 Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to our briefing this afternoon. My name is Carol Werner. I'm the executive director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. We are delighted to be hosting this briefing on offshore wind this afternoon with Senator Carper's office. And of course, we are even more delighted that Senator Carper is here with us this afternoon to kick off this important briefing. Offshore wind is something that hasn't received a lot of attention here in the US. Which is a shame because it's received a lot of attention in other parts of the world. So this is an opportunity for us to play a little bit of catch-up to find out what's really going on in different countries around the world. Because it truly is a proven technology. It's been providing commercial power generation very, very successfully for a number of years now. You will hear a lot more about that. And we are very excited to talk about what really is also happening here in the US where we think that it will have a very bright future. But in order for that to happen, there are a lot of things that have to come together in terms of thinking about how technology needs, financial needs, policy needs, how they all come together. Because certainly the potential resource in this country in terms of looking at our coastal resources as well as the offshore wind resources in the Great Lakes are absolutely immense. But first, let me just mention a couple things about Senator Carper from Delaware that I think are very important for us as we move forward this afternoon. First of all, he serves on a number of committees here in the Senate where he is ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. He serves on the Finance Committee and also on the Environment and Public Works Committee. And one of the things that he has been known for since he's been here in the Senate since 2001 is his ability to really work across party lines. And in fact, he has sponsored so much legislation, has done a lot of work on many issues particularly in the whole environment and clean energy areas in which he really has demonstrated his ability to really be a problem solver and somebody who really tries to build consensus. Now, I would submit to you that that comes from so much of his prior experience, which he brings a wealth of experience coming from state and local government in which he, prior to coming to the Senate, he had been governor, he had been the state treasurer. He had also served five terms as Delaware's congressman in the House of Representatives. And coupled with that, he also brought with him at the very, very start of his career, his experience in the Navy as a naval flight officer for five years. And where he served three tours of duty in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War and then continued to serve in the Naval Reserve, retiring at the rank of captain in 1991. So when you start to weave together all of his public service coming from that in uniform and leading there as well as having to lead through all of these offices, state government, and also here in the Congress, we are very, very glad that we have Senator Carper also leading on this issue. Thanks. Thanks, Carol. Welcome to the Committee Hearing Room and Environment and Public Works Committee. And I'm going to just say to our panelists from left to right, right to left, it's nice to see all you guys and gal. And we're honored that you're here. Thanks for joining us. Frankly, thank you for showing the way and with respect to renewables and offshore wind in some cases. I want to thank Laura Haynes Gillum. Laura, would you raise your hand? Laura Haynes and her security detail of our jail here to keep, make sure she's protected, she's a good child. And so we're taking real good care of Laura. And we're happy that you're here. We're happy that you're here. I just want to follow up on a couple things that Carol said. I spent five years of my life in a hot war in Southeast Asia. Our job there was to fly low-level missions about 500 feet off the water in big airplanes, 30-man crews called Navy P-3 aircraft. And our job was to intercept and infiltrate the trawlers coming and trying to come in to resupply the Viet Cong. We were trying to maintain, prop up the government of South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese were trying to bring them down. And they were using the Viet Cong to do that. And our job was to find these little junk fishing boats in the South China Sea, not too far from Spratly Island, a place where the Chinese are building runways and stuff like that. And our mission was to find them, track them in to the coast and turn them over to Swift boats. John Kerry, thank you. And to the Coast Guard. Yes, Coast Guard. To board them and see what was going on. I learned a lot about leadership from the age of 17. I was Navy Watsimid Shipman and served in to write to the end of the Cold War, August of 1991. And when I stepped down the next month, I led a congressional delegation of Vietnam veterans in the house to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, to find out what happened to 3,000 MIAs. And so that's a little bit about my past. I learned a lot about leadership over that time. And one of the things I learned are these things. And this is, and it relates to what we're going to be talking about here in just a minute. Leadership. Leaders are humble, not haughty. We lead by our example. It's not do as I say. It's do as I do. Leaders should be servants. Our job is to serve, not be served. Leaders should stay out of step, have the courage to stay out of step when everybody else is marching to the long tune. Leaders should be aspirational, appeal to people's better angels. Leaders don't build themselves up by running other people down. Leaders are interested in doing what's right, not what's easy or expedient, but what is right. Leaders treat other people the way we want to be treated. That was a lesson we learned from the Pope. We have any Catholics here? Okay, I sit down for the Presbyterian. I sit to some of my Catholic friends in the Senate last week. The Pope would make a great Presbyterian. I think he would. It's not a bad Catholic either. But one of the things he tried to drill home with us in our joint session and everywhere else we went, Golden Rule Treat other people the way we want to be treated. Most important rule of law. Another leadership lesson for me was to focus on excellence in everything we do if it didn't perfect, make it better. And the last one would be when you know you're right, you're sure you're right, don't give up. Don't give up. And those are sort of like my training. As a leader coming up, and I used all these in the Navy for all those years, I've used those lessons as a treasure and governor of my state and in the Congress and the House of the Senate. And I'm told to change. So how does all that relate to offshore wind? Find out what works and do more of that. Well, thank you. Thank you for showing us what works. And see if we could do some of that as well. Find out what is right, not necessarily easy or expedient, but what is the right thing to do? Well, finding new ways to generate energy in ways that are not harmful to our environment that actually put a lot of people to work. Maybe that's not such a bad idea. If it isn't perfect, make it better. We have seen my son Christopher, MIT graduate, mechanical engineer. When he was in college, spent a summer in Erie, Pennsylvania. How many of you been to Erie, Pennsylvania? He was a big operation there by a GE. And he worked on wind turbine gear reduction boxes for the better part of the summer. There's a lot of jobs that can flow, a lot of research and development that flow for wind. And frankly, we're doing a lot better in terms of our ability to regenerate electricity now than we were that summer that he worked there, gosh, almost 10 years ago. And the other one is that when you know you're right, you're sure you're right. Just don't give up. Just don't give up. And how many of you have ever been to Delaware? Where's your hand? Not just came through on I-95, paid the toll. Not just used your easy pass. I actually got out of your car, maybe went to the southern part of the state. If anybody ever been to any of our beaches, we have more fire, I think Delaware last time I checked, has more five-star beaches than any state in America. Little Delaware, can you believe that? And one of them is called Rehoboth. Does anybody know what Rehoboth is in the Bible? Anybody know what Rehoboth means when you translate it into English? Anybody know? Here's what it means. It means room for all. Is that nice? Including you and your family and your friends. Room for all. If you stand on Rehoboth Beach and look east, you look at the Atlantic Ocean. If you look kind of east, northeast, you're looking toward New Jersey. But if you look east, you're looking at the Atlantic Ocean. If you happen to travel maybe 12, 13, 14 miles, do east from Rehoboth, you find a place where the wind is just right. Just right. Anybody here remember the fairy tale about Goldilocks? The porridge that was too hot. The porridge that was too cold. And the porridge was just right. It was a place just due east of Rehoboth. Almost 15 miles out there where the wind is just right. Not too hard. Not too soft. Just right. And about seven years ago, I was at the University of Delaware's College of Marine Studies in Lewis, Delaware. Not