Tag Archives: BOEM

CFACT blasts Fed’s “floating wind” fantasy

From  CFACT

CFACT President Craig Rucker has blown the whistle on Federal plans to put hundreds of floating wind generators off the Oregon coast. Floating wind is the latest green energy fantasy, taking its place along with hydrogen, EVs, battery storage, and net zero.

The idea is that where the water is too deep for conventional offshore wind generators, we will simply put these huge towers and turbines on floats. Pretty much all of the West Coast fits this bill, as does most of Maine.

Responding to a Federal request for comments on a big floating wind proposal for Oregon, Rucker explains clearly that the technology needed to do this does not exist and may never exist in an economically feasible form. The federal agency is the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). The plan is to designate hundreds of thousands of ocean acres as Wind Energy Areas and then start auctioning them off to floating wind developers.

His succinct comments are here: http://www.cfact.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Comments-concerning-BOEMs-Draft-Wind-Energy-Areas.pdf

I want to dive into the technology a bit to show what a boondoggle floating wind really is.

First, let me say that, sure, we can put huge turbine towers on floats. Our fighter jets take off from and land on floats, right, floats called aircraft carriers. But they are really big, hence expensive. The same is true for floating wind, albeit at a somewhat smaller scale.

Look at it this way. Suppose you took a sailboat and put a 600′ tall mast on it. At the top, you put an 800-ton turbine with three 500′ long wind-catching blades. How big would that boat have to be not to blow over when hit by severe wind and waves?

The answer is very big indeed, in fact, huge. Now compare this huge float with the simple monopile that conventional offshore generators sit on. The monopile is a simple steel tube, maybe 30′ in diameter and a few hundred feet long, driven solidly into the ocean floor.

Compared to the huge float, the monopile is small and cheap. But simple monopile base offshore wind facilities are already tremendously expensive. Floating wind is projected to cost much more, from 2.5 to 3 times more, in fact.

In addition to the huge float holding up the turbine tower, there have to be a bunch of monster mooring chains anchored firmly to the ocean floor in all directions to keep the float from rocking too much in heavy seas or from capsizing. Then, too, the power lines taking off the electricity have to somehow get from these bobbing floats to the distant shore.

The highly specialized fabrication facilities and work boats required to make and install all this stuff in deep water do not exist. Given that over 50 vastly different floating wind designs have been proposed, we do not even know what to build.

I say projected because no utility-scale floating wind facility exists in the world today. BOEM is talking about quickly building thousands of Mega Watt (MW) of floating wind. Five leases pegged at 3,600 MW have already been sold off California. But as Rucker points out, the biggest facility in the world today is an experimental 88 MW and that just fired up a few months ago.

Those five California leases are, in effect, experimental. The developers are each going to try to produce an economically viable floating wind facility. As things stand, the odds are very long against them. I can hardly wait to see the Construction and Operations Plans, which are the first required step in the long road toward project approval.

But the ultimate crunch point is selling the juice via a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA). If costs run three times regular offshore wind, which is already extremely expensive, then the required PPAs might simply be unobtainable.

However, California just passed a law allowing the State to directly buy offshore wind energy. Perhaps the plan is for the State to buy horrendously expensive electricity, sell it to the utilities at the much lower going wholesale rate, then let the taxpayers eat the losses. It is, after all, Crazy California.

Mind you, this silly game is being played around the world. Several countries have launched similarly speculative large-scale floating wind projects, and many more are talking about it. Of course, they are also talking about mass-scale hydrogen, EVs, and net zero. It is all part of the same green nonsense.

As for the American floating wind fantasy, stay tuned to CFACT as this engineering comedy unfolds.

BOEM’S Right Whale coverup and deception

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From CFACT

By Collister Johnson

BOEM pretends it knows the noise impairment levels for Right Whales but hides its own admitted lack of knowledge on the issue and also obscures its ongoing research that will not be completed for several years.

The Biden Administration is rushing headlong to start the massive construction of offshore wind power projects off the East Coast. The wind industry calls these installations “farms”.

In no way, shape, or form do they resemble bucolic farms?

They are massive, noisy, complicated, metal, concrete, and fiberglass factories consisting of thousands of steel towers, all taller than the Washington Monument, topped by fiberglass blades longer than a football field, and surrounded by tons of rock required to prevent ocean scouring.

Even if one subscribes to the absurd theory that carbon dioxide controls the climate, these factories will, when considering the energy and materials required to construct them, result in zero reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere and have zero impact on world climate.

