Building wind ports for the new giants of the sea

Ambitious plans to develop a world-class offshore wind energy industry in the United States are dependent on the specialized port infrastructure needed to support it, write our maritime ports and offshore wind experts Marlin Peterson, Abbas Sarmad, and Dawn MacDonald.

With a full pipeline of projects promising industrial renewal and a clean energy future, America is on the cusp of an offshore wind energy revolution. The Biden Administration has set targets of 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind (OSW) in United States waters by 2030 –enough to power 10 million homes with clean energy. They are also targeting 15GW of floating OSW by 2035, to complement the modest 0.042GW of installations that exist today. The Administration is supporting the plan with financial measures and environmental stewardship to underpin the vast investment required to unlock OSW’s full potential.

Thanks to pioneering OSW development across the globe, in particular northern and western Europe, harnessing the powerful gusts that blow over the oceans is now an efficient and increasingly affordable technology to decarbonize energy supplies and minimize further climate change impact.

For a vibrant offshore wind industry to take off in the United States, one critical element cannot be overlooked: the need for port infrastructure that can handle the enormous scale of the project components. Recent years have seen staggering growth in this technology, with turbine sizes increasing rapidly to reduce the levelized cost of energy. These are massive machines: the world’s largest, currently under construction in China, sweeps 10 football fields with every spin. In the United States, GE is constructing manufacturing facilities for the Haliade X’s blade that is longer than a football field with a rotor that sweeps seven football fields every spin.

Ports are essential to the development of offshore wind. They are where offshore wind turbine generator (WTG) components, foundations and other equipment get transported, stored and assembled. Ports are where floating substructures are assembled and turbines are erected prior to delivery to the offshore project site, where OSW equipment manufacturers setup their fabrication and storage yards, and where operation and maintenance activities are led. Ports are a hub for the industry, as the massive equipment involved makes marine transport essential. With the rapid development of new technologies in the green energy sector, the role of ports is also becoming increasingly prominent in the generation and distribution of renewable hydrogen.

The OSW industry in the United States is complicated by the Jones Act ^[1], also known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920. Designed to protect the American shipping industry from foreign competition, the law limits trade between two ports within the United States to American flagged ships. In short, the Jones Act protects the shipping industry from foreign competition. While similar laws are found in other countries and often apply to intra-national shipping by sea, air, or truck, for the emerging United States offshore wind industry, the Jones act adds significant complexity as there are currently no United States flagged vessels in the existing global fleet of offshore wind installation vessels.

Under the accepted interpretation of the Jones Act, the offshore wind farm or project site is considered a United States port, and as such, only United States flagged vessels can transport materials between the marshalling port and the project site. Many developers appear to have addressed this challenge by engaging local tugs and barges to transport the equipment from the marshalling yard to the foreign flagged installation vessel which stays within the project site – avoiding violation of the Jones Act. This generally adds cost due to the need for supplemental vessels and increases risk due to the added number of vessel interfaces and additional materials handling.

There are several alternate strategies being considered in the industry. Ports need to be designed to accommodate today’s ocean-going barges, while also preparing to accommodate tomorrow’s United States flagged wind turbine installation vessels (WTIV) – the first of which is scheduled for delivery in early 2024. Solutions will look different across geographies based on water depths, installation equipment and turbine characteristics, so careful consideration of all factors is critical.

A technical challenge and a financial conundrum

While the OSW opportunity for ports is sizable, so are the challenges. Current OSW ports are being built or adapted to handle turbines that are rated up to 12-14 megawatts (MW), with nacelles ­– the component which houses all the generating elements of a wind turbine – weighing nearly 700 tons, the blades are more than 330 feet in length (approximately 100 meters) and the towers taller still. In the future, it is projected that ports will have to make room for even larger machines with rated generating capacities of 22MW or more.

OSW farms require several types of ports: for storage, marshalling and assembly of WTG components, foundation, cable, anchors, substations during the construction phase, installation and then ports for operation and maintenance during the asset life. While technical requirements vary depending on the planned usage, most are rigorous relative to standard port requirements. For the current generation of WTGs, an installation port requires up to 70 acres, with a minimum of two heavy lift berths of 650 feet (200 meters) each with a depth at berth, turning basin, and along the access channel of at least 36 feet (11 meters).

While early mover construction activity in the United States has been limited to ports in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey, as many as thirteen coastal states are actively developing prospective ports for OSW. To date, port construction has been concentrated along the United States’ Eastern seaboard, which is shallower than the West Coast and therefore more suitable for fixed-bottom turbine installations. The floating technologies planned for the West Coast will drive unique port requirements and substantial investment due to port space, load capacity and lifting equipment required for floater assembly and storage prior to transport for offshore installation.

A recent report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory describes current OSW port capacity as “inadequate” and states that “half of the existing pipeline is at risk of not being installed by 2030 because of limited port and vessel availability.” ^[2]  It estimates that achieving President Biden’s goal of 30GW by 2030 will require a roughly $6 billion investment in ports and vessels.

