13 Things You Should Know about Offshore Wind turbines (on the US Pacific coast)
Offshore wind is NOT “green.”
Offshore wind is NOT “clean.”
Offshore wind is NOT “renewable.”
Offshore wind does NOT replace fossil fuels, but requires more fossil fuel production.
Offshore wind negatively impacts local commercial fishing, and tourism.
Offshore wind kills whales, dolphins, seals, sea lions, sea otters, sea birds and negatively impacts all marine life and threatens ocean health.
Offshore wind industrializes and pollutes our coastlines and harms human health of onshore residents.
…. Is being proposed offshore of Crescent city…. And in Brookings, Coons baby, Humboldt bay… Here are thirteen things you should know about offshore wind plans for the Pacific coast…
1 Offshore wind has a massive carbon footprint, and produces negative energy! After the costs of producing, transporting, installing, maintaining, and decommissioning turbines are all factored in, offshore wind produces negative energy, meaning it takes more energy to invest in offshore-wind facilities than they can ever produce.
2 Offshore wind is extremely expensive. Costing tax payers billions to trillions. It will also not reduce, but increase, energy costs for consumers.
3 Offshore wind turbines are colossal, and visually pollute the horizon line. Turbines planned for our coast measure between 900-1,100 feet, larger than the Eiffel Tower, as large as the Empire State building, and three times the size of the Statue of Liberty, for just one single turbine. They would rest on platforms the size of a baseball stadium, 350 x 450 feet, with blades measuring at 300 feet each, hundreds (and possibly thousands) are planned, taking up hundreds of acres of ocean.
4 Offshore wind is polluting, supports conflict mineral mining, and is NOT green. To produce wind turbines, the mining of rare earth minerals, and conflict minerals are necessary and require massive amounts of steel and concrete—all activities linked to habitat destruction, pollution and human rights violations. Petroleum oil is needed to lubricate the blades, which commonly drips into the ocean. And the blades of turbines are made from balsa wood (in addition to fiberglass and steel), contributing to global deforestation.
5 Offshore wind does not end or reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, but increases it. Fossil fuels are burned in mining, construction, transportation and maintenance and are directly linked to turbine installations for back-up power anytime the wind drops off. So far, each time a wind or solar facility has been installed onshore, new “natural” gas plants are constructed to provide energy for lag time in order to prevent power outages.
6 Offshore wind increases EMF pollution in our oceans and onshore. To transport energy from wind turbines, hundreds of miles of massive deep-sea cables are needed. The EMFs (electromagnetic fields) produced by these cables are harmful to crustaceans, sharks and other marine life. Infrasound (sound vibrations below the human audible threshold) disturb and sicken human populations onshore within twenty miles of turbines. Additionally, new power lines onshore and new power substations both on and offshore are necessary for offshore wind, further adding to EMF pollution known to kill birds and insects, and increase asthma and leukemia in nearby residents.
7 Offshore wind interferes with ocean upwelling. Natural wind-driven upwelling in the California Current is responsible for much of the primary productivity that sustains one of the richest ecosystems on the planet, and is thereby considered the foundation of the entire oceanic food web on the Pacific coast. Offshore turbines on the proposed scale can shift natural upwelling with “unknown consequences”, but likely killing plankton and disrupting whole ocean ecosystems, negatively impacting marine life and fisheries.
8 Offshore wind harms fisheries. Deep sea anchor chains, as thick as a human body, are needed to secure wind turbines. These chains continually drag across the ocean floor, disrupting marine ecosystems and suffocating fish. The artificial light (added to turbines) and noise pollution from the turbine rotating blades, infrasound and sonar from ocean floor surveying, all disturb, displace and kill fish and other marine life, while the spinning blades directly kill all kinds of birds including endangered species, in the hundreds of thousands.
9 Offshore wind crowds ports. Increased boat traffic for installation and maintenance in our harbors, adds to noise and water pollution, disturbs local residents, tourists and marine mammals. For current offshore proposals, 26 ports will be needed for assembly and transport of turbine installation materials, threatening to further industrialize most of our coasts.
10 Offshore wind will NOT provide new jobs, or help the local economy in any way at all.
Most employment gains for these projects (as witnessed with offshore wind on the east coast) do not come locally, rather, foreign-based Wind corporations import their own skilled-labor teams, while any local gains that are seen will be short-lived only. Local politicians push for these wasteful projects because they see dollar-signs for themselves in the form of federal grants, but pretend that locals will benefit. Failed solar and wind farms onshore also testify to this trend where towns promised long-term jobs have turned to ghost towns. These projects are not sustainable, so they cannot bring long-term localized economic benefits.
11 Offshore wind will industrialize our ocean—206 square miles of northern California, and over 500 square miles total represent the industrial ocean footprint of currently proposed offshore wind projects (in the permitting process), with this total possibly doubling or tripling if these insane schemes are allowed to continue. The Pacific Ocean is one of the last largest wildernesses left on our planet, already trying to cope with current levels of ocean industrialization and pollution, may not be able to cope with an added burden so great. Half of the oxygen we breathe is produced by ocean photo-synthesizers like phytoplankton and seaweed. Ocean industrialization threatens to reduce critical planetary oxygen levels.
12 Offshore wind substations are major polluters. Factory-sized floating substations gush boiling hot water into the ocean. These also use sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) to insulate electronics which cause greenhouse gas effects 23,500 times the warming power of CO2, and like the above-mentioned petroleum oil used to lubricate blades—it leaks.
13 Offshore wind is a grand experiment, conducted at the expense of tax payers and the environment. Over 500 sea acres have been “leased” to the highest bidder for offshore wind on our coast. Most of similar leases on the east coast have not gotten off the ground, as they are proving too costly and otherwise not feasible, even in shallower calmer waters with smaller turbines. 1,000 feet turbines in seas over 200 feet deep up to 20 or more miles offshore in rough wild ocean has never before been attempted. There is no real-life data, only computer model “data”. Yet the BOEM permitting office believes these projects involving hundreds of turbines, costing over $10 billion in subsidies, will have “no significant environmental impact”, not requiring any environmental review.
Resources – For More Information:
https://www.protectthecoastpnw.org
https://offshorewindpowerhub.org
https://wind-watch.org
Planet of the Humans documentary film: