Econ Stuff
New offshore wind tech will revitalize the economy
Musial and Ram 10 - *Manager Offshore Wind and Ocean Power Systems at
National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Test Engineer at KENETECH Windpower,
Wind Turbine Test Engineer at Energy Sciences Incorporated (ESI) and **Senior
Researcher at Danish Technical University (Walter and Bonnie, Large-Scale Offshore
Wind Power in the United States ASSESSMENT OF OPPORTUNITIES AND BARRIERS)
NREL. http://www.nrel.gov/wind/pdfs/40745.pdf //Laura T
Offshore wind projects are analyzed in terms of their initial installed
capital cost (ICC) as well as their life-cycle costs, also known as the levelized cost
of energy (LCOE). Cost projections of either type for the U.S. market are
difficult because of the many regulatory and technical uncertainties and
the lack of U.S. market experience. Although the European market is based on
a more developed supporting infrastructure and substantially different regulatory,
policy, and physical environments, preliminary analyses of that experience provide
some potentially useful insight. As in the case of land-based projects, the ICC for
offshore wind power has been increasing over time. Costs jumped
approximately 55% between 2005 and 2007, leading to an estimated
average capital investment of $4,250 per kW for an offshore wind project
in 2010. The wind turbine itself contributes 44% of this total. In general,
capital costs are expected to increase with distance from land and water depth, and
decrease as the size of a project increases, as a result of economies of scale. As the
technology matures, prices are expected to decline. The LCOE calculations, or
the cost of energy produced over the anticipated 20-year life of a project, are based
on a range of factors, many of which are currently unknown and must be projected.
In addition to the ICC, these include operations and maintenance (O&M)
costs, the cost of financing, amount of energy to be generated, long-term
system reliability, and decommissioning costs. Operation and maintenance
costs are higher for offshore wind turbines than for land-based turbines, primarily
because of access issues. It is simply more difficult to perform work at sea. Although
more research is needed to determine the range of these offshore O&M costs, some
reports estimate they are two to three times higher than on land and can reach 20%
to 30% of the LCOE. The LCOE for offshore wind is heavily influenced by the
relatively high ICC and the cost of financing. A significant part of the financing
cost is based on the perception of financial risk and project uncertainties.
These risk perceptions could potentially be lowered through research on
virtually all of the factors that make up the LCOE for offshore wind, but
the larger impacts will come from confidence built on deployment
experience. Under reasonable economic assumptions, offshore wind can be
expected to penetrate the U.S. market on a large scale without
introducing substantial new technologysuch as large-scale grid storage
or smart grid load management. Although these analyses are still preliminary,
NRELs Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS) model (formerly called
the Wind Deployment System [WinDS] model) shows offshore wind penetration
of between 54 GW and 89 GW by 2030 when economic scenarios favoring
offshore wind are applied. These cases used combinations of cost reductions
(resulting from technology improvements and experience), rising natural gas prices
(3% annually), heavy constraints on conventional power and new transmission
development in congested coastal regions, and national incentive policies.
Furthermore, analyses indicate that if wind energy is to supply 20% of the
nations electricity by 2030, offshore wind will be an essential component.
could affect U.S. estimates updated in the future. Some individual projects in
the U.S. have conducted studies providing job projections. Lake Erie Energy
Development Corporation (LEEDCo) is undertaking the development of a 5,000 MW
wind farm in the waters north of Cleveland, Ohio. The stakeholders believe it
could be a strong generator of jobs, partially due to the existing port
infrastructure and supply chain capacities from the areas onshore wind
industry. By the time the wind farm is online, they project that 8,000 jobs
will have been created. In Maine, the Deepwater Offshore Wind Plan is
projected to generate 7,000 to 15,000 jobs.
Jones Act, which has been in existence since 1920, foreign vessels may not be
allowed to service wind farms in U.S. waters. With offshore wind vessels
costing an estimated $260 million and taking about two years to build,
manufacturing of these ships could be a boon to the U.S. shipbuilding
industry and result in the retention or creation of a significant number of
jobs .57, 58 However, the industry will need incentives and financing mechanisms
that help developers mitigate the risk associated with such a large investment. The
Jones Act restricts the transportation of merchandise between points in the U.S. to
U.S. built-vessels. These ships must fly the flag of the U.S. and be owned and
crewed by U.S. citizens. If indeed the Jones Act is judged to apply to the huge
seagoing vessels needed to erect and maintain offshore wind turbines, then there
are a few important implications. In the short term, there would be a
shortage/absence of specialized vessels to service offshore wind farms in the U.S.
