Energy Musings - February 27, 2025

Vineyard Wind's blade disaster last year scared Nantucket residents by the debris washing ashore. New research shows normal blade wear releases toxic waste. This calls for a comprehensive review.

Toxic Wind Blades Need A Comprehensive Review

New research shows that deteriorating wind blades unleash toxic particles that could harm individuals. Offshore, those particles could become embedded in seaweed and shellfish that humans consume. This danger is another reason why the federal government needs to conduct a cumulative assessment of the environmental risks of building multiple offshore wind farms, a review President Donald Trump has promised his administration will undertake. That promise was part of his Executive Order halting all leasing and approval of offshore wind farms (OWF).

The Biden administration made creating an offshore wind industry a centerpiece of their environmental agenda. The “30 GW by 2030” drove the rush to lease offshore acreage and approve offshore wind projects during Biden’s time in office. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) often cut corners. It granted favorable terms to offshore wind developers, almost all European oil and gas companies, to accelerate the pace of development.

Carbonless energy was the carrot offered to coastal states with aggressive clean energy mandates for their electricity grids to get them onboard with OWFs. Most states are small, so they lack the swaths of land needed to support onshore wind farms or solar arrays. Sticking wind turbines in the Atlantic Ocean was the solution, although environmental and economic challenges exist. Government subsidies became the salve to overcome the financial challenge. Skipping comprehensive environmental assessments made it easier to approve individual wind farms.

The government agreed to lease offshore waters amid the East Coast habitats of marine mammals (whales). These leases were often centered over substantial commercial and recreational fishing grounds, impacting those industries. Furthermore, these fishing grounds are usually feeding sites for marine mammals.

The OWF construction process requires significant and concentrated vessel activity. Turbine components must be hauled from shore to their installation location and then assembled. High levels of underwater noise are generated by seismic surveys, construction vessel activity, and piledriving of turbine foundations to anchor them on the seabed. Underwater noise is known to impact marine mammals. Therefore, the government allows developers the right to harm a certain number of mammals during construction, although they cannot kill them. The harm accepted includes temporary or permanent hearing loss, which can cause them to become disoriented. This is significant as marine mammals communicate via sounds underwater. Sound allows mothers to track their offspring. It is also critical for mammals to find food.

Since OWF development started, there has been a higher-than-normal incident rate of injured or dead whales, which are protected species. Almost every whale death shows it was hit by a vessel, although there is no proof a vessel strike killed the whale. Likewise, there is no proof that high underwater noise from wind farm construction caused whale deaths.

The reason why a direct link between underwater noise and whale deaths cannot be made is twofold. Necropsies of whales are conducted long after the mammal dies, and its body washes ashore. The whale’s hearing structure deteriorates rapidly after death, which generally means there is no way to determine their condition immediately before death.

In contrast to dolphins, whales cannot be maintained in captivity to allow scientists to conduct tests to determine how whales react to underwater noise levels generated during wind farm construction. A second linkage problem is that whales are difficult to observe and track, and where they die may not be anywhere close to where the carcass washes ashore. Therefore, the senior officials at BOEM, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMF) that support the wind farm development program claim that no direct link exists between underwater noise and whale deaths. However, we often see NMF scientists and their European counterparts acknowledge that they do not know for sure, even though underwater noise is proven to cause disorientation. Is it possible whales were disoriented and temporarily without their hearing, so they unknowingly crossed in front of vessels, were struck, and killed? The logic seems straightforward, but political agendas argue to dismiss any possible linkage to not slow the building of offshore wind farms.

We were tipped off by Linda Bonvie, who writes Badditives on Substack.com, about toxic particles from deteriorating wind blades. Her interest in the subject came from her knowledge that GE Vernova, the Vineyard Wind turbine blade manufacturer that disintegrated offshore Nantucket, Massachusetts, provided a document listing the materials in wind blades.

The blade failure resulted in debris washing ashore on beaches in the four neighboring states – Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York. BOEM was forced to shut down construction work. An investigation unearthed that the blades manufactured by the company’s Canadian plant were defective, and the problems had been covered up during their testing.

