Offshore Windpower: A Royal approach to conserving seabirds & migrant birds

The Biodiversity Research Institute is bringing Rowena Langston of the Royal Society of the Protection  of Birds (RSPB) to discuss  the European approach to conserving birds when designing offshore windfarms. Langston was principal author of a February 2010 report " Offshore wind farms and birds. Round 3 zones, extensions to Round 1 & Round 2 sites & Scottish Territorial Waters."  Here are the recommendations of that study, (also known as RSPB Research Report No. 39) (pdf)

"Recommendations. Offshore wind farms and birds

1. Collation of existing information on distribution and abundance of birds in UK continental shelf
waters in a GIS compatible form; ideally bringing together data from aerial and boat-based surveys
and providing a unified assessment by species of priority areas in breeding, wintering and passage
periods, as well as identifying gaps in survey coverage. This would facilitate assessment of risk, but
needs rapid delivery to do so.

2. Comprehensive baseline data collection, using a combination of aerial and ship-based surveys, as
appropriate, using recommended methods (Camphuysen et al. 2004; Maclean et al. 2009, Thaxter &
Burton 2009). Minimum of 2 years pre-construction data collection.

3. Co-ordinated survey programme to plug gaps in coverage and provide updated contextual
information for UKCS waters. To include sample re-surveys of areas covered by ESAS, to determine
whether broad patterns of distribution and abundance remain relatively unchanged or whether
there have been changes that cast doubt on the value of using just historical ESAS data for
identifying marine SPAs or areas of potential greater sensitivity for wind farm development.
4. Further research into foraging ranges and areas used by priority species relevant to each
development area, making use of developing technology such as data loggers and habitat suitability
modelling (also relevant to identification of marine SPAs).

5. Review sensitivity indices for birds in the UK continental shelf waters – either a workshop or email
exchange, with a convener, involving several experienced ornithologists.

6. Collate and, where necessary seek to improve, information on population size, survival and
productivity, age structure and frequency of non-breeding to facilitate population modelling for
priority species.

7. Encourage and facilitate further research into migration and other flight movements at sea, notably
to elucidate routes and variation in these by bird species of conservation priority. Further
deployment of satellite tracking with enhanced frequency of positional information shows most
promise, but currently is technically restricted to larger seabirds and waterbirds. This is an
extension of 3.

8. Deployment of radar offshore, on fixed platforms post-construction, to improve our understanding
of avoidance responses by e.g. migratory waterbirds or seabirds commuting to foraging areas
(Desholm et al. 2005, 2006). Resolve how best to obtain complementary visual observations or use of
thermal imaging cameras. OceanPod (Natural Power), and other similar prototype offshore research
platforms, may be a useful development to facilitate offshore research.
Offshore wind farms and birds

9. Deployment of land-based radar and complementary visual observations at several key locations,
pre-construction, to observe departure and arrival bearings and flight elevation of migratory birds.
Offshore deployment of radar to augment baseline data collection also potentially valuable for
specific cases (Walls et al. 2009).

10. Encourage and facilitate the development of study techniques and, where applicable, mitigation
measures for application in the marine environment and at offshore wind farms."

End of recommendations

Offshore Gulf of Maine Birds - Are new studies good news or bad for DeepCwind?

A symposium of bird researchers came together recently to compare and share the results and data mined from ongoing field studies documenting migratory bird movements in the Gulf of Maine.  It was was described in a March 2011  news article The significance of this flocking together of avian eggheads is that it has become clear that many more birds of many more species than suspected  are using Maine's offshore islands like Monhegan to migrate north and south each year. Like this redbellied woodpecker on Monhegan.

Certainly not what the DeepCwind folks wanted to hear. Now we'll see who much they respect the work of these university researchers.
 
UMaine ornithologist Rebecca Holbertson is quoted in the article “We found the islands had more brush and scrub habitat and a greater number and diversity of birds that we didn’t expect.....We easily, conservatively estimated over half a million birds were coming through the Penobscot Bay area alone. We had no idea of the magnitude of this."

.Image:Black scoters off Monhegan.

 Remember this USFWS Cape Wind bird study excerpt? (the aerial and boat surveys mentioned in it were done by windpower environemental consultants:
"[T]he Cape Wind project aerial and boat surveys resulted in the observation of approximately 210 birds flying at turbine height while the [US Fish and Wildlife Service's] radar surveys conducted for the same project resulted in the tabulation of over 127,697 targets within the proposed rotor swept zone...."

That's what they're discovering up here now.
Will Ocean Windpower developers  find sections of the Gulf of Maine never visited by birds? I can't think what else would be a happy discovery for Dagher and company. One can't help but worry that there aren't many places like that out there.
Stay tuned

DeepCwind Report misses the boat

Today's announcement by the public affairs staff of the University of Maine's DeepCwind Consortium  of the release of its report is raising a few eyebrows.

"Not so fast!" I cautioned, being  a critic of DeepCwind's controversial proposal to site its windpower research site in the middle of  one of the world's most painted, most beloved, most fecund ocean places.   

