The biggest problem facing offshore wind energy isn’t broken blades. It’s public opinion.

One of the installed turbines at the Vineyard Wind farm. (Photo courtesy of Avangrid)

Jim Boyd’s heart sank the first time he saw the now-infamous image of a fractured wind turbine blade dangling above the Atlantic Ocean.

Not because of the fiberglass and styrofoam debris collected from the waters and shoreline along Nantucket in the month that followed. Not because of the potential safety implications the blade failure might mean for the Vineyard Wind project, or others.

Boyd’s first thought?

“This is going to be an incredible PR nightmare for Vineyard Wind and the nascent offshore wind industry in southern New England,” said Boyd, a commercial shellfisherman who retired as the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council’s deputy director in 2022.

He was right.

In the wake of the July 13 incident, deemed a manufacturing error in preliminary review, the chorus of concerns over the offshore wind industry grew to a roar. Which has made the job of selling skeptics much harder: not just on Vineyard Wind, but the slew of projects coming up behind it, including the 700-megawatt Revolution Wind farm being built off Rhode Island’s coastline. The developer announced Tuesday the first of 65 turbines in the project had been installed.

“There’s a lot of concern out there that is valid, but there’s also a lot of disinformation and whack-a-doo theories,” Boyd acknowledged. “The only thing that’s going to help the wind industry at this point is to be as upfront and transparent as possible.”

Which has not always been the case.

An initial statement by Vineyard Wind LLC two days after the 300-foot-long blade broke off of the Eiffel Tower-sized turbine offered no explanation or detail. Three days later , the company, co-owned by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) and Avangrid Renewables, LLC, provided another terse update after what was left of the broken blade fell off, in which it said it was working to remove debris. It took 11 days for blade manufacturer GE Vernova to offer its preliminary assessment on the failure, blaming an unspecified “manufacturing error.”

The 62-turbine wind farm powering Massachusetts began operating on Jan. 2. Federal regulators shut down operations after the blade failure, which remains under review.

There’s a lot of concern out there that is valid, but there’s also a lot of disinformation and whack-a-doo theories. The only thing that’s going to help the wind industry at this point is to be as upfront and transparent as possible.

– Jim Boyd, former deputy director for the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council

The information void has quickly filled with public reactions, hypotheses and conspiracy theories.

Social media posts abound, laden with images of the neon styrofoam scattered along Nantucket beaches and collected in the weedlines where ocean currents intersect, many accompanied by hashtags such as #stopoffshorewind. Letters flowed into l ocal newspapers, warning that the blade failure was a sign of bigger dangers on the horizon, including the ongoing construction of the Revolution Wind farm.

Politicians who have supported offshore wind energy, like Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey and U.S. Rep. Bill Keating, a Massachusetts Democrat, expressed concern and urged federal regulators to get to the bottom of what happened — especially after the same manufacturer was tied to another blade failure on a U.K. wind project a month later.

Rhode Island officials have been noticeably quieter on the subject, save for Republican congressional candidate Patricia Morgan, a vocal offshore wind opponent.

Unintended consequences

On Aug. 25, a dozen commercial and recreational fishermen staged a protest around the broken blade 15 miles southwest of Nantucket, clutching signs that read “support your local fishermen,” and “save our squid,” according to news reports.

Experts and researchers, including Boyd, agree that there is not enough information to fully understand how building and operating the powerful projects will affect the sensitive ecosystem below them. Not to mention the safety concerns for fishermen and emergency rescue crews trying to navigate around 200 acres of turbines in rough seas or poor visibility.

While offshore wind pioneered in Europe more than 30 years ago, it only made the trek across the Atlantic in the last decade, starting with the much smaller-scale Block Island Wind Farm which began operating in 2016.

Thousands of pounds of fiberglass and styrofoam falling into the ocean was never considered as a potential hazard, not mentioned in the thousands of pages of environmental reviews by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which has final authority over where and how projects are built.

“It’s just an illustration that we just don’t know about the potential impacts,” said Rich Hittinger, vice president of the Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association.

Hittinger soured on offshore wind before the blade failure, having served on a state volunteer advisory panel representing the fishing industry in negotiations with offshore wind developers. Hittinger, along with the rest of the Rhode Island Fishermen’s Advisory Board, resigned en masse a year ago , citing frustrations with the lack of adequate compensation developers offered to fishermen, and perceived deference by state regulators to the developers.

“What’s going on is there’s a desire to have these projects built, and that is a desire coming from high up in government,” Hittinger said. “Because there’s so much pressure to have them built, they are trying to fast-track the environmental reviews.”

Developers have said just the opposite. The federal review and regulatory process got off to a slow start, riddled with the usual red tape worsened by the nascent nature of the industry in the United States. Now, many project developers are facing a new set of delays tied up in cost hikes and supply chain slowdowns in the wake of the pandemic.