This is where the economics of OSW become increasingly challenging. Advances in technology have made OSW competitive with other energy sources, but significant upfront investment is still required to develop a supply chain that can support the sector’s growth. It can take more than a decade for an offshore wind farm to advance from conception to operation, leaving a significant gap between investment and revenue generation, and limited capacity for project developers to fund port infrastructure development.

For port developers considering OSW, there is a further complication in the form of necessary return on investment. To recover the significant investment in port development, installation ports will need upwards of 10 to 20+ year revenue streams associated with leasing and terminal operation. However, OSW developers are typically interested in short-term (2-5 year) lease periods that are commensurate with the offshore wind farm construction or installation window. This leaves a big financial gap for port owners unless they can line up a series of developers that will commit to use the port’s facilities over a cumulative span of a decade or more. Right now, few developers are willing to commit resources that far ahead, particularly given the limited insight into leasing rounds beyond 2025.

Leveraging global expertise for United States development

In November 2022, after more than a decade of infrastructure development that transformed the country, the sporting world watched a successful soccer World Cup play out in Qatar. A crucial element of this was a $5 billion project to build Hamad Port in Mesaieed, Qatar. This was the world’s largest greenfield port development, for which we acted as program management consultant ^[3].

Relocating the port from central Doha, Qatar was key to unlocking the logistical challenge of building the infrastructure for the World Cup, including roads, bridges, a mass transit system, and stadiums. Bringing the port project together in time to support other infrastructure development necessary for a successful tournament required expertise in planning, procurement, risk / schedule management, cost control, safety, quality assurance and more. The lessons we learned in Qatar are relevant to the challenges of building OSW ports in the United States as these ports are catalyzing OSW development.

This significant global expertise is being utilized to develop the necessary OSW port infrastructure already underway in the United States, where AECOM Tishman is managing the construction of the New Jersey Wind Port in Salem County^[4]. New Jersey has plans to become a hub for the OSW industry and the New Jersey Wind Port together with the Port of Paulsboro are central to those plans. The New Jersey Wind Port will support the manufacturing, fabrication, marshalling and assembly of WTGs, whereas the Port of Paulsboro will continue supporting the fabrication of fixed bottom monopile^* foundations. While the Port of Paulsboro is undergoing Phase 2 development, ground was broken in 2021 for the New Jersey Wind Port’s 220-acre parcel, which was previously a dredge material placement.

Both the New Jersey Wind Port and Port of Paulsboro are public-private partnerships (PPP) – a model for financing and developing infrastructure that could unlock the financial resources necessary for OSW infrastructure development elsewhere in the United States. The state of New Jersey has invested more than $500 million to kick-start development at Paulsboro and the New Jersey Wind Port^[5] and hopes the combined facilities will support 11GW of OSW projects by 2040.

That level of commitment, along with development funding, will help give the private sector the confidence to invest. Paulsboro has had success already by attracting leading manufacturers within the OSW industry supply chain. Specifically, EEW, a German manufacturer, is investing in the construction of a 70-acre monopile fabrication facility^[6] at the site, which creates approximately 260 local jobs.

Finding the right funding support

At the federal level, the Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act (IIJA) signed into law in November 2021 by President Biden also recognizes the potential of OSW to stimulate economic activity. Three specific provisions impact OSW: 1) increased funding for vessels, of which there is a shortage; 2) among other OSW impacting provisions, the IIJA program includes over $600 million in port grants through the Maritime Administration’s Port Infrastructure Development Program^[7]; 3) the regulatory authority to permit energy storage on the Outer Continental Shelf, which could allow the development of hydrogen production from OSW and is regarded as an important mechanism for extending the potential of wind power beyond electrification.

Growing pains

 Political commitment, climate change and technological advancement have created a rich opportunity for OSW in the United States. The installation and maintenance of 45GW of fixed and floating wind projects over the next two decades offers an enormous opportunity for economic growth in coastal communities across the entire continent. The Biden Administration targets the creation of 77,000 new jobs, the revitalization of old, underachieving ports as hubs for the OSW industry, and a cleaner, more affordable energy transition in the long run.

As discussed, to achieve these targets the United States OSW industry will need to overcome substantial legal, logistical, technical, financial, and environmental challenges. Overcoming these barriers requires expertise that is both broad and deep, covering disciplines from port design and construction to environmental management and brokering alternative delivery models like PPPs, as well as expert grant writers helping in the application process. We have developed expertise over decades of working in the maritime market planning, designing, and delivering ports across the world, as well as enabling the energy transition through commitment to the OSW market. We believe in the sustainable, decarbonized future that renewable energy promises, and we are committed to working with all those helping to bring it closer.

* Monopiles are mega scale steel pipe piles (i.e. 40-feet in diameter) that are driven into the seabed and act as foundations for the tower sections of offshore wind turbines to sit upon.