South Fork’s developers, Danish energy giant Orsted and New England-based Eversource, claim the $2 billion project will generate enough electricity for 70,000 Long Island homes.
The New York Post (Jan. 23) reports that Citizens for the Preservation of Wainscott want the wind farm’s cable to skirt their bucolic neighborhood and link to a mainland substation farther east in Amagansett.
Local officials have given the developers permission to begin road construction for the project, a move that has infuriated Citizens for the Preservation of Wainscott, who called the action “illegal and reckless.”
... “Experience in Europe over the past decade demonstrates that the performance of offshore wind turbines degrades rapidly – on average 4.5 percent per year,” notes the Manhattan Institute’s Jonathan A. Lesser in a recent report, “Out to Sea: The Dismal Economics of Offshore Wind.”
Even though offshore wind blows more consistently than onshore wind, ocean-based turbines still operate at only 50 percent to 58 percent of their capacity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
This means that, at best, the giant turbines perform over 40 percent below their capacity, requiring a backup source of power when the wind isn’t cooperating.
... Offshore wind’s alleged environmental benefits also turn out to be illusory.
The raw materials needed to manufacture wind turbines far exceed those needed to manufacture and install combined life-cycle natural gas turbines.
Of those raw materials, none are more important than rare earths, almost all of which are controlled by China, a country with an abysmal environmental record."