The best candidates would be ships used to service the oil and gas
industries that are located in the Gulf of Mexico. In the longer term, this
could be a boon for the U.S. ship building industry. The European experience
indicates that specialized wind system installation vessels, rather than adapted oil
and gas vessels, are required for cost-effective, high volume installation. Such
vessels are major undertakings, as they must support 100 to 200 ton towers and
cranes, are estimated to cost $150 million to $250 million per ship, and take about
two years to construct. Another possibility is that foreign companies already
building these shipsincluding South Koreas Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine
Engineering and Samsung Heavy Industries, Polands Crist Shipyard, and Germanys
Sietas shipyardset up a domestic shipbuilding capacity in the U.S. so that their
ships could comply with the Jones Act. Precedents are still being established. It is
possible that further legal interpretation could allow foreign ships. In May 2010,
regulators indicated that a stationary foreign vessel could be used in U.S. waters to
install a meteorological tower, which would be necessary for offshore wind farms.
But for reasons including the Jones Act, as well as the high cost of leasing
foreign ships and the lack of availability, the U.S. ship-building industry
could stand to benefit.
threshold. The study suggests that offshore wind farms would serve two
important purposes: prevent significant damage to cities during
hurricanes and produce clean energy year-round in normal conditions as
well as hurricane-like conditions. This makes offshore wind farms an
alterative protective measure to seawalls, which only serve one purpose
and do not generate energy. Jacobson and study co-author Willett Kempton,
professor in UDs College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, weighed the costs and
benefits of offshore wind farms as storm protection. The net cost of offshore wind
farms was found to be less than the net cost of generating electricity with fossil
fuels. The calculations take into account savings from avoiding costs related to
health issues, climate change and hurricane damage, and assume a mature
offshore wind industry. In initial costs, it would be less expensive to build seawalls,
but those would not reduce wind damage, would not produce electricity and would
not avoid those other costs thus the net cost of offshore wind would be less. The
study used very large wind farms, with tens of thousands of turbines, much larger
than commercial wind farms today. However, sensitivity tests suggested benefits
even for smaller numbers of turbines. This is a paradigm shift, Kempton
said. We always think about hurricanes and wind turbines as
incompatible. But we find that in large arrays, wind turbines have some
ability to protect both themselves and coastal communities, from the
strongest winds. This is a totally different way to think about the
interaction of the atmosphere and wind turbines, Archer said. We could
actually take advantage of these interactions to protect coastal
communities . The paper, titled Taming Hurricanes with Arrays of Offshore Wind
Turbines, appears online on Feb. 26 in Nature Climate Change and will be published
in print in March.
Turbines reduce destruction from hurricanes more offshore wind key
Carey 2/26/14 Science Writer for Stanford News (Bjorn, Offshore wind farms
could tame hurricanes before they reach land, Stanford-led study says) Standford
News. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/february/hurricane-winds-turbine022614.html //Laura T
For the past 24 years, Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental
engineering at Stanford, has been developing a complex computer model to
study air pollution, energy, weather and climate. A recent application of the
model has been to simulate the development of hurricanes. Another has been to
determine how much energy wind turbines can extract from global wind
currents. In light of these recent model studies and in the aftermath of hurricanes
Sandy and Katrina, he said, it was natural to wonder: What would happen if a
hurricane encountered a large array of offshore wind turbines? Would the energy
extraction due to the storm spinning the turbines' blades slow the winds and
diminish the hurricane, or would the hurricane destroy the turbines? So he went
about developing the model further and simulating what might happen if a
hurricane encountered an enormous wind farm stretching many miles offshore and
along the coast. Amazingly, he found that the wind turbines could disrupt a
hurricane enough to reduce peak wind speeds by up to 92 mph and
had shown that they would fail under the stress of a Category 3 hurricane, the levees posed a silent threat to the
The levee system was taken for granted; no specific group of business
people, residents, or policy analysts focused attention on the serious
consequences for the city if the levees failed. The cost of rebuilding was high; there
was no hurricane on the immediate horizon; other issues demanded urgent attention and
city.
