{"id":61100,"date":"2023-11-28T10:02:58","date_gmt":"2023-11-28T18:02:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/energi.media\/?p=61100"},"modified":"2023-11-28T10:02:58","modified_gmt":"2023-11-28T18:02:58","slug":"what-happened-to-the-great-lakes-offshore-wind-boom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/energi.media\/news\/what-happened-to-the-great-lakes-offshore-wind-boom\/","title":{"rendered":"What happened to the Great Lakes offshore wind boom?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was originally published byInside Climate News<\/a> and is reproduced here as part of Grist’s Climate Desk<\/a> collaboration on Nov. 28, 2023.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Nicole Pollack, Inside Climate News<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

At the tail end of the aughts, as it became clear that the United States would need to create much more renewable energy, fast, many believed the transition would be bolstered by the proliferation of offshore wind. But not off the coasts of states like Massachusetts and California, where it\u2019s best positioned today. They thought the industry would emerge, and then take hold, in the Great Lakes.<\/p>\n

Things looked promising for a while. Glimmers of an offshore wind boom arose from the depths of the Great Recession, as developers offered up proposals on both the U.S. and Canadian sides of the lakes. In 2010, the Cleveland-based Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation, better known as LEEDCo,\u00a0announced plans<\/a>\u00a0to install its first 20 megawatts by 2012 and scale up to 1,000 megawatts by 2020. Two years later, the Obama administration and five states\u2014though not Ohio\u2014formed<\/a>\u00a0the Great Lakes Offshore Wind Consortium to help streamline the permitting process.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was really a peak of burgeoning interest in climate,\u201d said Greg Nemet, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies energy policy. \u201cThere was also a spike in energy prices just before the global financial crisis \u2026 that also stimulated awareness and interest in energy. And at the same time, the prices of renewable energy were really starting to come down.\u201d<\/p>\n

The wind that blows over the Great Lakes is stronger and more consistent than what inland wind farms receive. It holds steady even in the middle of the day, when power demand is high but generation from onshore wind farms tends to slow down. Which means that, in theory, tapping into the wind resource over the lakes would allow the electric grid to rely more on renewables without being as affected by their intermittency.<\/p>\n

Yet more than a decade on, none of those early offshore wind projects have succeeded. There are still no commercial wind turbines in any of the five Great Lakes. And as the industry debates when, if ever, it will give the region another shot, those who tried before want newcomers to avoid making the same mistakes that they did.<\/p>\n

Icebreaker wind<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Perhaps the most famous (or most infamous) such proposal is Icebreaker Wind, the sole project of Cleveland\u2019s LEEDCo, a public-private nonprofit launched by several lakefront counties and a local foundation in 2009. By most accounts, the six-turbine pilot project is the most successful Great Lakes offshore wind initiative of its time\u2014even though it may never be built.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were really ahead of their time,\u201d Nemet said of LEEDCo. \u201cIt\u2019s high risk, and just because it\u2019s high risk doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s a bad idea\u2026You can learn from success, but you can also learn from failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two key qualities set Icebreaker apart from nearly all of its counterparts: It has been permitted, and it hasn\u2019t been canceled. It survived the labyrinth of federal reviews and state and local hearings that took out the handful of others that made it that far. And it\u2019s being spearheaded by a developer that, despite blow after blow from local policymakers, still hasn\u2019t given up.<\/p>\n

These days, though, LEEDCo is struggling to overcome the resistance it\u2019s faced from\u00a0birders<\/a>, anti-wind groups and fossil fuel interests.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was an awful lot of delay and uncertainty,\u201d said Will Friedman, president and CEO of the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority and the acting president of LEEDCo. (The nonprofit, which no longer has any full-time staff, is being held together by Friedman and a few other volunteers.)<\/p>\n

