External Sources
An effort to create ‘carbon-free energy’ is resulting in the injury and death of sea creatures, including protected ones.
As the Biden administration expands its offshore wind projects as part of its goal to reach a carbon-free energy system, whales and other marine life may become collateral damage, according to new research.
Two independent studies measuring ocean wind turbine construction noise found that the sound emitted by vessels mapping the seafloor was significantly louder than estimated, and that noise protection for whales and other sea creatures during wind turbine pile driving doesn’t work.
Intense noise causes hearing loss in whales, other marine mammals, turtles, and fish, compromising their ability to navigate, avoid danger, detect predators, and find prey, according to scientific studies.
Robert Rand, an acoustics consultant with 44 years of experience, took underwater readings of the sonar survey vessel Miss Emma McCall off the coast of New Jersey. He also recorded acoustic readings of pile driving for Vineyards Wind 1, an offshore wind farm project under construction 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard.
In his pile-driving report, published March 28, Mr. Rand found that even the most advanced sound-dampening technologies didn’t adequately control harmful noise. The pounding was just as loud as seismic air gun arrays used for oil and gas exploration, long known to cause injury, hearing loss, and behavioral changes in fish and marine mammals.
Furthermore, the noise made by the construction vessel itself, which is not monitored, was almost as loud as the pile driving. Mr. Rand found that the standard formula used by the National Marine Fisheries Service to calculate how noise, over a period of time, affects a mammal’s hearing, significantly underestimates the sound levels experienced by dolphins and whales.
“These are real data,” Mr. Rand, who testified at a Congressional field hearing on January 20, told The Epoch Times. “I measured it. This is not a computer model. This is not a political press release. These are data.”
Many environmentalists fear that noise related to ocean wind farm construction is contributing to “unusual mortality events” affecting whales. From 2016 through April this year, 220 humpback whales have died, according to data collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
“Elevated humpback whale mortalities have occurred along the Atlantic coast from Maine through Florida,” since 2016, the NOAA states.
The NOAA also reported an “unusual mortality event” for North Atlantic right whales, in which 126 have died since 2017.
“The numbers have been decreasing, especially since 2017, when offshore operations really swung into gear,” Mr. Rand said.
“From my experience in noise control, that’s not a coincidence. Noise is an environmental pollutant. In human terms, it’s measured in life years lost.”
The North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium estimates 350 North Atlantic right whales exist in the world’s oceans today.
Pile-Driving Noise
On Nov. 2, 2023, Mr. Rand went out on a 29-foot sport fishing boat to the Vineyard Wind 1 construction site.
The completed wind farm project will comprise 62 wind turbines in the Atlantic Ocean, spaced one nautical mile apart. The project is estimated to provide power to more than 400,000 homes and businesses.
The offshore wind farm is owned by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners of Denmark and Avangrid Renewables, part of the Spanish company, Iberdrola.
At the construction site in November 2023, Mr. Rand said an 874-foot crane ship called the Orion was using a massive hammer to pound a monopile foundation for a wind turbine into the seabed.
The monopile is a steel pipe 31 feet in diameter, 279 feet long, and weighs 1,895 tons, according to the manufacturer, EEW Special Pipe Constructions.
Vineyard Wind 1 implemented two sets of noise controls. The first is a “hydro sound damper,” which Mr. Rand said, is a vertical net in the water around the monopile that’s covered with foam or rubber blocks and balls.
The second is a “double bubble” curtain. These are two weighted hoses lying on the seafloor in concentric circles around the monopile. The radius is roughly 492 to 656 feet.
The hoses have holes in them, and compressed air from a support vessel is forced through the hoses, causing bubbles to rise to the surface. The bubbles are supposed to mitigate the sound pressure created by the pile driving.
“These are advanced techniques,” Mr. Rand said. “They aren’t used anywhere else.”
Unfortunately, the noise mitigation techniques don’t work, he said.
Mr. Rand dropped a research-grade, omnidirectional hydrophone into the water at six locations, starting at 4.10 nautical miles from the pile driving and moving closer to 0.57 nautical miles.
Analyzing the data, Mr. Rand found that even with sophisticated noise mitigation in place, the pile driving is as loud as multiple seismic air guns.
“People have been protesting and the government has been rigorously regulating seismic air gun arrays for years, if not decades, because of their sonic intensity and hazard for endangered species—for whales and other marine species,” Mr. Rand said.
“This pile driving is as loud as an array of air guns.”The Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) makes it illegal to kill, hunt, capture, or harass a marine mammal. Killing or injuring a mammal is considered a Level A harassment under the 1972 law. Level B harassment includes actions that disrupt an animal’s normal behavior, including migration, breathing, nursing, breeding, feeding, or sheltering.
The National Marine Fisheries Service provides a guide to marine acoustic thresholds, which are considered harassment at certain levels.
“Acoustic thresholds refer to the levels of sound that, if exceeded, will likely result in temporary or permanent changes in marine mammal hearing sensitivity,” the website states.
The Fisheries Service notes that Level B harassment is reached when continuous noise, such as a ship engine running, hits 120 decibels, or impulsive or intermittent noise, such as pile driving, hits an average of 160 decibels.
