Are offshore wind turbines in Washington’s future?

The first American offshore project was Block Island, 12 miles south of Rhode Island, which went online in 2016 with five turbines to generate 30 megawatts. In comparison, Washington’s largest proposed land turbine project – in the Horse Heaven Hills south of Kennewick – would build 100 to 222 turbines to generate between 236 megawatts and roughly 1,150 megawatts. Its exact size is still being debated at the state level.

The United States has 58 offshore projects on the drawing board, mostly off the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts. Meanwhile, the Eastern United States has extensive capabilities to manufacture offshore turbines.

California and Oregon have eight projects in the pipeline. Hawaii has two. Officially, Washington has none. It does have two unsolicited proposals that are currently just sitting.

Last October, Gov. Jay Inslee announced the beginning of a public/private partnership to explore creating a wind turbine industry in Washington, including the possibility of turbines offshore. “The jobs created in this supply chain could be enormous. … This can create a supply chain that can go in many different places,” Inslee said at that time.

Last spring, the state legislature allocated $625,000 to study developing an offshore wind turbine industry. Of that, $375,000 would go to Washington Maritime Blue, a nonprofit cluster organization formed to develop an ocean-based economy, to conduct outreach, workshops and studies on developing a turbine supply chain. The rest – $250,000 — would go to the state Commerce department to start mapping plans to develop that same supply chain. The two efforts are to identify gaps and needs to develop this industry, said Cassidy Fisher, joint innovation program director for Washington Maritime Blue.

But this state money is not guaranteed. The money comes from Washington’s cap-and-invest program, which faces a November referendum on whether to repeal it.

The cap-and-invest system aims to decrease carbon emissions and finance climate change mitigation measures across the state. Under the program, carbon-emitting corporations – like oil and gas companies and utilities – bid on state allowances for the pollution emitted by their facilities. The money raised in the auction is earmarked for projects and programs aimed at lowering the carbon footprint.

If the repeal vote is successful, the $625,000 in this appropriation disappears. It is not scheduled to go into effect until Jan. 1, 2025.

Fisher estimated that the studies could take a year to a year and a half to complete, depending on the scope of the research contract.

While the United States’ existing commercial-sized offshore wind farms produce 42 megawatts, projects on the drawing board total 52,687 megawatts for 2023 — up 15% from 2022 with the addition of proposed Gulf of Mexico projects. Thirteen states have plans to install more than 112,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2050.

Offshore wind turbines have been around since 1991. Chinese, British and German ventures account for at least 75% of the world’s offshore turbine power.

Offshore winds are usually faster and more consistent than land breezes. Offshore turbines have traditionally faced less public opposition than land windmills.

The downside is that offshore turbines are more expensive to install than land turbines — American offshore wind projects cost $4,000 per kilowatt to build in 2023, compared to $1,363 per kilowatt for land wind farms, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2023 Offshore Wind Market Report.

Land wind development typically takes two to three years from inception to commissioning, with development costs ranging from $1 million to $2 million per project. An offshore wind farm typically takes five to ten years to develop, requiring $10 million to $50 million in costs, said a 2019 World Bank Group report.

That same report said: “Over time, offshore wind evolved into a distinct, specialized technology. Offshore turbines are now specifically designed to reduce maintenance requirements given the relatively high cost of marine access. At the same time, offshore wind farms are subject to fewer limitations faced by onshore wind, including land use pressures, concerns about views, and transportation/infrastructure constraints. As such, they have evolved to become the largest pieces of rotating machinery on the planet, capable of generating much higher capacity factors than their onshore cousins.”

The Department of Energy also expects costs to increase. “Supply chain constraints, high inflation, and rising interest rates have resulted in significant project cost increases of 11%–30% during 2022,” the department said in a 2023 report.

There are two basic types of offshore turbines — those with their foundations placed on the ocean floor up to 160 feet deep, and those that float, attached to the ocean floor by cables that can reach to 3,280 feet deep. A state’s control over the ocean extends 12 nautical miles from the coast. The West Coast has much deeper waters than those off the Eastern United States and Europe, which would make floating turbines more likely.

Unintended effects

Building wind farms in the ocean could also have the side effect of increasing fish in their vicinities, though more studies are needed on how offshore turbines affect the marine environment, said Mark Severy, a research engineer specializing in renewable energy systems with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland.

Plankton, mussels, barnacles and fish tend to gather around the foundations of fixed turbines, which does not cause any significant harm and tends to attract fishermen, Severy said. He also noted that underwater cables carrying electricity from the turbines to the shore tend to have magnetic fields extending a few feet from them, which could attract fish, but not harm them.

Rhode Island’s Block Island turbine farm has become a popular fishing spot because fish like to hover around underwater structures, according to news reports.

Last January, Rep. Larry Springer, D-Kirkland, introduced a bill to have the University of Washington study what would happen to the coastal ecosystem if offshore wind turbines are installed. The proposed study would have looked at whether offshore turbines attract or repel fish and marine life. It would also study the effects of construction and operations on water cloudiness, noise, vibrations, thermal matters and disruptions to electromagnetic fields.

The proposed study also would have looked at how turbines affect upwelling, which occurs when winds blow parallel to a coastline. This pushes surface waters offshore and brings up colder water from the deep, encouraging the growth of plants such as phytoplankton, a key food that attracts more fish.

“The issue for me is that we simply get it right,” said Springer in a Jan. 19 hearing on his bill before the Washington House Agriculture & Natural Resources Committee.

“We need science so we can develop a no-harm solution, said Dale Beasley, representing the Coalition of Coastal Fisheries and the Columbia River Dungeness Crab Association, at the same hearing.

The bill stalled in committee.

While scientists have a decent understanding of offshore turbines’ effects on marine life, Severy said there’s more to learn.

“There are always more questions,” Severy said.