New Offshore Wind Study Confirms The Obvious: A Malevolently Incompetent Clown Is Steering The US Clown Car
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Last Updated on: 10th August 2025, 03:27 pm
The US has devolved from a widely respected global powerhouse into the personal self-dealing tool of a convicted felon with astonishing speed, so it’s no surprise to see the promise of a thriving domestic offshore wind industry kneecapped by the White House. Along with direct job losses from canceled projects, the supply chain fallout will bleed thousands of jobs from more than three dozen states, and that’s not even counting missed opportunities for the concrete industry. Yes, the concrete industry.
Offshore Wind And The Concrete Connection
Conventional offshore wind farms are built in relatively shallow waters, where the turbines can perch on top of tall steel monopiles fixed into the seabed. Back in 2022, the US Department of Energy assessed the potential for using steel-reinforced concrete as a much less expensive alternative for monopile turbine foundations, but concluded that more research into stress and fatigue issues was needed.
New research on North Sea wind farms in the UK indicates that the floating offshore wind field is a more immediate opportunity for the concrete industry. As applied to the US, that includes long swaths of deepwater coastline unsuitable for fixed monopiles, including practically all of the energy-thirsty West Coast as well as Maine on the East Coast (see more floating wind background here).
The new study was produced by the UK offshore wind consultancy group OpenWater Renewables, which focuses on floating platforms. “Concrete foundations could be the best option for developers of floating offshore wind farms in the North Sea,” the firm summarized in a posting on the Technology Leadership Board website.
“The material’s durability, low maintenance requirements, lower capital expenditure (CAPEX) and suitability for UK construction could provide a competitive alternative to steel designs,” they added, while advising that developers are challenged by the wide variety of materials choices.
The study is significant because it is available on an open-source basis. “Whilst private wind farm developers and others have performed similar analyses, their results are generally not available in the public domain,” OpenWater explains.
Sorting Through The Floating Wind Variables
TLB’s membership is frontloaded with oil and gas stakeholders, spearheaded by TotalEnergies and the North Sea Transition Authority in collaboration with other North Sea stakeholders. Still, TLB also reflects the extent to which legacy energy firms are transitioning into renewables.
OpenWater deployed its proprietary ranking software to formulate a roster of economically viable floating wind platform options in the North Sea. Making the shortlist were 15 concepts, including three barges, 11 semi-submersible platforms, and one tension leg platform.
Before you get too excited, none of the concepts has achieved Technology Readiness Level 9. TRL is a standard ranking system ranging from back-of-the-napkin Level 1 on up to a successful record of operation at Level 9. Of the 15 options selected by OpenWater, none reached higher than Level 7, the prototype level.
On the plus side, none of the 15 options ranked lower than 5, which refers to successful component tests in the target environment.
Next Steps For The US Offshore Wind Industry
“Critical factors included installation, CAPEX and operating expenditure, financial strength, and project track record. Technical maturity was also a key factor in assessing the concepts,” OpenWater notes, adding that weather conditions in the North Sea also influenced its choices.
“For North Sea projects, ease of installation and repair were seen as key differentiators due to the short weather windows in which critical work has to be done,” OpenWater observes.
If you caught that thing about “short weather window,” that’s where things get interesting for the US offshore wind industry. The North Sea sits farther up the latitude ladder than the US Pacific coast. All else being equal, a larger weather window would improve the economic outlook for new floating offshore wind farms in Hawaii as well as Washington, Oregon, and California.
Except, not. In yet another in a series of anti-wind measures, on Friday, US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced a complete overhaul of his agency’s offshore wind regulations.
“We’re taking a results-driven approach that prioritizes reliability, strengthens national security and upholds both scientific integrity and responsible environmental stewardship,” Burgum said in a press release that also included a reminder that Burgum didn’t mean any of it.
“This effort also supports Executive Order 14315, which directs agencies to identify and eliminate favoritism toward unreliable energy sources,” DOI reminded everyone.
“The Department has paused new approvals for offshore wind projects—including leases, permits, rights-of-way and loans—in compliance with the Presidential Memorandum on wind energy, while it conducts a review of offshore wind energy projects and their impact on the environment, national security and the economy,” they added.
Who Voted For This Guy Anyways?
If you caught that thing about “unreliable,” that’s where everything circles back around to personal self-dealing. As helpfully explained by the Interior Department, the White House has adopted a specious definition of energy security in which domestic energy resources are separated into intermittent availability and non-intermittent. That made sense back in the 20th century when both wind and solar power were just a speck on the horizon. However, “reliability” is a poor measure of energy security in the 21st century environment of new energy storage and grid management technologies.
The reliable/unreliable separation does fulfill one key goal. It helps provide US President Donald Trump with cover to pursue his widely reported and highly personal vendetta against wind turbines, without singling out wind alone as a matter of public policy. The “unreliable” canard leaves the US solar industry twisting in the wind, so to speak, alongside the wind industry, while three other significant domestic renewable energy resources — hydropower, biomass, and geothermal — have been left largely untouched, simply because they fit neatly into the 24/7 baseload power generation silo of Trump’s “American Energy Dominance” plan.
On the other hand, Trump ditched many norms of public policy during his first term in office and his 2024 campaign for another turn around the Oval Office foretold of a more thorough trashing of public resources and systems to come. That has all materialized, in spades. Thanks to whoever voted for this guy, the entirety of federal policy is mere putty for his fevered brain to manipulate, with the Republican majority in both the US House and Senate marching happily along in lockstep.
Still, US Presidents come and go, and this one will leave office as scheduled on January 20, 2029 — peacefully, one hopes, this time.
Photo (cropped): A new report from the consulting group OpenWater Renewables indicates that the concrete industry can help reduce the cost of floating offshore wind platforms (courtesy of NREL).
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