Lewis, Delaware. Lewis, Delaware. It's about six, seven miles north of Rehoboth. And I met with the folks at the, it was in the College of Marine Studies. The College of Marine Studies. And it's now, it's no longer called the College of Marine Studies. I don't know what it's called now. So you know what I call them? The College of Earth, Wind and Fire. That's what I call them. But what is now the College of Earth, Wind and Fire? I shared with me all these maps off of the Atlantic coast of the U.S. from right on our shores, going up five, 10, 15, 20, 20, 50 miles, 60, 100 miles. And it was basically sharing where the wind blew, what direction it blew, the different speeds that it blew. And what they said to me, they said, Senator Carpenter, Rehoboth Beach, 12, 13 miles up, that's a great place to create wind. And they said put a lot of people to work deploying windmill farms. We would harness the wind. We'd put a lot of people to work maintaining those windmill farms. And we would, because the wind is always blowing out there, not too hard, not too soft, just right. We would have a reliable form or source of energy for many, many years to come. And the woman who was ahead of the College of Earth, Wind and Fire at the time, Nancy Target, I said, Nancy, you had me from hello. And she did. She did. Among the reasons why Susan Collins, before that Olympia Snow, and I've been pushing the idea of an investment tax credit, an investment tax credit, that would basically provide not a tax revenue, tax stream, revenue stream after a windmill was put into use, but it would provide it at the commencement of construction. And a production tax credit works just fine for on land. This is not so expensive to build them on land. You know that and I know that. It's a lot harder and a lot more expensive to put them 12, 15, 30, 40, 50 miles out to sea. A lot of money. And we figured out if we're going to try and see if this works here, what we should do is say we want to not provide a tax credit forever for offshore wind, we want to get it started. We want to get it started. And the way our legislation that we introduced in the last Congress or two with Olympia Snow and most recently with Susan is that the current version of the bill, the current version of the bill we introduced in the last Congress that basically said this, any construction begun, I want to say was it being at the end of last year? Last year? All right. It began before the end of last year. Before December, by December 31st, 2014, if the construction began by that date, that construction project would realize a 30% tax, investment tax credit. Okay? If they started the day after, too bad. Too bad. But the idea was to get them started. Nobody took advantage of that tax credit. Did they? Maybe one. Maybe one. Folks from a smaller state, but not much smaller, took advantage of it. And that tax credit has expired. And what we have to do is to extend it. And the idea is to extend it not by a couple months, but actually by a couple years. So that any investments in the construction offshore when it begins by the end of next year, by December 31st, 2016, would realize a tax credit. Let's say we have 6,000 megawatts of generating capacity signs up by the end of next year. Well, only the first 3,000 would benefit from the tax credit. We want to get it started. We want to find out in test and see if this works. That's the way it works. 3,000 megawatts. First 3,000 signs up. You make the cut. You're good to go. If you don't, do that. But the others will have a good tool to use. So that's what we're trying to do. The legislation will be offered again. It's part of some tax extenders, a bunch of tax extenders before the tax, before the finance committee. And later this year, if we've made sure that we don't close, shut down the government this year, this month, this week, get through that. And we'll have the opportunity to fight our cyber wars and do some other things that we need to get done. And we'll do that during the course of the fall. And hopefully before the end of this, before Christmas Eve, before December 20th, we will have passed most of the stuff that we need to pass and also put in place some tax extenders that will include the provision offered previously by Olympia Snow, now by Susan Collins and myself, that I've just explained to all of you. Without it, I don't think we're going to see any offshore when a construction began or be completed. With it, I think we will. I think we will. And we'll see how it works. And we'll learn from that going forward. Let me stop there. Anybody has a comment? Anybody has a question? Anybody wants to ask me, where is the newest national park in America? I will answer that question. Delaware. Anybody else? Any comments? No, that's fine. That's fine. Okay. Anything I missed? Come on. Oh, she thinks we're all good. Okay, folks. Everybody still awake? All right. Let me say to the panel, I am your opening act. I'm your opening act, and they are all yours. Long story short, many roles of government. Lincoln said it best. The role of government is to do for the people what they cannot do for themselves. In this case, we can't build offshore wind in this country without a tax policy that actually helps to enable it. And I think Susan Collins for that Olympia Snow and I have pretty good enabling legislation. And if we do it, I think, or at least give it a try, I think at the end of the day we'll say, as smart as those Brits were, as smart as those Germans were, and the Danes, we're not stupid because we learned from what they did. And we took a good idea, and maybe hopefully, made it even better. Thank you very much. God bless. And remember, what does Rehoboth mean? What does Rehoboth mean? Room for including you. Come and see us. So, hopefully, we will see something that has happened on the policy side before the end of the year as Senator Carver was suggesting that will help benefit some of the things what we're talking about today. Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, someone else here in the Senate who cares very much about offshore wind. And particularly because his state is home to that first project that we're going to be hearing about in a little bit. The whole delegation has been extremely, extremely supportive of what's going on at Block Island. But Senator Reed has been very involved in this issue, and he is also the co-chair of the Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus, as well as serving on the Appropriations Committee here in the Senate, and he is also on the Armed Services Committee and also on the Banking Committee. And so in that capacity, he has also looked at many energy and environmental issues. And again, as with Senator Carver, Senator Jack Reed also brings a commitment of longtime service. He had graduated from West Point and then served with the 82nd Airborne Division as a platoon leader and company commander and battalion staff officer. So it's another aspect of one of the many ways in which he has also served as a leader, both in uniform and then in other public service through serving three terms in the Rhode Island State Senate, as well as three terms here in the House of Representatives before being elected to the Senate. And so he was not able to join us this afternoon, but we do have a video from him. Hello, everyone. I want to extend my warmest greetings as you gather this afternoon, and thank you for your efforts to promote clean and renewable energy. I would also like to thank the Environmental and Energy Study Institute for organizing this briefing, as well as Deepwater Wind CEO Jeff Grubowski for his leadership and participation. Jeff can give you a firsthand update on the progress we are making in my home state of Rhode Island with the Block Island Wind Farm becoming the first offshore wind farm in construction in the United States. The steel is in the water. It's impressive, and they've already installed four of the five foundations for this project. When it's completed, it should lower energy bills for families and businesses on the island. Our state model is hope, and I hope other communities can learn from the success and experience we've had in Rhode Island. It took a lot of hard work and coordination to reach this point, and a mixture of federal grants and private investment, and we still have a ways to go. But the bottom line is this. If we make smart investments in renewable energy sources and projects like this one, it will help us generate both clean energy and jobs well into the future. That's why I joined Senator Copper, who is also speaking today in introducing the Incentivizing Offshore Wind Power Act. Tapping into the power of offshore wind can help address climate change, reduce greenhouse gases, and make energy more affordable. There is a lot of international competition, and the United States should be at the forefront when it comes to renewables. Again, we've got to make smart, sustainable investments, and we've got to continue to innovate and collaborate. That is why gatherings like this are so important. Again, thank you to all the speakers for being here. I look forward to hearing what comes out of today's session and working together in the future. Thank you. So, I think hearing from both Senator Reid and from Senator Copper is important in terms of setting the stage for our briefing today, and in terms of thinking about the future and the whole potential and what can become real in the future. It just feels like there's a whole