promised quicker returns. Given the range of problems that the City of New Orleans was facing in the period from
2001 to late August 2005, the repair of the levee system fell in the too hard pile of problems, with little thought
Maintenance of engineered infrastructure for metropolitan regions is a long-term policy problem (Lempert, Popper,
and Bankes 2003), one that does not fit the annual budget cycles that drive most urban agendas. It is also a
complex policy problem, as major engineering projects were often financed with federal funding, but once built,
states and cities were expected to maintain them. In uneven economic cycles and as the industrial base for the
City of New Orleans and state of Louisiana declined in recent decades, infrastructuremaintenance was delayed
repeatedly. Presumably delayed as a budget balancing measure, infrastructure maintenance needs to be redefined
as a long-term policy problem. The extraordinary costs incurred from the failure of the levee system following
Hurricane Katrina discredit any form of justification for delaying maintenance for budgetary reasons.
New methods of computational simulation offer a promising alternative for calculating potential risks, their costs
and consequences, and exploring policy options (Comfort, Ko, and Zagorecki 2004; Zagorecki, Ko, and Comfort
2005). Although these methods have long been used by engineers, extending their application to guide decision
making in actual policy problems represents a method of assessing the complexity of urban environments and
developing strategies for long-term policy planning.
constraints; the wetlands in the region could become buffers to damaging storms and erosion, as they once were.
But the vision of the city must change, if it is to become a sustainable, resilient community (Comfort 2005).
because of increased population, rising standards of living and the consequent accumulation of wealth in these
astronomically . Pielke et al. (2008) find that the normalized damages of hurricanes
provides an important warning message for policy makers : Potential
damage from storms is growing at a rate that may place severe burdens on
society. Avoiding huge losses will require either a change in the rate of population growth in
coastal areas, major improvements in construction standards, or other mitigation actions. Unless
such action is taken to address the growing concentration of people and
properties in coastal areas where hurricanes strike, damage will increase ,
and by a great deal, as more and wealthier people increasingly inhibit these coastal locations. An obvious agenda
for researchers and policy makers involves decisions on loss mitigation strategies and plans to lessen these
economic impacts. The domain of potential public and private coping and adaptation options is large. It goes
beyond measures designed to mandate and enforce stringent regulatory policies such as building codes, hazard
planning, land zoning and development regulation. Often, these measures are immensely costly and involve
providing public protection via implementing and investing in major retrofitting and/or structural projects such as
dams, levees, acquisition of private property, etc. In addition to these proactive measures, devastating natural
disasters elicit post-disaster recovery and assistance programs primarily aimed to provide immediate relief to
has spent more than 13 billion dollars to help communities implement long term hazard mitigation projects.
Approximately 76% of total mitigation grant funding have been allocated for hurricane, storm and flood related
disasters. Even more was spent for public assistance projects. Around 45 billion dollars (in 2005$) was given to
impacted communities, since 1999, in the form of immediate assistance to help with disaster recovery.1
Approximately eighty percent of these funds were given in response to hurricane, flood or severe storm related
raise public concern especially as the frequency and severity of hurricanes are projected to increase in the future.
