The US government proposes to lease wind energy businesses in a region roughly 17 miles off Morro Bay to provide more electricity than the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant's 2,200 megawatts.
The proposal specified commercial ships and the US Navy as active in the 376-square-mile area, which required negotiation with the Navy Secretary. It has also alerted fishermen in Santa Barbara and other harbors, the Santa Barbara Independent newspaper reported.
Increasingly powerful wind turbines, with a wingspan of two-and-a-half football fields, are reaching the height of the Statue of Liberty. Some of them are being tested in Denmark and the Netherlands and can power 18,000 European homes.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is conducting the first of several environmental reviews in the US (BOEM). No leases have been sold yet. Companies will utilize buoys to determine weather and wind conditions, along with bathymetric (underwater topography) investigations, as the big floating turbine building projects move forward with development and approval, including environmental studies.
When competing uses threatened to destroy Morro Bay's offshore wind project in 2020, Congressmember Salud Carbajal struck an arrangement with Navy Secretary Kenneth Braithwaite. This might impair aircraft systems and training for international deployments, the Navy discovered.
The danger to training missions was “acceptable” as long as there was a moratorium on new wind farms in military operating regions, according to Braithwaite. “Offshore wind shows enormous promise as a tool to confront climate change while simultaneously offering economic opportunity,” Carbajal said. On average, the wind will produce 2,924 megawatts, enough to power over a million homes.
Several wind platforms may be tested in California state waters two and a half miles off Vandenberg Air Force Base. There are around 50 shipwrecks in the vicinity, including the seven destroyers that ran aground near Point Honda in 1923, killing 23 sailors.
The State Lands Commission has approved two applications to anchor four platforms each, connected by cables, and an energy cable from onshore to substations on the base. Palm Springs-based Cierco Projects Corporation is developing CADEMO off Point Honda. They plan to test two 12-15 MW platform designs. Ideol USA, a French-owned business that has floated wind turbines off the French coast since 2018, proposes to build and decommission 10-megawatt floating barges off Point Arguello, the Santa Barbara Independent newspaper reported.
In addition to the federal leases, the Vandenberg projects are in around 300 feet of water, according to Chris Voss of the Commercial Fishermen of Santa Barbara. To the floating islands, Voss wonders how they are engineered. “As a group, we know the ocean can be extremely violent and deadly. Will a loose one collide with another? They're huge, mammoth.”
The constructions' stability and bottom anchoring on California's outer continental shelf do not affect the Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Ventura fishermen's collectives. They are closely monitoring all wind advancements for industry implications. For starters, they expect challenges with the wires that connect each floating turbine. Voss proposes a transit zone between them.
The Jalama windfarm has turbines 427-492 feet tall, taller than any other floating turbine currently in development.
In addition, Voss expressed concern about the environment. The fishermen fear the turbines may impede coastal upwelling. “This is how nutrient-rich water nourishes the food chain,” Voss added. “We have to go off carbon,” he remarked. We get it. We believe this should be done methodically and organized.” Voss feared that President Biden's plan to develop 30,000 megawatts of offshore electricity by 2030 would push a technology unsuitable for the deep waters of Morro Bay.
Their fishing areas for halibut, sable fish, spot prawn, salmon and other species are expected to be lost. That's what happened when offshore data cables from across the Pacific poured into San Luis Obispo County, closing off areas of the seafloor and clogging the port of Morro Bay with ships and barges, the Santa Barbara Independent newspaper reported.
Like when offshore oil leases were sold in the 1950s, big money is involved. “The wind energy giants just gave the authorities $4.2 billion for leases on the East Coast,” Voss predicted.
The federal lease plan comment period has been extended to May 16, and BOEM expects the first lease analyses in 2023. Visit boem.gov and type in “Morro Bay wind” for additional information.
No comments:
Post a Comment