I was speaking with a TV producer, whose only crew was, alas, nearing Augusta whilst he himself was enroute to Orono, to cover Dr Dagher's latest Dog & Pony show, DeepCwind's report the   "The Offshore Wind Report just issued by DeepCwind raises as many questions as it answers."

"Not only is Judge Jeffrey Hjelm of Knox Superior Court yet to rule on a lawsuit challenging the state's decision to allow the DeepCwind project to be sited off Monhegan," I said,  "the Department of Energy is dragging its feet on deciding whether to fund the DeepCwind project with the tens of millions of bucks the Consortium expects and needs to get moving."

I read to him (and later emailed him) an email I'd gotten from the Department of Energy on why they were already a month late issuing their draft environmental Assessment. Showing how confused things are in fed land, the Dept of Energy's NEPA coordinator wrote that the "DeepCWind project is still going through internal DOE reviews and revisions. I would not be able to give you an exact date but we anticipate posting it for public review and comment in the next 3-8 weeks." 

 

Three to eight weeks away from releasing even the first draft of the necessary Environmental Assessment that must be reviewed and commented on the promised multi-millions of dollars in federal funding become available. And it was supposed to come out in early February. DeepCwind's cash burn rate is one that has eaten up the last million dollars; the next millions may not come quite as quickly as they'd hoped.

I don't see why Dr Dagher and friends are celebrating: the Fat Lady hasn't even cleared her throat yet, let alone sung.

"While the Consortium's  report is hefty, it does not address some of the most critical issues that now the Federal energy regulators are being faced with," I told the newsguy.  "Is one of the other 2 sites along the Maine coast a better location, after all?"

Topping that list of concerns is a need to discover to what extent ocean windmills placed in the path of migrating lobster larvae will divert some of those young lobsters away from Penobscot Bay and out into the deep Gulf of Maine where survival is less likely.

University of Maine Marine scientist Pete Jumars  acknowledges quite candidly in the report that the "upwelling" effects that extracting  wind energy with an ocean windmill are now known to cause will make changes in the Gulf of Maine's water column. in the area beneath the windfarm and 'downstream in the passing currents. 


Where are those locations?   The state has picked four sites right smack in the  midst of the critical Maine Coastal Current, including one the most easterly site, athwart a junction point where a large piece of the Eastern Maine Coastal Current diverts in to Penobscot Bay.
 

But inexplicably, beyond that acknowledgement, is action suggested? Poor Pete Jumars! Caught between the Scylla of scientific rigor and the Charybdis of Cianbro and the rest of the impatiently waiting companies and University of Maine's administrators . In a section of the report apparently written by him,  Jumars accepts Brostrom's 2008 predictions of forced upwellings beneath operating ocean windmills - at 1 meter per day over large area (pg 5-47);  notes that the effects would be noticeable "several kilometers" away (page 5-70); and recommends using upstream and downstream buoys, along with gliders to measure how powerful the upwelling force is, to help them address "potential concerns about increased phytodetrital fluxes to the seabed." (page 5-74 of the report.).  

Bravo Dr! I mean it!

So is it time  to prepare an EIS?  While such a possibility probably leads to sleepless nights for Jumars, Dr. Dagher and the rest of the  deepwater offshore windpower extraction crew, it may be necesssary, unless DeepCwind agrees to a few small but important additional improvements to their research plan. Calling Bob Steneck!

Because while an artificial upwelling is a good thing at the right season, if and when a floating  wind farm is anchored within  in the Eastern Maine Coastal Current, (as  State Planning Office proposes), the oasis of nutrients may confuse and divert passing lobster larvae into perceiving they've reached a good home. A lethal error: given the lack of possibilities for burrowing on a submerged windmill shaft, the lobsters cannot hide, to the great joy of predaceous fishes and seals attracted to the floating poles.

Worse, the natural predators of freeswimming lobster larvae could soon be exploiting the floating windmills' submerged habitats, using them as  bases from which to prey on the passing baby lobsters, which travel  in great numbers every year to Penobscot Bay and points south from Canadian waters of the northern Gulf of Maine.

Finally, the endless plume of water  brought up from the seafloor beneath the anchored  ocean windfarm is dense and cold.  It may form a kind of blockage to the passing  warmer surface current  water and could divert some of the Eastern Maine Coastal Current away from the coast, baby lobsters and all, to an uncertain fate.

But DeepCwind Consortium  doesn’t want to deal with the upwelling issues beyond hoping for the best and hoping on dealing with whatever problems crop up after the fact.

I think the US Department of Energy will have to take on that question, if the court doesn't first. 

Stay tuned!"

