Hope Floats, But Not for UMaine’s VolturnUS Floating Offshore Wind Platform: Reagan Paul

Last year, LD 1895 “An Act Regarding the Procurement of Energy from Offshore Wind Resources” passed, which got the ball rolling on Maine’s push for offshore wind port.

The port will be the culmination of a more than decade-long taxpayer-funded effort to develop a floating offshore wind research array project, with the goal of eventually turning the Gulf of Maine into an industrialized wind farm. The viability of this technology was to be tested through an array of 12 wind turbines using the patented VolturnUS concrete, semi-submersible floating offshore wind turbine platform design created by Dr. Habib Dagher of the University of Maine, over the last decade. The Portland Press Herald conceded that this floating offshore wind research array project is too cost-prohibitive without an almost billion-dollar dedicated wind port facility off the coast of Maine, which means that a port must be constructed before the state can even move forward with the research array outlined in LD 1895.

Enter Sears Island. It is precisely because of this VolturnUS technology that the uninhabited and non-industrialized Sears Island was chosen for the offshore wind port location due to the large land and deep water requirements needed for the football-field-sized concrete floating platforms to be manufactured and launched, even though there is a viable already industrialized port location on Mack Point, only 800 yards away. The need to prop up this technology also led to Governor Mill’s introducing a bill, LD 2266, which was sponsored by Rep. Gerry Runte (D-York) — (whose wife just happens to work for the company that developed Maine’s Offshore Wind Roadmap). This bill lifted EPA protections for sand dunes on Sears Island that got in the way of Maine’s plans to industrialize the last of its kind island on the east coast. This bill initially failed in the house, but after threats and coercion by special interest groups like the Natural Resources Council of Maine and the Maine Labor Climate Council, the bill eventually passed.

It is also the VolturnUS technology that is being touted as a new Maine-made marine industry that will provide hundreds of jobs and give Maine unprecedented influence over offshore wind energy around the world.

There is just one small problem with these claims—the VolturnUS platform may not be viable for commercialization, as indicated by a recent Department of Energy readiness contest.

Has that critical information caused the project to be reevaluated or paused? Have you seen the headlines in the Bangor Daily or Portland Press Herald? In over a month since the news broke, has the University offered an explanation? Quite the opposite. Those with their snouts in the trough of government subsidies are pressing on, with the help of federal agencies. None of the supporters of the project, nor the recipients of more than $113 million in taxpayer funding backing the project, have responded to press inquiries asking about the contest’s outcome and the failure of VolturnUS to advance to the final rounds.

Everything had been going swimmingly for the State of Maine’s pet project until May 15, when the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) news broke that the VolturnUS platform technology failed to progress out of Phase 2 of testing in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Floating Offshore Wind Readiness (FLOWIN) program. In order to make it into Phase 3, it must be demonstrated that the design is able to be mass-produced and ready for commercial scalability. Five winners in the contest advanced to Phase 3, but UMaine’s VolturnUS platform was not one of them, thereby showing that this technology is struggling with a pathway to deployment, as it has been for over a decade. The winning models all have modular designs with more modest port requirements both in terms of land required and depths of waters needed. However, just a few days later on May 24, the Bureau of Ocean Management (BOEM) granted the state of Maine a research array lease for the Gulf of Maine specifically for the VolturnUS platform.

Interestingly enough, on the University of Maine’s website where the VolturnUS platform is discussed, the technology is described as being  “Demonstrated” and “Ready.” Those claims would appear to be quite inaccurate.  In the spirit of the movie “The Princess Bride”, it would be appropriate to say, “I do not think those words mean what you think they mean.”

What impact this new information will have on the port development has yet to be seen. The question needs to be asked: Why is Maine continuing to fast track the destruction of an island to build a port for a research array that utilizes technology that has failed to advance in federal testing?

In an election year, you will hear the proponents of the port, such as the Maine Labor Climate Council (MLCC), whose very existence depends on the project, say that they are agnostic to the port location. However, behind the scenes, the MLCC is working with a Washington D.C.-based group called Greenlight America to fast-track the permitting for Sears Island for this flailing technology to be launched. Does this have anything to do with the $1-2 million in subsidies that someone is receiving per job per year?

To promote this project on the premise of economic gains and recognition for the state of Maine is a greedy move that lacks soundness and environmental responsibility, as blue collar jobs that contribute to the economy will be lost due to downstream impacts of electricity price spikes, the decimation our heritage fishing industry and all Mainers, especially those already struggling, paying unaffordable electric bills that may be the highest in the nation.  For what? A smash and grab for the well connected?

Logic, facts, and reason have never stopped a government project before, but this recent development should make even the most ardent supporters of the wind port pause and question what is really going on. Forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for a questionable technology to create taxpayer funded short term jobs while claiming to bolster Maine’s economy is Alice in Wonderland economics and a blind money making scheme that will inevitably prey on the heart and soul of Maine-its environment and residents.

If Maine, in collusion with special interest and unions, are going to build, not a bridge, but a port to nowhere, then at least make Mack Point the preferred location so that when offshore wind fails, as it will, then at least Searsport will  have an upgraded multi-use port facility that doesn’t destroy an island.

I think Mahatma Ghandi was right when he said that “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.”