By CFACT
By David Wojick
The Biden administration has recently unleashed a wave of plans and regulatory actions aimed at building massive amounts of destructive offshore wind energy. An environmental impact assessment is not included.
The timescales range from tomorrow to 2050. Here's a quick look at some of them, starting with the Grand Plan.
“Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Offshore Wind” is the grandiose title of the Energy Department’s version of Biden’s vision. Their basic idea is that offshore wind energy is ready to go once the unexpected cost crisis has been successfully overcome.
They point out that the booming market remained unchanged, although costs rose quickly by an average of 65%. Coastal states are eager to introduce major offshore wind targets and laws. In short, it's a seller's market. Costs don't matter.
They note that government targets and targets already exceed the Biden goal of 100,000 MW by 2050. But why stop there? They say Net Zero requires a staggering 250,000 MW of offshore wind energy. At 15 MW per turbine, that's almost 17,000 monster towers.
The word “environment” appears frequently throughout this 62-page grand vision, but it is always about environmental justice. The accumulating, destructive environmental impacts of lining our coastline with towers and cables are seemingly ignored. Nor the costs.
Next comes transmission, where we have “AN ACTION PLAN FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF OFFSHORE WIND TRANSMISSION IN THE ATLANTIC REGION OF THE UNITED STATES.” While the Pathways plan covers the US, this is only about the Atlantic, because that's where the big action is now taking place.
This 110-pager comes from the Department of Energy and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, who are actually building the offshore wind monster.
The basic idea is simple. Instead of bringing the juice from each giant wind turbine to land one at a time, we will build a massive high-voltage grid in the ocean. This allows us to transport energy along the coast from where it is generated to where it is needed.
In the plan there are actually three basic networks: North, Central and South, but we need not be concerned with this detail. Of course, there is a huge network of feeder lines connecting the backbones to the numerous individual giant power plants.
Given the incredibly large generation numbers in the Liftoff plan, it is actually a very large network. Since it is a DC grid, I suspect that the juice is converted to AC on land, where it is then connected to the appropriately boosted land grid. The increase is another big, unknown cost.
There are many problems with this great draft, including legal and political, and many of them are mentioned. An interesting example is the connection of this deep sea network with state supply law.
Environmental impacts are treated only as a research topic and not as a potential problem, with the exception of floating wind, where some major problems are mentioned in passing. The feel-good idea of minimizing impacts comes up frequently, but what those impacts might be is left unsaid.
As is typical for BOEM, there is a lot of talk about surveillance. Their approach to the environmental impact is to build it up and see what happens, as if the extinction of the North Atlantic right whale was reversible. The concept of cumulative impacts is not addressed.
Cost distribution is an important economic issue, but there is no information at all about what this underwater monstrosity might cost.
Back to today: several things happened. First, BOEM has announced many new lease sales for the next five years (the Biden II years?). These operate fixed and floating from Maine to Oregon, five of which are planned for this year alone.
Some are in new locations, while others are in already crowded areas like the New York Bight. As always, there is no cumulative environmental impact analysis. It's like BOEM has never heard of this even though the law clearly requires it when accumulating projects.
Even more threatening is that there are new regulations for the approval of offshore wind projects. The developers love these new rules, which shows us that they are not designed to protect the environment. This is from the BOEM press release:
“”The final modernization rule will streamline the permitting process and reduce regulatory hurdles for developers. It will also lead to greater collaboration among federal, state and local stakeholders and ensure that offshore wind projects are developed in a sustainable and responsible manner,” said Anne Reynolds, American Clean Power Association vice president for offshore wind.
The main “regulatory obstacle” is the analysis of environmental impacts. The new rules require authorities to rush through them, which means glossing over them without giving time for serious analysis.
Today's actions may seem small, but given the long-term plans, they are anything but small. It's all part of a huge rush to do something hugely expensive and environmentally destructive for which there is no need at all.
This offshore bulldozer must be stopped before it is too late.
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