Solar and wind power hit a new record this year, generating more U.S. power than coal for the first five months of the year, according to preliminary data from the Energy Information Administration.
It’s the first time on record that wind and solar have out-produced coal for five months, according to industry publication, E&E News, which first calculated the figures.
Official EIA data, which is released with a lag, shows wind and solar energy out-producing coal for January, February and March, while real-time figures “indicate that same trend continued in April and May,” EIA spokesperson Chris Higginbotham said in an email.
When hydroelectric power is counted among the renewable mix, that record stretches to over six months, with renewables beating out coal starting last October, according to the EIA.
Cheaper than coal
“From a production-cost perspective, renewables are the cheapest thing to use — wind and solar. So, we’re going to see more and more of these records,” said Ram Rajagopal, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University.
The figure marks a new high for clean power and a steep decline in coal-fired power generation, which as recently as 10 years ago made up 40% of the nation’s electricity. And while the monthly figures are preliminary and could be revised in the coming months, according to the EIA, more renewables in the pipeline mean that coal power is set to keep falling.
“We expect that the United States will generate less electricity from coal this year than in any year this century,” EIA Administrator Joe DeCarolis said in May. “As electricity providers generate more electricity from renewable sources, we see electricity generated from coal decline over the next year and a half.”
For years, coal power has been declining, pushed out by increasingly cheap natural gas — also a fossil fuel — driven by a hydraulic fracturing boom. But coal saw a brief resurgence last year when natural gas prices shot up in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, leading some utilities in the U.S. and Europe to sign on coal-powered generators.
Globally, coal use reached a new high in 2022, however, its bounceback has been short-lived in the U.S., as coal plants in the country retire at a steady pace. Six coal-fueled generating units have been closed so far this year.
The retirement of coal is good news for the climate. As the most-polluting energy source, coal is responsible for more than half of carbon emissions from electricity-production, despite it making up less than 20% of the grid. However, recent research on natural gas casts doubt on its comparative “clean” status.
The Inflation Reduction Act, which dedicated billions of dollars to the expansion of clean energy, promises to boost the renewable buildout even further. But constructing more clean energy plants is only half the battle, Rajagopal said. The other half is connecting those new renewable sources to the nation’s electrical grid, a process that is taking longer and longer.
On average, a project — such as a wind, solar or hybrid plant — that went online in 2022, waited five years from the time it requested a connection to the grid until it began commercial operations, according to a recent report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. That’s up from less than two years for projects built between 2000 and 2007, the April report found.
More than 10,000 projects representing 1,350 gigawatts of generating capacity are awaiting hookup to the grid, the vast majority of those zero-carbon, the LBNL said.
“There are many hundreds of gigawatts of projects in interconnection queues of the United States,” Rajagopal said.
“Even if we wanted to accelerate [renewables] more, there is this pipe, and we have to make sure everything fits into the pipe, and making sure it all gets approved takes time.”
BERLIN — The world is set to add a record amount of renewable electricity capacity this year as governments and consumers seek to offset high energy prices and take advantage of a boom in solar power, according to a new report Thursday.
The International Energy Agency said high fossil fuel prices — resulting from Russia’s attack on Ukraine — and concerns about energy security had boosted the rollout of solar and wind power installations, which are expected to reach 440 gigawatts in 2023.
That’s about a third more than the world added the previous year, taking the global installed capacity to 4,500 GW, roughly the combined total power output of the United States and China, the Paris-based agency said.
“The global energy crisis has shown renewables are critical for making energy supplies not just cleaner but also more secure and affordable,” said Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director.
“Governments are responding with efforts to deploy them faster,” he said. Recent incentives to install renewables introduced by the Biden administration are already driving a significant uptake in the United States.
About two-thirds of this year’s increase in renewable power capacity will come from photovoltaic, with both large-scale solar farms and consumer rooftop installations seeing significant growth.
IEA said manufacturing capacity for PV components was also surging, especially in China.
Construction of new wind farms is predicted to rebound after a period of low growth. However, in contrast to solar manufacturing, the supply chains for wind turbines aren’t growing fast enough to meet demand, the agency said.
Birol also cautioned that power grids must be upgraded and expanded to cope with the intermittent nature of solar and wind power, which require a fundamentally different approach by network operators compared with existing coal, gas or nuclear plants.
The report forecast that several European countries, including Spain, Germany and Ireland, will see wind and solar’s combined share of their overall annual electricity generation top 40% by 2024.
Shifting the global economy away from fossil fuels is one of the most important steps for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.
Experts say that to meet the Paris climate accord’s goal of limiting temperature rise since pre-industrial times to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit), emissions need to be halved by 2030 and cut to “net zero” by mid-century.
The International Renewable Energy Agency, a separate body, has called for a major increase in wind and solar investments. Nations are expected to discuss setting an international target for the rollout of renewable energy at this year’s U.N. climate summit in Dubai.
Solarcycle CTO Pablo Dias and COO Rob Vinje show a solar panel laminate after it’s been cleanly separated from the glass to investors and partners. The laminate is where most of the value is contained in a panel, like silver, silicon, and copper.
Solarcycle
The growing importance of wind and solar energy to the U.S. power grid, and the rise of electric vehicles, are all key to the nation’s growing need to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, lower carbon emissions and mitigate climate change.
But at the same time, these burgeoning renewable energy industries will soon generate tons of waste as millions of photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, wind turbines and lithium-ion EV batteries reach the end of their respective lifecycles.
As the saying goes, though, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Anticipating the pileup of exhausted clean-energy components — and wanting to proactively avoid past sins committed by not responsibly cleaning up after decommissioned coal mines, oil wells and power plants — a number of innovative startups are striving to create a sustainable, and lucrative, circular economy to recover, recycle and reuse the core components of climate tech innovation.
Wind and solar energy combined to generate 13.6% of utility-scale electricity last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), and those numbers will undoubtedly rise as renewable energy continues to scale up. Some leading utilities across the nation are far ahead of that pace already.
Meanwhile, sales of all-electric vehicles rose to 5.8% of the total 13.8 million vehicles Americans purchased in 2022, up from 3.2% in 2021. And with the Environmental Protection Agency’s newly proposed tailpipe emissions limits and power plant rules, EV sales could capture a 67% market share by 2032 and more utilities be forced to accelerate their power generation transition.
Solarcycle is a prime example of the companies looking to solve this climate tech waste problem of the future. Launched last year in Oakland, California, it has since constructed a recycling facility in Odessa, Texas, where it extracts 95% of the materials from end-of-life solar panels and reintroduces them into the supply chain. It sells recovered silver and copper on commodity markets and glass, silicon and aluminum to panel manufacturers and solar farm operators.
“Solar is becoming the dominant form of power generation,” Solarcycle CEO Suvi Sharma said, citing an EIA report stating that 54% of new utility-scale electric-generating capacity in the U.S. this year will come from solar. “But with that comes a new set of challenges and opportunities. We have done a phenomenal job making solar efficient and cost-effective, but really have not done anything yet on making it circular and dealing with the end-of-life [panels].”
The average lifespan of a solar panel is about 25 to 30 years, and there are more than 500 million already installed across the country, Sharma said, ranging from a dozen on a residential home’s rooftop to thousands in a commercial solar farm. With solar capacity now rising an average of 21% annually, tens of millions more panels will be going up — and coming down. Between 2030 and 2060, roughly 9.8 million metric tons of solar panel waste are expected to accumulate, according to a 2019 study published in Renewable Energy.
Currently, about 90% of end-of-life or defective solar panels end up in landfills, largely because it costs far less to dump them than to recycle them. “We see that gap closing over the next five to 10 years significantly,” Sharma said, “through a combination of recycling becoming more cost-effective and landfilling costs only increasing.”
Indeed, the market for recycled solar panel materials is expected to grow exponentially over the next several years. A report by research firm Rystad Energy stated they’ll be worth more than $2.7 billion in 2030, up from only $170 million last year, and accelerate to around $80 billion by 2050. The Department of Energy’s National Renewable Laboratory (NREL) found that with modest government support, recycled materials can meet 30%-50% of solar manufacturing needs in the U.S. by 2040.
