Offshore Wind: Renewable Energy Solution for East Coast
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Offshore wind energy could eventually supply all of Virginia's power needs. Let's look at how we can get there, what it will cost, and why we should start now.
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Offshore Wind: Renewable Energy Solution for East Coast
- 1. Renewable Energy for the East Coast Offshore Wind Ivy Main, March 2012
- 2. Offshore Wind: Renewable Energy for the East Coast
- 3. Offshore Wind: Renewable Energy for the East Coast
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- 7. Offshore Wind: Renewable Energy for the East Coast Kentish Flats wind farm. Photo Phil Hollman
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- 9. Offshore Wind: Renewable Energy for the East Coast Long Island Power Authority 2003
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- 14. Offshore Wind: Renewable Energy for the East Coast W in d E n e r g y P la n n in g A r e a s - M a s s a c h u s e tts to V ir g in ia 7 6 ° 0 '0 " W 7 5 ° 0 '0 " W 7 4 ° 0 '0 " W 7 3 ° 0 '0 " W 7 2 ° 0 '0 " W 7 1 °0 '0 " W 7 0 ° 0 '0 " W 6 9 ° 0 '0 " W M a s s a c h u s e t t s N e w Y o r k 4 2 ° 0 '0 " N 4 2 ° 0 '0 " N R h o d e C o n n e c t i c u t I s l a n d C a p e W in d L e a s e A re a L O N G IS L A N D SO U N D 4 1 ° 0 '0 " N 4 1 ° 0 '0 " N P e n n s y l v a n i a C a ll A r e a O ff s h o r e R h o d e I s la n d a n d M a s s a c h u s e tt s N e w J e r s e y 4 0 ° 0 '0 " N 4 0 ° 0 '0 " N D E L A W A R E B A Y 3 9 ° 0 '0 " N 3 9 ° 0 '0 " N D e l a w a r e M a r y l a n d 3 8 ° 0 '0 " N 3 8 ° 0 '0 " N C H E SA P E A K E i a B A Y i n g i r V 3 7 ° 0 '0 " N 3 7 ° 0 '0 " N V i r g i n i a N o r t h C a r o l i n a 7 6 ° 0 '0 " W 7 5 ° 0 '0 " W 7 4 ° 0 '0 " W 7 3 ° 0 '0 " W 7 2 ° 0 '0 " W 7 1 °0 '0 " W 7 0 ° 0 '0 " W 6 9 ° 0 '0 " W F e d /S ta te B o u n d a ry N e w J e r s e y W in d E n e r g y A r e a ( W E A ) 0 25 50 100 150 B a th y m e try USC G TSS D e la w a r e W E A N a u tic a l M ile s U p to 3 0 m e te rs M a s s a c h u s e tts C a ll A r e a M a r y la n d W E A 0 50 100 200 300 M o r e th a n 3 0 m e te r s C a p e W in d L e a s e A r e a V ir g in ia W E A K ilo m e te r s C a ll A r e a O ff s h o r e R I / M A O C S L e a s e B lo c k s M a p ID : P A C B -2 0 1 2 -1 0 0 7
- 15. Offshore Wind: Renewable Energy for the East Coast
- 16. Offshore Wind: Renewable Energy for the East Coast
- 17. Offshore Wind: Renewable Energy for the East Coast VCERC 2008
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- 32. Offshore Wind: Renewable Energy for the East Coast
- 33. So what does it take to get there? Need some combination of: • Competitive production costs • Incentives • RPS • Limits on carbon • Price on carbon, pollution, or other externalities
- 34. Virginia’s Renewable Portfolio Standard gets a failing grade
- 35. Virginia legislation • 2010: Virginia • 2011: Joint Offshore Wind Resolution Development supporting 3000 Authority MW of offshore • Coordinates data-gathering, wind by 2025 supply chain, works with • Aspirational only, no carrots local governments and no sticks 2012: RPS further weakened
- 36. What is the Sierra Club doing? We advocate: • a real RPS • including externalities in the IRP process • continuing funding for VCERC • incentives for offshore wind investment and turbine manufacturing • removing the $45 million of coal subsidies
Editor's Notes
- 1. The Sierra Club supports renewable energy as an integral part of its Clean Energy Solutions campaign. It ’ s not enough for us to be opposed to coal, nuclear, and other fossil fuels; if we are going to make a real impact on greenhouse gas emissions, we have to advocate for alternatives. And to make enough of an impact, that means advocating for alternatives at a utility scale; much as we all want distributed generation and should continue to advocate for it, small wind and rooftop solar cannot supply our cities with enough power in time to prevent the worst effects of climate change. For those of us on the East Coast, offshore wind offers the biggest resource at the lowest cost to consumers and with the least environmental impact. It ’ s also a technology that ’ s commercially ready now.