flurry of things that have been happening with regard to offshore wind. A variety of conferences that are going on. There was just a summit on offshore wind at the White House. There was a business supply network meeting that is going on. There is a major conference that we're going to hear about that is happening in Baltimore on offshore wind. We're reaching that time where the timing is becoming right. And when you have words like Senator Reid saying that the motto for Rhode Island as hope and Senator Copper talking about room for all, well, then maybe it is just the right time for here too. And so, we're now going to turn for remarks to Fatima Ahmed, who is the manager for Federal Regulatory Affairs in offshore wind with the American Wind Energy Association. Before coming to Fatima has really put a lot of work in with regard to this whole issue and to energy issues through her work at the Department of Interior where she worked with then Secretary Ken Salazar to help in terms of looking at the licensing of public lands for renewable energy and she also had been an attorney with NOAA the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And before that she also was in private law practice. So she brings a wealth of experience specifically that can help in terms of addressing a lot of the barriers in helping see some of the opportunities that we now see. Fatima. Thank you to ESI for organizing this briefing. We're happy to participate along with some of our member companies and draw attention to the promising technology that is offshore wind. So as the leading trade association for both land-based and offshore wind power we can say with confidence that it's been a great year for wind power in the U.S. From our perspective the success of land-based wind in the U.S. is a critical part of efforts to build support for offshore wind. So as context the U.S. has an installed capacity of over 67,000 megawatts of land-based wind and there are over 13,000 megawatts currently under construction. Land-based wind supports 73,000 well-paying jobs nationally including jobs at more than 500 factories in 43 states. So the jobs created the manufacturing facilities that have been built and the proof that large amounts of wind can be reliably integrated into the grid all demonstrate to political leaders and members of the public the significant opportunity that offshore wind represents and that it must be a vital component of our energy portfolio. So as Jeff will be able to describe in more detail this summer there was historic progress in the U.S. offshore wind industry with the beginning of offshore construction at Block Island Wind Farm. We're very happy about that and as Paul will discuss site surveys have begun offshore Maryland for the proposed U.S. wind project and we're encouraged about that as well. This year we also saw the entrance into the U.S. market of a major European player in the global offshore wind sector the Danish Oil and Natural Gas company. They have taken over the lease for a wind energy area offshore Massachusetts from Res America. So in light of these developments the American Wind Energy Association is optimistic about the industry as a whole. Offshore wind projects have been proposed in both state and federal waters off of the Pacific coast as well as the Great Lakes. The big picture is that offshore wind energy must be a part of our energy portfolio. This spring DOE released the landmark wind vision report which describes a scenario in which wind power provides 10% of the country's electricity in 2020, 20% in 2030 and 35% in 2050. To support this scenario the wind vision reports anticipates 22 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030 and 86 gigawatts by 2050. Additionally as we know last month the EPA released the clean power plan which will reduce carbon emissions nationwide by 32% from 2005 levels by 2030 with state specific targets varying in stringency. The final emission guidelines specifically cite offshore wind as one of the tools states can use to meet their targets. So we think that the future remains bright for offshore wind. And at the American Wind Energy Association we're working closely with our regional partners to develop state markets for offshore wind. So for example over the summer we worked with Alliance for Clean Energy New York to submit comments advocating for offshore wind in conjunction with land based wind in the New York state large scale renewables proceeding and the New York City Department of Energy to provide a range of advice for information on 100% renewable energy sourcing. So substantively in addition to focusing on the jobs and the environmental benefits of offshore wind we are trying to bring attention to offshore wind energy's benefits for consumers including fuel diversity especially in New England where natural gas is constrained on cold winter days and electricity prices spike. Offshore wind provides a hedge value against volatile fossil fuel costs. Zero fuel cost wind energy also contributes to reductions in wholesale electricity prices. There's a correlation between peak demand and offshore wind resource strength. So on hot summer afternoon the sea breeze kicks in when electricity is needed most and is most expensive. Also congestion costs reduction. Offshore wind can help reduce costs for rate payers by providing power on congested systems like in the PJM region. Now in addition to the substance an important part of making the case for offshore wind is building the coalition of stakeholders who are committed to a US energy future featuring offshore wind. We need to build relationships and share knowledge and expertise whether it's about technical issues such as foundation installation techniques or various approaches to advocacy at the state and federal levels. And so to that end the American Wind Energy Association is holding a conference beginning tomorrow in Baltimore and we really encourage you to attend. Our keynote speakers include Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Abby Hopper as well as the DOE Wind and Water Power Technologies Office Director Jose Zias. We will have international representatives from all segments of the offshore industry developers, manufacturers, operations and maintenance contractors. If you have any questions about conference registration I'd be happy to speak with you after this session and thank you again to ESI for the opportunity to participate and for bringing attention to this important technology. Thank you. So now we're going to hear about the first project that actually is in the water in the US. So we're going to hear from Jeff Grabowski who is the CEO for Deepwater Wind which is doing the Block Island project in Rhode Island. Jeff is the as I said he is the CEO there where he manages the whole portfolio of Deepwater's offshore, other offshore wind and transmission projects and so he's been involved in this particular project since its inception in 2008. Prior to that while he has spent many years being involved in terms of looking and thinking about the whole role of these technologies and how to help shape their structures and the government policies necessary. He had also served as chief of staff to the governor of the state of Rhode Island where he was senior advisor to the governor on as we all know in terms of a chief of staff having to deal with basically just everything. And he also has practice law in Rhode Island as well as in New York. We are delighted to hear firsthand Jeff about what's happening with Block Island. Good afternoon very happy to be here today in particular because Senator Carper and Senator Reed have both been such champions for offshore wind for a number of years now and we in the industry speak highly of both of them very frequently because they're so critical to our effort to building this industry in the United States. I'm going to talk a bit about the Block Island project in a moment but I'd like to start with some perspective first. Many of us know the basic story of what happened in Europe. This is a graph that shows how many megawatts are in operation in Europe from offshore wind projects and most people tend to focus on the right hand side of that chart because it's impressive because the lines are really large and there are 10,000 megawatts in operation in Europe right now 3,000 turbines spinning the oldest project dates back to 1991 and it's still in operation so this is a big mature sophisticated industry in Europe where many billions of dollars are being invested every year building these projects but I often like to focus on the left side of the slide because what we're going through in the US with really slow moving development of this industry where it seems like an excruciating long period of time to get the industry started is not really surprising because the same thing happened in Europe it took almost a decade and there really were projects back there to the left of 1994, there are just so few of them that they barely register on that chart it took a long time before the industry took off in Europe and then it exploded and in calendar 2015 there was going to be about a 40% increase in capacity from offshore wind there are billions and billions of dollars being invested in Europe right now consequently it's an enormous industry this is the port of Bremerhaven which was a sleepy dying port facility used to be a fishing port a number of years ago and suddenly the offshore wind industry showed up and now it's a