Atlantic article on climate debate impasse

Is this a Three Mile Island moment for offshore wind? 

By  Charlie Siler

Nantucket residents were shocked in July when shards of fiberglass began washing up on their beaches, the result of an offshore wind turbine blade falling into the ocean and disintegrating. Beaches were closed, and parts of the Vineyard Wind project, now under construction, were put on hold. Fishermen are protesting, and a federal investigation is underway. 

A few days ago, there was another blade failure at the Dogger Bank Wind Farm off the coast of England. And it turns out that there was an earlier blade failure in May 2024 at Dogger Bank, for a total of three failures involving the GE Vernova Haliade-X turbine, according to the Nantucket Current. 

It brings to mind the meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in 1979. No one was injured, yet the accident caused a panic. Thousands of people were evacuated. The nuclear industry was quickly saddled with a bevy of new federal regulations, and it never recovered from the loss of the public’s trust. Nuclear financing dried up, and dozens of nuclear reactors were canceled, resulting in a shift to coal-fired power to meet the nation’s electricity needs. 

The parallel between TMI and the blade disasters is obvious: A new, heavily subsidized “clean-power” industry, poorly understood by the public and struggling with high borrowing costs, suddenly scares everyone with an accident, then fails to quickly explain what happened and why.  

Listen to what Nantucket lobsterman Dan Pronk had to say about the disaster, according to National Wind Watch: “It’s affecting our lives negatively in numerous ways, and it’s also affecting my livelihood. Between the garbage washing up on our beaches daily, to our electric rates possibly tripling. The wildlife these things are killing. It’s all foreign-owned. I could go on and on. There aren’t any positive sides to these things.” 

NWW went on to quote resident Mary Chalke: “The blade went in and as you know, it’s 60 tons of fiberglass shards and foam into the water and this is the heart of the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale habitat. They’re baleen whales. They feed by skimming the surface of the water. So they’re going to be ingesting it as this gets broken down into microplastics, and our fish, and our seals.” 

As of now, we have more questions than answers. How common is it for blades to fall off of ocean turbines and disintegrate? Has this happened before? When it does, what are the disclosure requirements for wind companies? Who pays for the cleanup? What compensation is available to fishermen and tourism companies? Do the risks of blade failure increase over time, and if so, is there a replacement schedule based on years in service, as is the case with airplane propellers? How will this affect confidence in floating wind turbines planned off the coast of  California? If a blade can fall off a turbine anchored to the sea floor, would it not be far easier for a blade to drop off a floating turbine that is rising and falling with the waves? Residents in Eureka, California, are being told that they won’t even know the floating turbines are there because they will be so far out at sea. The prospect of a sea full of fiberglass shards could significantly alter the public’s appraisal of the project. 

For the wind industry, this is a crisis in some ways analogous to the Tylenol scare of the 1980s. How the industry responds will help determine whether we see a few weeks of bad press for the offshore wind industry and a return to business as usual or a major re-appraisal of the risks associated with offshore turbines.