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JONES ACT WORKAROUND: The U.S. is going to need between four and six gigantic wind turbine installation vessels to support President Joe Biden’s 30 gigawatt-by-2030 offshore wind goal, according to a new Energy Department national lab-led report out this week.
It currently has zero finished vessels that comply with the Jones Act, which requires that vessels carrying shipments between points in the United States be owned and crewed by U.S. citizens, registered under the U.S. flag, and built in the United States.
But no matter — project developers have found a way around the century-old maritime law to get their turbines up and turning as the domestic wind turbine installation vessel fleet is being established.
What’s happening: The U.S. offshore wind sector remains in relative infancy with just a handful of turbines currently standing off the east coast (compared to ~2,100 the National Renewable Energy Laboratory says will be necessary for Biden’s 30 GW target).
Production of installation vessels, which could set you back a half a billion dollars, is therefore likewise in the early stages and represents the “chicken and egg problem,” said Matt Shields, senior offshore wind analyst at NREL’s National Wind Technology Center.
Project developers have therefore used, or are planning to use, Jones Act-compliant “feeder” barges to transport wind components from domestic ports out to the project site, where the components are then transferred to a foreign-flagged vessel capable of installing them.
And it’s totally kosher. Developers behind the Block Island Wind project off Rhode Island’s coast, the first U.S. offshore wind project to be built, set the precedent. Customs and Border Patrol ruled the plan did not violate the Jones Act and construction of the project’s five turbines, using the Maltese-flagged Brave Tern, was completed in 2016.
Numerous of the construction and operations plans undergirding the more than a dozen offshore projects in the works lay out similar plans, Shields said.
Developers for Vineyard Wind in Massachusetts, the first-of-its-size 800-megawatt offshore project aiming for completion this year, said their foundation components could be picked up directly from the port by the main installation vessel in New Bedford “if Jones Act compliant vessels are available.”
The other way of doing things: One Dominion Energy-owned wind turbine installation vessel is currently under construction in Brownsville, Texas, with expected completion in the fourth quarter of this year. The vessel is already marked to serve two other wind projects in New England between 2024-2025 before being used to build Dominion’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project.
The ship’s hull is 472 feet in length and 184 feet wide, with a main deck area of 58,000 square feet (See a rendering here.)
Shields said Dominion is a “first mover” with its wind turbine installation vessel, but he noted that not all shipyards and navigation channels can accommodate such a large vessel, and the ones that could are more or less “booked up.”
He said he sees the Jones Act barge-to-foreign-WTIV installation method persisting with the current global economic outlook.
“[The vessels] are so big, and so specialized, and so expensive to build, particularly on top of inflation and supply chain bottlenecks, interest rates going up … that the price tag of those vessels might be a little bit of a challenge,” he said.
The Government Accountability Office found that as of September 2020, there were some 50 foreign-flag wind turbine installation vessels in the world in operation or under construction with a crane capacity equal to or greater than the vessel used to install the Block Island turbines — and turbine designs have only gotten bigger since.
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TONGASS ROAD-BUILDING AND LOGGING RESTRICTIONS REINSTATED: The U.S. Forest Service said yesterday it is reinstating restrictions on road-building and logging in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, an effort to settle a two-decade long dispute over America’s largest temperate rainforest, after its Clinton-era protections were rolled back during the Trump administration.
Tongass is roughly the size of West Virginia, and has a unique ecosystem made up of rainforests, fjords, and coastal islands, as well as ancient, towering trees that store more than 8 percent of the carbon accumulated by the rest of the country.
In addition to prohibiting road construction, the Forest Service rule would restore protections making it illegal for logging companies to remove timber in the roughly 9.3 million acre forest.
“As our nation’s largest national forest and the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world, the Tongass National Forest is key to conserving biodiversity and addressing the climate crisis,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement yesterday.
Alaska’s governor, Mike Dunleavy (R), objected to the decision, writing on Twitter yesterday that “Alaskans deserve access to the resources that the Tongass provides — jobs, renewable energy resources and tourism, not a government plan that treats human beings within a working forest like an invasive species.”
ENERGY DEPARTMENT TO ALLOCATE $118 MILLION TO BIOFUELS PROJECTS: The Department of Energy will today allocate $118 million in government funding to expand domestic biofuels production, as the Biden administration seeks to embrace biofuels as a means to slash greenhouse gas emissions, especially in the transportation sector.