big booming town and those vessels that you see and those foundations those yellow things in the back or foundations for offshore wind turbines have created tens and tens of thousands of jobs in Denmark and in Germany in the UK and in France and in the Netherlands and all across Europe you know well today we have nothing spinning in the US today but we have an enormous potential and the DOE says by 2020 we could have many many jobs in this industry because it's a big complex capital intensive technology intensive industry and in Europe all of the big players are in this game this is not an industry for small for small players big companies like Siemens are investing billions of dollars in this technology it's a real competitive industry it certainly can work here and this is these two slides to me demonstrate why offshore wind makes sense in the US even in the near term this is the market fundamentals of offshore wind in the US on the left side you see a nighttime sidelight image which is a pretty good proxy for energy demand and you can see how brightly lit up it is from Boston to Washington that also coincides with with really high population population densities extremely high property values and let's just say a high aversion of big smelly power plants in those neighborhoods so it is incredibly difficult to build anything on that coastline imagine trying to get a permit and local approval to build a big natural gas fired plant in the east Hampton New York really hard to do and that story can be repeated multiple times across up and down this coastline southern New York New England those are hard places to build new energy sources and there's really no other energy in the area that's native that's domestic but if you look at the right side of the map this is essentially the solution this is a wind map of the east coast and so the darker colors the reddish the reds and oranges indicate really strong wind speed that red and the orange those are world class wind speeds every bit as good as the North Sea where all of the projects or most of the projects in Europe have been built so we have a world class energy resource that's just off our coast and it is really easy to interconnect that wind resource into these coastal communities it's quite easy to build a 20 mile transmission line under the water we're the only property owner as a federal government it's a whole lot harder to build a 500 mile transmission line from Canada to downstate New York crossing 15 different municipalities and hundreds of property owners so we have a huge demand on the left we have a huge resource on the right that's the market case for offshore wind in the US this is just a snapshot of one particular market this is New England and this is what's happening in New England today and similar stories could be told in other parts of the country in New England there are about 8500 megawatts of power that will retire in the next few years coal plants, old oil plants and now adding on top of that potentially some nuclear power plants that are receiving a whole lot more scrutiny today than they did a couple years ago that energy is going offline very soon most of these power plants in the northeast were built in the 50s and 60s and those plants are going to retire we're beginning a replacement cycle in power generation in the United States and it's starting here in New England first unfortunately New England doesn't have any domestic resource and you see that little gas line from Pennsylvania sure there's a lot of gas in Pennsylvania but you have to get it to New England somehow which means building really long pipelines that are very controversial or you could bring in hydro from Canada again really long controversial lines that are difficult to permit difficult to site, very expensive but we have a domestic energy source just off the coast of New England and that's offshore wind Deepwater is working on two projects on the coast of New England right now the Block Island project, Block Island wind farm you can see on that map is right in the center I'll talk about that in a second but that really is a demonstration scale project and a prelude to the larger project that we're working on which is outlined in yellow there we secured the lease for that site from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management through the first competitive auction that that agency held for that site we control now under a 30 year lease 256 square miles of ocean which has the capacity to generate about 1,500 megawatts and our plan is to develop that site in increments over time and to sell that power into the three markets you see on the map Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Long Island but we have to start with something and Block Island is where we started this will be the first offshore wind farm in the United States you can see Block Island on the map on the southeast corner of the island there are five dots down there in that shaded area those dots represent the wind farm this process really began in 2008 with really strong bipartisan support in Rhode Island state government where we are now we now enjoy the support of our third consecutive governor in Rhode Island and entire delegation in the state so we have really strong local support which for a project like this is absolutely fundamental and we wouldn't be in this business if we didn't have that support the project right now is under construction today as we speak it's under construction we will build it in two phases in 2015 we'll do the first half of the project and we'll finish the project in 2016 and so it will be producing its first energy around October of next year this is a photo this was the moment when steel went in the water in the United States that was the end of July that is the first steel foundation being lifted onto the seabed that is a very large crane barge the largest crane barge on the east coast lifting 450 tons of steel in the air and it's about to lower that extremely slowly into the water it's about 90 feet of water there and now we have installed five of those foundations the project consists of five installations and we were very excited for that moment it creates a lot of jobs you really can't see the text here but these are photos of actual people in Rhode Island working none of those are stock images except for the boat because we're building the boat doesn't exist yet but we are employing about 300 different people locally Rhode Islanders out on the water in the port facilities we're commissioning a vessel that will be built in Rhode Island this industry creates a lot of jobs and it creates jobs across the spectrum from really high tech engineering to blue collar jobs, welders, electricians and laborers and tug captains and everything in between so it's a very labor intensive industry even for the Block Island project we're using four different port facilities in Rhode Island to build five turbines so it requires a lot of infrastructure and this is sort of the potential of what we could be doing more locally this is European content that we'll be using for the Block Island project on the left it's an installation vessel that's coming from a Norwegian company but it's a specialized it's a purpose built vessel and on the right is the turbine that we'll be installing it's made by Alstom it's a six megawatt machine it's about 600 feet tall from the sea level to the tip of the blade it's very large right now all of the really high tech work in offshore wind is being done in Europe and the first slide that I showed you is the reason why that's where the projects are but as we build projects in the U.S. more and more the supply chain will come to the U.S. and we'll have our own vessels and we'll be doing more and more of the manufacturing here in the U.S. which we'll add on to all those jobs I just talked about that were construction related so this is an industry with enormous potential and today I'm happy to answer any questions about this project and happy to be followed by my colleague Mr. Rich Thank you Pretty exciting to see that and I must say it's got to be amazing to see the scale of this equipment sometime I really want to go see one of these operations I'm now delighted to introduce Paul Rich who is the director of project development for U.S. wind I'm here to joining U.S. wind Paul had actually been the development officer for deep water wind for a couple years he brings a lot of experience in the energy industry where he had been development officer of CCH Holdings Group where he had been involved in terms of looking at underground transmission another very very important aspect of dealing with offshore wind and had worked on a variety of electricity projects he had also served on the staff of former congressman Tom Allen of Maine as well and he too brings a lot of experience coming out of the Navy where he had been a lieutenant commander and so all of those years also helped build a lot of the experience that we are seeing in this whole industry and in its interest Paul? Thank you Carol and welcome everyone it's exciting to be able to lift my head up out of my cubicle on my desk and actually see some people who aren't either railing against me or running away so thanks for all of you for coming and Carol thanks for setting this up and what's interesting in hearing her talk about my background is there's at least one project there that's successful that I worked on Jeff's making sure there's another one that