Key to Biden’s lagging wind energy target to set sail after election | Wilnesh News

The United States currently generates less than 1% of the electricity it hopes to generate by 2030 from wind power.

The ship, named after the Greek mythological sea monster Charybdis, won’t set sail until next year, possibly after one of the most pro-green energy administrations in history leaves the White House. As Eric Hines, director of the graduate program in offshore wind energy at Tufts University, said, “In just a few years, we will need about five of these installation vessels.”

The Biden administration hopes to generate 30,000 megawatts of wind power in the United States over the next five and a half years. As of last year, that number stood at just 42 MW, lagging far behind Europe, which will add 18,300 MW of new wind energy capacity in 2023 alone. According to European wind power.

In recent years, building large-scale offshore windmills has faced headwinds such as supply chain obstacles and rising interest rates. But a hundred-year-old maritime law created additional logistical headaches for the United States, which, among other factors, led to delays or even cancellations.

The November election results are unlikely to affect Charybdis, whose operators plan to take advantage of green energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act. But the prospect of a new government less enthusiastic about renewable energy could stymie more projects.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump claimed at a rally in New Jersey in May that offshore wind facilities harmed whales, saying: “We’re going to make sure this ends on day one. I’m going to put it on paper (“There are currently no known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind activity,” the executive order said. NOAA explain.

The first major part of the boat is Formulated in 2020kicked off the $625 million project between Dominion Energy and Seatrium AmFELS, which is building the massive vessel at a shipyard in Brownsville, Texas. Charybdis weighs more than 30,000 tons, has 58,000 square feet of deck space, and is capable of transporting 12 blades at a time, each 357 feet long and weighing 60 tons.

Just as important as the technical specifications, the vessel is also able to meet the requirements of the Jones Act, a 1920 commercial maritime law that stipulates that cargo shipped from one point to another within the United States must be carried by a U.S. vessel . Until now, no U.S. vessel has been able to transport wind turbine parts directly from the coast to installation sites miles away.

Charybdis’ first project will be an offshore wind farm being developed by Dominion 24 miles east of Virginia Beach. When completed, its 176 turbines are expected to provide 2,600 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than 900,000 homes. But in order to install the first two pilot turbines, it had to install parts in Canada to comply with the Jones Act, which added to long shipping times and associated costs.

“Obviously, you don’t want to install a large project like this,” said Mark Mitchell, senior vice president at Dominion Energy, which oversees offshore wind projects off the coast of Virginia. The $9.8 billion project is currently the largest and most expensive in the United States. Expensive project.

Instead, Charybdis will be able to pick up components on the coast, sail to the wind farm site and implant itself on the seafloor using four 30-story-tall trestles, turning the ship into a construction platform. Assembly of the turbines will then begin using a crane with a boom length greater than 20 full-size vehicles side-by-side.

Upon completion of the Virginia project, the vessel will be available for contracting other offshore wind projects along the U.S. coastline. Mitchell hopes Charybdis will not only complete wind farms already under construction but also inspire developers and planners to come up with new wind farm proposals.

“It’s a chicken-and-egg problem,” Mitchell said. “As we start implementing these programs, others can work on infrastructure like this.” He added that state and federal incentives will be passed “directly to our customers”.

But in other cases, federal subsidies aren’t enough to overcome rising costs. One of the main reasons: The Federal Reserve raised interest rates 11 times between March 2022 and July 2023, which was the fastest rate increase since the early 1980s.

Higher interest rates make large-scale construction projects such as wind farms more expensive to finance.

“The construction costs are very high,” Hines said. “If you imagine the time that one is building a project, then you are not making any money from that project. So, you are borrowing money during that time to build the project, and that money is at a premium, And the lower the interest rate, the better.

Last year, Danish company Orsted canceled two projects off the coast of New Jersey, citing “challenging” conditions.

“Macroeconomic factors have changed dramatically in a short period of time, with high inflation, rising interest rates and supply chain bottlenecks impacting our long-term capital investments,” Orsted said. October says. company $125 million paid to the state to stop development.

The Biden administration acknowledges the pressure from rising interest rates and points to tax credits in the IRA as one way to offset the pressure.

“We know there are a lot of different tools that can help us overcome some of the macroeconomic challenges,” said Jeff Marutian, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

He acknowledged the Biden administration’s 30,000-megawatt wind energy target as “ambitious” but pointed to the projects in the pipeline as a sign of things to come. Department of Energy Statistics nearly $6 billion Investments in developing offshore wind power over the past few years include 17 manufacturing sites and 15 ports.

“To achieve the president’s goals, we need to continue making these investments,” Marutian said.