- 2. This is a government wind map. The darker colors show the best wind resources. The wind is pretty good in the Plains states, where you see all that pink, and there ’ s some on our mountain tops, but it ’ s best where you see the red and blue areas: on the east and west coasts, and in the Great Lakes.
- 3. As it turns out, that ’ s where most of the population is, and almost 80% of electric demand.
- 4. You hear a lot in the press about bringing wind power from the Plains and Texas to the coasts. The so-called Pickens Plan and this Green Power Superhighway idea are based on the notion that we need thousands of miles of new high-voltage transmission lines to carry power from the center of the country to the coasts.
- 5. But the east coast and the Great Lakes states have a better power source right off our coasts. Here on the Atlantic coast, we can put wind farms twelve to twenty miles out or more because the outer continental shelf is shallow along most of the east coast: less than thirty meters deep.
- That allows the towers to be anchored right to the ocean floor, using what are called monopiles. If these pieces look huge, it ’ s because they are. Wind turbines on land have some size constraints because you have to be able to transport the pieces by road. On the ocean you don ’ t have that problem.
- 7. Most offshore wind turbines today are rated at 3 megawatts, but new ones are 5 megawatts or more, and designs for 10 megawatt turbines are in the works. The towers can be as tall as 90 meters (about 300 feet), with rotor diameters (the sweep area) of more than 120 meters. Another advantage of putting the turbines offshore is that the wind is more reliable over the ocean and usually stronger, so the wind farms are generating more energy more of the time. Land-based wind turbines usually produce about 30% of their total capacity over time, while offshore wind turbines have a capacity factor of about 45%. Optional notes : Capacity factor is the ratio of the average actual energy generated to the design maximum, or “ nameplate ” capacity. So a 3 MW turbine operating at 45% capacity generates an average of 1.35 MW. By comparison, the average coal plant operates at 85% capacity, so to displace a coal plant, you would need a wind farm of about twice the size. A 3 MW offshore wind turbine would create enough electricity to power about 1000 homes.
- 8. This is a diagram of how it works. Any number of turbines can be linked to a single cable coming ashore. One of the benefits of offshore wind energy is that it ’ s scaleable: you can start with a 50-turbine wind farm and add more turbines as you want more power. You can ’ t do that with a coal plant.
- 9. Twelve nautical miles is about the visual horizon, where you can ’ t see the turbines at all from shore unless you have a crystal-clear day, and even then you can ’ t see much. With the exception of the Cape Wind project in Massachusetts, most of the proposals in the east would put the turbines out twelve miles or more. The Wind Energy Areas proposed for Virginia would actually be more like 20 miles out.
- 10. That far out, they ’ re also away from other close-in coastal uses and the migratory routes of shore birds, though not necessarily of other birds.
- 11. How much power are we talking about? The Department of Energy estimates we have enough offshore wind that it could potentially power the whole country. Some of that is in deep water, and obviously, you wouldn ’ t put wind farms absolutely everywhere, but it shows you the scale of the resource.
- 12. Ten states have enough shallow water wind resources to supply their entire energy demand.
