Coastal jurisdiction can be very complicated. Our town had a dead whale on its beach. The town couldn't touch it. The county couldn't touch it. The state couldn't touch it. The Coast Guard couldn't touch it. The federal government couldn't touch it. Luckily, one of the local tribes was still allowed, by a treaty recently reinforced by a court decision, to hunt whales, and they agreed to move it.
Offshore wind power has a lot of possibility in the US, especially along the eastern coast, an area with a demand for a lot of power. To be honest, I'm glad to see the Jones Act pushing the US to build the appropriate support vessels. That's the kind of thing that the act was set up to do.
Does this not strike everyone as just utterly absurd?
I’m generally in the “we need to review and constrain regulations” camp, but this sort of stuff makes me think the only way forward is to put the whole regulatory apparatus to the torch and start over…
Regulations are a response to problems. They're not always the best response, but they usually made things better. It's like the Army's infamous twenty page set of regulations defining a cherry pie. People used to make fun of it, but the reason it cited a specific number, mass, viscosity and volume of cherries is because vendors were selling the Army cherry pies with no cherries in them. Ditto for specifying the size, shape, depth, crust thickness and so on. Each clause was put in because vendors cut a corner at some point. It's what software people call scar tissue.
There are lots of parties that benefit from our coastal waters. There are fishermen, oystermen, sewage processors, shippers, tourists, restaurateurs, power plant operators, bathers and a host of others. There are local interests and more global interests since what is done with the waters locally affects those in a broad area. There are historical factors. Early arrivals tend to get first dibs on resources, so the tribes got the right to fish whales and dibs on half the fish catch.
It is definitely tempting to blow the whole thing up and try to start over with something simpler, but that means renegotiating the existing compromises. Who is expected to give up what and what do they get for it? I'm not saying it can't be done or that it might not improve things, just that there are a lot of parties who could be justifiably aggrieved. Some of them accepted a lot of bad things until recently, and they are not keen on going through that golden age of losing big again.
I don’t disagree, but it seems clear that’s the existing model’s “one-way rachet” and “stakeholder obsessed” aspects are not working effectively.
We have genuinely reached a point in several industries, of which construction is plainly the worst, where the regulatory environment is strangling actual, often badly needed, activity.
The complexity of our permitting, zoning, environmental review, and community consultation system far exceeds the actual technical challenges wrapped up in construction. The cost overruns are murderous enough, the delays and outright cancellations even more so.
We need to go through the whole ecosystem with a fine-tooth comb to figure out what serves a real purpose, what doesn’t, what is purely a case of regulatory capture…
And, more importantly but definitely harder, what trade-offs are entailed by the legitimate regulations addressing real world concerns, and whether they carry sufficient benefits on a national level to offset their costs.
I would posit that individual locales should have precisely no say in any of this. We must seek specifically to chase diffuse benefits even if it dispenses concentrated harms alongside, and we have to crack down on concentrated benefits that come with diffuse harms. The era of unending community involvement and stakeholder engagement has been an utter failure. It is bloody well past time to *end* it.
I agree with you. It would be great to come to a new compromise, but so much of this is about political power. It's like the billionaires in Menlo Park, CA saying they were in favor of more affordable housing, but insisting that rezoning any part of Menlo Park was out of the question.
Hence, “this sort of stuff makes me think the only way forward is to put the whole regulatory apparatus to the torch and start over.”
If the only option under “sane politicians” is to preserve every single jot and tittle of the status quo, then the only real option is to let the Supreme Court ram through the non-delegation doctrine and slowly, painfully pick up the pieces.
Which is also horrific, but less so than failing to meet any of our housing, resiliency, infrastructure, or green energy needs because the regulatory environment makes everything impossible.
The construction and maintenance issues are perhaps less severe for floating wind turbines than for fixed offshore turbines. Floating turbines can be assembled at a nearby port, and towed back there for servicing, provided they are not too big for the local port. Jobs!
There might be a de-facto economic upper limit on floating wind turbine size for this reason. A possible side benefit is that making and installing more of smaller turbines might move them down the learning curve more quickly.
The other issues, permitting and NIMBYism, I have no idea about.
