The Gulf of Mexico’s first offshore wind farms will be developed off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana, the Biden administration announced Wednesday, and together they’re projected to produce enough energy to power around 3 million homes.
The wind farms likely will not be up and running for years, energy analysts and the state’s grid operator said, but the announcement from the U.S. Interior Department is the first step in ramping up offshore wind energy in the United States, which has lagged behind that of Europe and China. The only two operating offshore wind energy farms in the U.S. are off the coasts of Rhode Island and Virginia, which together produce 42 megawatts of electricity — enough to power fewer than 2,500 homes.
One of the new wind projects announced Wednesday will be developed 24 nautical miles off the coast of Galveston, covering a total of 546,645 acres — bigger than the city of Houston — with the potential to power 2.3 million homes, according to the U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The other project will be developed near Port Arthur, about 56 nautical miles off the coast of Lake Charles, Louisiana, covering 188,023 acres with the potential to power 799,000 homes.
“It’s exciting to see offshore wind in the Gulf getting closer to reality,” said Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas, an environmental protection group. “With strong winds in the evenings when we need energy the most, offshore wind in the Gulf of Mexico would greatly complement Texas’ onshore renewable energy resources, help bolster our shaky electric grid and help our environment.”
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“Offshore wind has a great potential in Texas,” Brad Jones, president of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages Texas’ main power grid, told The Texas Tribune on Thursday. “It will take some time to develop, and that time will be based on how quickly we can put together port facilities, the specialized ships that are necessary and train our labor force to achieve this type of development. It is new for the U.S.”
I suppose it’s a sign of the times that when I read stories like this I go looking for the bit where Ken Paxton threatens to file a lawsuit to stop it. I may need therapy. No mention of any such action in this story, or in the Chron story that has a few more details.
The wind energy area proposal is still just a draft, the bureau said. Visitors to its website can comment on the plans, and the bureau will hold online public meetings Aug. 9 and 11 to discuss the proposals.
“Once the final wind energy area or areas have been identified, the next step is to propose a lease sale for public comment either later this year or early next year,” said John Filostrat, a spokesman for BOEM’s Gulf of Mexico office.
The bureau said state officials and wind developers would determine if electricity generated in the areas’ boundaries would flow to the Texas power grid or the neighboring East Coast grid system. The Coast Guard would determine if commercial or recreational boats — including commercial fishing and shrimping operations — could enter the waters near the wind turbines, bureau officials said, adding that they have held several meetings with fishing groups and associations this year.
As a result, they said they have already carved out parcels from the lease area to leave bare for shrimping operations to continue.
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Wind power along the Gulf Coast tends to be strongest south of Corpus Christi, tapering off by the time it reaches Florida, according to a bureau study.
Even so, the Gulf of Mexico has a leg up on the competition, said Josh Kaplowitz, vice president of offshore wind for the American Clean Power Association. The region is home to an entire supply chain dedicated to offshore energy and a trained workforce. Already, he said, a massive wind turbine installation vessel is being built in Brownsville.
“The Gulf of Mexico has a head start, and we should be leveraging that,” he said. “Wind turbine technology is getting better. They’re getting larger, and as they get larger they can be built in a more economical way at lower wind speeds.”
One issue more pressing for Gulf turbines than those in other offshore areas is the potential for strong hurricanes. Kaplowitz said the turbines off Rhode Island and those designed for off the coast of North Carolina have been engineered to withstand hurricane-force winds. He said those built off the Texas coast would likely be designed to withstand winds of the strongest storms projected to hit that part of the coast.
Offshore wind turbines have yet to be tested in such a ferocious storm, Andy Swift, associate director of education with Texas Tech’s National Wind Institute, told the Chronicle in October. Turbines onshore have suffered catastrophic damage in tornadoes, he said, requiring companies to take out large insurance policies on them. That could also be the case in the Gulf, he said.
“The storm issue — it’s a big one. I think people are looking at building more hurricane-resistant turbines as much as they can to stand against the high winds continually buffering of equipment, with waves and winds gusting against it,” Swift said in October. “I think that’s a challenge for offshore.”
The BOEM’s press release about this is here, and it points you to this page for info about public meetings and providing feedback. This is likely the start of a ten-year process, so settle in and make yourself comfortable. Assuming there isn’t already a national injunction against it issued by some cretinous Trump judge in Lubbock or something. Did I mention that I need help?
As much as I am a fan of sitting on the beach with cold beverage in hand, am not a fan of sitting on the beach with said drink, saddled with a horizon clouded by stalled tankers and drilling rigs.
Am all about the wind, blowing hot or cold, north/south/east/west doesn’t matter, but would prefer the visage of spinning turbines appear (well) beyond the horizon if at all possible. 24 miles MAY be sufficient for that to happen (depends on how tall they are, not how much with how much I’ve shrunken in my latter years).
Perhaps the electrical generation will help with powering our hospital ventilators as we all slowly succumb to the 800th and 900th generation of COVID and monkeypox mutations.
The wind turbines, as with waiting ships and oil and gas platforms, will relieve the excruciatingly boring view of an empty Gulf.