- 13. Ten countries in Europe already have offshore wind farms, and some have more than a decade of experience with them. Just recently China joined them, beating out the U.S. by at least several years.
- 14. The Department of the Interior ’ s Bureau of Offshore Energy Management--the agency formerly known as MMS—has designated Wind Energy Areas along the east coast for the first round of offshore wind leasing. BOEM issued its call for interest in the Virginia Wind area in February 2012. The Virginia area could support up to 2,400 megawatts of generating capacity, enough to power over half a million homes. Dominion Power has indicated an interest in acquiring all of the Virginia lease blocks.
- 15. In Virginia, our offshore wind information comes from the Virginia Coastal Energy Research Consortium, VCERC. Its Research Director, George Hagerman, has been especially helpful in educating us. VCERC chose to study fifty lease blocks off of Virginia Beach. You can see they have Class 5 and 6 winds, some of the best, and it ’ s all shallow water. They eliminated shipping lanes, an old dumping ground, and some areas used by NASA, and eventually focused on 30 lease blocks that would provide 3200 megawatts of electric capacity, or about 10 percent of the total amount of electricity we use in Virginia.
- 16. This is the area BOEM chose for us. It ’s further out than the VCERC area, but similar in size and energy potential.
- 17. Another bonus of the Virginia Beach area is that one of the high voltage lines of our regional electric grid already goes right to the coastline, so a line coming ashore from a wind farm could plug right in. Dominion has done a study that concluded it could be done with only minor upgrades.
- 18. What about cost? Offshore wind can be a better investment than a new coal-fired electric plant. This slide from the Virginia research group, VCERC, shows offshore wind-generated electricity prices compared to the price of electricity from a new coal-fired or gas-fired power plant. Fuel prices are the biggest variable in determining price competitiveness. If you assume coal will resume its pre-recession price rise, or if you include a carbon price, offshore wind will be cheaper over the life of the wind farm. Natural gas is currently very cheap, but has a history of volatility. However, there are a lot of other factors that influence wind farm costs, including whether the utility finances the project, whether the turbines are manufactured in the U.S. or abroad, and what capacity factor you assume. Other researchers using less optimistic assumptions have come up with higher prices for offshore wind, and lower prices for coal. (Capacity factor is the ratio of the average actual energy generated to the maximum, or nameplate, capacity. The better the capacity factor, the more energy you make, so the cost per megawatt of energy produced goes down, and the project becomes more profitable.)
- 19. You ’ re also getting price stability. Those coal prices can go up or down, but the price of wind will always be zero. Predictable energy pricing is hugely important to businesses. Using fossil fuels to generate electricity is like taking out an adjustable rate mortgage that you can never get out of; consumers have to pay for fuel price increases for the whole life of the plant, as well as any extra costs that might be needed for, say, paying a carbon tax or putting in additional emissions controls to fight global warming. Using wind power is like taking out a fixed-rate mortgage and locking in stable prices decades into the future.
- 20. Okay, but what about the fact that the wind doesn ’ t always blow? Don ’ t we need energy all the time? There are really two issues here. One is day-to-day variability — offshore wind is much steadier than land-based wind, but it still fluctuates. The other issue is seasonal, because wind is stronger during the winter months and drops off during the summer. For the near term, neither one matters very much. A government report concluded the transmission grid can already handle up to 20% wind power without a problem, and it will take us at least ten years to install that many wind turbines. Utilities already rely on natural gas and other fuels that can generate extra power on demand, like when we have a hot summer day and everyone ’ s running the A/C.
- 21. Other forms of renewable energy can also balance wind. Solar is a perfect complement to wind; on hot sunny days when there ’ s not much wind, that ’ s when solar panels are generating at their peak. And all that local generation actually makes the grid stronger and more resistant to blackouts and disruptions.