Both the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provide tax credits and funding for domestic manufacturing of solar panels and components, as well as research into new solar technologies. Those provisions are intended to cut into China’s dominant position in the global solar panel supply chain, which exceeds 80% today, according to a recent report from the International Energy Agency.
One recipient of this federal funding is First Solar, the largest solar panel manufacturer in the U.S. Founded in 1999 in Tempe, Arizona, the company has production facilities in Ohio and another under construction in Alabama. It has been awarded $7.3 million in research funds to develop a new residential rooftop panel that is more efficient than current silicon or thin-film modules.
First Solar has maintained an in-house recycling program since 2005, according to an email from chief product officer Pat Buehler. “We recognized that integrating circularity into our operations was necessary to scale the business in a sustainable way,” he wrote. But rather than extracting metals and glass from retired panels and manufacturing scrap, “our recycling process provides closed-loop semiconductor recovery for use in new modules,” he added.
Retired wind turbines present another recycling challenge, as well as business opportunities. The U.S. wind energy industry started erecting turbines in the early 1980s and has been steadily growing since. The American Clean Power Association estimates that today there are nearly 72,000 utility-scale turbines installed nationwide — all but seven of them land-based — generating 10.2% of the country’s electricity.
Although the industry stalled over the past two years, due to supply chain snags, inflation and rising costs, turbine manufacturers and wind farm developers are optimistic that the tide has turned, especially given the subsidies and tax credits for green energy projects in the IRA and the Biden administration’s pledge to jumpstart the nascent offshore wind sector.
The lifespan of a wind turbine is around 20 years, and most decommissioned ones have joined retired solar panels in landfills. However, practically everything comprising a turbine is recyclable, from the steel tower to the composite blades, typically 170 feet long, though the latest models exceed 350 feet.
Between 3,000 and 9,000 blades will be retired each year for the next five years in the U.S., and then the number will increase to between 10,000 and 20,000 until 2040, according to a 2021 study by NREL. By 2050, 235,000 blades will be decommissioned, translating to a cumulative mass of 2.2 million metric tons — or more than 60,627 fully loaded tractor trailers.
Players in the circular economy are determined not to let all that waste go to waste.
Knoxville-based Carbon Rivers, founded in 2019, has developed technology to shred not only turbine blades but also discarded composite materials from the automotive, construction and marine industries and convert them through a pyrolysis process into reclaimed glass fiber. “It can be used for next-generation manufacturing of turbine blades, marine vessels, composite concrete and auto parts,” said chief strategy officer David Morgan, adding that the process also harvests renewable oil and synthetic gas for reuse.
While processing the shredded materials is fairly straightforward, transporting massive turbine blades and other composites over long distances by rail and truck is more complicated. “Logistics is far and away the most expensive part of this entire process,” Morgan said.
In addition to existing facilities in Tennessee and Texas, Carbon Rivers plans to build sites in Florida, Pennsylvania and Idaho over the next three years, strategically located near wind farms and other feedstock sources. “We want to build another five facilities in the U.K. and Europe, then get to the South American and Asian markets next,” he said.
In the spirit of corporate sustainability — specifically not wanting their blades piling up in landfills — wind turbine manufacturers themselves are contracting with recycling partners. In December 2020, General Electric’s Renewable Energy unit signed a multi-year agreement with Boston-based Veolia North America to recycle decommissioned blades from land-based GE turbines in the U.S.
Veolia North America opened up a recycling plant in Missouri in 2020, where it has processed about 2,600 blades to date, according to Julie Angulo, senior vice president, technical and performance. “We are seeing the first wave of blades that are 10 to 12 years old, but we know that number is going to go up year-on-year,” she said.
Using a process known as kiln co-processing, Veolia reconstitutes shredded blades and other composite materials into a fuel it then sells to cement manufacturers as a replacement for coal, sand and clay. The process reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 27% and consumption of water by 13% in cement production.
“Cement manufacturers want to walk away from coal for carbon emissions reasons,” Angulo said. “This is a good substitute, so they’re good partners for us.”
GE’s wind turbine competitors are devising ways to make the next generation of blades inherently more recyclable. Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy has begun producing fully recyclable blades for both its land-based and offshore wind turbines and has said it plans to make all of its turbines fully recyclable by 2040. Vestas Wind Systems has committed to producing zero-waste wind turbines by 2040, though it has not yet introduced such a version. In February, Vestas introduced a new solution that renders epoxy-based turbine blades to be broken down and recycled.
Lithium-ion batteries have been in use since the early 1990s, at first powering laptops, cell phones and other consumer electronics, and for the past couple of decades EVs and energy storage systems. Recycling of their valuable innards — lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper — is focused on EVs, especially as automakers ramp up production, including building battery gigafactories. But today’s EV batteries have a lifespan of 10-20 years, or 100,000-200,000 miles, so for the time being, recyclers are primarily processing battery manufacturers’ scrap.
Toronto-based Li-Cycle, launched in 2016, has developed a two-step technology that breaks down batteries and scrap to inert materials and then shreds them, using a hydrometallurgy process, to produce minerals that are sold back into the general manufacturing supply chain. To avoid high transportation costs for shipping feedstock from various sites, Li-Cycle has geographically interspersed four facilities — in Alabama, Arizona, New York and Ontario — where it’s deconstructed. It is building a massive facility in Rochester, New York, where the materials will be processed.
“We’re on track to start commissioning the Rochester [facility] at the end of this year,” said Li-Cycle’s co-founder and CEO Ajay Kochhlar. Construction has been funded by a $375 loan from the Department of Energy (DOE), he said, adding that since the company went public, it’s also raised about $1 billion in private deals.
A different approach to battery recycling is underway at Redwood Materials, founded outside of Reno, Nevada, in 2017 by JB Straubel, the former chief technology officer and co-founder of Tesla. Redwood also uses hydrometallurgy to break down batteries and scrap, but produces anode copper foil and cathode-active materials for making new EV batteries. Because the feedstock is not yet plentiful enough, the nickel and lithium in its cathode products will only be about 30% from recycled sources, with the remainder coming from newly mined metals.
“We’re aiming to produce 100 GWh/year of cathode-active materials and anode foil for one million EVs by 2025,” Redwood said in an email statement. “By 2030, our goal is to scale to 500 GWh/year of materials, which would enable enough batteries to power five million EVs.”
Besides its Nevada facility, Redwood has broken ground on a second one in Charleston, South Carolina. The privately held company said it has raised more than $1 billion, and in February it received a conditional commitment from the DOE for a $2-billion loan from the DOE as part of the IRA. Last year Redwood struck a multi-billion dollar deal with Tesla’s battery supplier Panasonic, and it’s also inked partnerships with Volkswagen Group of America, Toyota, Ford and Volvo.
Ascend Elements, headquartered in Westborough, Massachusetts, utilizes hydrometallurgy technology to extract cathode-active material mostly from battery manufacturing scrap, but also spent lithium-ion batteries. Its processing facility is strategically located in Covington, Georgia, a state that has attracted EV battery makers, including SK Group in nearby Commerce, as well as EV maker Rivian, near Rutledge, and Hyundai, which is building an EV factory outside of Savannah.
Last October, Ascend began construction on a second recycling facility, in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, using federal dollars earmarked for green energy projects. “We have received two grant awards from the [DOE] under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that totaled around $480 million,” said CEO Mike O’Kronley. Such federal investments, he said, “incentivizes infrastructure that needs to be built in the U.S., because around 96% of all cathode materials are made in East Asia, in particular China.”
As the nation continues to build out a multi-billion-dollar renewable energy supply chain around solar, wind and EVs, simultaneously establishing a circular economy to recover, recycle and reuse end-of-life components from those industries is essential in the overarching goal of battling climate change.
“It’s important to make sure we keep in mind the context of these emerging technologies and understand their full lifecycle,” said Garvin Heath, a senior energy sustainability analyst at NREL. “The circular economy provides a lot of opportunities to these industries to be as sustainable and environmentally friendly as possible at a relatively early phase of their growth.”
There’s a “renewable power revolution” occurring, and in the U.K., it’s working. For the time ever, wind energy provided more power to the country than gas.
