Despite a decade of objections, this offshore Cleveland wind farm proposal never dies, like a zombie. LEEDCo = Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation. LEEDCo was proposed years ago as the first offshore freshwater wind energy project ever built in the western hemisphere. It is now known as the "Icebreaker Windpower"project.
BACKGROUND:
Wind turbine opposition is mainly “not in my backyard” objections, because windmills are big, ugly and produce infrasonic noise. Unfortunately, few people understand that wind turbines are dysfunctional power sources -- they can’t produce cheap, consistent, reliable power, and they are also very effective bird shredders.
THE BIG PICTURE:
This article is about fresh-water Great Lake Erie, near Cleveland, Ohio, versus a billionaire foreign developer subsidized with US taxpayer funds from the Department of Energy. The LEEDCO project is the “trojan horse” leading the attack on our Great Lakes -- a demonstration project for what politicians really want -- more than a thousand wind turbines in the Great Lakes. Last week the Ohio Power Siting Board was supposed to revisit the May 2020 LEEDC0 decision that placed significant environmental conditions on the project. Note: I was not able to find the conclusion on the Ohio Power Siting Board website over the past five days, either because the website was not updated yet, or there was no conclusion last week, as scheduled.
SUMMARY:
The LEEDCo offshore wind application is now owned by "Icebreaker Windpower, Fred Olsen Renewables". The massive size 6-turbine 20.7 MW offshore wind turbine project near Cleveland has produced a decade of controversy, but no windmills, and no electricity, even with generous Department of Energy funding underwriting the project ... that seems to be on permanent life support.
The Ohio Power Siting Board (OPSB) approved the project in May 2020, subject to 33 conditions, the most significant being the turbine blades must be “feathered”, or shut down at “night” (dusk to dawn), during the eight months of migration of many bird species. The developer described the OPSB conditions as a “Poison Pill.” The board’s ruling, supposedly last week, was a way for Icebreaker Wind to begin construction sooner.
DETAILS:
The Great Lakes are a natural habitat for birds making their pilgrimage across the waters twice a year -- a migration superhighway (see “Ohio Birding by Season: Fall” in Bird Watcher’s Digest.). This richly abundant migration route is one of the most travelled in the world. Environmentalists filed legal challenges to these proposed bird shredders -- American Bird Conservancy (ABC) and co-plaintiff, Black Swamp Bird Observatory (BSBO). Water quality, and impacts to fish and aquatic species, are also issues.
Lake Erie is unique among the Great Lakes because its shallow depth provides forage grounds for ducks, loons, horned grebes, and other waterfowl across its entire surface. Shorebirds, songbirds and raptors all cross Lake Erie at varying altitude and locations. Migratory birds are already highly stressed. Raptors inhabit the Lake Erie area, and the US Fish & Wildlife Service has observed the migration of five raptor species across Lake Erie: peregrine falcons, short eared owls, osprey, bald eagles and harriers. Wind turbines in Lake Erie will become bird slaughtering machines.
In 2012, the Spanish Ornithological Society (SEO/Birdlife) reviewed actual carcass counts from 136 monitoring studies. They concluded that Spain’s18,000 wind turbines are killing 6-18 million birds and bats yearly.
This bird carnage is being covered up by self-serving or politically motivated government agencies, wind industry lobbyists, environmental groups and ornithologists, with misleading studies paid for with taxpayer money.
The legal filing by ABC and BSBO provides a major roadblock to the LEEDCO project. The fact that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service repeatedly called for DOE to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (“EIS”) to evaluate Icebreaker. In that DOE ignored the Fish and Wildlife Service and chose to instead use a far less rigorous Environmental Assessment.
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, joined by former Vice President Al Gore, today executed the nation’s largest offshore wind agreement -- single largest renewable energy procurement by any state in U.S. history – nearly 1,700 megawatts. Two offshore wind projects, that will allegedly create enough energy to power over 1 million homes. Governor Cuomo wants to industrialize Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.
Terminating LEEDCo would be a blow against offshore wind, which costs about triple that of the power generated from new capacity from onshore gas-fired combined-cycle plants. New York Governor Cuomo’s offshore plan involves 1,700 megawatts, eighty times that of LEEDCo (onshore natural gas power plants would still be needed for offshore’s intermittent power -- if New York can import the natural gas for such back-up.)
Meanwhile, LEEDCo is in deep eco-trouble, based on excerpts from the Filing IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA by ABC and BSBO (bird conservation environmental groups, called boid groups, in Brooklyn USA):
DOE VIOLATED NEPA
“This case is about the Department of Energy’s (‘DOE’) funding and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (‘Corps’) permitting of the Icebreaker Wind Project (‘Icebreaker’ or ‘the Project’), a first-of-its-kind proposed offshore wind energy facility in Lake Erie. With a cost to taxpayers in excess of $40 million, the Project is meant to spur future development of offshore industrial wind energy in the Great Lakes region and beyond.
If constructed, Icebreaker will be the first offshore freshwater wind energy project ever built in the western hemisphere. Proposed for construction in the heart of a Global Important Bird Area, Icebreaker poses a grave threat to millions of birds and bats that migrate through the area twice each year and/or utilize the biologically fertile waters of Lake Erie as feeding and breeding grounds.
Given both the precedent-setting nature of the Project, and its potential to scar an ecologically critical area, the decision to fund and authorize the Project warranted rigorous environmental scrutiny. Yet, rather than conduct the robust examination that federal law required for this ground-breaking project—one that will fundamentally transform this freshwater ecosystem and pave the way for thousands of wind turbines in the Great Lakes—DOE has instead willfully ignored objections from expert agencies and shirked its most fundamental duties under the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”), 42 U.S.C. §§ 4321–4347.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”) is the federal agency with specialized expertise regarding wildlife and the biological threats associated with wind energy. It repeatedly called for DOE to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (“EIS”) to evaluate Icebreaker. DOE opted instead to review the Project using a far less rigorous Environmental Assessment (“EA”)"
U.S.C. § 706(2).
MY TWO CENTS:
Are wind turbines
really 'green'?
They use cobalt, copper,
steel made using lots of water,
aluminum, carbon fibers,
glass fibers, E-glass,
and highly toxic rare earth
elements that are usually
sourced from China;
S-glass, or high
strength-glass,
is made of
magnesium
aluminosilicate,
Unsaturated Polyesters:
General Polyethylene
terephthalate, amorphous
Vinylesthers:
General Vinyl ester (VE)
Epoxies:
General Epoxide;
Epoxy (EP+GF25+MD45),
(EP+GF30+MD20);
Polymethacrylimide,
foam (PMI);
AS 1302 Grade 230S
rolled steel, concrete
reinforcing bar.