Following years of permitting slowdowns, LEEDCo\u00a0sparred<\/a>\u00a0with Ohio regulators in 2020 over conditions tacked onto a key state permit that it said would\u2019ve killed the project, then slogged through an Ohio Supreme Court case\u2014brought by area residents but\u00a0partly funded<\/a>\u00a0by a coal company\u2014that lasted another\u00a0year and a half<\/a>. It won both, but development has dragged on for so long now that some of LEEDCo\u2019s initial work has become outdated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we currently hold all the permits, we don\u2019t know if we can build the project consistent with the original permits, so maybe we have to go back to the drawing board and do that over again,\u201d Friedman said. With a resigned chuckle, he added, \u201cDo we then open ourselves up to being sued again by opponents?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Major barriers<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The challenges LEEDCo has confronted are far from unique. Onshore renewable energy projects have long\u00a0faced pushback<\/a> from prospective neighbours and are, increasingly, being met with inhospitable new regulations designed to shut them down. The idea of offshore wind turbines being built within sight of beloved coastlines can have entire communities up in arms.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a lot of policymakers are hesitant to get offshore wind attached to their name, because it\u2019s such a controversial technology,\u201d said Doug Bessette, an associate professor at Michigan State University whose work explores the acceptance of renewables. \u201cI think people are afraid to push it forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of the Great Lakes region has made little headway on enacting policies that would help offshore wind. Efforts to change state or Canadian provincial laws to facilitate or subsidize offshore wind projects have struggled to gain momentum. For pilot-sized wind farms like Icebreaker, designed to prove that the technology is safe and effective, but too small to take advantage of economies of scale, cost remains a nearly insurmountable barrier.<\/p>\n

The progress made by offshore wind projects in the Northeast, where supportive policies have found more traction and turbines have actually made it into the water, could be a boon for the industry if it ever returns to the Great Lakes, according to David Bidwell, an associate professor in the University of Rhode Island\u2019s Department of Marine Affairs.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s real data now on offshore wind farms\u2019 socioeconomic impacts, along with evidence that overwhelming public opposition is not, in fact, inevitable. While the approval process would be different\u2014Great Lakes states have more authority over the lakebed than East Coast states have over the ocean floor\u2014and studies on things like bird migration routes wouldn\u2019t translate very well, the region would no longer be starting from scratch.<\/p>\n

But there are also infrastructure barriers specific to the Great Lakes, Bessette noted. U.S. supply chains for freshwater turbines, designed to resist annual icing and de-icing, don\u2019t exist. The workforce hasn\u2019t been trained. There are a limited number of ports deep enough to support offshore wind, and some of those don\u2019t yet have the capacity. There\u2019s no way to get a ship big enough to put up turbines through the St. Lawrence River and into the lakes, meaning that the first company to make it to the construction phase will probably need to build one.<\/p>\n

Offshore wind turbines themselves have advanced considerably in the last decade and a half, thanks to ongoing research and their continued deployment in Europe and, more recently, on the U.S. East Coast. They\u2019re sturdier. More efficient. Better at withstanding freshwater ice. All that technological progress will inevitably boost the odds of an offshore wind project one day succeeding in the Great Lakes.<\/p>\n

The political climate may be working against them, however. In the early 2010s, and maybe even more recently than that, there was an appetite in the Great Lakes region for bold new clean energy projects, Bessette said. \u201cI don\u2019t know if we\u2019re there right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, as the developers that flocked to the Great Lakes region back then quickly learned, building wind turbines that are visible from shore has never been an easy sell, even in places that are supportive of the idea of creating more renewable energy.<\/p>\n

\n

Trillium power<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In many ways, the Great Lakes offshore wind sort-of-boom started in Canada. Toronto-based Trillium Power led the charge. The company\u2019s plan was ambitious: 80 turbines, situated on a shallow shelf about 10 miles off Ontario\u2019s mainland, together capable of generating roughly 500 megawatts of electricity.<\/p>\n

The concept went over well at first, according to John Kourtoff, Trillium\u2019s CEO. Kourtoff felt like local officials were on his side until a swarm of other developers\u2014over a half-dozen by\u00a0some counts<\/a>\u2014got the same idea. Some of the projects, he said, were proposed very close to shore, well within the lake views of affluent communities. That\u2019s what he believes turned the tide of public opinion.<\/p>\n