I had anything to do with is successful and our project can only hope to emulate the success that Deepwater Wind is doing right now up in Rhode Island so I also want to thank Laura and all her work with Senator Carper and our interests in offshore wind and working with Senator Collins' office to make sure that we take care of those things that you can take care of to help stimulate development and without it truly still be beached so to speak so well I was impressed to hear Senator Carper talk about leadership because that's what it takes to get these things off the ground and I think Jeff was right in pointing out that the European experience took a decade and yet as we are want to do in the US it's sort of the wild west of development we're not fronting big companies to lead these undertakings they're starting to come now as we see with DONG Energy coming over from Europe one of the leaders in offshore wind but Deepwater Wind is a startup company the company I work for, US Wind is a startup company and so there are opportunities that we're willing to take a chance on but it takes a little bit of bravery a little bit of risk, tolerance and you need some help from congressional and state legislatures to make sure you have the support to try to pull this off in Maryland what we're pursuing is the same thing as Jeff is up in Rhode Island we're looking for a larger project that's about 500 megawatts and I'm not going to spend much time on this page because they didn't know who might cover it but between Fatima, Jeff and Carol even Senator Carper I think you know the facts and you can look at it afterwards if you like but I'll just dive into the Maryland project it's a project that starts about 12 miles off of the coast of Ocean City and it's in a wind energy area that's about 80,000 acres it will allow for our 500 megawatt project and in fact something I'll touch on at the end of this presentation I mean we could have more 1500 megawatts of offshore wind power could be generated from this one wind energy area that the Department of Interior Bureau of Ocean Energy Management auctioned off last year but we're going to use 250 megawatts of this 500 to pursue under the Maryland offshore renewable energy credit program now this gives us a pathway to the marketplace what that OREC will allow is for us to have a an opportunity to marketize the rates of our energy to the rate payers of Maryland to allow this project to move forward the other 250 megawatts were on our own to figure out how to sell that and integrate it into the grid but pathways to marketplace is a key term to remember in all of this because developers can only take this so far with the support from the congressional legislature 125 turbine installations would most likely support a 500 megawatt project and then we're looking to put about a billion dollars into the development of this project now some of that is capital some of that is development costs but a large chunk and Jeff talked about this is in the workforce development the construction and fabrication side of this and what our project at least holds the potential for is helping to bring that supply chain from Europe over to the U.S. shores right so we can finally begin to establish an industry a source of workforce development you know some centers of excellence that will probably develop much like the silicone valley did but this time in offshore when we start to pull some of that technology over here and set up bases of operation and intelligence and synergy and capacity so we're looking for an in service date of the first quarter in 2020 and in and along that way we're going to be creating about 3100 jobs now that's direct indirect and induced right those are the forecast models we know we're going to have to employ almost 700 people directly just for welding for fabrication for assembly some of the jobs Jeff talked about in terms of marine operations and services there's a whole host of other businesses that develop from this kind of project that in Maryland would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars of indirect and induced benefits to the economy so it's big business this project is made fairly substantial progress we secured the least last December the auction was held in August and all that happened and then the lease was secured in December we started building a development team in March and we tried to draw from people who were known in the industry or at least had familiarity with the systems and components of the industry we've invested close to 20 million dollars thus far now that's a huge spike and the rest of the development costs will probably taper but we had to go out into the wind energy area and perform marine survey operations we had to conduct environmental studies and analyses of avian migration patterns marine mammals and sea turtle activity and all of this goes into a site assessment plan that we then submit to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management who's the coordinating agency for our permitting process and so that's a significant amount of money upfront at risk by one company so we're asking a lot if we think this is going to be popular up and down the east coast with folks who don't do this over in Europe we also have applied for and received Q positions for our project with PJM and I say positions because one is purely for the OREC slated offtake and then the other is for our remaining 250 megawatts so we've begun that process we've had scoping meetings and perhaps more importantly we held just Friday of last week an introduction to folks from the US and around the world who are interested in being involved in this project as major contractors doing steel fabrication so these are folks that would take flat steel roll into tubular shapes forms of steel and assemble these into those jackets that Jeff's company installed off of Block Island and these folks would be drawn into the Baltimore area because of the scale of this project building 125 turbines will interest a company to move here to do that kind of activity especially when the oil and gas industry is a little bit slowed down these days but we had interest from companies in Germany Georg and we had companies in Michigan Louisiana and Ohio and Baltimore has a great waterfront resource that can actually allow these companies to do the scale of this work right on the waterfront so we're interested in that and trying to be a catalyst in creating that activity in terms of federal support we've talked about the ITC there's been a great effort now under Bohm to organize lease areas and to hold the auctions and identify wind energy areas that are suitable for development and that's really the key you know the permitting consolidation I talked about and then also infrastructure improvements such as DOT Tiger grants DOE research and development grants that folks are taking advantage of are all very important to lay a baseline for the industry but some challenges still remain very lengthy process to permit these projects and so when I talk about the 20 million dollars of front at risk development capital that we've put into this project we've still got four more years to go before this project is likely to have a project in operation and so your development cycles are enormous you have to have a lot of risk tolerance it's also something to encourage around interagency collaboration so the way the Coast Guard the Department of Interior Department of Energy Department of Transportation all of these agencies interact is very important that there's a common message that comes out the other side I mean if everyone's working in their own individual area it's helpful but when there's collaboration as we learned about up in the New England States around this kind of effort there's a huge benefit to all of us trying to get a common understanding of where to put our resources and I'll just touch at the end here my last theme which is really for the developers interest having a pathway to the marketplace is really what's in need of further attention and by that I mean in Maryland we have an OREC process which gives us a pathway to the marketplace for 250 megawatts if we can encourage the federal government and the staff of these great congressional leaders to work closely with states I think you'll find that there are common benefits to these activities that can be shared in a region can be shared across states and the parochial interests of the states are less highlighted we need to continue to assist developers in organized labor and any number of other folks that are interested in develop a workforce to put funds, put training and allow us to access capital to develop that Minority business enterprises and small businesses continue to need capital and access to capital and that's a huge deal we are trying to encourage a minimum goal of 15% MBE participation in our projects in the state of Maryland which for a technology in an industry in Europe this is a huge challenge right but they need access to capital we need to encourage them to be known and to learn and get on a steep curve and I guess lastly we need to try to shorten that supply chain and by that we mean home growing companies that can do the same things that are now prevalent in a mature industry in Europe so to the extent we can you know follow in your wake in this way we'd love to and we're open to participate I know Jeff's been out on the trail a lot talking about the opportunities in this industry