The agency says marine mammals can suffer permanent hearing loss at 173 to 219 decibels of continuous sound, or 202 to 232 decibels of impulsive sound.
Based on his data, Mr. Rand estimated the pile driving noise at the source at 241 decibels. Loudness decreases as sound waves move away from the source. Still, Mr. Rand measured peak sound levels ranging from 180 decibels at a distance of 0.57 nautical miles from the ship to 162 decibels at 4.10 nautical miles.
He also found that the continuous noise of the Orion’s propulsion and positioning thrusters exceeded 120 decibels at a distance of 3.7 miles from the ship.
Why did the sound mitigation measures fail? Mr. Rand explained that sound waves travel through air, water, and land. In fact, sound travels nearly five times faster through water than air.
One likely reason why the hydro sound damper and double bubble curtain didn’t curb the noise is that they are designed to inhibit sound waves moving through water, Mr. Rand said. They have no effect on sound waves traveling through the seabed.
The formula the National Marine Fisheries Service uses to calculate how noise affects a mammal’s hearing is essentially 90 percent of average noise levels.
Mr. Rand used his data to perform the calculation. He found that the National Marine Fisheries Service formula underestimated the sound level experienced by whales, dolphins, and porpoises by as much as 6 decibels.
Six decibels means six times the sound energy.
“The metric is deficient,” Mr. Rand said.
Offshore wind construction ships are required to have spotters watching for marine mammals during pile driving and sonar surveys. If an animal swims too close to the ship, work must stop.
But, Mr. Rand says, because the National Marine Fisheries Service formula is off, the protective distance for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale and other marine mammals is only half of what it should be.
“Everything looks earnest,” Mr. Rand said. “They’ve got the observers up on the deck. They’ve got the protective radii. They’ve got the fancy models. They’ve got all of this.
“But to me, as someone who’s worked in noise control planning for over four decades, it looks like smoke and mirrors.”
Sonar Noise
In his earlier study, published on Sept. 22, 2023, Mr. Rand measured actual noise levels generated by a sonar survey vessel. On May 8, 2023, the Miss Emma McCall was mapping the seafloor for Attentive Energy, LLC.
Attentive Energy won a bid from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in February 2022 to lease 84,332 acres in the Atlantic Ocean, 47 miles off the coasts of New York and New Jersey.
Attentive Energy had contracts to supply power to both New Jersey and New York. Its contract for the New York project was canceled on April 19. The New Jersey contract is still in place.
The Miss Emma McCall used equipment including a multibeam echosounder, side scan sonar, and a sub-bottom profiler, or “sparker,” to reveal geological features of the seabed.
The sparker sends an acoustical pulse to the ocean floor that is reflected back to a receiver. Based on the data collected, Mr. Rand estimated the sparker source sound level at 224 decibels, and peak sound levels at 151.6 decibels at one-half nautical mile away.
This was consistent with the sparker’s manufacturer specifications, but louder than what the vessel stated it would generate in its permit application for incidental marine mammal harassment.
The vessel itself created continuous noise, which Mr. Rand measured at 126.5 decibels at one-half nautical mile away. But as with the pile driving ship, the permit application treated the vessel as if it were silent.
Mr. Rand reiterated that any continuous noise above 120 decibels is considered Level B harassment.
To protect marine mammals, the Miss Emma McCall was obligated to shut down the sonar survey if a North Atlantic right whale came within 500 meters (1,640 feet) of the ship, if endangered marine mammals came within 100 meters (328 feet), or if non-endangered marine mammals came within 50 meters (164 feet).
But, Mr. Rand said, based on his data and calculations, the sonar survey should shut down if the mammals came within one nautical mile (1.1 miles) of the ship.
He says the National Marine Fisheries Service “appears to have abandoned the evaluation of Level B behavioral harassment at 120 decibels.”
“Level A harassment due to cumulative sound exposure level appears feasible depending on time periods occupied and various distances to the sparker,” Mr. Rand wrote in his report
“It is unclear that the mitigation methods set in place are adequate to protect the North Atlantic right whale and other Endangered Species Act-listed mammals and marine species.”
Federal Agency Responsibilities
The damage intense noise causes in mammals is noted in several scientific studies.
A Duke University study published on Science Daily, found that when ship traffic in the Bay of Fundy, Canada, decreased after Sept. 11, 2001, underwater noise decreased by six decibels. This correlated with lower stress levels in whales, suggesting that low-frequency ship noise may be associated with chronic stress in whales.
Researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that turtles exposed to excess underwater noise can experience temporary hearing loss.
The Ecological Society of America published a study showing that squid, octopus, and cuttlefish exposed to excessive low frequency sound had severe lesions in their auditory structures, indicating “massive acoustical trauma.”
To protect marine mammals from the risk of auditory injury and behavioral harassment, Mr. Rand believes federal agencies such as the National Marine Fisheries Service, which sits within NOAA, should increase protective distances around offshore wind construction sites.
“I think NOAA should uphold the Marine Mammals Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act,” Mr. Rand said. “I think they strayed away from their legal requirements established by Congress.