DOE plans to award the $118 million to 17 separate projects to accelerate biofuels production— which can be produced using soybean oil, animal fats, and agricultural waste, Reuters reported.
The funding will be given to recipients ranging from private companies and universities and amounts will range from $500,000 to $80 million, according to DOE. The investment is expected to create jobs across nine U.S. states.
“DOE investments are helping to build out a domestic bioenergy supply chain that increases America’s energy independence, creates jobs, and accelerates the adoption of cleaner fuels for our transportation needs,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.
The U.S. consumed some 16.8 billion gallons of biofuel in 2021, according to data from the Energy Information Administration, compared to roughly 134.83 billion gallons of motor gasoline consumed in the same year.
STRIKES TO REDUCE FRENCH NUCLEAR AND HYDROPOWER OUTPUT: A 48-hour strike at French utility EDF against the government’s planned pension reform is expected to reduce its nuclear and hydropower output for the next two days, according to an official with France’s National Federation of Mines and Energy trade union.
Fabrice Coudour, the union’s national representative, told Reuters that disrupting maintenance work at nuclear reactors was “being considered,” and that they could not rule out the possibility of targeted cuts.
“We call for a 48-hour strike … there will certainly be production cuts, perhaps from tonight but probably more tomorrow, in nuclear and hydro in particular, without going so far as to impact users,” Coudour said.
The union has also announced a new strike on Jan. 31, and a follow-up, 72-hour refining strike to be held in early January. The strikes are in response to French President Emmanuel Macron’s newly announced pension reform program, which pushes up the retirement age by two years, to 64.
TotalEnergies president Patrick Pouyanne said one day of strikes and protests would not disrupt operations, as it had sufficient gas stocks to cope, but that could change if the strikes dragged on.
GAS FUTURES TANK AGAIN TO NEARLY TWO-YEAR LOW: Natural gas futures plummeted further today, falling below $3 per MMBtu for the first time since spring 2021.
The front month NYMEX futures contract is now trading at a third of its peak in the summer of last year.
Temperatures have tamed following Winter Storm Elliot at Christmas, and gas demand has fallen from the new record it set on Dec. 23 to below year-ago levels, according to EIA data. The rate of withdrawals from gas storage have also been lower due to the lower demand.
“People thought gas prices were going to be high this winter. We thought gas prices were going to be high,” Dena Wiggins, president and CEO of the Natural Gas Supply Association, told Jeremy. She said she was “amazed” by the price for futures considering where they were last year and added that it reflects the strength of the sector, which has been producing at record levels.
BLM AWARDS NEW GEOTHERMAL LEASES IN UTAH: The Bureau of Land Management announced the leasing of two public parcels in Utah for geothermal energy production.
The lease sale generated $197,558, BLM said in an announcement, a sum that will be shared between the State of Utah, Millard County, and the Federal Treasury.
Geothermal, though overshadowed by wind and solar, is among the energy resources the Biden administration is prioritizing as part of its goal to permit 25 gigawatts of renewable energy on federal lands by 2025.
A new Department of Energy analysis published this week concluded that U.S. geothermal resources have the potential to supply power to 65 million homes.
ENERGY AND COMMERCE FINALIZES SUBCOMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS: House Energy and Commerce announced the leadership and rank and file of its six subcommittees yesterday.
Rep. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina will head the Energy, Climate, and Grid Security subcommittee. Utah Rep. John Curtis, who chairs the Conservative Climate Caucus, will be vice chairman of the subcommittee.
The Subcommittee on Environment, Manufacturing, and Critical Minerals will be led by Rep. Bill Johnson of Ohio.
The Rundown
Bloomberg Biden’s push to slash truck pollution has a hidden loophole
E&E News One company could sink Massachusetts’ climate goals
Washington Post Clean-energy push puts abandoned Philippine nuclear plant back in spotlight
Calendar
TUESDAY | JANUARY 31
11:00 a.m. 2123 Rayburn. The House Energy and Commerce Committee will host its first hearing of the 118th Congress to discuss restoring U.S. leadership in the energy landscape and strengthening areas of economic, environmental, and national security. Learn more here.