and at night he's working on developing the project so we gotta find ways to really harness all of our activities and the things you are all thinking about to try to make this a successful endeavor in the states I look forward to answering any questions later but thank you so much for your attention thank you thank you so much Paul and obviously it is really clear in terms of what a big deal it is and how much this is involved along with a lot of opportunities where you can just see it there but it's a lot of work to pioneer this here in this country so now I'm going to take a look at where this industry really has been growing and thriving it took a lot of that it's been going gangbusters now as it's really developed and so we are going to hear first from Dr. George Malone who is the First Secretary for Energy and Climate with the MSc of Germany and prior to joining the MSc of Dr. Malone worked at the Germans at the Ministry for Environment Nature Conservation and the Clear Safety where he had received responsibility for climate and energy policy as well as a number of their environmental issues at the German Environmental Protection Agency so he has been involved with the Ministry's development of energy policies which have been very very important in terms of moving Germany's energy policy which have then resulted I think as everybody knows in a tremendously robust land-based wind and solar industry and over the past few years offshore wind and so we look forward to hearing from you Georg Pleasure for me to say a few words on the German experience so far actually when talking about offshore in Germany I think it's a part of our whole policy it is embedded in a larger strategy that's why I would like to say a few words on what is Germany doing actually a few years ago the government decided on a long-term strategy building on existing measures and new measures and the reason for that was that in a long way and in a long-term our energy production is not sustainable looking at the environmental impacts looking at the energy security we are importing 70% of our energy in Germany also looking at the cost that the so-called energy transition I think this term is now well known already builds on two major cornerstones in Germany one is energy efficiency trying to bring down the demand and of course renewable energy and actually the idea is to build the whole energy system on renewable energies and of course you need a lot of transformation including the marketing system the energy research has to provide new success and so on all four working fields are not only electricity today we are only talking about electricity but of course it also includes transport, heating and all the relevant sectors so this is the whole concept of our energy and that is why we have so much push on all the important and relevant energy resources including wind if you look at our long-term targets three blocks have long-term targets, climate we want to bring down our greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 by 80 to 95% at the least the same time we want to increase our renewable energy in the power sector to at least 80% and 60% overall energy efficiency we want to double the energy efficiency of today so these are quite ambitious targets this is where we stand at the moment so we have a long way to go and when we of course what is important for a policy like that you have to control it and monitor the success so we are quite doing quite well but a lot of projects are as you can see not finalized with the green arrow we still have a lot of things to do for the next years so the reason why Germany is doing this is now quite clear and the good thing is it's well accepted and supported in the German public with regard to renewable energy so people prefer to have even if there is a lot of opposition against new power lines and even windmills they prefer to have that one instead of a nuclear power plant in front of their house this is where Germany stands today with regard to our electricity production it basically came from nothing and renewable energy in 2004 we tripled that amount first half year in Germany renewable energy is 32% so it's growing fast and of course wind is the strongest renewable resource and offshore is coming today we have around 40 gigawatt installed capacity onshore and 2.3 gigawatt installed offshore so offshore is only a small fraction of that but growing fast this is our target for the next 10 years we want to expand today's share of renewables up to 45% so coming now to the wind capacity after hydropower wind is the leading resource so all our studies we looked at when we looked at is it possible to run Germany power wise with renewables it is possible and offshore wind is an important part of that we have the resources actually in the north and if you look at the market the wind market in Germany grew steadily over the last 10 years while you see a lot of fluctuation amongst the European states and the specific situation in Germany is like you have all the capacities all the resources, the potential in the north offshore and you have the consumption centers more in the south and in the west is also a question of how to bring that electricity to the south you can see the offshore wind potential and as was mentioned before mostly in the north sea but also in the Baltic sea we have our projects going this year was exceptionally successful in Germany so in the first half of 2015 1700 megawatt were installed that is more than whatever was installed in whole Europe within a year and by the end of the year we expect all together a capacity online of 3,300 megawatt in Germany offshore so that is growing the target in Germany is to have 6,500 megawatt by the end of 2020 we are on track about that and a major policy which drives the installation of offshore is the feed-in tariff and we have the feed-in tariff since two decades in Germany but to really boost offshore we had to work on the system and the idea is now and this is what actually boosted the investment in offshore wind is that we have a concentrated 8-year phase where we give to investors a feed-in tariff of almost 19 cents 90.4 cents for the first 8 years and then that feed-in tariff goes back to 3.9 cents this is actually helped to bring investors on board and of course it also helped in Germany to develop new technologies and to overcome the first problems particularly with the good connection and with the capacity of the ships and one example which Jeff already mentioned is the sea port city Bremerhaven it's a region which experienced harsh economic down what trend in the 90s and in the 80s and offshore wind actually brought a new perspective to that region with a lot of new as you can see here a new enterprises being developed on that area you see before it happened and here a lot of new companies working on the typical production and this is a projection a little bit outdated data actually at the moment another port cooks have and I think is taken over the port position that is a positive perspective we have on offshore at the moment in Germany and we're looking forward to a quite bright future thank you that was a whirlwind tour through a lot of offshore wind we're now going to turn to take a look at what's been going on with regard to the UK and offshore wind because that is another country that has done enormous work and obviously I think that you know that there are a number of countries that have in Europe that have been doing a lot the UK has been a leader and to talk a little bit about that is Tom Simchak who is a policy advisor for energy for the UK embassy and Tom has been with the embassy I joined the embassy last year and before that he worked with a number of different energy NGOs here in Washington thank you and sorry to disappoint I don't come with a proper Downton Abbey accent for you so offshore wind has long been a central part of the UK government's goals for reducing carbon emissions from the power sector and the economy as a whole and improving security of supply unlike the United States we don't have vast new fields of gas coming online and that's continuing to a great amount of the new power developments in the US and certainly security of where the country's interests will be coming from in future years remains very important geopolitically so to that end the UK has been seeking to provide marked uncertainty to projects particularly offshore wind and reducing the risk of investment to leverage private investment so UK has become the world leader in offshore wind and is one thing in particular to note is the role of supply chain you might not for the big names you might see painted with the logos painted on the side of turbines but as mentioned a little bit earlier there's a great deal more to the offshore wind industry port facilities suppliers, financiers everything that goes into previous speakers have shown a number of great pictures of those big facilities creating all this equipment and UK is becoming a leader in particular in that area I've mentioned providing marketing confidence building a competitive supply chain innovation both in technology and in financing and making sure that making these projects able to happen and developing a highly skilled workforce many of you will be aware that the North Sea the 70s, 80s and 90s was a major area of the world for the oil and gas industry the offshore wind industry really builds on that experience quite well and that as fewer and fewer