“What I’m seeing is a relaxation of protections. And it’s very subtle because there’s so much apparent concern about the modeling and the calculations and the research on what is an appropriate level to be used for a threshold.”
The Epoch Times requested comments from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, NOAA, and Attentive Energy. They did not respond by press time.
During a hail storm last week, several solar farms in the Needville, Texas were destroyed in an area spanning more than 10,000 acres.
Nearby residents have expressed concerns about the envirnmental impact of the solar farms. F
ox 26 Houston spoke with local resident Nick Kaminski after the damage:
My testimony before the Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs within the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability
TRAVIS FISHER
Chairman Fallon, Ranking Member Bush, and distinguished members of the subcommittee:
Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the reliability and security of America’s electrical grid. The Cato Institute is a nonpartisan public policy research organization dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace. At Cato, I am the Director of Energy and Environmental Policy Studies, and my research focuses on the economics and reliability of electricity, the role of free markets in improving the availability and affordability of energy and natural resources, and environmental regulations that impact the energy sector.
I commend you for your efforts to better understand the impacts of public policy on the reliability and security of America’s power grid.
Executive Summary
Americans depend on a strong energy infrastructure for our health and well‐being, and the electrical grid is the most important—and fragile—piece of energy infrastructure we have. Unfortunately, the power grid is hampered by harmful public policies at nearly every level of government.
The stakes for policymakers are high. Losing sight of the fundamental issue of grid reliability—particularly by endorsing policies that shut down reliable generators or subsidize unreliable ones—puts citizens’ lives at risk.
A recent reminder of this fact was the tragic loss of lives during Winter Storm Uri. And we see the growing frequency of energy emergency alerts across the country, including load shed events in the footprints of Duke Energy and the Tennessee Valley Authority.
During extreme weather, Americans need reliable electricity to survive. Day to day, we need reliable and affordable electricity to thrive and grow.
The power grid should be an asset to American prosperity, but policymakers—through a multitude of subsidies, regulations, and mandates—have wounded it to the point that it is now becoming a dangerous liability.
“We’re building a clean energy future,” says President Joe Biden.
Who is “we”?
Well, you pay for it. He and his “green” cronies do most of the building.
Lately, they’re pouring more of your money into “renewable energy.” They promise to give us “carbon-free power” from the sun and wind.
My new video illustrates some problems with that, using scenes from a new documentary series called “Juice: Power, Politics, and the Grid.”
Political scientist Roger Pielke Jr. notes, “It’s quite intuitive for people to understand that there’s a lot of power in solar energy. We feel the wind. The idea that you can get something for nothing, people find enormously appealing.”
Especially in California, where politicians now require all new homes to have solar panels, all new cars sold in 2035 to be zero-emission, and all the state’s electricity to come from carbon-free resources by 2045.
They’re getting results, but not good ones: California’s cost of electricity increased three times faster than in the rest of America.
People in Washington state pay about 11 cents per kilowatt-hour. In Oregon, 13 cents. In California, now almost 30 cents.
Do they at least get reliable energy for that? No.
A solar farm in Nebraska suffered significant hail damage during an extreme weather event that swept through the Great Plains last week. The 4.375 MWac solar farm in Scottsbluff was damaged on June 23 by the same storm cell that injured eight people at a Wyoming coal mine.
Molly Brown, executive vice president of corporate strategy for GenPro Energy Solutions, which co-developed the project with Sol Systems, said insurance adjustors were onsite June 29 to assess the extent of the damage.
Based on a visual inspection, it appeared that only the solar modules were damaged in the storm, though further testing will be required. It's unclear how long the project will be out of commission.
Moss Landing in California is now the world’s biggest battery storage project at 3GWh capacity. China is also building large lithium-ion battery energy storage facilities. But China is also goign a different route, storing energy through physical weights in Gravity Energy Storage Systems.
EnergyStorage.News wrote on August 2 that Vistra Energy has announced the completion of work to expand its Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in California, the world’s largest lithium battery energy storage system (BESS).
An additional 350MW output and 1,400MWh energy capacity has been added to the plant, bringing it to a total 750MW/3,000 MWh.
Lithium-ion batteries are fire prone and are notoriously difficult to extinguish - the more lithium the larger the fire CTIF.org follows lithium-ion battery safety, and we wrote recently about two incidents in the United States:
By C. P. Colum and Lea Booth in collaboration with The Blind Spot.
Last August, in an amalgamation of ‘The Green New Deal’ meets ‘Build Back Better’, President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act gifted the renewables industry with billions of dollars worth of taxpayer-funded subsidies. What few backing the bill realized was that the largest beneficiary would likely be China due to its expansive grip on the global solar photovoltaic (PV) industry.
Worse than that, it might end up misdirecting the world’s clean energy efforts into dirtier than appreciated energy technologies because of the country’s ongoing dependence on coal-fired energy.
Information unearthed by Environmental Progress points to a gaping oversight in how the figures influencing government net zero policy and investments in solar worldwide are compiled and collated due to the difficulty of collecting accurate information out of China, especially for the purification processes used to create silicon wafers.