Trillium almost made it to construction. \u201cWe were just ready to close the financing to do detailed engineering for two specialized barges that we were having made to erect the turbines,\u201d Kourtoff said.<\/p>\n

It was Feb. 11, 2011, a Friday, when he got the call. Facing increasing public opposition to offshore wind months, and with a general election coming up that October, Ontario had imposed a moratorium on offshore wind. Ontario officials cited a lack of scientific research on the turbines\u2019 impacts. Offshore wind\u2019s proponents believe, however, that the moratorium was prompted by opposition from the public and from the province\u2019s influential nuclear power industry.<\/p>\n

Following the cancellation, Trillium sued, ultimately securing a\u00a0partial victory<\/a>\u00a0in response to its claim that the province had destroyed relevant evidence, but failing to convince the courts of its primary argument that officials had targeted the project unfairly when they issued the moratorium.<\/p>\n

Twelve years later, Kourtoff hasn\u2019t given up on his flagship offshore wind project, or on the three others he wants to build in the Great Lakes. But he hasn\u2019t been able to move forward on any of them, either. The moratorium is still in place.<\/p>\n

\n

Public outcry<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Toronto Hydro, the city-owned electric utility, relinquished its own vision for offshore wind after the province\u2019s moratorium went into effect. It had planned to start with an approximately 20-turbine, 100-megawatt project at a promising site about two miles offshore, said Joyce McLean, who worked as Toronto Hydro\u2019s director of strategic issues and oversaw its clean energy programs at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe basically put the anemometer in the lakes, collected the data, and then there was nothing for us to do, because the program disappeared,\u201d McLean said. The province, she said, \u201ccouched [the moratorium] in terms of \u2018Well, we\u2019re going to study it.\u2019 But they never did, and it was deemed dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Residents had reacted more strongly to the proposal than the utility expected. They\u2019d packed its public meetings to ask about what would happen to their views and their property values and whether construction would stir up old industrial toxins sitting on the lakebed. One man, McLean said, yelled in her face about the harm the project would cause him. Then the moratorium came down, and the wind project went away.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that we were a cautionary tale,\u201d McLean said.<\/p>\n

Scandia Wind arrived in Grand Haven, Michigan, even less prepared for the backlash it would face. The prospect of somewhere between 100 to 200 turbines, some of them situated as close as a mile and a half to shore, didn\u2019t sit well with the beachfront city. The Norwegian developer\u2019s later decision to reduce the scale of the project by half and move it six miles offshore did little to remedy the situation. In the end, unable to win over much of the community, Scandia was all but run out of town.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they came with a mindset that, \u2018Well, we have crossed these thresholds in Europe, and surely the Americans, with their desire for renewable energy, would welcome similar developments in their Great Lakes,\u2019\u201d said Arnold Boezaart, then-director of Grand Valley State University\u2019s Michigan Alternative and Renewable Energy Center. \u201cWell, they miscalculated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some Michigan leaders believe that the fallout from Scandia ruined the chances for any offshore wind project to move forward in the area. Boezaart disagrees. \u201cEven without Scandia,\u201d he said, the offshore wind industry would still be figuring out how to better navigate public concerns about safety and visibility. \u201cBut certainly, there\u2019s no question that Scandia Wind caused a big dustup during that time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This story was originally published byInside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of Grist’s Climate Desk collaboration on Nov. 28, 2023. By Nicole Pollack, Inside Climate News At the tail end of the [Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":61101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13,120,528,14,50,328],"class_list":{"0":"post-61100","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-canada","9":"tag-clean-energy","10":"tag-electrification","11":"tag-featured","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-wind-power"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGreat Lakes offshore wind - Thoughtful Journalism About Energy's Future<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Glimmers of the Great Lakes offshore wind boom arose from the depths of the Great Recession on both the U.S. and Canadian sides of the lakes.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/energi.media\/news\/what-happened-to-the-great-lakes-offshore-wind-boom\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Great Lakes offshore wind - 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