new oil and gas fields are being developed a lot of it onshore infrastructure so the port facilities the expertise so we saw photos for example for the Block Island project of those jacks being lowered into the ocean those were actually manufactured in Louisiana using oil and gas know-how and knowledge likewise in the UK that knowledge base has been very important for the wind industry and the wind industry has been very important for those parts of the country we were seeing declines in employment due to the decline of the oil and gas sector some quick facts and figures there for you to take a look at more than 5 gigawatts capacity 3.5 million homes worth of energy production nearly 7,000 full-time jobs so increasingly more and more going in as a number of leasing rounds at least large tracts of North Sea and Irish Seawaters which we'll see for the development of the coming years and we've got a crack coming up with that just very briefly your standard electricity mix graph there looking at the increasing role for renewables which is mainly offshore wind and existing hydro but in the future that will be offshore wind being where the UK renewables growth will be and again community capacity about a year coming in this is a little bit dated but you can see the leading role that the UK has in offshore wind and increasing and a map just to give you a sense the oil and gas industry I guess I do not have a laser here but the North Sea to the east of Great Britain those port facilities are very important for the offshore wind industry and also in the Irish Sea just to the west between England and Ireland there so to meet the target goal 10 gigawatts by 2020 this shows kind of the current process towards getting there a little bit dated also here this is from several months ago and the sector is changing quickly enough that May 2015 is out of date but you can see operational with significant under construction capacity coming in I'll discuss the government support on offer section just a moment but also quite a lot of capacity that's received planning consent for the projects to go forward and quite a lot in planning also so the 10 gigawatts by 2020 is effectively a business as usual policy case without significant further changes to policy or investment environment so it could be even more this is kind of a broad sense of what the goals of the British government in terms of power sector policy so the three main pillars for power sector planning decarbonization, security of supply and affordability I think some of you have pronounced so I won't bore you with going through some of the text there but we'll look at some of the policies the British government is pursuing to meet these three goals for the electricity sector or energy sector broadly I should say in many cases so financial support for low carbon energy for years are what are called renewables obligation it's been the main policy driver for renewable energy that's basically a renewable portfolio standard so those of you familiar with US renewables policy are probably familiar with that kind of policy but moving forward the UK government is transitioning to what we call contracts for difference which sort of fills the same kind of policy niche as a feed in tariff so how this works and you'll have to bear with me at the end without a laser but so effectively a project receives a set what's called a strike price so the government determines at this point the government determines a price which if the wholesale electricity price is lower than that strike price the project receives a top up and if the wholesale price goes above that strike price the project pays that money back the idea is that this provides certainty for the project going forward so they can go to investors and say hey we know we can get 60 pounds a megawatt hour for our project we know what our return investment will be we're insulated from the various of the market and that's of uncertainty which would deter investors or investors would be seeking a much higher interest rate than they can get with this kind of security in the future this program is going to be changed specifically so that projects are actually bid for a contract for difference and the projects that bid for the lowest possible price will get those contracts will get that certainty and that will guarantee lower prices for consumers while still creating that that certainty for investors for projects going forward because I mean it's often just uncertainty with these new technologies that investors look at this they say they're doing gas wells since 1975 I know that I know what looks like a good project you guys can come in here and tell me how great your offshore wind project is but I'm not so familiar with that I don't know how the markets play I don't know what kind of volatility there is how the supply chain will impact it this reduces that uncertainty so that they can get that private sector financing and seven projects so far have received these contracts and there will be many more in the coming years just a couple other examples of ways that the UK government supports financing and other aspects of the offshore wind industry so certain areas are designated enterprise zones you have similar policies in some states in the US so this is sort of tax relief and basically accelerated appreciation for business investment financing of help, financing support for projects the green investment bank invests in various renewable energy technologies there's one or two states that have similar kinds of programs export finance for UK businesses exporting goods and services overseas and on the research side the offshore renewable energy catapult supports innovation in the sector and much of this and actually much of what I've been talking about also applies to the ocean hydroponetics and tidal sector as well which policy wise often gets together with offshore wind just probably about 15 years behind in technology but is starting to move forward there we go terrific and it's kind of staggering when you think about 15 years since that first offshore wind facility came online in the UK and I think in terms of looking at what is happening in Europe it's also so fascinating in terms of looking at the interconnection of policy and technology and leadership political will how all of that has really been critical in terms of making this all happen let's open it up for your questions we've got 10 or 15 minutes okay and if you could identify yourself please I'll start here in the back and then here here Hi my name is Camille I'm from Climate Wire of UNE Publishing and my question is for the US representatives thank you all for being here by the way what specific opportunities do you see with the Clean Power Plan and are any of you in talks with your states to include offshore wind and their compliance plans well that's a complicated one because the places where offshore wind is most likely to be developed first are in the northeastern states where those states generally are acknowledges having a pretty good head start on the Clean Power Plan right now I sure wish I could sell offshore wind to the middle of the country it'd be great if I could sell it into Kentucky or something like that but it's not the way it works so the Clean Power Plan frankly is not a major focus for offshore wind I think our near term focus is in working with state leaders to promote offshore wind but I think given the advanced stage of where most of the northeastern states are right now with their Reggie program for instance that is helping a lot of the northeastern states make their initial compliance with the Clean Power Plan it's not sort of the principal vehicle we're looking at to promote offshore wind I think perhaps in the longer term you know past the first phase of compliance of the Clean Power Plan offshore wind certainly can be a huge part of compliance with some of the later targets and later goals of the plan but in terms of the near term development opportunities as a project developer I'm not so focused on the year 2030 right now so you can have a great wind resource in a place where you really can't serve the demand for that energy so the value in offshore wind is its location very close to large population centers on the two coasts so we've been focusing on the east coast here because it's the near term opportunity for offshore wind is to serve markets really up and down in particular focused in that very between Massachusetts and Washington those states in the United States they don't have any onshore wind or have they have very little onshore wind and it's very difficult to build large amounts of onshore wind in those states or imported in addition there's a great amount of offshore wind on the west coast as well so markets like Southern California again it's really hard to build big power plants in Southern California that's a great long term opportunity for offshore wind so I think the way to think of it is you can't just build an onshore wind farm wherever you'd like it you have to build it where the wind is you have to build it where there's room for demand and there's a real mismatch between where the onshore wind resource is and these markets that we're talking about first of all I really want to say thank you for showing up and taking an interest in this it's huge I think a couple other things to reinforce what Jeff was saying was these are expensive not just because of the size of these things or the location offshore