Wind farm developers have found unexploded munitions at two sites set to be some of the first commercial offshore wind farms in the US. After decades of military dumping, weapons on the seabed aren鈥檛 uncommon, but the developers will have to work around them.
Despite being a leader in onshore wind farms, the US lags behind Europe and Asia in tapping windy, coastal areas for renewable energy. President Joe Biden鈥檚 administration is hoping to change that, with a goal of developing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030. Currently, there are only two small-scale projects totalling 0.042 gigawatts.
As part of that ramp up, the government has reinvigorated a stalled permitting process for offshore wind farm areas in federal waters. Much of the early development is happening off the shores of New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
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There, Vineyard Wind, a partnership between utility company Avangrid and energy investment firm Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, is building the US鈥檚 first large-scale offshore wind project 鈥� an 800-megawatt farm that will send electricity to Massachusetts.
This month, the crew of a ship conducting sea-floor survey operations for Vineyard Wind found an unexploded munition during work to remove debris. They discovered the estimated 450-kilogram weapon about 40 metres below the surface.
A nearby project called Revolution Wind, which will send 304 megawatts of electricity to Connecticut and 400 megawatts to Rhode Island, also found unexploded munitions last month. During a cable route survey, workers for the firms behind the project, 脴rsted and Eversource Energy, found six unexploded munitions in an area of Rhode Island鈥檚 waters used for training during the second world war.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has now added the locations to its charts, where they will remain unless the devices are detonated or removed, says a spokesperson. The US Coast Guard also sent a notice to local mariners.
Representatives for both projects told 快猫短视频 that they don鈥檛 expect the findings to affect their schedules. Vineyard Wind is due to start delivering energy in 2023 and Revolution Wind is forecast to be fully operational by 2025.
Before the US Department of Defense banned ocean dumping of munitions in 1970, the military disposed of millions of unused explosive devices this way.
The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which is in charge of wind farm permitting, excludes known disposal areas from potential offshore wind development. But in cases where unmapped munitions are found, the most common approach developers take is adjusting the location of cables and turbines, the agency says.
鈥淭hey will reroute their work to avoid the problem,鈥� says Andy Elvin, president of the US arm of EODEX, a company that disposes of unexploded marine ordnance.
Other options for unexploded munitions include blowing them up, moving them, burning out their innards without causing a large explosion or marking them and leaving them alone. However, as the Department of Defense , it 鈥渂elieves that it is best to leave sea-disposed munitions in place鈥�.