Coastal jurisdiction can be very complicated. Our town had a dead whale on its beach. The town couldn't touch it. The county couldn't touch it. The state couldn't touch it. The Coast Guard couldn't touch it. The federal government couldn't touch it. Luckily, one of the local tribes was still allowed, by a treaty recently reinforced by a court decision, to hunt whales, and they agreed to move it.
Offshore wind power has a lot of possibility in the US, especially along the eastern coast, an area with a demand for a lot of power. To be honest, I'm glad to see the Jones Act pushing the US to build the appropriate support vessels. That's the kind of thing that the act was set up to do.
Does this not strike everyone as just utterly absurd?
I’m generally in the “we need to review and constrain regulations” camp, but this sort of stuff makes me think the only way forward is to put the whole regulatory apparatus to the torch and start over…
Regulations are a response to problems. They're not always the best response, but they usually made things better. It's like the Army's infamous twenty page set of regulations defining a cherry pie. People used to make fun of it, but the reason it cited a specific number, mass, viscosity and volume of cherries is because vendors were selling the Army cherry pies with no cherries in them. Ditto for specifying the size, shape, depth, crust thickness and so on. Each clause was put in because vendors cut a corner at some point. It's what software people call scar tissue.
There are lots of parties that benefit from our coastal waters. There are fishermen, oystermen, sewage processors, shippers, tourists, restaurateurs, power plant operators, bathers and a host of others. There are local interests and more global interests since what is done with the waters locally affects those in a broad area. There are historical factors. Early arrivals tend to get first dibs on resources, so the tribes got the right to fish whales and dibs on half the fish catch.
It is definitely tempting to blow the whole thing up and try to start over with something simpler, but that means renegotiating the existing compromises. Who is expected to give up what and what do they get for it? I'm not saying it can't be done or that it might not improve things, just that there are a lot of parties who could be justifiably aggrieved. Some of them accepted a lot of bad things until recently, and they are not keen on going through that golden age of losing big again.
I don’t disagree, but it seems clear that’s the existing model’s “one-way rachet” and “stakeholder obsessed” aspects are not working effectively.
We have genuinely reached a point in several industries, of which construction is plainly the worst, where the regulatory environment is strangling actual, often badly needed, activity.
The complexity of our permitting, zoning, environmental review, and community consultation system far exceeds the actual technical challenges wrapped up in construction. The cost overruns are murderous enough, the delays and outright cancellations even more so.
We need to go through the whole ecosystem with a fine-tooth comb to figure out what serves a real purpose, what doesn’t, what is purely a case of regulatory capture…
And, more importantly but definitely harder, what trade-offs are entailed by the legitimate regulations addressing real world concerns, and whether they carry sufficient benefits on a national level to offset their costs.
I would posit that individual locales should have precisely no say in any of this. We must seek specifically to chase diffuse benefits even if it dispenses concentrated harms alongside, and we have to crack down on concentrated benefits that come with diffuse harms. The era of unending community involvement and stakeholder engagement has been an utter failure. It is bloody well past time to *end* it.
I agree with you. It would be great to come to a new compromise, but so much of this is about political power. It's like the billionaires in Menlo Park, CA saying they were in favor of more affordable housing, but insisting that rezoning any part of Menlo Park was out of the question.
Agreed.
Hence, “this sort of stuff makes me think the only way forward is to put the whole regulatory apparatus to the torch and start over.”
If the only option under “sane politicians” is to preserve every single jot and tittle of the status quo, then the only real option is to let the Supreme Court ram through the non-delegation doctrine and slowly, painfully pick up the pieces.
Which is also horrific, but less so than failing to meet any of our housing, resiliency, infrastructure, or green energy needs because the regulatory environment makes everything impossible.
There is a very interesting different design from T-Omega. I'd like to hear your comments on it.
https://newatlas.com/energy/t-omega-floating-wind/
Bureaucracies have a tendency to overcorrect. You don't want this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6CLumsir34
But, analysis paralysis is often worse.
The construction and maintenance issues are perhaps less severe for floating wind turbines than for fixed offshore turbines. Floating turbines can be assembled at a nearby port, and towed back there for servicing, provided they are not too big for the local port. Jobs!
There might be a de-facto economic upper limit on floating wind turbine size for this reason. A possible side benefit is that making and installing more of smaller turbines might move them down the learning curve more quickly.
The other issues, permitting and NIMBYism, I have no idea about.