The milestone energy sourcing occurred in the first three months of 2023, a new report published on Wednesday said. According to the report, published by Drax Electric Insights and conducted by researchers at Imperial College London, 32.4% of Britain’s electricity came from wind power during that time. Turbines generated 24 terrawatt-hour (Twh) of electricity, an amount that could charge more than 300 million Tesla Model Ys, researchers said, and an amount that was 3% higher than the output generated at the same time last year.
Gas, on the other hand, generated 31.7% of the nation’s energy and was down 5% from the same time last year.
“It is the first-time wind has provided the largest share of power in any quarter in the history of the country’s electricity grid,” a press release for the report says.
And this was just one part of renewable energy’s continued takeover of fossil fuels for the No. 1 spot in the U.K.’s power sourcing, which happened for the first time in 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That year, the country generated 46% of its power from renewable electricity, which includes solar, biomass and hydro, and 38% from fossil fuels. This year, they accounted for 42% and 33%, respectively.
Iain Staffell, a scientist and researcher at Imperial College who led the report, said this transformation is due to the “renewable power revolution.”
“In the space of a decade the UK has almost completely cut out coal, after relying on the most polluting fossil fuel for over a century to power our country,” he said. “There are still many hurdles to reaching a completely fossil fuel-free grid, but wind out supplying gas for the first time is a genuine milestone event, and shows what can be achieved when governments create a good environment for investors in clean technology.”
Coal production has also fallen substantially, decreasing more than 90% from 2010 to 2020, the EIA said. And according to the Drax report, it’s the smallest source of electricity overall, with just a single coal power plant left, and many previous fossil fuel-burning plants now focused on renewables.
This chart, published by Drax Electric Insights, shows that wind has overtaken gas for the No. 1 spot of energy sourcing in the U.K. for the first time in 2023. Coal, another fossil fuel, is now the smallest source of power.
Drax Electric Insights
The latest report is just part of a global push for renewable energy, as experts warn that the planet may exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial times within the next few years. This threshold, climate scientists and the United Nations have repeatedly warned, would greaten the risk of extreme weather, sea level rise, temperatures, droughts and other weather and climate events.
The burning of fossil fuels, such as gas and coal, greatly contributes to global warming, as that process releases carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat within the planet. Renewable energy, on the other hand, does not.
Last month, environmental non-profit think tank Ember published a report that found wind and solar power increased by 19% globally in 2022, a surge that, if continued, could “push the world into a new era of falling fossil generation” as soon as this year. Comparatively, coal generation increased by just 1.1% that year, while gas decreased by 0.2%.
That data was compiled based on electricity data from 78 countries that generate 93% of the world’s electricity demand, the report said.
“Clean power growth is likely to exceed electricity demand growth in 2023,” the report said. “This would be the first year for this to happen outside of a recession…A new era of falling power sector emissions is close.”
Finding ways to recycle windmill blades and used solar panels is taking on greater importance as the use of renewable energy sources rises. Ben Tracy has more.
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The blades on massive wind turbines can be as long as a football field and as strong as a linebacker.
“They are designed not to break,” Julie Angulo told CBS News. “So, when your job is to break them, obviously it’s tough.”
Angulo’s company, Veolia, stores windmill blades at a quarry in the Missouri city of Louisiana, before it cuts used blades down to size and shreds them.
Cement makers use the shredded windmill blades as fuel instead of burning coal, cutting planet warming carbon emissions at the cement plant by nearly 30%.
What happens to windmill blades that aren’t recycled?
“What would, or what does happen, unfortunately, a lot of those end up in landfill,” Angulo said.
Most used windmill blades are buried in the ground because it’s cheaper, a black eye for green energy. By 2050, the world’s wind industry is expected to produce more than 47 million tons of blade waste each year, according to a University of Cambridge study.
Finding ways to recycle windmill blades and used solar panels is energizing the industry. One solar panel recycling plant in Yuma, Arizona, can process 7,500 panels a day. Solar is the fastest-growing source of energy in the U.S. Panels can last for 25 to 30 years, but more than 90% of used panels end up in landfills.
“There was no planning to handle the waste,” said Adam Saghei with We Recycle Solar. “It was just going to dumpsters, and you’re just creating a bigger problem that doesn’t need to be there.”
But with a tsunami of renewable waste coming, recyclers are ramping up to ride the wave.
In less than two months, seven dead whales have washed up on the shores of New Jersey and New York. What’s behind the mortalities has not been clearly established, but theories abound. Some have pointed blame at offshore wind development in the region and claimed construction of the sites causes harm to marine animals. But federal officials are pushing back, saying that’s not what the evidence shows.
Here’s what we know about the recent whale deaths and what researchers say could be the cause.
What happened to the whales?
Several dead whales have washed up on New Jersey and New York beaches since the beginning of December. Two were found in New York, with a 31-foot-long humpback whale washing up in Amagansett, on Long Island, on Dec. 6, and a 30-foot-long sperm whale found on Rockaway Beach on Dec. 12. The others have been found in New Jersey, including a 12-foot infant sperm whale in Keansburg on Dec. 5, a 30-foot humpback on Strathmere beach on Dec. 10, a humpback whale in Atlantic City on Dec. 23, and another 30-foot humpback whale in Atlantic City on Jan. 7.
The most recent was on Jan. 12, when a 32-foot-long humpback whale washed up in Brigantine, New Jersey.
A dead female humpback whale more than 32 feet long washed up on the shore of Brigantine, New Jersey, in January 2023.
Marine Mammal Stranding Center/Facebook
The causes of death for these whales have not officially been confirmed, as it can take several months to obtain results of test sampling. But some of the cases did reveal information about what may have contributed.
The most recent whale, for example, may have been killed from a vessel strike after responders observed evidence of blunt trauma to the whale’s head and thoracic area, according to the Marine Mammal Stranding Center. Likewise, the whale found on Dec. 7 was also found with “marks from a suspected ship strike” near its blowhole and on the whale’s right side. In that case, responders also found a large hematoma — a pool of blood — under one of the suspected strike marks, and also found scars from a possible entanglement.
Why are some blaming wind energy?
Even though pathology results have not yet been released, some local groups have accused offshore wind energy development in the region of being responsible for the deaths.
The increase in offshore wind energy development comes amid the White House’s goal to ramp up offshore energy capacity to 30 gigawatts by 2030 — an amount the administration says could provide power to more than 10 million Americans’ homes for a year.
On Jan. 9, a local group called Clean Ocean Action issued a press release demanding “an immediate and fully transparent investigation” into the whale deaths, a “hard stop” on existing offshore wind energy development activities, and a pause to any “new, planned, or pending” development permitting activities.
“These tragic multiple deaths of mostly young, endangered whales are of no apparent cause, however, the only new activity in the ocean is the unprecedented concurrent industrial activity by over 11 companies in the region’s ocean, which allows the harassment and harm of tens of thousands of marine mammals,” Cindy Zipf, executive director of the organization, said in the release.
Clean Ocean Action accuses the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of giving “the green light” for offshore wind companies to “harm, harass, injure and kill” marine mammals in their development process through Incidental Take Authorizations. The ITAs issued by NOAA may allow the unintentional harassment, injury or killing of marine mammals in connection to authorized activities, “including construction projects, scientific research projects, oil and gas development, and military exercises.”
But during a call with reporters on Wednesday, NOAA officials reiterated that the agency “has not authorized — or proposed to authorize — mortality or serious injury of whales for any wind-related action.” It also said “no whale mortality has been attributed to offshore wind activity.”
Concerned about the recent whale strandings along the East Coast? So are we. Our experts are following the science and sharing the facts: https://t.co/aF5TMJueY8
According to NOAA, there are 12 active authorizations for “Level B” harassment from offshore wind sites in the Atlantic Ocean from New England to the Carolinas, meaning that companies will likely disturb animals, but do not have permission to injure or kill. There are also two active authorizations that allow non-serious injury, specifically auditory injury, from “exposure to noise from pile driving.”
Benjamin Laws, NOAA Fisheries deputy chief for the permits and conservation division, told reporters that “no injury, and certainly no mortality,” has been authorized.
