Wind power executives worry over US offshore ambitions
The Biden administration wants to spark an American offshore wind power boom, growing the industry from less than 1 gigawatt today to 30GW by the end of the decade — enough to serve 10mn homes.
But executives are increasingly concerned that a myriad of challenges facing the sector are pushing that target beyond reach: permitting is too slow, leases are too expensive, equipment is in short supply and inflation is soaring, they say. https://archive.ph/mZfbk
DB2
"Obtaining permits was a central worry for many developers gathered at the Providence event, who said environmental reviews needed to be speedier and carried out with more consistency and transparency.
“Our concern is that this could end up being a very difficult bottleneck,” Morris said. “If we don’t get these projects that are in the forefront . . . permitted, then it’s very difficult to really get this industry off the ground.”
Permitting and environmental reviews are real issues now. The concern is that it could get worse and become ‘very difficult’ – not something the wind guys can go through quite readily. Notice the wind guys are using the present tense:
“permitting is too slow, leases are too expensive, equipment is in short supply and inflation is soaring”.
This is a problem almost everywhere (I don’t mean locations, I mean all sorts of projects). A few years ago, I was involved in a traffic safety research project where a pole had to be installed with some equipment attached to it. The designs were submitted, and the permits pulled. It took well over a year to get all the permits and complete the installation. And that delayed the overall project by over 9 months. The thing that was ridiculous is that the permits to run the power, dig the hole, install the enclosure at the street level were approved in a timely manner and that part of the construction was completed in less than 6 months. Then it all sat there for more than 7 months while waiting for someone in the city to approve the pole and the equipment installation. Then it was all installed, and connected to power, and tested. And the city wouldn’t allow it to be turned on, and wouldn’t allow the research to begin, until they issued ANOTHER permit to turn everything on. And that last permit took another 6 weeks to get!
The last business I had in Caracas required a permit from the fire department so that some other office could give us a tax number. I duly visited the fire department asking for the inspection. I’m still waiting…
In Venezuelan style we just got on with our business. Since we didn’t have a tax number we couldn’t report our activity to that office so we just skipped it. No big deal!
Not a problem. When people on Nantucket whine about their need for more power, tell them they can’t have it because the wind farms needed to provide their power were rejected by them. Good luck !!
That assumes the deeper pocket players (Siemens? GE?) want to spend more at this time with uncertain wind economics. In addition, orders this year are only half of what they were in 2019. And there are permitting issues mentioned previously [Permitting in Europe is the “overriding biggest challenge,” Andersen said.]
Germany’s federal network regulator on Tuesday launched a tender for offshore wind turbines in four areas in the North and Baltic seas, with a total capacity of 7,000 MW. The tender will use a “dynamic bidding process” which means that if multiple companies forgo government subsidies, the one with the greatest “willingness to pay” will be win the lease…
Germany’s wind industry association WAB said companies in the sector should not be burdened with price pressure.
I’d prefer solar where the sun shines, but in snowy, long-winter-night places it doesn’t heat your house in winter. We do get almost “free” air conditioning in the summer here in Maryland, but we need gas for winter heat.