by James A. Bacon
As the cost of offshore wind energy in Europe continues to decline, Abigail Ross Hopper, director of the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, believes that offshore wind will come to the United States eventually.
Responding to a question by Dave Mayfield with the Virginian-Pilot what prospect she sees for ocean wind energy by 2050, she said:
I think there will be turbines running up and down the coast, the Eat Coast and the West Coast, and I don’t think it will be a big deal. Just like I’m looking out the window right now and there’s power lines along the side of the road that I ordinarily don’t see because I’m used to them.
Recently, the Dutch government auctioned rights for two large wind farms in the North Sea. The winning bid came in at the equivalent of about $95 per megawatt hour generated — $40 per megawatt hour below the previous low set by a Danish project just last year. That’s still higher than the cost of other energy sources, but the trend-line is moving in a positive direction.
The U.S. has a lot of catching up to do, Mayfield notes. Compared to the 500 wind turbines off the coast of tiny Denmark, there are five turbines off the East Coast of the U.S. — off Block Island, R.I.
Bacon’s bottom line: Europe is driving down costs now because national governments used massive subsidies to build a large and competitive wind industry, with all the supporting infrastructure and expertise required to install wind turbines in the open sea. That scale and expertise does not exist in the U.S. yet, and given the fact that offshore energy policy is driven mainly by uncoordinated state initiatives, there is no sign that it will develop any time soon.
If all East Coast states could coordinate their policies, they conceivably could generate a critical mass sufficient to entice European major players to set up shop in the U.S. For whatever reason, no one has undertaken the task of getting all the states working together.
Here in Virginia, Dominion Virginia Power investigated the cost of building two experimental turbines off the Virginia Beach Coast. That project would have tested, among other things, innovations designed to help the turbines stand up to hurricane-force winds, thus laying the groundwork for the large-scale deployment of offshore wind power. But the cost of the two experimental turbines was so high that the power company did not think it could get State Corporation Commission approval to build. Progress has stalled since the feds pulled a $40 million research grant.
Virginia has the most to gain of any U.S. state from building a vital offshore wind energy industry because Hampton Roads, centrally located along the East Coast and home to a large ship repair industry, is the most logical location for companies to operate. But the McAuliffe administration has done little — at least nothing visible — to build the interstate cooperation needed to achieve European-style economies of scale. Perhaps that’s because the McAuliffe team has chosen to focus on solar energy, for which the economics are considerably more favorable and the development lead times are much shorter. Given the string of recent solar project announcement, the administration arguably made the right decision.
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