Turbine Tall Tales

The Real Cost of Offshore Wind

Photo by insung yoon on Unsplash

Another One Bites The Dust

In another blow to the offshore wind industry, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) announced on April 19 that it would cancel the results of a bid solicitation tentatively awarded in November 2023. The decision to rescind the bid offers comes after GE Vernova said it would halt production to its 17 MW and 18 MW Halide-X line of offshore wind turbines, a suite of large-scale products that the winning bidders had banked on to fulfill their contracts. Citing an inability to procure alternative turbines at a cost-competitive rate, the three bidders were unable to come to terms on their proposed agreements, leading NYSERDA to scrap the projects. The three cancelled proposals, submitted by TotalEnergies SE, National Grid Ventures, Ltd., and Excelsior Wind, would have totaled an estimated 4,032 MW in nameplate generation power.

This is only the most recent in a spate of offshore wind project cancellations up and down the East Coast. The abrupt pull out by Orsted, a large Danish multinational, from the New York Bight projects in October 2023 made a big splash across the energy industry and led to much handwringing among the pundit class speculating on the potential effects to President Biden’s ambitious plans to install 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030.

Strict Scrutiny

As I reported a few weeks ago in the piece “Tilting at Windmills,” the depth of the problems plaguing offshore wind technologies has yet to fully come to light. This could not be truer than in the case of California, where government agencies and project developers are diving headfirst while blindfolded in their rush to build massive offshore wind developments. Unlike the relatively shallow waters of the Atlantic seaboard ( < 60m deep), Pacific coastal waters quickly reach ½ mile in depth (800m/2,625ft). This means that the engineering requirements for these projects are fundamentally of an unprecedented scale. The plans call for giant floating platforms tethered to the seabed, used to support wind turbines up to 900 feet tall.

To gain more insight on the engineering specs needed for such endeavors, I consulted with Dr. David Wojick, a civil engineer and advisor to the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), who has been researching the engineering, environmental, and policy implications of offshore wind for several years. Dr. Wojick expressed concern that there are a number of significant design elements for the turbines, platforms, and electric cable lines that have not been properly addressed in published planning documents, such as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) Offshore Wind Regional Ports Assessment and the California State Land Commission’s  Port Readiness Plan.

When turbines are built in shallower waters, such as those on the East Coast, specialized boats use fine-grained sonar analysis to perform initial site preparation, clearing boulders and other debris obstructing the path for cable trenching. The cables are then trenched and buried by another type of specialized boat. However, this kind of analysis and burying technique is not possible in waters 2000+ feet deep. As Dr. Wojick pointed out, there is no clear outlined method currently put forward publicly by any government agency or developer discussing in detail how they plan to implement and secure the safe and effective transfer of electricity through deep water cables. Indeed, while the current iterations of the planning documents listed above address issues pertaining to construction and anchoring of the floating platforms, there is no specific mention of cabling method. As per the Land Commission’s Plan, “the configuration of export cables for wind energy areas to be installed off the California coast is still unknown, as challenges with interconnections as well as the progress of cable capacity technology are not yet fully defined.” The Commission seems to be playing Wizard of Oz, instructing curious onlookers to “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

The method of deep sea cabling is not a small point of detail. As Dr. Wojick points out, cabling that is not sufficiently buried or otherwise protected from disturbance would be sliced through by ships and recreational boats. It is also important to consider the kinds of shipping activities in the region, which include not only merchant cargo ships, but also supertankers carrying oil from Valdez, Alaska. Another issue that has been poorly addressed thus far is the sheer amount of cabling that would be required to connect the turbines to substations that generate the high voltage electricity to shore. “Given that the many big turbines…need to be a mile apart, this is a huge network of power cables,” said Wojick.

Another “Blue Ocean” question not fully explored in public documents is the true cost of deep water offshore wind projects. In my conversation with Dr. Wojick, he noted a distinct lack of cost estimates conducted by BOEM. Indeed, outside of the California Independent System Operator’s estimates for basic transmission costs, I was unable to find any official documents with holistic calculations for overall construction or installation, let alone eventual operations and maintenance. Dr. Wojick provided me with some back-of-the-envelope calculations, based on his analysis of Dominion Energy’s offshore project in Virginia. Since Dominion is a public utility, they must report project costs to the state. Based on extrapolation of Dominion’s data, Wojick estimates that the California projects would require $6 billion/GW for construction, which, when added to finance and profit requirements, would total closer to $12 billion/GW. For the ~5GW projects presently leased, this would be at least $60 billion, but more likely in the ballpark of $100 billion, considering the high likelihood of cost overruns in building and scaling an unproven technology.

Other unknown factors that could drive up costs include the effects of future inflation, and the availability of monopiles needed to secure offshore wind foundations. The past few years have seen an increase in energy shortages and resulting cost inflation worldwide, stemming from various technical and geopolitical factors. Furthermore, as more countries seek to build offshore wind, the global supply of available specialty equipment, such as monopiles, has become scarcer. When it comes to offshore wind cost, it seems the sky’s the limit.

Tough Waters Ahead

The next chapter of California’s offshore wind experiment is thoroughly underway. After awarding leasing contracts in 2022, BOEM announced it would move to the environmental review stage in December 2023, marking the next phase of planning for California’s offshore wind leases. The purpose of the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) is to “identify, analyze, and adopt, as appropriate, potential mitigation measures” for environmental damage associated with offshore wind. Currently, the agency is soliciting public comment on its docket log. About 200 comments have been submitted to date, mostly from private citizens. Comments overwhelmingly express concerns about the lack of transparency and accountability on behalf of the lessees in their consideration of potentially serious environmental degradation, and most strongly oppose further exploratory actions and construction.

Among the most pressing issues are the effects of imminent surveying activities that project developers will need to undertake to site the floating platforms and turbines. Many respondents to BOEM point to the overlap between planned surveying during the spring months and the natural migration and breeding patterns of birds, fish, and marine mammals that will likely cause interruptions in normal behavioral patterns, with the potential for population-wide effects.

Another serious issue raised by independent citizens and fishing industry organizations concerns significant noise pollution resulting from high-decibel (dB) sonar mapping. As one independent scientist and commenter wrote, the California Coastal Commission previously denied permits to PG&E and the U.S. Navy seeking to survey marine environments at 240 and 155 dB, respectively, because of potential harm to aquatic life -- high frequency sound waves have been shown to cause tissue damage and death to fish and invertebrates. Dr. Wojick’s research group at CFACT have similarly written about the deleterious effects of offshore wind-associated noise contamination on sea life.

Other commenters, such as the Morro Bay Commercial Fishermen’s Organization, argue that pre-project monitoring and scoping of project sites has not been sufficiently performed, and therefore current authorization of site surveying would be in violation of state and federal regulation, including NEPA and CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act). The Fishermen state that “it is premature…to authorize site surveys which may destroy the baseline fishing resources before they are documented. Neither NEPA or CEQA allow the physical disturbance, denial, [or] spatial displacement of public trust values and resources…based on completely deferred mitigation.”

The picture coming into focus remains a blurry one. Whether by mistake or design, the current vision for California offshore wind is poorly conceived, with potentially devastating effects on wildlife and local communities. To quote Dr. Wojick, BOEM’s convoluted plans “make nuclear look easy!”  I’d laugh if it wasn’t so serious.

David Wojick contributed to this piece

Electrically yours,

K.T.