Repeat: zero reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere and zero impact on climate.

But vendors believe there could be a lot of money to be made in this business, and the wind industry has been effective in sprinkling seed money into the coffers of politicians and so-called environmental groups to support the legislation necessary to pay for this boondoggle – money which will ultimately be derived from hapless electricity consumers who want nothing more than cheap, reliable electricity to power their daily lives, and who will find out too late in the game that offshore wind will be neither cheap, reliable, or environmentally friendly.

Fortunately, several citizen groups have been formed that are vigorously opposing this massive industrialization of the ocean. The two leading organizations are Save Right Whales Coalition, led by Lisa Linowes: https://saverightwhales.org/, and Save Long Beach Island, led by Dr. Robert Stern https://www.savelbi.org. In addition, Michael Shellenberger has produced a terrific documentary, Thrown to the Wind, which provides an eye-opening view into the real world of noise produced by so-called survey ships. Save LBI has also initiated litigation in New Jersey federal court seeking to revoke the permits issued by BOEM authorizing this preconstruction activity.

Officially listed as an endangered species by all State and federal governments, the Right Whale falls under the protection of both the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act. These statutes require wind energy companies to obtain an “incidental take” permit for the Right Whales and other protected marine mammals while engaged in pre-construction site assessment work, which consists of sonar blasting the ocean floor to determine the placement of the wind turbines.

Last year, BOEM issued a dozen “take” permits to different wind developers who spent the winter months sonar blasting off the East Coast.

Between December 2022 and May of this year, 60 large whales, including one Right Whale, washed up dead on the beaches of NY, NJ, and VA. BOEM put together a “hastily called ” news conference to counter the outcry from the public over this outbreak of dead whales.

BOEM seemed absolutely sure there was no connection between the dead whales and sonar blasting: “At this point, there is no scientific evidence”, BOEM claimed in carefully worded lawyer jargon, ” that noise resulting from offshore wind site characterization surveys could potentially cause mortality of whales”. It concluded, ” There are no known links between recent large whale mortalities and ongoing offshore wind surveys”.

But what BOEM did not mention, or even reference, was the fact that it has funded a program currently underway that is designed precisely to answer the question of the extent to which sonar noise adversely impacts Baleen whales. Nor did BOEM mention that it had virtually no knowledge of the impact of sonar noise on large whales when it authorized the IHAs that permitted sonar mapping off the East Coast.

The program, termed “Auditory Weighting Function for Low Frequency Whales,” consists of three studies that examine the underwater noise abilities of the minke and humpback whales as proxies for Right Whales and other Baleen whales.

The program, begun in 2021, contains some startling admissions. First, BOEM is very clear in admitting that it does not know how sonar noise impacts “low frequency” whales. “The hearing abilities of ‘low frequency’ whales”, it explained, “remain one of the ‘major unknowns’ as the regulatory community has tried to deal with the effects of noise on marine mammals.” It added, “This information is imperative for BOEM to assess the potential effects of noise-producing actions (from both oil and gas and renewable energy) on these species, many of which are highly threatened”. It further conceded, ” the data need is national information on just one species of baleen whale which will significantly advance the current understanding (which is almost nonexistent) ……”.

Second, it acknowledged that “we are required to know this information for analyses under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act.” It further explains that ” the lack of meaningful, validated data for LF whales has made it extremely challenging for NMFS and others to derive meaningful regulatory ‘not to exceed thresholds’ for noise sources, as required under the MMPA and ESA”.

The program envisions a set of three studies funded not just by BOEM but also by the US Navy, NOAA, and the Marine Mammal Commission.

This means that the program, when completed, will provide guidance for the entire government concerning acceptable noise levels for both oil and gas and offshore wind development.

So why hasn’t BOEM acknowledged that it does not know noise impairment levels for large whales, and why hasn’t it revealed the existence of this program, which will produce the information it is “required to know” under the MMPA and ESA?

The reason is obvious. The studies are being conducted right now and have not yet been completed. The final report and conclusions of the studies are not scheduled for completion until June 2025, almost two years from now.

BOEM is obviously hiding the existence of these critical studies. BOEM does not yet know the impact of sonar signals on Baleen whales, it is very clear that under the Marine Mammal Protection Act BOEM is required to rely on ” the best scientific information available” in crafting underwater noise regulations. In its rush to authorize offshore wind construction before the elections in November 2024, BOEM is relying on guesswork and outdated guesswork, at that. The Federal Code of Regulations makes it very clear that BOEM cannot hide behind the excuse that this critical information is not available when it knows full well that the data will be derived from ongoing studies that are organized and funded by BOEM itself.