Laws said that most of the offshore activity right now is surveys for more developments. During a vessel-based survey, a piece of equipment that emits sound is paired with a receiver and towed through the water in a zig-zag fashion to track how sound waves bounce off the sea floor.
Laws said that the agency did not have “evidence that would support the connection between the survey work and these recent stranding events or any stranding events in the last several years.”
Erica Staaterman, a bioacoustician with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said during the call that the equipment used in these surveys is not as intrusive to marine animals compared to the equipment used in oil and gas construction. Whereas offshore oil and gas development uses seismic air guns, the equipment being used for offshore wind development surveys emits a smaller amount of acoustic energy in a smaller radius and are used for shorter periods of time, she explained.
The agency added that when surveys are done, vessels are required to slow their speed and must be joined by protected species observers at all times, with at least one observer during the day and at least two during the night with night vision devices.
NOAA has acknowledged that any activity that puts noise in the ocean could potentially impact marine mammals, namely with their navigation, habitats and vessel traffic. However, there is no evidence that’s what happened in the most recent cases of whale strandings, the agency said.
If development isn’t responsible for recent whale deaths, what is?
One of the most important aspects of the string of whale deaths to note is that humpback whales, which have made up a majority of the recent events, have been undergoing an unusual mortality event since 2016. Since then, there have been roughly 178 deaths, most of which occurred in Massachusetts and New York. Necropsies have been done on at least half of those whales, of which about 40% had evidence of either a ship strike or entanglement. More research on the cause for the event as a whole is needed.
Both humpback and sperm whales, the two species seen washing up on shores, are listed as endangered, according to NOAA. Human interaction remains the species’ No. 1 threat, namely from vessel strikes, entanglements, noise pollution and marine debris.
Sarah Wilkin, coordinator of the Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program, said Wednesday that humpback whale strandings in particular tend to happen in the mid-Atlantic during winter. Researchers are still working on determining if the recent strandings is an elevated number compared to previous years, she said.
Climate change is also anticipated to have a major impact on the whales, as changes in the ocean can impact their habitat and food availability. Sperm whales are expected to be more resilient to these changes, as they have a more widespread presence worldwide.
However, these are reasons for overall deaths and are not specific to the most recent string of events. The reasons for each of the most recent deaths are still being determined.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, renewable sources of energy like hydropower, wind and solar will account for 24% of the nation’s energy supply in 2023, more than double what it was a decade ago.
The number is being driven by an increase in generating capacity from wind and solar and the retirement of coal and nuclear plants — and a dramatic drop in prices in recent years.
While big states like California, Texas and Washington lead the way on total renewable energy generation, one small state has been leading in a different way.
In 2015, Hawaii became the first state to pass a law saying all electricity would come from renewable sources by 2045.
Jeff Mikulina is an environmentalist in Hawaii who pushed for the clean energy standard. Initially, the idea was not well received.
“The governor at the time called me Harry Potter, which I thought was a bit of an honor. We kept on pushing,” Mikulina said.
For example, in 2013, the state got less than 1% of its electricity from solar. By 2021 that number grew to 17.5%. While 5.1% of that comes from solar farms, 12.4% comes from things like rooftop solar, on private homes.
“It’s been fantastic that the adoption of rooftop solar over the last 10 or 15 years in Hawaii,” Mikulina said. “Now we have nearly 100,000 mini power plants on people’s rooftops statewide,” he added.
The progress toward 100% renewal energy in Hawaii is ahead of schedule and has led to other noticeable changes like the closure of the state’s last remaining coal plant in 2022.
But the state is still heavily reliant on oil imported from places like Libya and until recently Russia, the cost of electricity has also gone up and many of the easier steps have already been taken.
Mikulina says it’s worth the continued effort.
“The bottom line is we need to get off fossil fuel as fast as possible. And it’s not a question of, can we achieve it? It’s a moral question that we must,” Mikulina said.
BERLIN — European Union governments and lawmakers reached a deal Sunday on key elements of the 27-nation bloc’s green deal, reforming the EU’s trading system for greenhouse gas emissions and creating a new hardship fund for those hardest-hit by measures to curb climate change.
The two sides agreed to push European industries and energy companies to cut their emissions by speeding up the phase-out of free pollution vouchers. Doing so makes each ton of carbon dioxide that’s released into the atmosphere more expensive for polluters.
The EU’s executive Commission said the measure would require European industries to reduce their emissions by 62% by 2030 from 2005 levels, compared to a target of 43% under the previous rules.
To ensure a level playing field, the EU will also introduce a tax on foreign companies that want to import products which don’t meet climate-protection standards European companies have to comply with. The so-called Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism was agreed to last week.
Governments and the European Parliament also agreed to extend the bloc’s emissions trading system to cover road transport and the heating of buildings from 2027. This is likely to raise the price of gasoline, natural gas and other fossil fuels for consumers, providing an incentive to switch to cleaner alternatives.
The deal includes an emergency clause allowing the introduction to be postponed by a year if energy costs are particularly high.
Against the backdrop of the current energy crisis that has stoked inflation in Europe and beyond, negotiators agreed to also create a social climate fund that will help vulnerable households and small businesses cope with higher costs for fuel arising from the new measures.
The fund comprising tens of billions of euros will be phased in from 2026 and filled with proceeds from the auction of emissions vouchers.
“We can now safely say that the EU has delivered on its promises with ambitious legislation and this puts us at the forefront of fighting climate change globally,” said Czech Environment Minister Marian Jurecka, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency.
The provisional agreement needs to be formally adopted by the EU Parliament and governments. It is part of the bloc’s broader ‘ Fit for 55 ’ package intended to help the EU cut its emissions by 55% by 2030 from 1990 levels and achieve “net zero” by mid-century.
Separately Sunday, countries that are part of the North Seas Energy Cooperation were expected to sign an agreement with Britain on working together to expand the construction of offshore wind power and electricity interconnectors. The deal also envisages cooperation on the production of hydrogen with renewable energy.
The United Kingdom, which left the North Seas Energy Cooperation agreement when it quit the EU in 2020, already has the biggest installed capacity for offshore wind power in Europe. With further expansion planned, Britain could become a major exporter of wind power to continental Europe in future.
An Orange-Bellied Parrot perched on the edge of a feeding bowl. The species is listed as being critically endangered.
Margot Kiesskalt | Istock | Getty Images
Plans for a major new wind farm in Australia were given the thumbs up this month — on the provision its turbines go offline for five months a year to protect a parrot species.
In an environmental assessment report of the Robbins Island Renewable Energy Park, Tasmania’s Environment Protection Authority said its board had “determined to approve the proposal” for the project, which could have as many as 122 wind turbines and is overseen by ACEN Australia.
One of the approval conditions relates to the Orange-bellied parrot, which the Australian government says is critically endangered.
“Unless otherwise approved in writing by the EPA Board, all WTG [wind turbine generators] must be shut down during the northern OBP migration period (1 March to 31 May inclusive) and the southern OBP migration period (15 September to 15 November inclusive),” the EPA document says.
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In a statement last week, EPA board chair Andrew Paul said the organization had concluded that “significant mitigation measures” were needed in relation to “potential impacts on the orange-bellied parrot population.”
This was due to “the limited knowledge about the importance of Robbins Island in the annual northern and southern migrations” as well as a need to account for a National Recovery Plan for the species.
“This has led to the inclusion of [project approval] condition FF6 which imposes shutdown periods during the migrations totaling five months when the turbines cannot operate,” Paul added.
Robbins Island is located in waters off the northwest coast of Tasmania, a large island and Australian state. If all goes to plan, the total capacity of the proposed wind farm could be as much as 900 megawatts.
CNBC contacted ACEN Australia via the Robbins Island project’s website, but did not receive a response prior to publication. The Ayala Corporation, parent company of ACEN Australia majority-owner ACEN Corporation, did not respond to a CNBC request for comment.
In a Facebook post, project developers said they welcomed approval from the EPA, adding that further approvals were needed from the Circular Head Council and the Commonwealth Government’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. These were expected in early 2023, they said.
