Offshore wind development has potential, but challenges remain

Erik Nordman is an adjunct professor of natural resources management at Grand Valley State University and has studied offshore wind development. He was not part of the U-M study.

“The visual impact is something that people have concerns about in some communities,” he said. “But an offshore wind farm that is more than 6 miles from shore would be very hard to see.”

The permitting system is different in the Great Lakes than along the coasts. 

“In the ocean, states have jurisdiction of the ocean bottom out to 3 miles, and then the federal government has jurisdiction out to 200 miles,” he said. 

“But on the U.S. side of the Great Lakes, those bottomlands are held in trust by the state governments,” he said. Each state has different policies that developers must comply with.

Nordman said there was growing interest in exploring offshore wind farms in Michigan about 10 to 15 years ago. 

Then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm had assembled the Michigan Great Lakes Wind Council, consisting of stakeholders from state agencies, academia, the charter fishing industry, local tribes and others, he said.

It explored how offshore wind farms could be developed, including how to structure lease agreements and royalties, and how to avoid sensitive habitats and shipping lanes. 

“Trying to balance all these things, they made their recommendations,” he said. “And it didn’t go anywhere.” 

Nordman said the politics shifted and offshore wind was no longer a priority.

Since then only a handful of offshore wind projects have been proposed, and no applications are pending now.

Wind farms can create problems for wildlife, including birds and bats.

“We’re still learning a lot about how birds interact with turbines in an offshore environment,” said Lewis Grove, the director of wind and energy policy at the nonprofit American Bird Conservancy. He is based in Vermont.

Studies in Europe, which has more offshore wind farms than the U.S., have provided information about potential impacts along the Atlantic coast. 

But how wind turbines would affect birds in the Great Lakes is unknown, he said. 

“What we do know is that the Great Lakes are a major migratory crossroads for the continent,” he said. “There’s a massive flyway of birds that come up out of the Gulf every spring and follow those river systems up.”

Migrating birds often follow the coastlines, both because they are good visual cues and because they are productive environments with many plants to feed on, he said. 

That’s why, “when it comes to offshore wind generally, we really like to be far offshore,” he said.

Some negative impacts can be mitigated, Grove said.

If turbines are shut off during the highest migration period, “I think you could probably run them there with relatively minimal impacts,” he said. “But it’s always going to be a bit of a higher risk for birds.”

But the impacts to bats could be worse, Grove said.

“We know so much less about the bats and their populations and their ecology than we do about birds,” he said. “It’s a much scarier story for bats.”

“Building out clean renewable energy sources fast is really important” in light of climate change, he said. And while other renewable energy sources like solar are generally less of a problem for birds, “a big part of that is probably going to need to be wind energy.” 

Regulations could incentivize developers to mitigate negative impacts to birds and bats, such as turning off turbines during migration. But that would cut into the utility companies’ bottom lines. 

“With the right regulatory system in place, I think that wind could be an unmitigated positive for birds, for climate, for people, all of it,” he said. “But the free-for-all we have is concerning.”