A few weeks back, I attended a workshop sponsored by the Monmouth Ocean Development Council on Regional Offshore Energy. One of the most interesting presentations was given by Doug Pfeister, the New Jersey Project Director for Bluewater Wind.
Bluewater Wind is one of three groups that had submitted proposals more than a year ago, on March 3, 2008, in response to a solicitation from the New Jersey Board of Utilities for a pilot wind farm project off the coast of New Jersey.
The BPU’s solicitation was in furtherance of a recommendation made by Governor Corzine’s 2006 Blue Ribbon Panel on Offshore Wind, which recommended a 350 megawatt pilot project to study offshore wind’s potential to help meet New Jersey’s growing energy demand. The offshore wind pilot project was also intended to help New Jersey’s electricity suppliers meet the BPU’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), which sets a policy benchmark for how much electricity must be generated each year from various renewable sources such as wind, solar or geothermal. New Jersey was one of the first states to establish an RPS, an important step in achieving the objective set by Governor Corzine’s Energy Master Plan (the "EMP"), which sets a goal of generating 20 percent of the state’s electricity from renewable resources by 2020.
Here is a quick summary of the three proposals the BPU received in March of 2008:
Blue Water Wind NJ Energy, which is based in Hoboken, submitted a proposal to build a nearly 350-megawatt farm southeast of Atlantic City. The project would include 116 turbines, spread out over a roughly 40-square mile area. The nearest turbine would be located more than 15 miles offshore.
A second proposal was submitted by submitted by Garden State Offshore Energy ("GSOE"), a joint venture between PSEG Renewable Energy Generation, a subsidiary of PSEG Global, and its partner Winergy Power Holdings (now "Deepwater Wind"). GSOE proposed building 96 wind turbines, amounting to 350-megawatts of capacity, about 16 miles off the Jersey Coast of Cape May and Atlantic counties.
The third proposal was submitted by Fishermen’s Energy of New Jersey, a consortium of South Jersey maritime businesses. The proposal was for 66 turbines to be developed off Atlantic City, but the group did not specify how far off the coast the turbines would be located.
Two other groups, Environmental Technologies, LLC and Occidental Development & Equities, LLC, which had originally responded to the BPU’s initial solicitation of interest in 2007, ultimately decided not to submit proposals.
On October 3, 2008, the BPU selected GSOE to build the pilot project, and receive up to $19 million from its Clean Energy program funds for the project, which would generate enough power for 125,000 homes. The approval requires GSOE to conduct further studies about the impact the project will have on the environment, and cleared the way for the GSOE to begin applying for permits. The week before, Rhode Island had awarded a bid to construct a $1.5 billion offshore wind farm to GSOE partner, Deepwater Wind, which acquired all of Winergy’s offshore wind projects, including its interest in GSOE’s New Jersey project, in which Winergy is a partner with PSEG Renewable Energy Generation. The Rhode Island project will provide 1.3 million megawatt hours per year of renewable energy, accounting for 15 percent of all electricity used in that state.
Although Bluewater Wind lost out on the New Jersey and Rhode Island pilot projects, they are still working on a similarly sized offshore wind farm project off the coast of Delaware, for which it has already lined up long term power purchase agreements from Delmarva Power and a municipal utilities authority to help finance the cost of the project. The BPU’s choice of GSOE appears to have been prescient in light of recent news that Bluewater Wind’s parent company, the Australian conglomerate Babcock and Brown, is reportedly headed for bankruptcy. It is clear whether or what extent the parent company’s financial problems will impact Bluewater’s plans to develop a wind farm off Delaware’s coast.
But none of the above undermines the interesting perspective that Doug Pfeister of Bluewater provided to those of us who attended his MODC-sponsored presentation on offshore wind back on February 20, 2009.
First, he explained that all of the serious offshore wind farm proposals these days are focused on siting the projects between 15 and 20 miles offshore. This is due not only to the fact that the wind is consistently strongest in that area, but also because at this distance even 300-400 foot tall wind turbines are barely visible on a clear day, marginalizing opposition from those who are concerned about the aesthetic impact of wind farms off our coasts.
