Local Environmentalists Cautious But Not Antagonistic to Proposed Wind Lease Sale Off the Humboldt County Coast
[Image from the Facebook page of Redwood Energy Authority]
In response to today’s release of proposed lease sales for the Humboldt Wind Energy Area, the Environmental Protection Information Center, Humboldt Baykeeper and Northcoast Environmental Center released the following statements:
“Today’s announcement moves us one step closer to realizing the opportunity of floating offshore wind,” said Tom Wheeler, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center. “As we move forward, the North Coast’s environmental organizations are going to monitor and participate in project development to ensure we protect our coastal ecosystems while supporting renewable energy development.”
“The proposed lease sales mark the beginning of the next chapter in the development of offshore wind. Through negotiating community benefit agreements, we can ensure that projects go above and beyond to protect the environment, create family-wage jobs, and work together with sovereign tribal governments and our fishing communities,” said Caroline Griffith, executive director of the Northcoast Environmental Center.
“These lease sales are the first step towards the real work of assessing environmental impacts and how to avoid or mitigate them,” said Jen Kalt, director of Humboldt Baykeeper. “Once developers enter into lease agreements, those site assessments will begin and we’ll have a much better understanding of how best to protect wildlife and their habitats as these projects move forward.”
Earlier: Wind Energy Areas off the Coast of Humboldt County Opening for Federal Lease Auction in Mid 2022
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Who gets the money from the lease? Will they divide the check amongst all of us who “own” the ocean? Will they sell us electricity back at a reasonable rate?
How many years will it take – if ever – will the electricity generated by this project offset the electricity consumed in the manufacture, installation, maintenance & eventual dismantling of these wind turbines and associated infrastructure? Asking for a friend.
You nailed it.. it’s an Elitist scam.
Didn’t nail a damn thing.
Critical questions but Lou’s response is rife with ignorance and unfettered bias
If it didn’t become profitable they wouldn’t bother. Electric cars take about 25,000 miles to overcome the excess emissions from manufacture over keeping a used car.
It seems you’ve already forgotten about the last one project proposed in Humboldt. It would have never become carbon neutral in its entire lifetime.
Compared to our current fracking wells, which is a better return?
Impossible to say without an honest accounting. What is the impact from the minerals strip-mined to construct turbines?
I would like to have an honest green energy. I am dismayed at the outsized effort to push green energy without assessing the true costs.
Can we recreationally fish around these offshore turbines or will they harm our local resource? Will their foundations create artifical reefs that home rock fish and lings? What do Indian Tribes have to do with waters they never fished 10 miles offshore?
The fish will be attracted to the splashes of birds struck by the moving blades.
Also, I know I sound negative but I actually appreciate wind power. I just also happen to like informed consent & objective decision-making.
If they kill birds on Bear River Ridge then why not offshore? Some birds count, others don’t?
I’m no expert on off shore birds, Which birds fly 10 miles off shore?
Nor am I. Albatross?
I am old enough to remember when Google fallaciously claimed there were no desert birds near the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility— only to be exposed when owls & falcons fell to the ground partially cooked!
Seagulls? Cormorants?
Ducks?
How far out would an eagle go?
Have you ever watched ‘Deadliest Catch’? There are seagulls flying around their boats 100+ miles offshore.
No, don’t own a TV.
That would be a waste of electricity
There is a much broader history of indigenous tribes venturing far into the ocean than you are aware of.
Can you even imagine for a moment the capability of a canoe carved from an old growth tree?
50’+ long canoe with 20-40 people paddling.
So Native whaling here in Humboldt?
We create fish habitat with pilings,
like a pier becomes a hot spot for fishing
so too for these structures.
Interesting if that’s so, whole new hot fishing grounds? Sounds like a boom for charter business. Better buy a boat while I still can!
BTW, how far offshore to the windmills, will smaller recreational boats be able to reach and fish there?
Don’t see a problem myself. One more thing that should have been adopted years ago. Oil and gas lobbyists have had their way to long.
China has close to 7,000, the UK nearly 10,000.
Are there disadvantages? Yes. But Americans are problem solvers and the technology is improving. It’s a matter of will.
These bird shredders should help kill off the prey-go-neesh (condors) that the natives worked so hard to restore
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-wind-energy-company-pleads-guilty-killing-150-eagles-2022-04-07/
t is estimated that of the roughly 672 million birds exposed annually to pesticides on U.S. agricultural lands, 10%– or 67 million– are killed
Not to mention all the birds killed by power lines.
I believe window strikes and cats kill even more.
And all of these are arguments against windmills, since we are already decimating bird populations.
Windmills must incorporate technology to prevent bird strikes.
Yes it is true that climate change is a threat to bird species worldwide, but there has been no actual scientific analysis of the net effect of wind energy generation versus carbon pollution from other sources of energy generation.
Even if a wind project helps protect bird species worldwide, it can decimate local bird populations.
FWIW, the Altamont Pass Wind Farm near Livermore (I think it was the first in the US) has been transitioning for the past several years away from many ‘smaller’ turbines (still very large) towards fewer, gigantic turbines due to the large numbers of birds killed.
Pardon me for citing Wikipedia:
“1300 raptors are killed annually, among them 70 golden eagles, which are federally protected; in total, 4700 birds are killed annually including the endangered California condor.”
Also, I assume these offshore turbines will be huge.
I never have a problem with people signing Wikipedia. It’s not like we’re writing a scientific paper here after all.
I think your guess that these windmills will be very large is probably correct, and I understand that the very large and very tall windbills might be less dangerous to birds.
We can’t just assume that this project will not have appropriate mitigations for bird kills, but given how rare the successful incorporation of technology to reduce bird deaths is, I think it is fair to be suspicious.
Are you saying there are condors 20 miles out into the ocean?
Absolutely ..Condors fly up to 150 miles per day at speeds of up to 55 mph.
“ Like the Andean Condor, the California Condor also foraged on offshore islands. For example, during the twentieth century, a resident of Oxnard, California, who was very knowledgeable and familiar with Condors and also a close friend of Ornithology Professor Barbara Blanchard DeWolfe (University of California, Santa Barbara), told DeWolfe that she often saw California Condors flying out to the nearby Channel Islands, presumably to raid seabird nests, forage for carrion of marine vertebrates, or eat the carrion of domestic livestock raised there (Barbara Blanchard DeWolfe, personal comment to the author in the 1980s). Fossils of California Condors have also been found on these islands, suggesting that condors exploited marine resources there for thousands of years (Orr 1968; Guthrie 1992, 1993).”
https://ecology.info/condors-htm/
I like that the environmental seem open minded with a participatory attitude.