complementary in production times, are combined on the grid, and stored energy in the form of hydroelectricity and
hydrogen and vehicle-stored electricity are used to fill in gaps in supply. In addition, using demandresponse
management; forecasting wind and solar resources; and using excess wind for district heat or hydrogen production
rather than for curtailing, facilitates matching demand with supply12, 13, 14.Including hurricane damage
avoidance, reduced pollution, health, and climate costs, but not including tax credits or subsidies, gives the net cost
of offshore wind as ~48.5 kWh1, which compares with ~10 kWh1 for new fossil fuel generation. The health
and climate benefits significantly reduce winds net cost, and hurricane protection adds a smaller benefit (~10% for
PTX Link
Offshore wind creates jobs and is popular with the public New
Jersey Proves
Bates and Firestone 4/14 *Finance Analyst at New York State Senate and
**PhD Public Policy Analysis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Director,
Center for Carbon-free Power Integration (Alison and Jeremy, Local Community
Acceptance of an in-View Offshore Wind Power Demonstration Project) Public
Opinion of Fishermens Energy. University of Delaware //Laura T
We asked respondents what the believed the effect of offshore wind power
would be on items such as price, tourism, marine wildlife, recreational
fishing, and job creation. Respondents were then asked to self-report the top
three issues you consider to be the most important, regardless of whether
mentioned above, ranked in order of importance #1, #2, and #3 in their decision
to support or oppose the Fishermens Energy project. The written answers were
coded into categories, by grouping like items together. We did not know whether the
item listed was considered to be a positive or negative issue given the wording of
the question, so we separate the top reasons listed by supporters (factors leading
towards support) and the top three reasons listed by opponents (factors leading to
opposition). We list top choice percentages by support and opposition (ordered by
percentage listing a factor as the top reason for support) and the weighted top 3
choice percentages (where each of the top 3 choices is weighted by 1/3 so that the
percentages add up to 100%). For example, if 6% listed user conflicts as their top
reason for opposition and another 58.86% and 0.25% respectively listed it as their
second and third reason for opposition, we multiplied each by 1/3, and then
summed to 21.8%, and then rounded to 22% (Table 2). When looking at the top
three factors, opponents appear to congregate around a few key issues,
where supporters have a wide variety of reasons for supporting the
project. The factor with the widest resonance for both supporters and
opponents is the samewildlife and the environment. Supporters may
view big-picture benefits resulting from reduced emissions and
associated environmental harms from traditional energy generation,
whereas opponents may be concerned about the acute effects on local wildlife.
Interestingly, cost of electricity is an important issue, but only for supporters.
Because offshore wind is not inexpensive, particularly at the scale of the
Fishermens Energy project, it is possible that respondents believe that the project
will lead to large-scale implementation in the future which will ultimately lead to
lower electricity rates. Alternatively, they may simply be mistaken about the cost of
offshore wind (see further discussion at end based on additional statistical analyses)
or they may correctly recognize that the costs of a small project like Fishermens
Energy when spread over all New Jersey households is likely to be quite meager.1
General costs rank as another important issue for supporters and opponents. The
general costs category includes responses including: cost, project costs,
maintenance and maintenance costs, costs to taxpayers, cost
effectiveness, government subsidies, and efficiency. Finally, jobs ranks
highly for supporters. Since this project is relatively small, project
supporters may see the project of a harbinger of New Jerseys plans for
large-scale commercial offshore wind projects and for the construction and
supply chain jobs such large-scale development is likely to engender. For
opponents, location/siting concerns resonate, with aesthetics being a
highly ranked category as is user conflicts (fishing, boating) and tourism.
Certainty Args
America's abundant clean energy resources," Nilles said. "The Atlantic Coast holds
tremendous potential for the kind of large-scale clean energy projects that will
create jobs, breathe new life into our economy and help make us a leader in the
global clean energy marketplace."
the mineral estate has been allowed for decades. Second, it is a basic principle of contract law that parties may contract freely and
the court will not evaluate the merits of the deal as long as the contract is not unconscionable and the contracting process was
fair.176 Third, the risk could be minimized through legislation that clearly defines how and to what extent wind rights can be
transferred. For example, the law could require the contract to include certain limitations, such as a requirement that development
of a wind turbine occur within five years. A law could also attempt to prevent future conflict by requiring that any contract that
conveys wind rights address certain areas of potential conflict between the wind estate holder and the surface or mineral estate
holders. Put differently, the law could require that each contract address what the wind estate holders rights are vis--vis the extent
of surface use and relative to the surface and mineral estates. This tactic is already being used in South Dakota, where the law
mandates that parties include certain terms in the contract.177 Similarly, Nebraska law requires that the agreement clarify the
scope of the responsibilities and liabilities of each party.178 While
A2: Lopez CP
bitter end saw Ed Whelan, Robert Alt and others persuasively counter the
alleged examples of "judicial activism" by the Roberts Court relied upon by
the Democrats -- e.g., the Ledbetter case, which the Democrats continue
grossly to mischaracterize. There's a chance that the Democrats' latest
partisan innovation will come back to haunt them. Justice Sotomayor and
soon-to-be Justice Kagan are on record having articulated a traditional, fairly
minimalist view of the role of judges. If a liberal majority were to emerge -- or
even if the liberals prevail in a few high profile cases -- the charge of
"deceptive testimony" could be turned against them. And if Barack Obama is
still president at that time, he likely will receive some of the blame.