Orsted U.S., which is co-developing the Revolution Wind farm off the coast of Block Island, has now pushed its target completion date back to 2026, citing delays in the construction of the onshore substation that will connect the wind-generated power to the online electric grid, according to an earnings call with company leaders in August.

Separating fact from fiction

Environmental activists backing offshore wind as a key way to reduce carbon emissions, including meeting Rhode Island’s 2050 net-zero mandate, are waiting with bated breath for more turbines to start spinning. The blade incident was concerning, but not as worrisome as climate change, said Amanda Barker, a member of the Rhode Island State Committee with regional advocacy group New England for Offshore wind.

“When these incidents occur, a thorough investigation must be conducted,” Barker, who also works as a policy advocate for Green Energy Consumers Alliance, said. “To say we must completely abandon technology doesn’t seem like a realistic answer. Saying ‘no’ to offshore wind and allowing the continued use and expansion of fossil fuels is much more negative.”

Tricia Jedele, Atlantic Coast offshore wind policy manager for The Nature Conservancy, can rattle off a sea of statistics in support of offshore wind without hesitation: the amount of carbon dioxide offset by the Vineyard Wind project — 1.7 million tons a year — or the threshold under which annual global temperature increases must stay — 1.5 degrees Celsius. Another stat in Jedele’s arsenal: the three blade failures reported this year represent .00004% of the 70,000 blades manufactured for projects worldwide.

Zero blade failures is, of course, the goal, Jedele said.

But, “We have incidents and technological failures in our regular life,” Jedele said. “We adapt our approaches based on the evidence. We do it in our daily life, and we’re going to do that with existing technology.”

Dave Monti, a charter boat captain and fishing columnist for The Providence Journal, also pointed out that the fiberglass from the Vineyard Wind blade pales in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of fiberglass boats sailing the ocean every day.

But facts and logic are a tough match against fear, which Jedele sees as the reason behind much of the opposition: fear of change, and fear of the unknown.

We have incidents and technological failures in our regular life.

– Tricia Jedele, Atlantic Coast offshore wind policy manager for The Nature Conservancy

Social media has provided a breeding ground for disinformation, on everything, but especially on a complicated and nuanced topic like offshore wind.

It doesn’t help that fossil fuel companies and right-wing think tanks are, at least in some cases, pouring money into local campaigns opposing offshore wind, including in Rhode Island, according to a 2023 report by Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab.

Christian Roselund, a volunteer with Climate Action RI, also blamed an anti-wind group made up of Rhode Island beachfront property owners, Green Oceans, for perpetuating disinformation about offshore wind.

“Opposition has absolutely been picking up as these groups raise money,” Roselund said. “But it’s not exactly organic.”

The growing power of disinformation was on display at a trio of informational panels organized by Climate Action RI with the Newport Energy and Environment Commission. While the rhetoric has grown fiercer since the Vineyard Wind blade failure, Roselund didn’t think one caused the other. Instead, he blamed Green Oceans for seizing on the opportunity created by the incident to perpetuate misinformation.

Dr. Lisa Quattrocki Knight, co-founder and president of Green Oceans, did not immediately return inquiries for comment on Tuesday.

Hittinger, whose letter resigning from the Fishermen’s Advisory Board is featured on Green Oceans website , did not comment on the nonprofit’s intentions. But, Hittinger said he feared conspiracists were undermining more valid concerns by local fishermen like himself.

“Some people go too far,” Hittinger said. “But there are real questions we need answered.”

Developers mostly mum

Questions that the offshore wind developers have not been quick or open in addressing, Boyd said. He blamed the companies behind the projects for not facing concerns head-on. The community meetings organized by developers in conjunction with advocacy and education groups were no more than “dog and pony shows,” Boyd said.

Case in point: Vineyard Wind did not respond to multiple inquiries for comment for this story. Orsted declined to comment.

The development companies are also among those vying for another contract to supply more offshore wind power to Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Rhode Island Energy is expected to announce its tentative selection on Sept. 6 on the state’s bid to buy another 1,200 megawatts of offshore wind. Evelyn Garcia, a spokesperson for the state utility provider, declined to comment when asked how the Vineyard Wind blade failure might impact reviews of each project proposal.

“We review a variety of aspects of construction as part of our project viability, but we’re unable to disclose the exact specifics of those aspects due to the confidential nature of our evaluation process,” Garcia said.

Boyd is among those watching carefully for the bid award.

“If I was one of these development companies, I’d be wanting to do some real engineering testing and proof of manufacturing tolerances,” he said. “Can you imagine if this happens with Revolution Wind?”

Brian Walch, a spokesperson for Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said in an email Tuesday that the agency is still reviewing whether the Vineyard Wind blade failure warrants changes to the review and approval process, as well as incident-response protocols, for other offshore wind projects.

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