Tag Archives: floating wind turbines
Ringside View: Offshore Wind is a Financial and Environmental Catastrophe
It’s about time Californians of all ideological persuasions wake up and stop what is possibly the most economically wasteful and environmentally destructive project in American history: the utility scale adoption of offshore wind energy. The California Legislature intends to despoil our coastline and coastal waters with floating wind turbines, 20+ miles offshore, tethered to the sea floor 4,000 feet beneath the waves. Along with tethering cables, high voltage wires will descend from each of these noisy, 1,000 foot tall leviathans, but we’re to assume none of this will disrupt the migrations of our treasured Cetaceans and other marine and avian life, not the electric fields emanating from hundreds (thousands?) of 20+ mile long live power lines laid onto the ocean floor, nor from the construction, the maintenance, or the new ports, ships, and submersibles. >>click to reafd<< 10:57
U.S. Rep. Jared Golden introduced a bill in Congress that would prevent offshore wind development in key fishing area
The bill would prevent the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management from potentially hurting the fishing and lobstering industries in Maine, said Golden, D-2nd District. The legislation also would launch an assessment of how federal agencies like the BOEM and the National Marine Fisheries Service study the effects of offshore wind development and engage with industry groups. Lobster Management Area 1 is the zone closest to the shores of Maine and stretches along the entire coast. That’s where Virginia Olsen, a commercial lobsterman and director of the Maine Lobstering Union, says a majority of Maine fishing and lobstering is concentrated. “I think this is the exclusion zone that the Maine Lobster Union and the area that the (Maine Lobstermen’s Association) would agree is most important economically to the fishery,” Golden said. >click to read< 19:46
Role of Unionized Firms at Center of Maine’s Offshore Wind Debate
On Thursday the Maine Legislature’s Energy, Utilities and Technology Committee held a public hearing on a proposal to pave the way for the development of offshore wind infrastructure in the Gulf of Maine, including the construction of a coastal manufacturing facility that would build the offshore floating wind turbines Lawmakers also considered Thursday Rep. Tiffany Strout’s (R-Harrington) LD 1884, a bill that would block offshore wind developments. In recent years, the prospect of filling the Gulf of Maine with hundreds of wind turbines has taken on an air of inevitability, with environmental groups, industry groups, and well-paid lobbyists pouring millions of dollars into political pressure campaigns and ad campaigns designed to build support for the project. Unions, construction companies, investment companies, and lobbyists are all lining up to secure their share of what could be one of the largest taxpayer-funded projects in the history of the state. >click to read< 09:42
Old lumber port preps for new life as California offshore wind hub
Eureka’s halcyon days as the “timber capital” of California are long gone, but the deepwater port city 270 miles north of San Francisco may see its fortunes turn as the hub of the state’s first foray in offshore wind energy. Eureka sits across two of the five swaths of Pacific Ocean along the California coast that the federal government auctioned off to offshore wind developers this past December for a total of $757 million. The three other leases are on the Central Coast across from Morro Bay. Humboldt Bay, the second-largest bay in California after the San Francisco Bay, is ideally suited to become the final assembly port for the massive turbines. >click to read< 15:43
Offshore wind won’t fish – There is no compatible mixing of wind turbines and fishing!
The endangered species of the Maine fishing family is already dancing around the newly announced National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) restrictions to protect the right whales from gear entanglement. Add several 10,000-ton floating wind turbines, and even more whale restrictions on the NOAA docket (98 percent gear reduction in 10 years), and you have a severely impacted Maine fishing industry.,, I fear NOAA is more a friend to the Green New Deal than to our fishermen, or even our whales. By Rep. Sherman H. Hutchins, >click to read< 14:21