At a minimum, this set of facts would support a temporary injunction prohibiting BOEM from issuing further IHAs until the studies have been completed and the data has been incorporated into definitive regulations. Any final Environmental Impact Statement issued by the EPA that fails to incorporate the data to be derived from these latest studies will be de facto misleading and de jure unlawful.

When BOEM claims that “there is no evidence” linking the recent outbreak of whale deaths due to sonar testing, it is engaging in obvious and easily provable deception. This is a classic case of gaslighting. BOEM cannot sweep its “knowledge gap” concerning Right Whale noise impairment under the rug and expect the courts to approve any further offshore wind development.

Author


Collister Johnson

Johnson has spent the last four decades working in the public and private sectors in Virginia, primarily in the fields of project finance and maritime transportation.

He began his career in public service as Chairman of the Board of the Virginia Port Authority. He was appointed by President George W. Bush, and confirmed by the Senate, as a member of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and most recently, as Administrator of the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation.

In that capacity, he became knowledgeable in the field of climate and its impact on the Great Lakes. He currently serves on CFACT’s Board of Advisors.

Johnson holds a B.A. degree from Yale University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia.

Feds admit offshore wind can kill whales!

From CFACT

By David Wojick 

Despite public proclamations of innocence, it turns out BOEM and NOAA clearly acknowledge the deadly threat of offshore wind development to marine mammals. Not surprisingly they do it in documents that are subject to judicial review, lest they be caught fibbing.

Of course these admissions are well hidden, buried in the depths of thousand page documents, but they are there to be found. These are the Draft Environmental Impact Statements (DEIS) that precede each offshore wind project. They are jointly prepared by BOEM and NOAA.

The key is that the overall project EIS includes the EIS for NOAA’s harassment authorizations for the construction of that project. In fact you can find this language by searching the DEIS for the word “harassment”. I am told that this is standard language which varies little from project to project.

The standard language says just what we have been saying! Harassment is likely to lead to dangerous behavior, including increased likelihood of deadly ship strikes and entanglements. It also says, as we have, that having multiple projects increases these risks.

Here is a good example of admitting that harassment is can cause harm. I could not have said it better.

“It is possible that pile driving could displace animals into areas with lower habitat quality or higher risk of vessel collision or fisheries interaction. Multiple construction activities within the same calendar year could potentially affect migration, foraging, calving, and individual fitness. The magnitude of impacts would depend upon the locations, duration, and timing of concurrent construction. Such impacts could be long term, of high intensity, and of high exposure level. Generally, the more frequently an individual’s normal behaviors are disrupted or the longer the duration of the disruption, the greater the potential for biologically significant consequences to individual fitness. The potential for biologically significant effects is expected to increase with the number of pile-driving events to which an individual is exposed.”

Empire Wind DEIS v.1, Page 3.15-14, PDF page 372

Empire_Wind_DEIS_Vol1Herunterladen

This warning is about risks created by pile driving but all forms of acoustic harassment fit this description. NOAA harassment authorizations are based on the estimated number of critters that will be exposed to unsafe sound levels. The source of the dangerous sounds is irrelevant. What matters most is the volume. Sound is a pressure wave; the louder the sound the greater the physical pressure on the hearing system. Pain and physical damage are possible.

In fact the infamous sonar surveying sounds, implicated in the whale deaths to date, can be much louder that the incredibly loud pile driving. Driving the enormous piles for the proposed wind projects is estimated to create sounds around 190 decibels, which is painfully loud in humans.

But some sonar equipment deliberately emits sounds over 200 decibels. Decibels is a log scale so this is not just 5% greater than 190; it is much greater.

Thus it makes no sense that NOAA claims sonar surveys have no significant impact and so do not fall under NEPA, while pile driving does. This is especially true when, as just happened, a dozen different projects are given simultaneous authorization to acoustically harass large numbers of whales.

What is important is that NOAA and a BOEM are clearly stating that the acoustic threats we have been warning about and suspecting are real. The telling correlations between sonar blasting and increased whale deaths cannot be waived away.

Correlation is not causation, but correlation between cause and predicted effect is very strong evidence that the cause is effective. NOAA and BOEM’s repeated insistence that there is no evidence offshore wind development is killing whales is clearly contradicted by their own Environmental Impact Statements.

Harassment kills.

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