George Stover, a Freeport-based energy operations consultant, discusses the sources and flow of electricity in Maine at a Feb. 26 offshore wind meeting in Trenton.
George Stover, a Freeport-based energy operations consultant, discusses the sources and flow of electricity in Maine at a Feb. 26 offshore wind meeting in Trenton.
TRENTON — Three days after Governor Janet Mills unveiled an offshore wind roadmap, a “comprehensive plan that offers detailed strategies” for offshore wind power in the Gulf of Maine, a handful of unconvinced citizens gathered at the Sustainable Maine Fishing Foundation Feb. 26 on Bar Harbor Road in Trenton.
The idea was to inform lobstermen and interested people on offshore wind development before a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) presentation that opens the Fishermen’s Forum March 2 in Rockport, board member Ginny Olsen said. Energy operations consultant George Stover of Freeport, who has worked in the state’s energy industry for decades, discussed the Maine power grid and its energy sources and why, to his mind, offshore wind power is not a good fit or needed here.
“If they continue down this road, it scares me,” he said.
He is not alone. The idea of floating offshore wind installations in the Gulf of Maine has raised fears and concerns from environmentalists and fishermen alike. When 11 endangered humpback whales washed up dead on the New Jersey and New York coast last month, many people connected what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) calls an “unusual mortality event” to underwater drilling to install wind turbines. But NOAA scientists hold that there is no evidence linking the whale deaths to noise and vibrations from the underwater construction.
And Maine lobstermen have been protesting offshore wind development in the Gulf of Maine since the Mills administration rolled out plans early in 2021 for an offshore wind research array 2 miles south of Monhegan.
Lobsterman and legislator Rep. William “Billy Bob” Faulkingham (R-Winter Harbor) submitted a bill the same year to ban offshore wind energy along the coast. The bill never made it out of the Committee on Energy, Utilities and Technology but a compromise was reached, with no other installation to be permitted in state waters. But the federal push for offshore wind energy is focused on Gulf of Maine federal waters.
“Everybody says you’re not going to stop [offshore wind development], it’s happening no matter what,” Faulkingham said at the Trenton meeting. Afterward, he told the Islander, “I just think there just needs to be a lot more education on this, and if people are looking at it objectively they’ll see that this is moving too fast.”
Faulkingham and Republican members of the Committee on Energy, Utilities and Technology issued a statement Feb. 24 against the offshore wind roadmap, calling it “a blueprint for destroying Maine’s way of life by polluting the marine environment, endangering whales, harming the fishing industry, and increasing our electric bills.”
Gov. Mills has positioned offshore wind development as a big step toward meeting state climate goals of 80 percent of Maine electricity coming from renewable sources by 2030. A new bill currently in draft form stipulates 100 percent of the state’s energy come from renewable sources by 2040.
And the White House is potentially partnering on offshore wind development in 11 states, including Maine. Last week, the Department of Interior announced the first proposed offshore wind sale of three lease areas in the Gulf of Mexico. Maine’s offshore wind roadmap includes a federal lease sale in the Gulf of Maine by the end of 2024.
“We are all in for wind energy, and floating offshore wind development is part of that,” Robert Golden, the White Houses’ senior advisor for clean energy infrastructure, said at a Feb. 22-23 offshore wind summit, where Mills gave a keynote address.
“The Gulf of Maine has some of the strongest wind speeds in the world,” Mills said, “representing a large source of potential energy for Maine and New England.”
But how strong is too strong? Wind turbines can withstand wind up to 55 mph before automatically shutting off, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. At the Trenton meeting, Stover said the shut-off wind speed was 25 mph. Speed depends on the length of the turbine blades, with longer blades snapping off at lower wind speeds, but the technology is advancing.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has been reaching out to Maine fishermen and fixed gear fishermen on offshore wind, with meetings held last month in Portland and online, where 111 people logged on.
“[Offshore wind] is going to have an affect all through the Gulf of Maine,” Swan’s Island lobstermen Jason Joyce said at the virtual meeting. “There is no compromise with this. Most fishermen are weighing in because even if it doesn’t affect us, it affects where we fish and the ecosystem. We don’t want it to be an industrial wasteland.”