The firm would “need to consider our options going forward,” the ABC report quoted Pollington as saying.
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Amid global plans to ramp up wind power capacity in the years ahead, the interaction of wind turbines with the natural world — including marine and bird life — is likely to become a key area of debate.
The U.K.-based Royal Society for the Protection of Birds warns that wind farms “can harm birds through disturbance, displacement, acting as barriers, habitat loss and collision,” adding that “impacts can arise from a single development and cumulatively multiple projects.”
The U.S. Energy Information Administration has said that some wind projects and turbines can result in bat and bird casualties.
“These deaths may contribute to declines in the population of species also affected by other human-related impacts,” it notes. “The wind energy industry and the U.S. government are researching ways to reduce the effect of wind turbines on birds and bats.”
Brussels-based industry body WindEurope says the effects of projects can be prevented “by adequately planning, siting, and designing wind farms.”
“The impact of wind farms on birds and bats is extremely low compared to the impact of climate change and other human activity,” it adds.
Wind turbines in the Netherlands. A report from the International Energy Agency “expects renewables to become the primary energy source for electricity generation globally in the next three years, overtaking coal.”
Mischa Keijser | Image Source | Getty Images
Renewables are on course to overtake coal and become the planet’s biggest source of electricity generation by the middle of this decade, according to the International Energy Agency.
The IEA’s Renewables 2022 report, published Tuesday, predictsa major shift within the world’s electricity mix at a time of significant volatility and geopolitical tension.
“The first truly global energy crisis, triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has sparked unprecedented momentum for renewables,” it said.
“Renewables [will] become the largest source of global electricity generation by early 2025, surpassing coal,” it added.
According to its “main-case forecast,” the IEA expects renewables to account for nearly 40% of worldwide electricity output in 2027, coinciding with a fall in the share of coal, natural gas and nuclear generation.
The analysis comes at a time of huge disruption within global energy markets following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.
The Kremlin was the biggest supplier of both natural gas and petroleum oils to the EU in 2021, according to Eurostat. However, gas exports from Russia to the European Union have slid this year, as member states sought to drain the Kremlin’s war chest.
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As such, major European economies have been attempting to shore up supplies from alternative sources for the colder months ahead — and beyond.
In a statement issued alongside its report, the IEA highlighted the consequences of the current geopolitical situation.
“The global energy crisis is driving a sharp acceleration in installations of renewable power, with total capacity growth worldwide set to almost double in the next five years,” it said.
“Energy security concerns caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have motivated countries to increasingly turn to renewables such as solar and wind to reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels, whose prices have spiked dramatically,” it added.
In its largest-ever upward revision to its renewable power forecast, the IEA now expects the world’s renewable capacity to surge by nearly 2,400 gigawatts between 2022 and 2027 — the same amount as the “entire installed power capacity of China today.”
The IEA expects electricity stemming from wind and solar photovoltaic (which converts sunlight directly into electricity)to supply nearly 20% of the planet’s power generation in 2027.
“These variable technologies account for 80% of global renewable generation increase over the forecast period, which will require additional sources of power system flexibility,” it added.
However, the IEA expects growth in geothermal, bioenergy, hydropower and concentrated solar power to stay “limited despite their critical role in integrating wind and solar PV into global electricity systems.”
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Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, said the global energy crisis had kicked renewables “into an extraordinary new phase of even faster growth as countries seek to capitalise on their energy security benefits.”
“The world is set to add as much renewable power in the next 5 years as it did in the previous 20 years,” Birol said.
The IEA chief added that the continued acceleration of renewables was “critical” to keeping “the door open to limiting global warming to 1.5 °C.”
The 1.5 degree target is a reference to 2015′s Paris Agreement, a landmark accord that aims to “limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.”
Cutting human-made carbon dioxide emissions to net-zero by 2050 is seen as crucial when it comes to meeting the 1.5 degrees Celsius target.
Earlier this year, a report from the International Energy Agency said clean energy investment could be on course to exceed $2 trillion per year by 2030, an increase of over 50% compared to today.
The New York State Public Service Commission approved a transmission line that will deliver electricity from a proposed wind-power project off the coast of Long Island to the existing electrical grid.
The 25-mile offshore/onshore transmission line will carry electricity from the planned Sunrise Wind installation to an existing substation in Brookhaven.
The proposed 924-megawatt project is the largest offshore wind farm to be connected to New York’s electric grid so far. The wind farm project, which has the potential capacity to power nearly 600,000 homes, is being developed as a partnership between Ørsted and Eversource, with support from Con Edison Transmission and the New York Power Authority, who will assist the development of the transmission facilities needed to deliver the offshore wind energy to the electric transmission grid, according to a statement from Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office.
“New York is taking bold action to address the climate crisis, and projects like Sunrise Wind demonstrate our leadership on clean energy,” Hochul said in the statement. “As we work to advance our nation-leading climate goals and create the jobs of the future, offshore wind projects will be critical to deliver clean energy to all New Yorkers.”
Developers expect the offshore wind farm will be fully operational by 2025, resulting in a direct investment of more than $408 million in New York and the creation of 800 direct jobs in the state, plus thousands of indirect jobs, according to the statement. The transmission line just approved by the PSC is being built by Sunrise Wind, which is entering negotiations with contractors and trade labor organizations on a project labor agreement to cover construction activities for the project and committing to paying prevailing wages.
“Today we take the next great step in connecting Long Island’s workforce to the heart of our new economy for New York State,” Matthew Aracich, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Nassau and Suffolk Counties, said in the statement. I’d like to express my sincere appreciation to Governor Hochul for her leadership in advancing the offshore wind industry here on Long Island. The governor has delivered on her promise of making workforce development her top priority through the creation of the new offshore wind industry here on Long Island. The governor’s approval of the transmission line for Sunrise Wind will actively put our members to work. When we create good paying, union jobs, especially in the emerging green energy industry, we are really creating careers.”
The approved transmission project includes a high-voltage, submarine export cable bundle up to 5.2 miles long that will enter New York State territorial waters 3 nautical miles from land. The transmission line will then transition from an offshore cable to an onshore cable that will travel up to 17.2 miles to an onshore converter station.
“We have a historic opportunity on Long Island to capitalize on the economic benefits from the new offshore wind industry and the approval of the Sunrise Wind transmission cable brings us one step closer to creating hundreds of union jobs and powering Long Island with clean energy,” Matt Cohen, CEO of the Long Island Association, said via email.
RICHMOND, Va. — Dominion Energy has agreed to implement several consumer protections in connection with its massive offshore wind project under a proposed agreement with the office of the Virginia attorney general and other parties released Friday.
The proposed agreement, which includes performance reporting requirements and provisions laying out a degree of construction cost sharing, is still subject to final approval by the State Corporation Commission.
Attorney General Jason Miyares, a Republican whose office represents the interests of consumers in utility regulation proceedings, said the agreement would provide “first-of-its-kind” protections for ratepayers while ensuring the 176-turbine project with an estimated $9.8 billion capital cost moves forward in a fiscally responsible way.
“I am pleased that we have achieved consumer protections never seen before in modern Virginia history,” Miyares said in a statement. “For the first time Dominion has significant skin in the game to ensure that the project is delivered on budget. Should the project run materially over budget, it will come out of Dominion’s pocket, not consumers,” he said.
Dominion filed its application to build and recover the costs of the project with the State Corporation Commission nearly a year ago. That kicked off a lengthy process before the regulatory agency, one that has included voluminous filings and an evidentiary hearing in May.
The commission in August signed off on the project, but it included a consumer protection provision — a performance guarantee — that Dominion strenuously objected to, saying it would kill the project.
The parties to Friday’s proposal said they had conferred since then and reached the terms of the proposed agreement. It calls for a cost-sharing arrangement for any overruns beyond the estimated $9.8 billion price tag. The company would cover 50% of construction costs between the range of $10.3-$11.3 billion and 100% of costs between $11.3-$13.7 billion. If construction costs were to exceed $13.7 billion, the issue would go back to the commission.
