by Eileen Levandoski, the Hampton Roads Conservation Coordinator for the Sierra Club’s Virginia Chapter. She blogs at ArticleXI.com.
On Monday June 29, Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms held a second meeting of his newly formed Alternative Energy Task Force. This meeting featured a presentation on offshore wind by Neil Rondorf with the Virginia Coastal Energy Research Consortium (VCERC).
VCERC recently completed an ocean mapping study suggesting that a single study area twelve miles off Virginia Beach could accommodate 4,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity – even after excluding areas used for U.S. Navy and NASA activities, shipping lanes, and dredge spoil disposal. VCERC has also concluded that their study area off Virginia’s coasts could generate in the near term more than 15% of Virginia’s present annual electric generation portfolio. Studies by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory have concluded that Virginia has enough offshore wind potential to meet 100% of our power needs.
June 29 also marked the kick-off to the Federal government’s acceptance for offshore renewable energy applications for lease sales. Four Atlantic coast states (Rhode Island, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Delaware) are already lined up with developers in hand, to bid on offshore ocean blocks for installation of offshore wind farms off their respective states’ coasts.
Keeping ever mindful of past activities that attempted to “sabotage” the Massachusetts Cape Wind projects, VCERC has been working steadily to gather as much buy-in from as many stakeholders as possible, to include especially the Navy and Dominion Power. Neil Rondorf also expressed the importance of regional coordination. Hampton Roads with its ship-building industry and deep water port could be the ideal location for developing the specialized ships that construct offshore wind platforms and assemble/maintain turbines. These types of ships will be in demand up-and-down the Atlantic Coast in the near future.
Rondorf also noted that each turbine is comprised of over 8,000 parts. Manufacturing these parts presents another economic development opportunity for our area. Already in his State of the City speech a few months ago, Mayor Sessoms announced that The Carraro Group, an Italian gear manufacturer, was moving its North American headquarters to Virginia Beach, expressing plans to expand its business into the manufacturing of machinery parts for wind turbines.
A few months ago, the City of Virginia Beach sponsored an offshore wind workshop that the Mayor was unfortunately unable to attend. He was instead in New York talking bond status with money people and indeed touting Virginia Beach’s tremendous renewable energy potential. And look what he came home with: “City Keeps its AAA Bond Rating” is the announcement on vbgov.com.
“The City of Virginia Beach’s good reputation and strong financial practices continue to provide excellent results. Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services recently assigned its AAA rating with a stable outlook to the city’s series 2009 general obligation bonds, and affirmed its AAA rating on existing general obligation debt.
The agency cited the city’s strong local economy that “has proven to be highly resilient through various economic cycles,” and the city’s “comprehensive economic development strategy that has been enhancing the city’s position as a tourism and convention destination while simultaneously diversifying its economic base.”
The Sierra Club is proud to play an active role in working with VCERC in the Commonwealth’s efforts to make offshore wind energy production a reality. Unlike coal, oil, gas and uranium, offshore wind is a clean, renewable energy source, which can help Virginia meet its renewable energy targets and embark on economic recovery. Offshore wind is a proven, commercially available technology, offering energy price stability, and creating thousands of good local jobs.