A2: States CP
A2: China CP
Solvency
Federal tax credit key to successful offshore wind currently
not sufficient
Sims 13 Director of Strategy and Finance, Center for Market Innovation at
Natural Resources Defense Council, Studied at Harvard (Douglass, Fulfilling the
Promise of U.S. Offshore Wind: Targeted State Investment Policies to Put an
Abundant Renewable Resource within Reach) Center for Market Innovation. NRDC.
http://www.nrdc.org/business/files/offshore-wind-investment.pdf //Laura T
Federal incentives in the form of tax credits and accelerated depreciation
are a vital part of creating these conditions, and the recent extension of
these benefits by Congress is welcome news.7 But federal support, while
necessary, has so far not been sufficient . For investment to flow to the
offshore wind sector, states also must implement policies that ensure that
projects have: (1) certainty that they will receive sufficient revenues for
the energy, capacity, and other attributes they generate, and (2) sufficient
access to affordable debt capital at a time when the capacity of private
sector banks to fund large projects is limited.
Case Extensions
OSW solves the economy and warming
Musial and Ram 10 - *Manager Offshore Wind and Ocean Power Systems at
National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Test Engineer at KENETECH Windpower,
Wind Turbine Test Engineer at Energy Sciences Incorporated (ESI) and **Senior
Researcher at Danish Technical University (Walter and Bonnie, Large-Scale Offshore
Wind Power in the United States ASSESSMENT OF OPPORTUNITIES AND BARRIERS)
NREL. http://www.nrel.gov/wind/pdfs/40745.pdf //Laura T
In common with other clean, renewable, domestic sources of energy, offshore
wind power can help to build a diversified and geographically distributed
U.S. energy mix, offering security against many energy supply
emergencieswhether natural or man-made. Wind power also emits no
carbon dioxide (CO2) or other harmful emissions that contribute to
climate change, ground-level pollution, or public health issues. The United
States offshore wind energy resources can significantly increase the wind
industrys contribution to the nations clean energy portfolio. The United
States is fortunate to possess a large and accessible offshore wind energy resource.
Wind speeds tend to increase significantly with distance from land, so
offshore wind resources can generate more electricity than wind resources
at adjacent land-based sites. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
estimates that U.S. offshore winds have a gross potential generating
capacity four times greater than the nations present electric capacity .
While this estimate does not consider siting constraints and stakeholder inputs, it
clearly indicates that the U.S. offshore wind capacity is not limited by the magnitude
of the resource. Achieve 20% of its electricity from wind by 2030. In assessing the
potential for supplying 20% of U.S. electricity from wind energy by 2030, NRELs
least-cost optimization model found that 54 gigawatts (GW)1 Achieving 20% wind
would provide significant benefits to the nation, such as increased energy
security, reduced air and water pollution, and the stimulation of the
domestic economy. Revitalize its manufacturing sector . Building 54 GW of
offshore wind energy facilities would generate an estimated $200 billion in
new economic activity and create more than 43,000 permanent, well-paid
technical jobs in manufacturing, construction, engineering, operations and
maintenance. Extrapolating from European studies, NREL estimates that offshore
wind will create more than 20 direct jobs for every megawatt produced in the United
States. Provide clean power to its coastal demand centers. High winds
abound just off the coasts of 26 states. More specifically, suitable wind
resources exist near large urban areas where power demand is steadily
growing, electric rates are high, and space for new, land-based generation
and transmission facilities is severely limited. These characteristics
provide favorable market opportunities for offshore wind to compete
effectively in coastal regions