 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.
- quags 3y 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.
- hulitu 3y 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 3y 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_ 3y 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.
    - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jncfhnb 3y 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 3y 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.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    Oh I see. That is a huge escalation then.
  - CameronNemo 3y ago
    Yeah, when he is out of office and termed out... Politicians shouldn't promise things they won't be around to deliver on.
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      The Biden administration has already enacted strong economic incentives to invest in this stuff. It’s happening now.
      - CameronNemo 3y ago
        He should focus on what he is doing now rather than the pie in the sky futurity promise.
        jncfhnb 3y ago
        His incentives are active to various degrees between 2023 and 2032 mostly. So… yes, goals set for 2030 are exactly the timeframe his work addresses. It is what he is doing now.
bilsbie 3y 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?
- bandyaboot 3y ago
  That’s not even close to answerable without many more variables specified.
  - jacquesm 3y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betz%27s_law
    - bandyaboot 3y ago
      Very interesting. Thanks.
- talldatethrow 3y 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.
gok 3y 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.
- bobthepanda 3y 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.
  - kevin_thibedeau 3y 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.
    - charles_f 3y ago
      I doubt that is true, it's likely more the oil industry's concern with environmental impact of wind turbines
      - kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
        It already happened with Cape Cod.
  - nine_k 3y 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 3y ago
japanuspus 3y 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/ https://map.4coffshore.com/offshorewind/
meristohm 3y ago
Emergy-demand reduction potential in the US is huge but untapped.
- CrzyLngPwd 3y ago
  That's definitely a karma-reducing opinion on HN.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y 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.
    - Retric 3y ago
      Per capita electricity demand did fall dramatically in the US. Mostly from more efficient technology that doesn’t reduce peoples standards of living.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        We’re closer to flat [1]. That said, your broader point stands: the energy intensity of American GDP is falling [2]. My point is relying on that trend continuing is akin to relying on the promise of fusion. Worth pursuing. But unlikely to yield to brute effort the way cleaning up primary production and transport can. [1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=49036 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=49036 [2] https://www.iea.org/reports/sdg7-data-and-projections/energy-intensity https://www.iea.org/reports/sdg7-data-and-projections/energy...
        Retric 3y ago
        The high and low points are IMO dramatic at the scale of the US. I suspect EV’s are going to continue to reverse this tend in the short term but efficiency is still very meaningful even if it’s never going to solve the problem.
ForestCritter 3y ago
so now we are going to kill off the sea birds...
ForestCritter 3y ago
So, as with the danger of oil spills, will we now have the danger of electric spills.

89 points by joak 3y 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/how-nepa-works https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-did-we-wait-so-long-for-wind-c51 https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-did-we-wait-so-lo...

nine_k 3y ago
I found this chart especially striking: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6e7099a8-9073-4a83-a4f1-56a1e2a9bce5_779x425.png https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr... The time is in tens of months, routinely.
kibwen 3y 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/the-jones-act--how-a-100-year-old-law-complicates-offshore-wind-projects https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/news/2023/04/03/t...
- MostlyStable 3y 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 3y 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?
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
Are there moderate proposals for reforming NEPA?
- purple_ferret 3y 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-forward-on-permitting-reform https://www.energy.senate.gov/2023/5/manchin-moves-ball-forw...
- MostlyStable 3y 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 3y 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.

quags 3y 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.
hulitu 3y 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 3y 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_ 3y 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.
  - 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jncfhnb 3y 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 3y 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.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  Oh I see. That is a huge escalation then.
- CameronNemo 3y ago
  Yeah, when he is out of office and termed out... Politicians shouldn't promise things they won't be around to deliver on.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    The Biden administration has already enacted strong economic incentives to invest in this stuff. It’s happening now.
    - CameronNemo 3y ago
      He should focus on what he is doing now rather than the pie in the sky futurity promise.
      - jncfhnb 3y ago
        His incentives are active to various degrees between 2023 and 2032 mostly. So… yes, goals set for 2030 are exactly the timeframe his work addresses. It is what he is doing now.

bilsbie 3y 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?

bandyaboot 3y ago
That’s not even close to answerable without many more variables specified.
- jacquesm 3y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betz%27s_law
  - bandyaboot 3y ago
    Very interesting. Thanks.
talldatethrow 3y 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.

gok 3y 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.

bobthepanda 3y 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.
- kevin_thibedeau 3y 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.
  - charles_f 3y ago
    I doubt that is true, it's likely more the oil industry's concern with environmental impact of wind turbines
    - kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
      It already happened with Cape Cod.
- nine_k 3y 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 3y ago

japanuspus 3y 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/ https://map.4coffshore.com/offshorewind/

meristohm 3y ago

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

CrzyLngPwd 3y ago
That's definitely a karma-reducing opinion on HN.
- JumpCrisscross 3y 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.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Per capita electricity demand did fall dramatically in the US. Mostly from more efficient technology that doesn’t reduce peoples standards of living.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      We’re closer to flat [1]. That said, your broader point stands: the energy intensity of American GDP is falling [2]. My point is relying on that trend continuing is akin to relying on the promise of fusion. Worth pursuing. But unlikely to yield to brute effort the way cleaning up primary production and transport can. [1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=49036 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=49036 [2] https://www.iea.org/reports/sdg7-data-and-projections/energy-intensity https://www.iea.org/reports/sdg7-data-and-projections/energy...
      - Retric 3y ago
        The high and low points are IMO dramatic at the scale of the US. I suspect EV’s are going to continue to reverse this tend in the short term but efficiency is still very meaningful even if it’s never going to solve the problem.

ForestCritter 3y ago

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

ForestCritter 3y ago

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