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You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Thursday Evening Open Thread: The Work Goes On

Thursday Evening Open Thread: The Work Goes On

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This is more significant in the long term, even if it does mean President Biden will never get another invitation from the millionaires on Martha’s Vineyard:

… Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said her department hopes to hold lease sales by 2025 off the coasts of Maine, New York and the mid-Atlantic, as well as the Carolinas, California, Oregon and the Gulf of Mexico. The projects are part of Biden’s plan to address global warming and could avoid about 78 million metric tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions, while creating up to 77,000 jobs, officials said.

“The Interior Department is laying out an ambitious road map as we advance the administration’s plans to confront climate change, create good-paying jobs and accelerate the nation’s transition to a cleaner energy future,” Haaland said. “We have big goals to achieve a clean energy economy and Interior is meeting the moment.”

In addition to offshore wind, the Interior Department is working with other federal agencies to increase renewable energy production on public lands, Haaland said, with a goal of at least 25 gigawatts of onshore renewable energy from wind and solar power by 2025.

Haaland and Amanda Lefton, director of department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said officials hope to reduce potential conflicts with fishing groups and other ocean users as much as possible. “This means we will engage early and often with all stakeholders prior to identifying any new wind energy areas,” Lefton said in a statement…

The bureau completed its review of a construction and operations plan for the Vineyard Wind project 15 miles off the Massachusetts coast earlier this year. The agency is reviewing nine additional projects, including the South Fork wind farm near New York’s Long Island and the Ocean Wind project off New Jersey.

Vineyard Wind is expected to produce about 800 megawatts of power and South Fork about 132 megawatts. Ocean Wind, the largest project, has a total capacity of 1,100 megawatts, enough energy to power 500,000 homes across New Jersey…

In a related announcement, the Energy Department said it is spending $11.5 million to study risks that offshore wind development may pose to birds, bats and marine mammals, and survey changes in commercial fish and marine invertebrate populations at an offshore wind site on the East Coast.

The department will spend $2 million on visual surveys and acoustic monitoring of marine mammals and seabirds at potential wind sites on the West Coast.

“In order for Americans living in coastal areas to see the benefits of offshore wind, we must ensure that it’s done with care for the surrounding ecosystem by coexisting with fisheries and marine life – and that’s exactly what this investment will do,″ Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a news release.

Reader Interactions

56Comments

  2. 2.

    ronno2018

    The former idiot president did not like wind farms. Another reason I hope to the great spaghetti monster that guy does not get elected again.

  4. 4.

    dmsilev

    The former President is invited to literally go tilt at windmills. Offshore, so clearly he’ll have to ride a seahorse.

  6. 6.

    Freemark

    The trail is just across the Susquehanna from my house.

    As for the wind farms I hope they don’t put one in the Gulf of Mexico. I can’t imagine the horrendous ecological damage a wind spill could cause. Bad enough we occasionally have minor oil spills there but at least they can be limited. Wind is much harder to contain.

  13. 13.

    Burnspbesq

    @Baud:

    Doesnt matter. The filing of the suit will be front page news and will reconfirm to right wing Texans his unending hatred of all things Federal. He runs on a platform of suing the Feds, and the median voter doesn’t think to ask whether he got any results.

    The granting of the motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim will, at best, be on page A13, and he won’t be sanctioned.

  15. 15.

    Geminid

    Just a few years ago there was a real prospect of oil drilling off the Atlantic seaboard. Pushback from seaside communities helped delay this long enough for cheaper oil from horizontal drilling and fracking on the mainland to make offshore drilling uneconomic. Now the offshore wind farms will support the jobs and business profits that oil promoters touted, but they will support clean and renewable energy instead. For decades a transition to clean energy was framed as a tradeoff between the environment and economic growth, but now it is a “win/win” proposition.

  20. 20.

    HypersphericalCow

    How much of this going to use “Rails to Trails”, I.e. using abandoned railroads and convert them to hiking/biking trails? There are a bunch of them in Pennsylvania.

  21. 21.

    zhena gogolia

    Now that Armitage has a new show coming out, he’s tweeting like a maniac.

    For my friends not in the North of ???????. A buttie has nothing to do with the ‘butt’ (apart from the fact it might be bigger after eating) pic.twitter.com/DWyO1NdkqS— Richard Armitage (@RCArmitage) October 14, 2021

  22. 22.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @HypersphericalCow:

    I remember when John first got Lily, they used to go on nice long rails-to-trails hikes. Until he wrote about it, I had never heard the term. It’s such a great idea!

  24. 24.

    MomSense

    We had an amazing offshore wind project lined up for Maine that had been negotiated with Norway but LePage scrapped it.   The nice thing about the wind patterns off Maine is that the wind is strongest during peak demand.

  28. 28.

    Elizabelle

    @debbie:   That’s excellent news.  McCabe (and Strzok and Page) — all treated very unfairly.  And so many others.

    fuck the fucking former guy

  31. 31.

    Dan B

    @trollhattan: One cool option is using oil drilling platform technology to set up floating wind platforms where wind is strongest and most consistent.  There are issues getting long cables to shore and there may be less issues with rotor types that produce lower stress on the platforms and cabling/ anchorage but we’ll find out by building them.  And we move electricity hundreds of miles on land so getting power to the shore is not the biggest issue.  15 miles out is probably not visible from shore but I know we could see the lights on top of the Sears / Willis Tower about 50 miles away on the far side of Lake Michigan.  At 1500+ feet it is not likely we’ll have a turbine that tall.

