Opposition to offshore wind development on the East Coast is growing following a blade failure at the Vineyard Wind development, one of the first offshore wind farms to come online in the United States. [emphasis, links added]
New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew and Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry held a hearing in Brigantine, N.J., a small town on the Jersey Shore will review the impact of offshore wind on the East Coast.
The Atlantic Coast wind project prompted the hearing, which the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management approved in July. It will include 195 turbines and stand 850 feet above the New Jersey coast.
“These will be the largest wind turbines in the world. [We will] Be an experiment in the world at your Jersey Shore. Dozens of these turbines will be very visible and possibly even audible, especially on a ketch,” Van Drew said.
Amy DiSibio, a board member of ACK for Whales, a Nantucket-based environmental group that opposes offshore wind development, testified that in 2014, an offshore wind insurance company estimated Of the 700,000 blades in operation worldwide at that time, 3,800 failed each year for a variety of reasons, including lightning damage, human error and manufacturing defects.
DiSibio estimates that with 3,000 turbines operating on the U.S. East Coast, there could be 48 blade failures per year, like the one on Nantucket.
The Biden/Harris administration aims to achieve 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030.
With an average power output of 10MW per turbine, 3,000 turbines are needed to meet the government's offshore wind targets. However, most turbines have three blades, meaning the failure rate could be three times higher than DiSibio estimated.
incredible transformation
Wind turbine blades disintegrate on single turbine at Vineyard wind power project, It happened on a sunny day, Shards of foam, fiberglass and epoxy resin litter the beaches of Martha's Vineyard.
The beach was closed for the day and construction and operations on the project were halted.
Cleanup work continues, Nantucket Helen Reports on Tuesday said the Interior Ministry's Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement allowed developers to resume installing towers and nacelles, but not blades.
NEW: Vineyard Wind and GE say they have begun “controlled cutting activities” on the damaged turbines to remove the last fragments of the damaged blades.
They also claim that BSEE has updated its suspension order, allowing them to resume installing towers and nacelles (but not blades) pic.twitter.com/viDniyo4qR
— Nantucket Current (@ACKCurrent) August 13, 2024
The Wampanoag Tribe of Aquinnah on Martha's Vineyard last month requested a moratorium on offshore wind development, and Nantucket residents are now doing the same, boston herald reported.
DiSibio brought a blade to the hearing that washed up on a beach near her home, she testified This event significantly changed the public’s perception of Martha’s Vineyard’s offshore wind industry.
She said the community relied on tourism and the fragments from the broken blade were affecting tourism.
“It's an unbelievable turnaround. The beach is a disaster,” DiSibio said.
DiSibbio recounted how long it took Vineyard Winds to notify local governments or the public about the broken blade.
“To make matters worse, nearly two days after the blade failure, “vineyard wind” kept everyone, including our local government, in the dark. In fact, they didn't really speak until the first pieces of debris started washing ashore. It was bad enough that their blade broke, but they shouldn't have sat on the news for almost two days,” DiSibio said.
She said some of the blade fragments were small enough to likely enter the marine food chain.
whale impact
Before the blade incident, DiSibio said it was difficult to get any attention given to opponents' concerns. She accused offshore wind developers of making a “strategic effort” to bolster public support by donating to local aquariums and environmental groups.
Many such donations were recorded in 2022 by the Save the Right Whale Alliance, which aims to raise awareness of the impact of offshore wind development on critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.
Although many media reports have found no evidence to support claims that offshore winds are harming whales, Although the increase in whale mortality on the East Coast began at the same time as offshore wind developmentRobert Rand, owner of Rand Acoustics LLC, used his own time and resources to conduct two studies and found that the impact could be widespread.
The towers were erected by driving 31-foot-wide monopiles into the seabed. Rand told the hearing that the noise generated by the activity was “shockingly loud.”
“The blows of these underwater piling hammers are Comparable to the explosive effect of a 155mm howitzer in the air. “This is excessive noise and should not be allowed anywhere near whale habitat,” Rand said.
He said that in addition to piling activities, The ship's propulsion gear that holds them in place creates a constant noise, and each pile driven into the seafloor creates an area of nearly 44 square miles of constant disturbance.
“This represents a Shocking and unprecedented levels of noise pollution that will Pollution of the marine environment from coast to high seas through persistent behavior harassment,” Rand said.
Read the break from Just The News