- 22. Offshore wind farms can also be connected to each other all along the East Coast, to even out the flow of electricity when it ’ s blowing in one place but not another. It ’ s almost always blowing somewhere, and storms tend to track up the east coast, making it easier to harness more wind power and greatly improve predictability. Southern states can send their surplus north in the winter, New England can send its surplus south in the summer. An offshore grid has a side benefit of limiting the number of places you need to run cables to shore; you don ’ t need a cable out to every wind farm. It can hook up to the next farm up the coast. So you can have a wind farm off Assateague or other parkland and never touch it. The Atlantic Wind Connection has proposed this offshore wind backbone capable of carrying 7,000 megawatts of power. Initially it will connect Delaware and New Jersey wind farms, with Virginia included in a phase 2.
- 23. What about downsides? What do we know about the environmental risks? We have some data from Europe that ’ s reassuring, but we can ’ t be complacent. It ’ s still incumbent on us in the Sierra Club and other environmental groups to make sure the environmental impact studies are comprehensive. You need mapping of the ocean floor to locate sensitive species, and you need to know the migratory routes of whales and other ocean mammals and fish. We ’ re told that so far the indications for mammals are that they move out of the area during construction, and then return.
- 24. We should also expect that some birds will be killed, but probably not many. Most coastal birds aren ’ t ranging out 12 miles, but some migratory birds do fly across open ocean, and ideally we ’ d like to avoid placing turbines directly in their path. Studies in Europe indicate a bird kill rate of two birds per turbine per year on average.
- 25. A Danish study of a wind farm sited in a known migratory bird flyway tracked the paths that individual flocks took, and the results showed that most of the flocks circled around the wind farm, and the few that went through it steered between turbines. They recorded three bird deaths per year per turbine there. Of course you have to keep in mind that the alternative to a wind farm is not status quo, but a planet that continues to warm, and that is bad for most species. So, for example, Massachusetts Audubon did the bird studies on the Cape Wind project and gave it a green light. They based their conclusion not just on the relatively low impact on birds that they projected, but on their perspective that climate change is the much greater threat to those same bird species. Bats are another species of concern; believe it or not, bats can be found twelve miles out at sea, and we have very little data on them. Land-based turbines have been blamed for a lot of bat kills, so we do want to know what happens at sea and how to minimize the risks for them.
- 26. Impacts on fishing are mixed; commercial fishermen who use half-mile long nets can ’ t operate around the turbines, but sport fishermen will probably benefit because the turbines can act as artificial reefs creating habitat for fish.
- 27. The upsides are pretty obvious. When you get your electricity from offshore wind turbines instead of dirty fossil fuels, there ’ s no air pollution, no risk of mercury poisoning, no toxic sludge washing up on beaches, and no ash spills burying houses and fouling rivers.
- 28. Wind turbines don ’ t cause asthma, they don ’ t produce radioactive waste, and they don ’ t require mountaintop removal coal mining.
- 29. This table summarizes the pollution case for renewable energy.
- 30. Offshore wind farms also mean jobs. This is a labor-intensive business, a big selling point for politicians and local leaders. There are 8,000 components of a wind turbine, and they could all be made here in the U.S. Installation and maintenance means thousands of permanent jobs. You need special ships to install the turbines and maintain them, and that means jobs for our shipbuilding industry. These are skilled jobs, and they can ’ t be exported overseas. VCERC estimates that a sustained buildout of offshore wind farms could bring 10,000 career-length jobs to Virginia.
- 31. We are already seeing industry players coming to Virginia to help start the U.S. offshore wind industry. At the Offshore Wind Technology Center in Chesapeake, Virginia, the giant Spanish wind company Gamesa, is working with Huntington Ingalls to develop the next generation of offshore wind turbines, and what could be North America's first offshore wind turbines. Poseiden Atlantic is developing an offshore wind testing facility on the Eastern Shore that will offer test pads where developers of offshore wind power systems can erect full-scale models of their towers and turbines for testing, evaluation and certification.
