The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (“BOEM”) has identified two Wind Energy Areas (“WEAs”) in the Gulf of Mexico (“GoM”) to develop offshore wind farms. A lease sale is expected later this summer. One 546,000-acre WEA is located south of Galveston, Texas; the other is a 188,000-acre tract off the coast of Lake Charles, Louisiana. According to BOEM, the two WEAs have the potential to power 2.3 million and 799,000 homes, respectively, with clean energy generated by continuously renewable offshore wind.
Offshore wind promises various advantages over onshore wind farms, including stronger, more consistent, and less turbulent winds, and the use of substantially bigger towers and blades than onshore farms, resulting in more efficient and greater power generation; out-of-sight-and-sound facilities; the capacity to service large U.S. coastal populations; and the ability to avoid ecologically sensitive sites ashore. (SeeOnshore vs offshore wind energy: what’s the difference?). Moreover, according to some estimates, the GoM possesses the potential to generate almost 510 giga watts (“GW”) of offshore wind (“OSW”) annually. (SeeThe Gulf of Mexico is poised for a wind energy boom. ‘The only question is when.’.) Additionally, given the mature oil and gas offshore infrastructure along and off the Gulf Coast states, that infrastructure arguably can and would adapt to build and maintain OSW farms in the GoM.
OSW will bring new jobs and continuously replenishing clean energy to both Texas and Louisiana.
Off shore wind in the Gulf looks interesting. But note that wind turbine manufacturers are reporting losses. They have been impacted especially hard by inflation. Apparently the long lead time of contracts and inadequate cost escalators made for problems.
Once inflation is tamed it may be easier. Until then contracts are a blank check. Finished cost is unknown. This may delay projects.
The engineers, etc have already considered it, but it’ll be interesting to see how well wind turbines survive severe hurricanes. I imagine there are already turbines in the North Sea… has anyone seen statistics on repair rates/costs in such environments?
Rob
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
While I have my doubts about the viability of wind power, there seems to be money in it today. Having voiced my concerns, I am happy to see more structure that will act like reefs in the North Western Gulf of Mexico.
Due to currents, the silt and other stuff that flows into the Gulf from the rivers ends up to the west of the rivers. Reefs generally harbor sea life that filters the water and makes a nursery for sea life.
You should consult with Texas, China, Brazil, France, Norway, Denmark, UK, Germany and many other countries and tell them about your doubts.
China was responsible for almost 70% of wind generation growth in 2021, followed by the United States at 14% and Brazil at 7%. The European Union, despite near-record capacity growth in 2020 and 2021, saw wind power generation fall by 3% in 2021 due to unusually long periods of low wind conditions. Globally, record generation growth was possible thanks to a 90% increase in capacity growth in 2020, which reached 113 GW, driven by policy deadlines in China and the United States. In 2021 however, wind additions decreased by one-third in China and by a quarter in the United States, partially offset by faster growth in other parts of the world, resulting in overall capacity growth reaching 94 GW.
About 22% of total wind capacity growth of 94 GW was delivered by offshore technology in 2021, the highest in history and three times the average of the previous five years. Such a high share resulted from a combination of record offshore capacity additions in China, which was responsible for 80% of offshore growth, and a slowdown in global onshore growth. While the rate of onshore wind capacity additions is expected to remain stable in the coming years, offshore systems are set to further accelerate in their existing markets, such as the European Union and China, as well as enter new countries such as the United States, Chinese Taipei and Japan.
Reaching annual wind electricity generation of about 8 000 TWh in 2030, as foreseen under the Net Zero Scenario, will require increased support for both onshore and offshore farms. Efforts should be focused on facilitating permitting, supporting the identification of suitable sites, decreasing costs and reducing project development timelines.
Maps shared with industry stakeholders and seen by Bloomberg News show vast red areas that the Navy and Air Force have deemed “highly problematic,” covering prime real estate the Interior Department last year earmarked for leasing off the coasts of North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware.
No the DOD was late in distributing its maps on areas they want to protect:
" The Pentagon has identified challenges operating around wind turbines that would be installed into the seabed in Atlantic waters near many of its operations and facilities, including North Carolina’s Dare County bombing range, used for training fighter jet crews, and a weapons station in Yorktown, Virginia. They are documented vividly on a map of Navy and Air Force concerns, dated Oct. 6, 2022, and circulated with industry and state stakeholders this month."
The ocean energy bureau expressed confidence it could resolve the dispute. The agency “has a long working relationship” with the Defense Department “and together we have successfully deconflicted and identified areas that have resulted in 27 leases along the Atlantic coast, covering over 2.1 million acres,” it said in its statement.
The maps have inspired a frenzy of calls and meetings as alarmed offshore wind advocates ask top administration officials to referee the dispute and broker a compromise.
Supporters argue the work is also critical to hitting the nation’s climate targets. Because of its massive scale and high generating capacity, offshore wind is viewed as a particularly important source of renewable power.