The GSOE website provides some photos that represent the appearance of the wind turbines at various distances, including one from a location on the beach in Ocean City that is closest to the proposed farm. The Bluewater Wind website goes even further and offers an interactive map graphic that enables Delaware residents to click on various locations to see a video representation from various onshore vantage points how the proposed wind farm will appear on the horizon.
Pfeister explained that there are several variables that go into deciding where to site offshore wind farms. The ideal locations for offshore wind farms are: (1) where offshore wind is strongest and most consistent; (2) where the ocean bottom contour and slope provide for a sandy bottom and depth of approximately 100-150 feet at a distance between 15-20 miles offshore; (3) where prevailing electricity rates enable wind-generated electricity to be competitive with prevailing on-land generation sources; and (4) where the wind farms won’t interfere with shipping lanes or environmentally sensitive conditions like migratory bird fly ways, fishing grounds, wrecks, etc.).
As it turns out, number 1 is the easiest condition to meet, and if that were the only consideration, much of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the US would be potential candidates for wind farms. But the second variable — the bottom contour and slope requirements — effectively eliminates most of the West Coast. The ocean floor beneath the Pacific Ocean drops off precipitously very close to the coast, making it impractical using current technology to put wind turbines far enough offshore to avoid aesthetic concerns.
The East Coast is a different story, however. Most of the Atlantic seaboard, from South Carolina up to Rhode Island, has the kind of gentle slope that means depths are between 100-150 feet at the 15-20 mile offshore mark. This is the "sweet spot" in terms of locating wind turbines. (The GSOE website has a very cool video animation that shows how the wind turbines will be transported offshore and mounted on the seabed.)
But it’s the third variable I found most interesting. Although much of the eastern seaboard meets the first two criteria, only in the stretch from roughly Maryland north to Rhode Island are the prevailing electricity rates sufficiently high enough to make wind energy competitive. That’s because in the Carolinas and Virginias most of the electricity is generated using coal, and therefore costs much less on average than electricity in the northeast. I asked if that dynamic would change if the price of coal were to be increased, say through a carbon tax or in through a cap-and-trade regime, to include its indirect costs (e.g., damage to the environment, etc.). Pfeister said that would be a "game changer," and would immediately trigger competition for offshore wind farm sites off the coasts of those states.
The last variable, whether there are local conditions that would make a wind farm impractical, is the reason wind farms are unlikely to be proposed off the coast of Monmouth County. There are two shipping lanes off the coast of Belmar coast. One that runs parallel to and about 6 or 7 miles off our coast at the horizon, and one that runs diagonally from the Ambrose Channel approach to New Yaight in a southwesterly direction, moving away from the Jersey Shore as it proceeds south. Pfeister explained that because of these shipping lanes it is impractical to locate a deepwater wind farm off the coast of New Jersey that would be in the 15-20 mile-range offshore.
Those who are concerned about the aesthetics of offshore wind farms may find that to be welcome news. Personally, though, I was disappointed. Due to the threat of sea level rise, I think coastal residents stand the most to gain from efforts to reduce greenhouse gases. We should therefore be in the forefront of efforts to promote renewable energy sources, even in our beloved ocean. Also, I confess that I don’t subscribe to the idea that they are unattractive or would be a blight on the horizon. No matter how many times I see the Atlantic City wind turbines, I still find them mesmerizing.
I think the image and sounds of hundreds of offshore wind mills slowly turning far beyond the site of land will turn out to be simply magnificent, and will spawn a tourism industry offering sight-seeing tours of these wind farms. A wind farm only 15 miles off the coast of Monmouth County would no doubt have been a boon to Belmar’s charter and party boat fleet.
The GSOE project will take an estimated 3 years to complete, and is scheduled to go online in 2013. When finished, it will generate more than 1.2 billion kilowatt-hours each year, which is enough to power 110,000 homes. The effect of this new source of clean energy will be to eliminate the following pollutants over the project’s anticipated 25-year lifetime: 15,417 tons of NOX; 29,893 tons of SO2; 11 million tons of CO2; 349 lbs of mercury
This is the equivalent of: Taking 1.5 million cars off the road; Planting 2 million acres of trees; Not importing 16 million barrels of
foreign oil annually
