By Neil Jaques, UK correspondent

Looming large over the Great Lakes’ pregnant wind energy prospects is a potentially lethal combination of Jones Act compliance and weak political will.

Created in the 1920s, the hoary, much maligned piece of US maritime law known as the Jones Act, requires all goods transported by water between U.S. ports be carried in US-flagged ships constructed in the US, and owned and fully crewed by US citizens.

Currently however, no US vessels capable of installing offshore wind turbines exist.

To complicate matters further, those looking to establish wind farms in the Great Lakes also face the navigational and logistical headaches of a lock system that necessitates a beam of 23.2m or less.

Ostensibly, European vessels are legally out of the picture. The American Wind Energy Association estimates that a fleet of 16 will be required when – and if – the industry bursts into constructive life.

Tea party politics

But the Jones Act is a mere technicality; the main barrier to any kind of meaningful progress is politics, according to Norwegian firm Havgul Clean Energy, majority owner of Scandia Wind, which presides over the potential Aegir Project, a 1,000 (MW) offshore wind farm in Lake Michigan.

“What you have in the Great Lakes is you have very rich summer home owners around the coastlines,” says Havgul Clean Energy project director and partner Harald Dirdal.

“They don’t care about the economy, they don’t care about unemployment, or the economic benefits that will come with offshore development. They only care about their view. And we’ve seen that the local and state political leadership, they are buying into this Tea Party mentality, and they are letting their political decisions be influenced. There is simply no political leadership.

“At the end of the day what is going to happen in Michigan and around the Great Lakes will be determined by political leadership, not by technical issues at all.”

Pressing on, regardless

In any case developers are pressing ahead, bearing Jones Act compliance in mind. NRG Bluewater Wind – an East Coast offshore wind developer with projects under way in Delaware and New Jersey and big ambitions in the Great Lakes – has taken a proactive stance.  

The developer intends to file a TIGER II application (Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery with the US Department of Transportation) as a sub-applicant for the construction of a specialized Turbine Installation Vessel (TIV) and major improvements at an east coast port that will be a staging area for OSW construction.

In the Great Lakes, NRG Bluewater Wind says it will look to adapt existing vessels for smaller offshore wind demonstration projects before eventually building, acquiring or otherwise gaining access to specialised vessels.

Work-arounds needed

However, creating a market for new vessels is not going to be straightforward.

“A steady stream of construction-ready projects would have to emerge on the Great Lakes wind market to justify such an investment,” predicts Uwe Roeper, president of ORTECH, a leading technology, environmental, and engineering consultancy.

Roeper suggests that other options worth exploring in tandem with building American include seeking an exemption or implementing business “work-arounds”.

The latter, possibly used in conjunction with an exemption, could entitle a US entity to lease or purchase a vessel, and carry out enough modification to pass the “built” aspect of the Jones Act.

“Sometimes where there is a will and a need, there is a solution,” says Roeper.

Low-hanging fruit for European contractors?

Danish offshore wind installation vessel gurus A2SEA is watching the situation with interest.

While the Great Lakes vessel retrofit and new-build industries speculate, A2SEA chief sales officer Kaj Lindvig claims his company is one of the few in the world with vessels ready for action (lock conundrum included).

A2Sea’s Sea Power and Sea Energy vessels are identical self-propelled crane vessels equipped with 4 jack-up legs enabling them to carry out offshore crane operations with precision and control.

This summer one of the vessels installed 90 turbines in 150 days in the Baltic Sea, with comparable Great Lake conditions.

A2SEA is looking at the possibilities of breaking into the Great Lakes market, and has mooted the possibility of joint ventures in either or both the US or Canada (which is not subject to Jones Act restrictions).

Side-stepping the problem

Havgul Clean Energy, is taking a different tack altogether and purports having found a solution that eschews the need for new or retrofitted specialists vessels entirely. 

“The Jones Act is a killer for current technology in the US, but that doesn’t mean it kills offshore projects – it just means you have to move towards more economically feasible solutions,” says Dirdal.

Havgul Clean Energy proposes complete wind turbine assembly onshore before tugging the entire structure offshore - using Jones Act compliant barges - and completing the installation process using ballasting.

The concrete foundation technique, developed by fellow Norwegian company and inveterate oil and gas industry trailblazers Vici Ventus, is applicable at depths between 30–100m.

According to the company, it significantly reduces risk and costs associated with transport (no heavy vessels, no cranes, no lock system nightmares), and seabed preparation, while the installation itself allegedly has minimal impact on marine life.

As the foundation cost is fixed, the solution also favours big turbines.

“We believe that our proposed approach is the future, not just in the Great Lakes but anywhere in the world – it doesn’t make sense to put the turbines on top of the foundations at the final site,” says Dirdal.

While developers are working on ways to overcome the technical barriers, the political framework in which these barriers exist has yet to be made concrete.

Indeed, the Jones Act may even be consigned to history; post Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Sen. John McCain introduced legislation calling for a full repeal, claiming it “hinders free trade and favours labour unions over consumers.”

Bruce Bailey, CEO and president of AWS TruePower, a renewable energy consultancy, which recently completed a feasibility study for New York’s Offshore Wind Energy Development Potential in the Great Lakes, agrees more political certitude is top priority.

“There are a number of factors that need to be addressed and fixed to provide some stability and predictability for the offshore marketplace,” he explains, citing in particular the glacial pace of the permitting process that can last up to eight years.

“It’s still hard to get a real energy standard passed in congress. It’s an uphill battle, it defies logic in terms of addressing America’s needs”, says Bailey. He adds: “Getting issues like that fixed will also help move the vessel problem forward. It is still a ‘what if’ scenario to definitively determine a solution for [the] vessel [question]”.

To respond to this article, please write to:

Neil Jaques: neil_erik@yahoo.com

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Rikki Stancich: rstancich@gmail.com