During the investigation, GE Vernova handed to Nantucket officials a 485-page material safety data sheet. According to Bonvie, the information revealed that besides fiberglass, “the massive 70-ton blade contained adhesives, resins, gel coats, chemical ‘balancing materials,’ hardeners, epoxies, coatings, and polyvinyl chloride (the latter known to be the most environmentally damaging plastic there is).” This material washed up on Nantucket’s beaches, making locals unhappy and worried about their health and safety.

Bonvie identified two recent scientific reports addressing the potential harm of toxic particles from deteriorating wind blades and turbines on the health of individuals. One paper was published last December, and the second was published last month.

The December paper was published in the journal Science of The Total Environment. The paper was titled: “Effect of particles from wind turbine blades erosion on blue mussels Mytilus edulis.” A team of scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research conducted the research. Scientists from other German research organizations supported them.

This was the first controlled lab experiment to study the biological effects of wind blade leading edge erosion (LEE) particles. If one only reads the study’s highlights, one might believe there was no significant health risk. In the study’s abstract, the authors wrote: “Experimental worst-case scenario of massive abrasion and the minimal response observed in M. edulis under the conditions tested suggest that erosion caused by wind turbine blades may pose little to no risk to bivalves at this stage.” This comes after the mollusks were fed a diet of ground-up blade particles for 7-14 days.

However, when we read the conclusion of the study, we were struck by the observation that “Mussels exposed to blade coatings and core (glass fiber particles, GFP) particles showed moderate to severe intake of metals, in particular, barium and chromium…” That doesn’t sound good.

The authors finished with the following observations and warnings. “According to the principles of One Health (Lebov et al., 2017), the presented results indicate a potential threat to the ecosystem functioning within the wind park area (as blue mussels are the ecological engineers in the epibenthic ecosystem), as well as a possible impact on the human health (due to the commercial use of blue mussels for human consumption). While these results are promising, the current study is far from providing a comprehensive and reliable understanding of the potential OWFs risks in the marine environment.”

The scientists note that further studies are needed using different turbine blade materials and different life stages of the mollusks. They also say the studies should be conducted on an international scale. They also included the following graphic. Note the plea for more research.

Scientists recognize the risk of OWFs and the need for more research.

The January paper was published in Nature Partner Journals Ocean Sustainability. The study, “Offshore wind energy: assessing trace element inputs and the risks for co-location of aquaculture,” examined the risks of collocated aquaculture and OWFs in the North Sea.

With the high interest in aquaculture co-location, the paper examines the possible impact on humans from wind turbine erosion particles becoming embedded in the seafood grown in these neighboring areas. The paper estimates that the annual volumes of trace elements (TE) from wind turbine corrosion erosion are as high as 3,219 tons of aluminum, 1,148 tons of zinc, and 1.9 tons of indium from zinc mining. Moreover, given the planned expansion of OWFs, these volumes “will increase ~12× by 2050.”

The researchers warn, “TE accumulation in seafood is a major human exposure route. Accumulated high tissue concentrations in oysters, mussels, and kelp during co-location culture would contribute significantly to or greatly exceed (e.g., oyster zinc accumulation) an adult’s Tolerable Weekly Intake.”

The risks of TE consumption by humans from eating shell food and seaweed poisoned by the particles should be considered by the U.S. government. Even states such as Rhode Island and Connecticut, which have important shell food industries, should consider the risks to their economies and the health of their residents and tourists.

Add toxic wastes from the erosion of offshore wind blades and turbine structures to the environmental risks of this effort to industrialize the Atlantic Ocean. It increases the need for a comprehensive review of offshore wind development. The health aspect of OWFs only became an issue when the Vineyard Wind blade broke apart. However, people actively following the development of OWFs have been aware of pollution from leaking turbines and deteriorating blades. They have scientific support for understanding the potential harm from the usual wear-and-tear of wind blades and turbine structures. How much risk should residents accept in the name of clean energy?