  32. 32.

    Auntie Anne

    Uncle Joe doesn’t do Martha’s Vineyard – he’s a Rehoboth kind of guy. And I’ll bet the DE politicians are lining up to put a offshore wind farm here.

  33. 33.

    Mike in Pasadena

    About that trail — as Julianni would say “9-11 9-11 9-11 9-11.

    Maybe a January 6 or 1-6 trail from the ellipse to the Capitol?

  34. 34.

    trollhattan

    @Dan B:eYou’re sure right about the size. I’ve seen specs for turbines from GE and Vestas that are mind-boggling.
    At least with an offshore installation you resolve that pesky issue of transporting the blades, et al overland. (110 meter blade radius on a GE Halide-X).​

  35. 35.

    Geminid

    @Dan B: An electric cooperative based in Valentia, Ireland is projecting a plan to use the plentiful offshore wind to produce “green” hydrogen. They are on Ireland’s west coast, distant from the European grid, but cheap wind generated elecricity would be used to separate hydrogen and oxygen from water. Initially the hydrogen could be used to heat buildings and power ferries locally. Eventually the hydrogen could be exported much as liquified natural gas is today.

    A British Isles jackal who is very knowledgable in energy technogy maintains that hydrogen is an unlikely future energy source. But the EU projects hydrogen as a sizable component of it’s future energy supply, and Airbus has floated plans for hydrogen powered aircraft, so hydrogen power may not be just a pipe dream. This could result in floating wind farms in the open ocean where large arrays of windmills do not reduce available wind power like they do on land.

  38. 38.

    Geminid

    @eclare: There is a 35 mile trail in Southwest Virginia that runs from Abingdon through Damascus to WhiteTop. It’s on an abandoned rail right of way. The stretch from Damascus to White Top is steep, so there is a shuttle service for bicyclists who just want to enjoy the downhill. The trail runs through beautiful country along Laurel Creek, and is named “The Virginia Creeper Trail” after our famous vine.

  39. 39.

    trollhattan

    @Geminid:

    Many schemes for storing surplus power from green generation will be needed and hydrogen will surely be in the mix. How it gets consumed I don’t know but presume fuel cells are at least one option. Storing and transporting it is tricky because it’s hard to contain those teensy H2 molecules.

    I suppose at sea pumped storage could be an option, but I’ve never seen it proposed. Finding water’s not an issue. :-)

  40. 40.

    debbie

    @Burnspbesq:

    I would have thought the taxpayers would object. That money would be better spent on the grid, which I hear still isn’t ready for the next disaster.

  42. 42.

    WaterGirl

    @debbie: That seems exceedingly fair

    The Justice Department settled the 2019 lawsuit, which argued the dismissal was retaliation because McCabe declined to give “personal allegiance” to Trump.

  45. 45.

    Roger Moore

    @Dan B: 

    15 miles out is probably not visible from shore but I know we could see the lights on top of the Sears / Willis Tower about 50 miles away on the far side of Lake Michigan.

    Using a “distance to the horizon” calculator, I get that you can see the top of something 150 feet tall that’s 15 miles away. Likewise, if you’re in a 150 foot tall building- not too uncommon close to the shore in places like New York and Miami- you’d be able to see the base of something 15 miles away.
    The bigger question is whether something that size is a big visual nuisance. My friend Google says offshore wind turbines are likely to get to about 500 feet tall. If they’re 15 miles away, that would take up about the same amount of visual space as something 50 feet tall 1.5 miles away or 33 feet tall 1 mile away. That’s not a big deal.

  46. 46.

    Kay

    Bring out the wind turbine technicians for the announcement!   They make 28 an hour here – with two years of experience the team leaders make 70 (home) to 100k (travel) a year and they’re absolutely desperate for them.

    Don’t let Biden leave the White House unless he’s with some kind of green job…person. He likes people. He’ll enjoy it.

  55. 55.

    JAFD

    Local pail-trail proposal:
    https://jcitytimes.com/essex-hudson-rail-trail-imperiled-by-governor-murphys-tepid-support/
    Oneovdezedaze they will finish rebuilding the Pulaski Skyway, then add safe walking and bicycling route along old US-1 / Lincoln Highway, from Newark to the Jersey City waterfront. Hope I’m still young enuf to enjoy it when ’tis done.
    In other news, saw first Bird electroscooters on streets of Newark this past week. Any of you jackals ridden them ? Tips ?

  56. 56.

    Robert Sneddon

    Scotland — 2,762 new COVID-19 cases reported today. The test positivity rate is 8.2%. There were 32 new deaths reported. ICU bed occupancy numbers are 45, down five from yesterday while hospitalisations are 851, down 57.

    There were approximately 6,000 vaccinations carried out in Scotland yesterday (Thursday) with about 65% of these being first vaccinations. 91.7% of 16+ adults are now vaccinated with their first dose and 85.1% are fully vaccinated. 73.6% of 16 and 17-year-olds have now received their first vaccination, up 0.1% from yesterday. 44.3% of 12-15 year olds have now received their first vaccination, up 1.1% from yesterday.

    There were about 20,000 booster vaccinations carried out yesterday. Vaccine hesitancy in already-vaccinated people is apparently not a thing in regards to the third-shot booster programme.

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