When the federal government announced it would award $47 million to Virginia for construction of an offshore wind demonstration project, officials hoped blades would be spinning by 2017, but that hope was dashed when the company got just one bid for construction – a price well above what it wanted to pay. The utility says it will try again early next year – issuing a request for bids. Meanwhile, offshore wind construction is booming in the North Sea, and now a tiny country on the Baltic is preparing to get into the game in a big way. Sandy Hausman went to Estonia to see what lessons we might learn from a country that – like Virginia – has ideal conditions for offshore wind.
You can get to the Estonian island of Hiiumaa by ferry – a 90-minute ride across the relatively calm, relatively shallow body known as the Baltic Sea. Located about 140 miles east of Sweden and 75 miles south of Finland, engineers determined this was the best place for Estonia to build an offshore wind park.
George Linkov is Mayor of one of five cities on the island. He admits many of Hiiumaa’s 10,000 residents oppose the idea of putting 150 turbines offshore.
“Basically they’re going to change their mind the first time they see something in their bank account,” he says with a smile.
Island residents will profit from the enterprise proposed. They can buy up to 20% of the bonds to be sold for construction – bonds with a 15% rate of return. And the company that operates the wind park – 4Energy -- will set-up a fund to benefit the community, donating a portion of its earnings to whatever local residents decide to do with the money.
Tuuliki Kasonen, General Manager of the Estonian Wind Power Association, thinks that will turn the tide of public opinion.
“They will feel that this is part of the community – that they need it to have a better life," she explains. "It is already functioning like this in other communities where they have turbines in Estonia.”
But surveying the proposed construction site from Hiiumaa's new habor, Kaidi Nõmmerga, head of the local development department, says some will continue to oppose the plan.
“It’s natural that people are afraid of new things, especially places like this island where everything has been very traditional," she says, "and we have had some initiatives before for onshore development, and they have not gone quite right, so people are afraid.”
They fear noise and destruction of pristine views, but developers say their turbines will be so far out that people will barely see them, and they definitely won’t hear them.
Then there are ecological concerns. Hiiumaa is a haven for 250 species of birds. Some are just passing through, while others spend at least part of the year living on marshes that cover about 7% of the island. There are cormorants and black-headed gulls, sedge warblers, herring gulls, mute swans, coots and rare birds like the black stork and white-tailed eagle.
After extensive study, the developer’s environmental consultant, Hendrik Puhkim is convinced the park can be built without harming the birds.
After flying over the island in all four seasons, making careful notes of bird traffic, Puhkin concludes it is possible to have a wind park and to have a place for birds to rest and to eat.”
By putting the turbines in a location far from observed flight paths and by positioning the blades in a certain way, he says 4Energy can minimize the risk to birds – a claim supported by the offshore wind experience in Germany, Denmark and the UK.
Which leaves just one more impediment to the start of construction – the same one faced by Dominion Virginia Power – where to find the money. In that respect, Estonia is blessed twice by the European Union. The EU is expected to support construction of innovative bases for the turbines, and if Estonia exceeds EU targets for production of green energy, it will be able to sell credits to other European countries that are not able to meet their goals. Planners in Estonia hope the Hiiuma wind park will be up and running by 2020.
Sandy Hausman reported from Estonia with the support of an Energy and Climate Media Fellowship from the Heinrich Böll Foundation.