Last week in The Carolina Journal, I discussed an emerging ecological disaster with ramifications for North Carolina. Policymakers should heed the warning.

On July 13, a single blade broke on a wind turbine in the Vineyard Wind offshore wind energy facility. The blade is longer than a football field. The cause of the breakage is unknown, but wind advocates and company (GE Vernova) officials suggested it was likely a manufacturer’s defect, for which people are expected to be relieved that “this was a one-off error, not a fundamental flaw with the blade design or engineering.” (According to Offshore magazine, broken turbines have happened in the UK earlier this year, and also in Germany and Sweden in recent years.)

Regardless, the broken blade has been spreading fiberglass waste across the ocean ever since, and this dangerous debris has been not only affecting sea creatures in the deep but also washing ashore on nearby beaches. Local officials warned about “floating debris and sharp fiberglass shards” and cautioned beachgoers not to go barefoot. The Nantucket Harbormaster had to close all southern-facing Nantucket beaches.

Within a week, more than six truckloads’ worth of debris had been removed, but fiberglass waste continues to turn up even now. Worse, it’s spreading farther. It’s now washing up in Rhode Island.

Even when beaches were reopened, officials warned people to “wear appropriate footwear while walking along beaches” — that means “appropriate for treading on sharp objects” — and to “leave their pets at home to ensure their safety.” One problem is, you can warn people, but marine animals and beachcombing critters are dangerously unaware.

On July 30 New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association CEO Jerry Leeman issued a statement about the ongoing disaster:

The Vineyard Wind blade disaster has confirmed fishermen’s worst fears about offshore wind. Massive fiberglass shards remain a huge navigational hazard for our members. We remain gravely concerned that micro-particles from fiberglass debris could poison local marine life. Worse still, we are still awaiting answers from the developer.

What If There Were 876 Turbine Blades Placed in North Carolina’s Uniquely Hurricane-Prone Waters?

This ongoing ecological disaster from a single broken turbine blade should be a huge wakeup call for North Carolina policymakers. Unlike wind turbines placed off the coasts of Europe or even New England, turbines placed off the coast of North Carolina are in highly hurricane-prone waters:

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) uses a metric of “hurricane return periods,” which is a measure of how often a particular location is subject to a hurricane within 50 nautical miles …. [T]he waters off the coast of North Carolina are frequently revisited by hurricanes — more so than anywhere else in the nation except south Florida. North Carolina sees return periods of hurricanes at 5–7 years.

What that means is that, in a century, those areas off the coast of North Carolina identified by the NHC could expect to see 14–20 hurricanes.

Estimated Return Period in Years for Hurricanes Passing Within 50 Nautical Miles of Various Locations on the U.S. Coast

Source: NHS

Estimated Return Period in Years for Major Hurricanes Passing Within 50 Nautical Miles of Various Locations on the U.S. Coast

Source: NHS

For those who want to point to turbines being built to withstand a certain level of sustained hurricane-force wind speeds as reason to downplay this risk, research has shown that the problem isn’t just weathering a sustained, single-directional force of wind. A 2020 study in Wind Energy Science noted that hurricane wind simulations in turbine design failed to account for “very high gust factors (>1.7), rapid direction changes (30∘in 30 s), and substantial veer” expected from hurricanes. Turbine destruction could result from such unanticipated structural loads. As the researchers put it, “these features of hurricane wind fields can lead to loads that are substantially in excess of those that would be predicted if wind fields with equally high mean wind speeds but without the associated direction change and veer were used in the analysis.”

There are currently two enormous offshore wind projects planned off North Carolina beaches, and Gov. Roy Cooper and the Biden/Harris administration want much more. The Kitty Hawk project would feature a sum total of 170 turbines. The Carolina Long Bay project would sit just 15 miles off the coast of Bald Head Island and Brunswick County beaches and feature 122 turbines. Each turbine would contain three blades apiece.

That would mean a total of 876 blades, the failure of any one of which — as we’ve seen from Nantucket through Rhode Island (so far) — is capable of producing an ecological disaster. Heaven only knows what more widespread damage to turbines and blades would produce.