‘Circularity’: Recyling wind-turbine blades
Wind turbine at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, in the town of Buzzards Bay.
Edited from a New England Council report.
BOSTON
“Avangrid, which is based in Orange, Conn., has begun working with a student-led startup from Yale University on an initiative to recycle wind-turbine blades. According to Avangrid, the company has donated 300 pounds of decommissioned wind-turbine blades to the startup, WindLoop.
“The blades are recycled using a process that allows 90 percent of the material, including glass fiber and epoxy resin, to be reused. This process is very useful, because wind turbines need blade replacements every 10 to 15 years. The blades donated by Avangrid came from the company’s wind farm in Kenedy County, Texas. Avangrid said that it plans to recycle 100 percent of its decommissioned wind-turbine blades by 2030.
“‘Avangrid is one of America’s most innovative leaders in renewable energy, and this is yet another example of our forward-thinking approach to accelerating a clean energy transition across the United States,’ said Avangrid CEO Pedro Azagra. ‘We recognize the great challenges in front of us, and we are helping lay the groundwork to find new and efficient methods to recycle blades that will improve the circularity of our industry.”’
Illustration of a wind turbine for power generation erected by Josef Friedlaender at the International Electrical Exhibition in Vienna in 1883.
Closing on final approval of Vineyard Wind 1
From The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)
“Avangrid recently received the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for Vineyard Wind 1 from the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the last step before a Record of Decision (ROD) that would jumpstart approval for the project to begin construction.
“A joint venture between Avangrid Renewables and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), Vineyard Wind seeks to establish a massive offshore wind farm about 15 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.“Dennis V. Arriola, CEO of Avangrid, commented, “We are one step closer toward realizing this historic clean energy project and delivering cost-effective clean energy, thousands of jobs and more than a billion dollars in economic benefits to Massachusetts.” The project would generate electricity to power over 400,000 residences and businesses in Massachusetts, while also reducing electricity rates, carbon emissions, and creating new job opportunities.
“The New England Council looks forward to the progress Avangrid makes in developing this project for the region. Read more from the Hartford Business Journal and Avangrid’s press release.’’
Lisa Prevost: European study finds wind turbines don't affect lobster harvest
European lobster
Via Energy News Network ( https://energynews.us/) and ecoRI News (ecori.org)
In New England, offshore wind developers and the fishing industry continue to grapple with questions over potential impacts on the region’s valuable fisheries.
A recent European study not only offers good news on that front, it also provides a template for how the two industries can work together.
Research conducted over a six-year period concluded that the 35 turbines that form the Westermost Rough offshore wind facility, about 5 miles off England’s Holderness coast, have had no discernible impact on the area’s highly productive lobster fishing grounds.
The overall catch rate for fishermen and the economic return from those lobsters remained steady from the study’s start in 2013, before the facility’s construction, to its conclusion last year, according to the lead researcher, Mike Roach, a fishery scientist for the Holderness Fishing Industry Group, which represents commercial fishermen in the port town of Bridlington, England.
“It was quite a boring result,” Roach said. “All my lines are flat.”
Ørsted, the Danish energy giant and developer of the offshore wind facility, contracted with Holderness’s research arm to carry out the study, as the group has its own research vessel. The collaborative approach, Roach said, has made the findings all the more credible to local fishermen, who were initially certain that the energy project would destroy the lobster stocks.
“We did the research the same way a fisherman would fish — the same gear types, same bait, deploying in the same way,” Roach said. “We were basically mirroring the commercial fishing method in the area. And that has allowed the fishermen to relate directly to the fieldwork.”
Hywel Roberts, a senior lead strategic specialist for Ørsted and a liaison with the researchers, called the collaboration “a leap of faith on both sides to join together and agree at the outset to live and die by the results.” He noted that the level of research also went well beyond what was required for government permitting.
Ørsted announced the study’s results last month in a press release, even as Roach is still in the process of getting the research approved for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
It’s no wonder the European-based wind developer was eager to share the news more widely, as the fishing industry has proven to be a powerful force in slowing the progress of offshore wind development off the Northeast coast, such as the Vineyard Wind 1 project.
Last year, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced it was pausing the approval process for Vineyard Wind 1, a joint venture between Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Avangrid, to be constructed off Martha’s Vineyard. The agency said it wanted to devote more study to the cumulative environmental effects of the many offshore wind projects lining up for approval.
In June, the agency issued a supplemental environmental impact statement that concluded that the cumulative impacts on fisheries could potentially be “major,” depending on various factors. The federal agency is considering requiring transit lanes between turbines to better accommodate fishing trawlers, a design change Vineyard Wind argues is unnecessary and could threaten the project’s viability.
The developer has proposed separating each turbine by a nautical mile. The transit lanes would require additional spacing.
A final report is expected in December.
The outcome of the Holderness study has “very important” implications for wind projects all over, Roberts said.
“The lobster fishery there is one of the most productive in Europe, and we were tasked with building a wind farm right in the middle of it,” Roberts said. “If it can work in this location, we think it can work in most places around the world.”
Ørsted even brought Roach and one of the Holderness fishermen to Massachusetts last year to spread the word to worried lobstermen about the minimal impact of Westermost Rough.
Roach said he’d like to think his findings “eased some concerns” in New England. However, he said he disagrees with Ørsted that the outcome in the North Sea is applicable to other areas of the world, where habitats and the ecology of the species could be very different.
“There are lessons to be learned and guided by, but I can’t say it’s directly transferable,” he said.
Lisa Prevost is a journalist with Energy News Network, an Institute of Nonprofit News (INN) member that has a content-sharing agreement with ecoRI News.