Porpoises and bombs left by Adolf Hitler’s forces six decades ago are adding millions of dollars to costs for wind-turbine developers in waters off Germany, delaying the nation’s shift from nuclear energy.
EON AG and RWE AG , the country’s two biggest utilities, are using technologies that reduce noise from driving turbines into the seabed after nature groups complained that the work damages the sonar-like hearing of porpoises. Unexploded mines from World War II also are holding up work.
“A porpoise is doomed to die if its hearing is shattered,” Kim Detloff, a marine expert at German nature conservation group NABU, said in a phone interview. “The regulator must sanction developers if they repeatedly violate the noise limit.”
The concerns show that wind developers are beginning to face the same scrutiny as oil companies for projects in sensitive places, a trend likely to add costs and slim profit margins that already are razor-thin. That adds another hurdle to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s effort to build up offshore wind as an alternative to atomic power, a program that may cost 39 billion euros ($48 billion) by 2020.
“Developing offshore wind in Germany is already more expensive than in other countries as projects are situated further from the coast in deeper waters,” said Fraser Johnston, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “Any additional costs such as delays to grid connections and environmental considerations will put more pressure on already low returns.”
“Nature groups complained that the work damages the sonar-like hearing of porpoises.”
I’m no Phocoenidae expert, but I betcha no porpi would be injured. Zero. They are rather mobile, and would simply move away.
On the other hand, the bottom-feeding crustaceans (lobsters, crabs, and their kin) should thrive on the bounty of carcasses from migratory birds.
That leaves the mines….now who do we get to shift those?