The proposal would not require the company to guarantee certain energy production levels, like the SCC had initially ordered. Rather, Dominion will have to report average net capacity factors annually and “provide a detailed explanation of the factors contributing to any deficiency.” Capacity factor is a measure of how often a generating facility runs during a period of time.
Richmond-based Dominion said in a news release that the deal would provide “significant customer benefits.”
“I appreciate the thoughtful effort of all parties in reaching a constructive agreement to allow the project to continue moving forward,” said Bob Blue, Dominion’s chair, president and and chief executive officer.
Also parties to the agreement are Walmart, Virginia’s largest private employer, and two conservation groups: Appalachian Voices and the Southern Environmental Law Center.
Will Cleveland, an attorney for SELC, emphasized in a statement that the primary issue in the case was “never about offshore wind’s value but the risks created by the ownership structure.”
No other offshore wind project under development in the U.S. is funded by captive ratepayers, and no other project has a monopoly utility owner acting as its own general contractor, the law center said.
The project, which will be located about 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, has drawn broad support from local officials, policymakers, business groups and trade unions, who say it will help fight climate change and create jobs.
The company already has a two-turbine pilot project up and running. The 2.6-gigawatt, utility-scale project’s schedule calls for construction to be complete in late 2026. Dominion expects the project to generate enough clean energy to power up to 660,000 homes.
Clean Virginia, an environmental and rate reform advocacy group that is a party to the proceeding, did not oppose the agreement, which it said in a statement represented a “vast improvement” for consumers.
“Absent pressure from environmental advocates, the Office of the Attorney General, regulatory staff, and Walmart, Dominion would have proceeded with one of the most expensive energy projects to date in Virginia with few consumer protections and would have faced little performance expectations to actually generate consistent clean energy,” Laura Gonzalez, the group’s energy policy manager, said in a statement.
Suffolk County has purchased a state-owned property located in Brentwood for $1.46 million to create a National Offshore Wind Training Center.
The site is a 50,000-square-foot under-utilized building on about 5 acres on Wicks Road. It comes with a 22-year licensing agreement with the county, will be home to a facility aimed at providing training in wind power technology, particularly for high school students and college-age individuals.
The NOWTC facility will be funded by a $10 million investment by Sunrise Wind (a joint venture of Ørsted A/S and Eversource Energy), in partnership with the Long Island Federation of Labor-AFLCIO, the Nassau and Suffolk Building and Construction Trades Council, Suffolk County Community College, International Brotherhood of Electric Workers, the Utility Workers Union of America, BlueGreen Alliance and Minority Millennials.
In addition, Gov. Kathy Hochul launched a $9 million competitive solicitation through the state’s Offshore Wind Training Institute for proposals for new workforce development and training initiatives from technical/vocational high schools, community colleges, universities, unions, training and job placement intermediaries, community-based organizations and non-profit organizations.
The effort is being led by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority in collaboration with the State University of New York Farmingdale State College and Stony Brook University, for expanded offshore wind workforce development and training initiatives to address workforce gaps and prepare New Yorkers for high-growth jobs in the wind power industry.
The training initiatives support the state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act goal to develop 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind by 2035.
“We are partnering with innovative, industry leading companies and spearheading billions in public and private investments to spur economic development and good-paying jobs for New Yorkers,” Hochul said in a written statement. “The national Offshore Wind Training Center will enhance our efforts to prepare our workforce for the green jobs of the future, support the physical infrastructure needed for these clean energy projects, and solidify New York’s role as a global leader in this powerhouse industry.”
Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone said: “Ensuring that every individual in every community in our region has the same opportunity for success is key to growing our economy. This community-centered hub is a place for education, government, industry and the community to come together to open doors to opportunity. The partnership with the National Offshore Wind Training Center will allow our residents to be at the center of the emerging offshore wind industry.”
The newly created NOWTC will collaborate with the state’s $20 million Offshore Wind Training Institute (OWTI) to establish comprehensive and cross-cutting offshore wind and clean energy training and workforce development initiatives. The OWTI will train 2,500 New York workers beginning this year through 2027 to support both offshore and onshore renewable energy projects.
“Clean energy means new jobs and the National Offshore Wind Training Center will position Long Islanders to reap the economic benefits of this brand-new industry off our coast,” said Matt Cohen, Long Island Association president & CEO.
Nassau and Suffolk Building and Construction Trades President Matthew Aracich thanked the governor for her efforts in advancing the offshore wind industry here on Long Island.
The NOWTC “facility will serve as a magnet to attract talent through workforce development programs in the Brentwood community and help point the youth to explore new paths in career opportunities,” Aracich said in the statement. “NOWTC’s strategic partnership with Orsted and Maersk will create a central training facility that will make GWO certification available to anyone working in the Offshore Wind industry and fills a niche that is needed in preparation for the 9GW of offshore wind we are building right here on Long Island.”
For more details on the training solicitation visit: nyserda.ny.gov.
SIERRA PAILEMAN, Argentina — It was a sunny morning when about 200 people trudged up a hill in Argentina’s southern Patagonia region with a singular mission: free two Andean condors that had been born in captivity.
The emotion in the air was palpable as conservationists got ready for a moment that so many had been working toward for months. But the joyous moment was also bittersweet.
Preliminary plans for a massive wind farm that could be located in the Somuncura Plateau to feed a green hydrogen project is putting at risk a three-decade-long effort to repopulate Patagonia’s Atlantic coast with a bird that is classified as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
While members of the Mapuche, the largest Indigenous group in the area, played traditional instruments, and children threw condor feathers into the air that symbolized their good wishes for the newly liberated birds, an eerie silence engulfed the mountain in Sierra Paileman in Rio Negro province as researchers opened the cages where the two specimens of the world’s largest flying bird were kept.
Huasi (meaning home in Quechua) seemed born for this moment. As soon as the cage opened, he spread his wings and took off without a moment’s hesitation. Yastay (meaning god that is protector of birds) appeared cautious, uncertain of the wide open Patagonia skies after spending his first two years in captivity, and it took him around an hour before taking off.
People hugged while researchers sprang into action and started tracking the birds. In the back of their minds were latent worries about what the potential for new wind farms in the area could mean for the lives of these newly released birds.
Conservationists fear the birds inevitably would collide with the rotating blades of the turbines and be killed. In neighboring Chile, an environmental impact study for a planned wind farm with 65 windmills concluded that as many as four of the rare condors could collide with the massive structures yearly. Environmental authorities rejected the project last year.
“Why are we freeing two? We generally free more than two,” Vanesa Astore, executive director of the Andean Condor Conservation Program, said. “We’re at like a maintenance level now.”
Researchers had to release Huasi and Yastay now or risk that they would have to remain in captivity for the rest of their lives, which can range from 70 to 80 years, Astore explained, noting condors can only adapt to the outside world if they are released before their third birthday.
The current uncertainty regarding the future of the wind farm that would be built by Australian firm Fortescue Future Industries has not only put conservationists on alert but has prompted them to slow the pace of reproduction and release of the Andean condors even as the company insists it has no plans to set up shop in the Somuncura Plateau.
Condors are notoriously slow breeders that only reach sexual maturity at 9 years old and have an offspring every three years, but researchers have found ways to speed that up by removing eggs from pairs in captivity to incubate artificially. When the egg is removed, the pair will then produce another egg within a month, which they will raise while the first one is raised by humans with the help of latex puppets meant to simulate their parents and help them recognize members of their own species.
That strategy allow researchers to “increase reproductive capacity by six times,” said Luis Jacome, the head of the Andean Condor Conservation Program.
That effort is now on pause.
“We aren’t maximizing because I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Astore explained.
Since the conservation program started 30 years ago, 81 chicks have been born in captivity, 370 condors have been rehabilitated and 230 freed across South America, including Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile and Bolivia.
Sixty-six of those have been released along Patagonia’s Atlantic coast, where the bird was nowhere to be seen at the turn of the century even though Charles Darwin had written in the early 1800s about the presence of the large birds in the region.
The Andean condor has now made a comeback, and for many locals that has a spiritual resonance.
“The condor flies very high, so our elders used to say that the condor could take a message to those who are no longer here,” said Doris Canumil, 59, a Mapuche who took part in the ceremonies for the liberation of the condors.