BACKGROUND

1. EMAIL from Dept of Energy on delaying decision

From: Margason, Laura <laura.margason@go.doe.gov>
Date: Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 9:48 AM
Subject: RE: DOE/EA-1792 draft env assessment UMaine DeepCwind - update?
To: Ron Huber <coastwatch@gmail.com>

Mr. Huber,

At this time, the draft Environmental Assessment for the University of
Maine's DeepCWind project is still going through internal DOE reviews
and revisions. I would not be able to give you an exact date but we
anticipate posting it for public review and comment in the next 3-8
weeks. I do have you and your organization on our mailing list for this
project and you will receive a postcard Notice of Availability when it
is out for public review. All our documents are put onto the Golden
Field Office Public Reading Room web site for the public to access.
The web site is http://www.eere.energy.gov/golden/NEPA_DEA.aspx

Thank you,
Laura Margason,  NEPA Specialist, 720.356.1322

2. BROSTROM CITED BY UMAINE RESEARCHER IN RECENT PRESENTATION
Go to page 13 of Pete Jumar's pdf file of his recent presentation; it is the Brostrom paper, with Dr. Jumar's side notes on it

When it comes to offshore windpower, the Shadow knows....

The ocean windpower extraction industry is now nervous about how more serious than earlier believed is the problem of "wind shadow" when positioning the mega windcomplexes envisioned off the Atlantic coast far enough apart to not reduce the wind too much between them.  The data from the Norwegian and other european ocean windmill operations is in and it is not pretty.

Read the January 10, 2011 letter from Blue Water Wind to federal wind agency BOEMRE: "...mitigation of potential shadowing effects on the Mid‐Atlantic Wind Park off Delaware must be considered"..."In this case, NRG Bluewater’s analysis indicates that turbines in the northern reaches of the Maryland RFI area will shadow some of the southernmost turbines of the proposed Mid‐Atlantic Wind Park." 

QUESTION: If impact of shadowing is enough to affect the performance of ocean windmills miles away, what affect must  wind energy extraction be having on the energetics of the oceanic ecosystem in the air and water currents flowing though these windparks? The significance of this on coastal currents is only beginning to be understood . Could Penobscot Bay lose its lobsters?  Could the Chesapeake lose its blue crabs? 

The Shadow knows....or those who plan to make those shadows.

Theoretically, yes, if larvae-bearing surface currents are slightly diverted from their landward wind drift by the giant wind armadas proposed to be stationed off the atlantic coast, from Maine to North Carolina, they could very well end of missing their home bays.

The War of 1810 - Maine's fishermen move to repel Big Wind invaders from their home waters.

A good day for fishermen at Maine's State Legislature concerning LD 1810, An Act To Implement the Recommendations of the Governor's Ocean Energy Task Force.  

Listen to testimony at the March 11 hearing

Prelude to battle. In the 36 hours before the hearing, members of the Utility and Energy Committee  heard loud and clear from Maine fishermen about their extreme displeasure with the notion of this bill opening up Maine state waters to nearshore commercial windfarms, pushing scallopers shrimpers & groundfishermen out.  

A war of words.  At the hearing, not only fishery activists, but Representative Leila Percy, co-chair of the Marine Resources Committee, let them know both that the bill  threatened Maine fishermen and was not acceptable, and that she spoke for Speaker of the House Hannah Pingree (who couldn't be there)  on this as well.  Listen to Representative Percy here (2 minute mp3)  Other legislators too, chimed in that their constituents weren't having any part of it.. Listen to them all  (7 recordings so far; more being added. Keep checking back)

Shock and awe. As the TV cameras rolled, and energy lobbyists reeled in dismay,  the Utility and Energy Committee switched from unqualified support for LD 1810, to acknowledging two alternatives: either 

(1) turning LD 1810 into a Resolve, and shipping it round  to other legislative committees and commercial fishing communities next year before taking any action, or 

(2)  removing from the bill all wording related to anything that would facilitate  commercial windfarm operations in Maine state waters.

Under # 2, the bill would continue with sections that give the wind industry tax breaks and immunizes it from a variety of conservation and environmental laws, also known as  "streamlining"  the laws.  "Streamlining? More like amputating the law," one conservation  activist grumped to the committee,  and the room filled with uneasy laughter.

Also remaining in the altered LD 1810  would be a controversial "Welfare Wind" section, This part of the bill forces Mainers to subsidize the wind industry by requiring electricity utilities to purchase wind-generated power for triple what they pay Bangor Hydro and other  electricity providers,  but then allows the utilities  to pass  the increased cost on to Maine consumers.

The Enemy of my enemy is my Friend. The oil heating industry also showed up in opposition to LD 1810  In particular, they opposed a section that calls for phasing their industry out of the home and commercial heating business and requiring Maine consumers to use electricity for heating.  

While oil and lobsters don't mix well in nature, in Augusta they may together push LD 1810, and the energy industry behind it, far away from its original goals.  


Counteroffensive in the offing?  The Windies will surely strike back and try to retake the conceptual ground , will try to recapture the bill and keep it as they wrote it.  It will be important for those concerned with keeping Maine state waters open for fishing and closed to wind extraction to keep up the pressure on legislators   The work session where the final decision will be made will happen  next week. 


Stay tuned. Stay ready.