Failure of wind turbine blade off Cape Cod raises questions for Maine officials

The governor's office and developer of the wind energy research array in the Gulf of Maine say they'll follow federal regulators' direction to address safety and environmental issues.

The collapse of a wind energy turbine blade off Massachusetts in mid-July exposed a weakness in communications about environmental and mechanical hazards, raising an issue that Maine may have to address as it plans its own wind power presence in the Gulf of Maine.

Debris from the broken turbine blade, about 350 feet long and manufactured by GE Vernova, washed up on Nantucket beaches. Residents posted photos of fiberglass and foam littering the tony island’s beaches. The online images sparked a tug-of-war between environmentalists who said the incident should not set back efforts to promote zero-carbon energy and skeptics who said the incident proves that wind energy can pollute the environment.

“Obviously, it’s not great,” said Jack Shapiro, climate and clean energy director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine. But busted wind turbines washing up on beaches is far less damaging than oil from broken tankers or off-shore drilling sites, he said.

“The most concerning thing for Nantucket was the delayed direct notification to our community,” Brooke Mohr, chair of the town’s select board, said in a recent interview.

Vineyard Wind, the developer of New England’s first utility-scale offshore wind project, informed the town at 5 p.m. July 15, two days after the incident, she said. Vineyard Wind did not respond to an email seeking comment on Mohr’s account.

In addition, Nantucket officials learned that the local emergency planning office responds to chemical or other spills, not a “mechanical failure,” Mohr said.

Emergency Preparedness Director Chip Reilly said in an email that the Barnstable County Regional Emergency Planning Committee was notified as a courtesy. It focuses primarily on hazardous materials reporting. A federal emergency right-to-know act applies to chemical hazard pre-planning and response and is not a “blanket emergency response” for mechanical components that malfunction or break,” he said.

Rep. William Keating, D-Mass., whose district includes Nantucket, called on the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior, to establish protocols that would ensure local, state and tribal authorities are notified immediately of environmental incidents at offshore energy facilities.

“When debris is washing up on the beach, the first call a resident makes is to their town government, and BSEE’s delay in notifying local stakeholders is unfair to those impacted most by this incident,” he told the agency.

A spokeswoman said the bureau does not “reply to inquiries from members of Congress via the media.”

Maine is at least five years from developing its floating offshore wind array in the Gulf of Maine. Future projects will be in federal waters, under the jurisdiction of federal agencies, including the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and the U.S. Coast Guard, and Maine would follow the direction of the regulatory agencies, the Governor’s Energy Office said in an email.

“As a state, Maine would also seek to learn and understand what steps the federal agencies would take in the event of a similar incident so that we can be prepared to respond accordingly,” it said.

Dave Wilby, a spokesperson for Diamond Offshore Wind, the developer of the research array in the Gulf of Maine, said before the start of construction, the Maine Research Array will have plans that address potential safety and environmental issues. The plans will be a component of the permitting and construction planning processes, he said.

Chief Executive Officer Scott Strazik told industry analysts on a July 24 conference call to discuss second-quarter earnings that GE Vernova identified a “material deviation or a manufacturing deviation” that should have been identified during inspection.

In a regulatory filing for the second quarter that ended June 30, GE Vernova said it has installed 24 of 62 turbines in the Vineyard Wind 1 project. The BSEE on July 15 ordered a halt to power production and the installation of new wind turbines at the project site, pending an investigation, GE Vernova said.

In March, a commercial-scale offshore wind farm began operations east of Long Island, New York. Danish wind energy developer Ørsted and the utility Eversource built a 12-turbine wind farm called South Fork Wind 35 miles east of Montauk Point.