- 32. So will the public support offshore wind farms? A survey by the University of Delaware found that over three-quarters of the state ’ s population supported an offshore wind project, even if it were visible from shore. When offered a choice between the offshore wind project and an equivalent new generating plant using coal or natural gas, over 90% voted for wind, even if it were to cost more . A number of us in the Virginia Chapter have been working to educate the public and our elected officials, and so far the response has been enthusiastic. Virginia Beach has had a couple of townhalls about this, and the response from residents, the press, and local officials has all been very good. You ’ d think if there were going to be opposition, it would be from the residents of Virginia Beach, who would be most affected, but the newspaper quoted the mayor of Virginia Beach as saying he wants a wind farm. That ’ s a tribute to the groundwork and the outreach that ’ s been done there, not least by Eileen Levandoski.
- 33. The fastest way for offshore wind farms to become a reality is for costs to come down. Lots of people are working on this, including not just developers here and abroad but also the Department of Energy, with grants for R&D, and the U.S. Congress, with production tax credits. But we ’ ve already discussed why offshore wind is a good deal right now in terms of reducing pollution and carbon emissions and creating jobs. So these are other ways the state could incentivize wind farms off our coasts starting right now. A real RPS is the approach most states are taking, although Delaware also requires that any proposals for new generation also take into account any negative costs to society like pollution, what economists call externalities.
- 34. Unfortunately, our so-called RPS won ’ t get us there. In the fall of 2011, we learned that Dominion is meeting the targets of the RPS mostly by buying certificates from old, out-of-state projects, mostly hydroelectric dams, rather than building any new projects in Virginia, and that they are using NO wind or solar. Yet buying these junk certificates qualified them to collect a bonus from ratepayers of $76 million over two years. Our RPS may make our leaders think we ’ re running with the big dogs, but we aren ’ t. And although we are kidding ourselves, we aren ’ t kidding manufacturers and developers, who need to see real incentives.
- 35. This is what we ’ve got instead. In the 2010 legislative session, the General Assembly passed a bill, SB 577, establishing the Virginia Offshore Wind Development Authority to coordinate and streamline the very complex process of gathering data, establishing a supply chain, upgrading port facilities for the specialized ships that will be needed, and working with local governments and other stakeholders. The environmental community participated in the drafting of that bill and supported its passage. In 2011 the GA passed a joint resolution saying they want to see 3000 MW of offshore wind by 2025. That ’ s a realistic goal, but then they didn ’ t back it up with a single piece of legislation that would make it happen. In 2012, nothing happened. A bill to reform the RPS to include Virginia-made wind and solar never got a hearing, and in fact the legislature weakened the RPS further. Apparently they reasoned that if the problem was utilities buying junk certificates from out of state, the solution was to give them options to buy junk certificates from in state. So right now we have offered offshore wind developers no reason to put in a wind farm. You cannot get financing for a project of this size unless you have an agreement with a customer to buy the electricity at a price that returns you a profit. Our best bet is for Dominion Virginia Power to be that customer, but they are currently reluctant to do so unless one of two things happens: either they can justify the cost in their filings with state regulators, or the state or federal government requires them to meet a significant mandatory renewable portfolio standard, an RPS. Dominion has said it could meet a serious RPS only by pursuing offshore wind energy.
- 36. These are some of the ideas we are promoting to make offshore wind a reality. We ’ ve talked about why we need a mandatory RPS. Another way to incentivize wind is to tell our utility regulator, the State Corporation Commission, to consider pollution and health care costs when they evaluate proposals for new electric generation. These costs, referred to as “ externalities, ” are real costs of burning coal and other fossil fuels, but they aren ’ t ones the utility has to pay. If you take them into account, though, renewables become a cheaper option. And finally, you the taxpayer are currently giving tax credits and even outright cash to the utilities and coal companies to thank them for blowing up our mountains. Removing those subsidies would be a small step towards a more level playing field for fuels.
- 37. We hope you ’ ll all join us in the continuing effort to educate the public and our legislators at both the federal and state level that offshore wind is good for our state, our region, and the country. Thank you.