While they celebrate the success of the program, conservationists worry it could all be erased.
“These birds that we’ve liberated, that once again joined the mountain range with the sea through their flight, that have matured and had their own offspring that live and fly here in this place, they will simply die in the blades of the windmills,” Jacome said. “So the condor would once again become extinct in the Atlantic coast.”
Conservationists found out about the proposed wind farm through the media and alarm bells immediately went off.
Last year, Fortescue unveiled a plan to invest $8.4 billion over a decade in a project to produce green hydrogen for export in what the government touted as the largest international investment in Argentina over the past two decades. In order to qualify as green, the hydrogen must be produced using renewable power, and that is where the windmill farm would come in, taking advantage of the strong, reliable winds of Patagonia.
The government of President Alberto Fernández celebrated the project, saying it would create 15,000 direct jobs and somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 indirect jobs.
Yet neither the company nor the provincial government of Rio Negro had carried out an environmental impact study before unveiling the project.
For now at least, Jacome said, the “only thing green are the dollars” attached to the project.
“We’re putting the cart before the horse,” Jacome said. “We need to have environmental impact studies that demonstrate what is going to be done, how many windmills, where they will be placed.”
Fortescue agrees and says it “is committed to evaluating the social, environmental, engineering, and economic considerations before committing to the development” of any project.
The Australian firm said in a statement that any pre-development study will include consultations with local organizations to “guarantee the protection of the local species such as the Andean Condor.”
Following questions about the project, Fortescue has decided to not measure winds at the Somuncura Plateau until the province finishes its environmental plan and will instead explore “other areas of interest within lands near Sierra Grande and the Province of Chubut,” the company said.
On Oct. 11, the Rio Negro provincial government said Fortescue launched a 12-month effort to analyze the environmental and social impacts of the project.
Provincial officials see the number of jobs attached to the project as key.
“On the one hand, we have to preserve and take care of our fauna,” Daniel Sanguinetti, Rio Negro’s planning and sustainable development secretary, said. But the government also must “promote the development of the 750,000 Rio Negro citizens who currently live (here) and generate sources of production and genuine work for all of them.”
Sanguinetti added it was important “not to get carried away by different situations that supposedly would happen at some time in the future when all of this would have been implemented, when the reality is that the project is in its initial phases.”
For those who have made repopulating the Patagonia coast with the condor their life’s work, the discussions over the future of the project are deeply personal.
“We feel a little bit like parents,” said Catalina Rostagno, who moved to the base camp in Rio Negro two and a half months ago for the process of liberating Huasi and Yastay. “The condor is a reflection of me.”
Off the coast of Grimsby, England, more than 300 wind turbines produce electricity to help power over 2 million homes a day. Sharyn Alfonsi reports on how the turbines work and how the project has been received.
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This past August, President Biden signed a sweeping climate bill into law, making wind power a priority. Specifically, offshore wind power.
The goal is to capture the force of the wind in the open seas and convert it to power 10 million American homes by 2030.
We have a long way to go. There are only seven offshore wind turbines off the coast of the United States compared to nearly 6,000 in Europe.
Critics say they are expensive to build and maintain — unpredictable and ugly.
We wanted to see for ourselves. so, we went to the largest offshore wind farm in the world, along the northeast coast of England to discover the power of Grimsby.
As you fly 200 miles north of London, along the coast, you can see the town of Grimsby below. 55 miles east of her port, you can’t miss them. Elegant and a little erie, white giants poking out of the North Sea like something out of a science fiction novel.
Hornsea Wind Farm
This is the largest crop of offshore wind turbines in the world – known as the Hornsea Wind Farm. It is hypnotizing. More than 300 turbines spread across 335 square miles generate enough electricity to help power more than 2 million homes a day.
To understand the power, size and upkeep of this evolving technology, we geared up on land and traveled 90 minutes on the heaving North Sea with 24-year-old Bridie Salmon. Her job is to scale and service the turbines. My job, with the help of a little anti-nausea gum was to simply, hold down my lunch.
Sharyn Alfonsi: This is choppy out here.
Bridie Salmon: Yeah. It is. How are you feeling?
Sharyn Alfonsi: I feel– okay. It’s more important “How do you feel?”
Bridie Salmon: Yeah, I’m doing good. Like I say, I’d like to think I’ve got my sea legs on.
When your last name is Salmon, negotiating rough waters is sort of in your DNA. Bridie’s great-grandfather worked on the Grimsby docks. Her dad owns a 100-year-old smoked fish shop in town.
Bridie was bartending when she decided to apply to an apprentice program to be a turbine technician. She was one of seven people selected from a pool of 500.
The apprentice program combines classroom instruction – with hands-on work at sea. But we soon learned that mother nature is a tempermental teacher.
Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi speaks with Bridie Salmon.
Sharyn Alfonsi: The weather here is ever-changing.
Bridie Salmon: Yeah, yeah, we’re holdin’ on for our dear lives. Yeah, I mean– and it is the North Sea. This is not something we can control. So every day is different. And it can change like that. So it’s just part and parcel of the job. Anything to get these things turning. This is the environment for wind turbines. It’s gotta be windy.
As we approached the turbines, we suddenly felt small.
Sharyn Alfonsi: You don’t get a sense of how large things are until you’re right up under them–
Bridie Salmon: Yeah, well, that’s it. I mean, so at very top, the nacelle– all the way to the top of the blades is half the size of the Eiffel Tower, which is pretty massive, it is. And because you’ve got nothing normal to compare it to like a building, you just see these in the distance. And then you’re here. And it’s– yeah, they’re pretty bloody huge.
Translation: they’re nearly 600 feet high with spinning fiberglass blades roughly the length of the world’s largest passenger jet. Each blade weights almost 30 tons.
The turbines are partially assembled on shore, then shipped out to sea where each blade is attached with surgical precision to the top of the turbine. Every angle has to be perfect to generate maximum power.
Once installed, keeping them spinning is critical. Offshore wind engineers say one revolution can power one home in the U.K. for 24 hours. And that’s where Bridie comes in.
Sharyn Alfonsi: It’s raining, it’s windy…
Bridie Salmon: Can’t wait. Just another day at the office!
In choppy waters, Captain Peter Broughton has to find the ‘sweet spot,’ maintaining constant contact between the bow and base. Some days the winds are so high and seas so rough, the job can’t be done.
On this day, success. Bridie harnesses herself to a cable, leaps to a ladder, and begins the climb rung by rung, eight stories to the top.
On a narrow platform hanging over the north sea, she makes her rounds, carefully inspecting and servicing the turbine. A job, not for the faint of heart.
Sharyn Alfonsi: What was that like the first time you made that climb?
Bridie Salmon: Oh, exhausting. Exhausting. Because you’ve got all your safety kit on as well so
you’ve probably got about ten kilograms of harnesses and claws and you’ve got to be clipped in so you’ve got that friction of climbing.
Sharyn Alfonsi: I imagine it would be kind of scary.
Bridie Salmon: Yeah, really scary. I remember there was one day it was super windy. So we were up there. And the top of the tower is moving. So, you’ve got the sea sickness, the motion sickness from the sea, and then the top of the tower’s moving. So, all day, you’re rocking. And it was cold and windy and I remember coming back onshore, and I was just rocking. I was, like, “I’m on land now. I don’t need to rock.” But it’s– yeah, it’s pretty scary.
Benj Sykes
Benj Sykes says those kinds of extraordinary efforts are needed in extraordinary times. Sykes is the vice president of offshore wind at Orsted, a Danish-based global energy supplier that runs the Hornsea Wind Farm.
Benj Sykes: You know we have a cost of energy crisis in Europe and in Britain at the moment. That’s driven by the pandemic but also of course by the terrible situation in Ukraine. And all that adds up to a real drive to find clean, cheap energy solutions.
About five years ago, Orstead decided to sell off it’s oil and gas business and focus on renewable energies. Grimsby, a depressed fishing town, became the unlikely backdrop to Europe’s clean energy movement.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Why here? Why Grimsby?
Benj Sykes: It’s got a good port. And it’s geographically really well located. Physically in terms of the water depth, in terms of the wind resource and of course places to connect to the national grid so that we can get that power to homes and businesses.
