The Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) recently weighed in on the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) proposal to site two “Wind Energy Areas” (WEA) off the coast of Oregon. President Craig Rucker, who submitted CFACT’s official comments, noted “BOEM should not create administrative “Wind Energy Areas” because the technology being deployed, namely floating wind turbines, have not yet been proven economically viable.”
Rucker went on to note that, to date, the 88 MW Hywind Tampen facility in the North Sea is the only major floating wind project in the world, and it merely services two offshore oil rigs. To put faith in a technology that has yet to prove itself scalable to service hundreds of thousands of homes and business is foolish and needs more time. In addition, the costs are likely to be substantively higher than for turbines planted into the seabed, Rucker adds, and will require the construction of specialized vessels that are not even in existence yet.
To read the CFACT’s official comments in their entirety, click here.