And now, offshore wind advocates are throwing the military’s own warnings back at the Pentagon. A shift to renewable power sources helps shrink US reliance on volatile commodities for energy, thereby strengthening national security, they say. The Defense Department and US intelligence agencies also have repeatedly cast climate change as a threat to American military assets and global security.
“Offshore wind can enhance national security by providing a clean and affordable source of energy protected from the whims of global commodity prices.”
The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has announced the finalization of four new Wind Energy Areas (WEAs) in the Gulf of Mexico offshore Louisiana and Texas, totaling approximately 763,000 acres. This follows BOEM’s first-ever Gulf of Mexico offshore wind lease sale in August, which resulted in a high bid of only $5.6 million from RWE…
Next, BOEM will issue a Proposed Sale Notice (“PSN”) with a 60-day public review and comment period later this year or early next. The PSN will identify, among other things, the proposed areas to offer for lease in the WEAs, auction format, and qualified bidders to date…
The recent BOEM Gulf of Mexico auction results from August demonstrated a lack of competitive bidding compared to previous auctions in other regions. Considering that only one of the three lease areas was awarded during the August wind lease sale, with an extremely low winning bid of $5.6 million (approximately $54 per acre) compared to the $157.7 million that RWE Offshore Wind Holdings, LLC paid for a 63,338-acre lease area (approximately $2,490 per acre) in the California auction, it appears that the broader offshore wind industry was hesitant to invest in these particular lease areas in the Gulf of Mexico.
Will offshore wind ever get built in the Gulf? https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/offshore-wind-gulf-of-mexico-18506481.php
Three months after the first auction to develop wind farms in the Gulf of Mexico were held, the region’s future as an offshore wind energy hub is falling into increasing uncertainty. Following a steep rise in construction and borrowing costs over the past two years, large wind developers along the East Coast are canceling or delaying projects as they seek larger power contracts from state regulators.
That is likely to make getting financing to build wind farms even harder in the Gulf, a region with lower wind speeds and regular hurricanes, making risky the building of 300-foot tall wind turbines.
“Already we weren’t thinking they were going to do much in the Gulf, and this certainly isn’t going to make it easier,” said Becky Diffen, an Austin-based Norton Rose Fulbright clean energy attorney…
“RWE paid the lowest price for an offshore wind lease since 2017,” said John Murray, a Houston-based energy analyst with S&P Global Commodities Insight. “This is one of those things where they could be securing lease acreage for quite a low price with the expectations that in the future it could be worth a lot more. You can sit on these leases up for 10 years.”…
The Biden administration offered the industry a small boost Nov. 17, with the Treasury Department allowing offshore wind developers to claim a lucrative tax credit not just on turbines but on the cables, transformers and substations that allow them to bring electricity to shore…
The hope within the Biden administration is clean hydrogen facilities might one day provide a market for offshore wind, with energy companies Shell, Invenergy and TotalEnergies noting the potential for such a relationship in public comments earlier this year, according to Reuters. But when the Gulf blocks came up for auction in August, none of those companies even offered a bid.
The United Nations’ COP28 climate summit in Dubai in December 2023 saw 118 countries pledge to triple the world’s renewable energy capacity by 2030. This pledge is part of the Global Pledge on Renewables and Energy Efficiency.
The pledge is intended to reduce the percentage of fossil fuels used in energy production. Progress on the pledge will be tracked annually at the UN climate summits until 2030
Of course, to affect climate change it’s not the percentage that matters, it’s the total.
But presumably this represents some aspirational goal to improve climate change causes.
Probably the most important discussion at the COP28 involves carbon capture and storage, CCS.
As negotiators at the United Nations COP28 climate talks underway in Dubai consider a phaseout of fossil fuels, a new term has opened a potential middle ground in the debate: “abated emissions.” In this “abated” scenario, greenhouse gas emissions from some continued use of fossil fuels would be trapped using technology called carbon capture and storage, or CCS…
“We’ve got to have largely—largely—a phaseout of fossil fuels in our energy system by 2050, focusing carbon capture technologies on the hardest-to-abate sectors,” Kerry said…
The U.K.'s government-appointed Climate Change Committee called CCS “a necessity, not an option, for reaching net-zero emissions,” and the International Energy Agency, or IEA, has called it “an essential technology” for sectors of the economy that are hard to decarbonize. However, IEA also cautioned against “excessive expectations and reliance” on CCS. The technology is extremely costly and has so far generated more controversy than actual carbon reduction.
A recent report found that heavy reliance on CCS would be “highly economically damaging,” prominent clean energy expert Mark Jacobson called CCS “a complete scam”…
But a “necessary” downstream bandaid, to protect the vested interests. Next best thing to declaring the entire issue a “hoax”, and ignoring it completely. It would be more straightforward to not create the carbon emissions in the first place. But no. That would hurt the vested interests. I even remember #44 warbling about “clean coal”, while the experts were saying it was more theoretical than real.