Long before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine set off the energy crisis, the U.K. had a strategy to use 100% clean or renewable electricity by 2035.
Sharyn Alfonsi: When you talk about clean energy, you talk about solar, hydro power, bio fuels. What makes offshore wind unique?
Benj Sykes: Offshore wind is really the only project in most countries where you can build it at the kind of power-station scale that we need. If I think about the projects we’re building here in the UK. That’s almost 3 gigawatts. That’s broadly speaking, the output of a nuclear power station. So, we’re talking large-scale infrastructure projects. Most of Europe is too populated, to fit very very large wind farms or solar farms. So that’s why we’ve gone offshore.
Sharyn Alfonsi: One big criticism is cost. They’re expensive to construct, to transmit and to decommission. Is that cost passed on to consumers.
Benj Sykes: So that’s simply wrong. Offshore wind power is one of the cheapest forms of electricity generation in the U.K. We privately fund it together with investment partners that we bring in.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Privately, you fund that.
Benj Sykes: Yeah. There’s no public exposure to the costs of building offshore wind. And I think the thing that has made the most difference is the fact that we’ve had political consensus now for more than a decade and that’s given investors confidence to step in and put the big money on the table to get these projects away.
Gas and nuclear still make up a majority of the power supply flowing into U.K. homes and business, but this year 13% of Britain’s energy has come from offshore wind. Only China produces more offshore wind power than the U.K.
Here’s how it works. Wind turns the blades around a shaft inside the turbine which spins a generator. Energy then travels down, going 300 feet beneath the water’s surface to cables buried under the seabed – connecting to an offshore substation.
Then, to a power station on land where that electricity created out at sea is transferred into homes and businesses, inviting the question, what happens if the wind stops blowing?
Benj Sykes: Using satellites and other technology we can predict extremely accurately how much we’re going to generate over the next days which enables those who operate the grid to make very clear plans about where demand is going, where supply is going. I mean, if I look at the turbines that we have out in Hornsea, they are operating 98-99% of the time.
This is Grimsby’s second act. Through the 1950s to 1970 the town hosted the largest fishing fleet in the world, with 700 trawlers, awash in cash and a port fit for a visit from the queen.
Dennis Avery: It was absolutely brilliant the camaraderie of it because you can say nearly 100% of the population would be associated with the fishin’ industry in some way.
Dennis Avery and Bob Formby were part of the town’s fishing tradition.
Dennis Avery and Bob Formby
Sharyn Alfonsi: what was it like?
Bob Formby: It’s a tough job. It’s work from sailing till you get back in the port again. Working in the winter around Iceland and them places was pretty severe. But it’s the kind of job that I’d do again tomorrow.
Dennis Avery: In those days You had two choices: you worked on the docks, or you went to sea.
Avery captained this hulking steel fishing trawler, the Ross Tiger, for eight years.
Dennis Avery: If you caught a good trip, and you steam back to Grimsby with a fish room full of fish, you know it’s a marvelous feeling.
That marvelous feeling ended when Iceland – Britain’s neighbor to the north – began enforcing fishing restrictions in their cod-rich waters.
Sharyn Alfonsi: What did you see happen in town when that happened?
Bob Formby: Gosh. It was a disaster, to be quite honest. Because everybody was involved some way in fishing. Like taxi drivers, the pubs, the dress shops, and places like that– they all suffered.
Dennis Avery: Once the fishin’ sorta went, it all sorta died a death.
Wind power has breathed new life into Grimsby. Offshore energy company Orsted says it has created over 500 jobs here and invested $11 billion in local wind farms.
But there are plenty of people who worry the environmental impact of the wind turbines hasn’t been sufficiently studied and others say the industry has not created the number of jobs they have promised, but the concern of these retired fishermen is more practical.
Bob Formby: We’re not seeing benefits.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Your electricity bill hasn’t gone down?
Bob Formby: No. It’s gone up if anything. When they said about em how ‘Oh, we’re going to get cheap electricity and it’s going to be green and everything.’ But I can’t see any benefits to be quite honest.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Has your electricity bill gone down?
Dennis Avery: Try double! It’s doubled.
Sharyn Alfonsi: There are people who have said, ‘Yeah, we’ve got all these turbines. But our electricity bill hasn’t gone down a cent.’
Benj Sykes: Yeah, it’s a real challenge that. It’s gonna take time. Because we need to build more offshore wind.
Sharyn Alfonsi: So you think if there’s more offshore wind, prices could go down?
Fearing the war in Ukraine could lead to blackouts this winter, the U.K. government announced more drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea. They will also speed up the time it takes for new offshore wind projects to get online.
Benj Sykes told us that over the next eight years, Orsted plans to invest another $17 billion in wind farms and add more than 300 jobs in Grimsby.
Benj Sykes: You know the fishing industry was fantastic for Grimsby. That era has passed. What we want to do is be a part of creating the next chapter of Grimsby’s life and of the country’s life as we build out.
A chapter Bridie Salmon is very much a part of.
Bridie Salmon: So that’s gone from Grimsby being the fishing town, to the powerhouse of the north, which is an amazing transition.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Proud of it?
Bridie Salmon: So proud of it. And to be a part of it is amazing.
A town’s future and fortune, once again tied to the sea.
Produced by Ashley Velie. Associate producer, Jennifer Dozor. Broadcast associate, Elizabeth Germino. Edited by April Wilson.
BILLINGS, Mont. — The Biden administration on Thursday proposed a new permitting program for wind energy turbines, power lines and other projects that kill eagles, amid growing concern among scientists that the rapid expansion of renewable energy in the U.S. West could harm golden eagle populations now teetering on decline.
The Fish and Wildlife Service program announced Thursday is meant to encourage companies to work with officials to minimize harm to golden and bald eagles.
It’s also aimed at avoiding any slowdown in the growth of wind power as an alternative to carbon-emitting fossil fuels — a key piece of President Joe Biden’s climate agenda. It comes after several major utilities have been federally prosecuted in recent years for killing large numbers of eagles without permits.
The federal government already issues permits to kill eagles. But Thursday’s proposal calls for new permits tailored to wind-energy projects, power line networks and the disturbance of breeding bald eagles and bald eagle nests.
Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams said the new program would provide “multiple pathways to obtain a permit” while also helping conserve eagles, which she described as a key responsibility for the agency.
Bald eagle numbers have quadrupled since 2009 to about 350,000 birds. There are only about about 40,000 golden eagles, which need much larger areas to survive and are more inclined to have trouble with humans.
The number of wind turbines nationwide more than doubled over the past decade to almost 72,000, according to U.S. Geological Survey data, with development overlapping prime golden eagle territory in states including Wyoming, Montana, California, Washington and Oregon.
In April, a subsidiary of the Florida-based utility industry giant NextEra Energy pleaded guilty in federal court in Wyoming to criminal violations of wildlife protection laws after its wind turbines killed more than 100 golden eagles in eight states. It was the third conviction of a major wind company for killing eagles in a decade.
Federal officials won’t divulge how many eagles are reported killed by wind farms, saying it’s sensitive law enforcement information.
Nationwide, 34 permits in place last year authorized companies to “take” 170 golden eagles — meaning that many birds could be killed by turbines or lost through impacts on nests or habitat, according to permitting data obtained by The Associated Press. More than 200 permits were in place to allow the killing of 420 bald eagles, according to the data.
For each loss, companies are responsible for ensuring at least one eagle death is avoided somewhere else.
Illegal shootings are the biggest cause of death for golden eagles, killing about 700 annually, according to federal estimates. More than 600 die annually in collisions with cars, wind turbines and power lines; about 500 annually are electrocuted; and more than 400 are poisoned.
Yet climate change looms as a potentially greater threat: Rising temperatures are projected to reduce golden eagle breeding ranges by more than 40% later this century, according to a National Audubon Society analysis.
“Birds tell us that climate change is the biggest threat they face,” said Garry George, director of the National Audubon Society’s Clean Energy Initiative. If it’s executed responsibly, he said the new program could strengthen protections for eagles as renewable energy expands.