the supply chain is generally located in Europe right now so as this industry starts to ensure the US your costs will come down per unit okay it's attractive to build onshore for the reasons Jeff said but also because offshore your capacity factor the potential of the energy produced by these units is around 40% or more onshore it's far less than that so without getting into a competition around the other hand-based wind as the efficient very offshore wind just look at the yield that you get offshore it's significant and again these are basically enormous construction projects once they're built they're built with PPA or some kind of off-take contract on the end so you know what the costs are the costs are embedded in the fund and then it's 20 years of payback that's why it's expensive as well so when it comes down to the supply chain being relocated here and a lot more of these units being built offshore I think it'll become more Hi Janet Larson, Earth Policy Institute I was curious it was great to hear the international perspective and I wanted to know if anyone could comment a little bit about the early U.S. history attempting to get into offshore wind namely Cape Wind are they completely dead in the water since they lost their PPA and are there other developers eyeing that area to come in or will anything ever happen? You know it's successful it's disappointing from the perspective of trying to build an industry you know we as project developers don't linger too much about projects that aren't going to happen we're very focused on what's happening in the future and I think the good news is that the industry is moving forward and much has happened in the last few years notwithstanding Cape Wind's struggles in Europe we're being installed every year billions invested we're building projects on the East Coast and the projects that we're building on the East Coast now are very different from the Cape Wind proposal in one really critical aspect that project was located in Mantucket Sound which is that area between Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and it's the closest point about four miles from which means that the project is very visible from the land and it's very visible from the shore at four miles the projects that we're talking about now all the project will be noted that it's located at least 12 miles from the coast our project is in that similar plus-mile range from the coast means that the project will be much less visible from where people live so we're talking about projects that are based in federal waters far offshore the wind happens to feel a lot better far further offshore but they're much less visible consequently they are much less controversial from a local community's perspective and I think deep water wind was formed to get into deep water where you can't see these projects and that's part of what we want to do as a company and I think most developers who are folks in the U.S. right now are thinking about these projects that are very far offshore that are not nearly as close to the coast as Cape Point project was and that's a big change in the way we move yeah and I think the other thing to remember is I think back on one of the slides I had about the agencies working together on these things and Bohm in particular has done an excellent job since the early attempts of developer-led site to find wind energy areas that are least impactful not only to the environment but are least impactful to multiple uses so let's say if it's a visual impact Jeff talks about Cape Point as an issue one of the issues they really vet these areas now in the way that you see in South Carolina there's been a a couple year process now of trying to determine where the best wind energy area is going to be and next week in North Carolina there's another round of reviews by stakeholders interested in the right area to develop off of North Carolina and sometime in early November off of New Jersey there'll be an auction held lease underwater lands in that area that will be less controversial and impactful because of the steps so I think it's a much different landscape from a developer's view My name is David Schwartz and I'm a retired professor from Howard University otherwise I wouldn't be here teaching but I have a website with my oldest son who's an environmental scientist called SolarUtopia.org and we do modeling of global wind and solar and climatic impacts of that so my question said this on the energy return over energy invested offshore wind if you look at the blogs and websites and so on of the nuclear fossil fuel industry they claim that the ratio is very low and it's not worth doing and they clutch the data by including embedded energy for the renewables but not the fossil fuel and nuclear so my question is what is the state of the science energy return over energy invested ratio now for offshore wind and the second short question is what about floating offshore how soon is that going to come floating offshore wind turbine yeah actually I talked to him about this today this morning and floating is a personal option it changed over the last years so it looked not so people went out of it five years ago but now they solved some problems with the with lining the platform and have it stable but the advantage is that you can mount the whole platform on land and then ship it to the place where it should be used so this is coming everybody is expecting that in the next 10 years the cost will be the share of the embedded energy we have the same arguments with solar 2D and of course the first generation sort of believe we needed more energy than it would use but now you get the energy back within the first six months of solar panel and same will happen more or less to offshore wind moments I think it's more so we are quite optimistic in that regard I would also like to comment on one question why offshore and onshore we have the same energy of course and things are going back and forth one argument of course is you have more or less double the production rate so these machines run 4500 hours instead of really at least the 2000 hours on land so that is a huge and important factor and it seems like to me that Europe in general is a higher cost power area in the United States and where you say that the supply chain if we advance to the United States we will bring prices down even if the prices were both they are in Europe at this point it's a little bit of a question to me that they still what type of innovations are you looking at that might be different than what is being done in Europe at this time that might be able to lower their style I'm going to challenge your premise without answering your question because I think your premise is wrong so I think it's energy prices again are a very market specific question and there certainly are markets in the U.S. right now that are very cheap this is a lot of old coal plants that were built in the 50s and 60s that are still chugging there are other markets however in the U.S. where power prices are not nearly as low as the average or in places like Kentucky or Ohio the Northeast is one of those areas in the New England region New York and even into New Jersey we're building a new gas plant that is a new that's about the same price that's building a new price of what they're building of the latest option we've formed today is just about the same price and what it would cost to build a new natural gas plant a million worth of today so we're not very far we've got to move that supply chain from Europe to the U.S. we've got to build the first few projects in the U.S. which won't be nearly as efficient as the projects that are being built in New York today the state of the technology in New York today with bigger machines, bigger rotors more efficient machines very lots of lessons learned on how to install and maintain these projects shows that these projects can be built at a cost very very competitive with building other new sources in generation remember when you build a new power plant whatever it is, it's more expensive than what you're paying today so your power your electricity bill today includes power plants that were built in the 50s that's why that energy is cheap in a new power plant your electricity bill is going to go up because great pairs have to absorb that new capital cost they didn't have previously so it's always important when we're comparing and I think it's really important for policy makers to understand this that when you're comparing energy sources you have to compare building something new to the cost of building something new not the cost of building an offshore wind farm versus the average cost of building an offshore wind power because you have to compare apples to apples so a new offshore wind farm versus a solar versus a gas plant versus a nuclear plant they all have a capital cost you always have to compare building something new to building something new and when you make that comparison offshore wind really is one of the strongest options in many markets in the US I will answer the second question which is the technology piece most of what we're talking about is the machine turbine and the turbines are getting larger and larger when we started looking at the Block Island project just in 2008-2009 we thought that we'd be using a 3.6 megawatt turbine we're now using a 6 megawatt turbine and that there's a tremendous technological advancement in the size and efficiency of the turbines we're now thinking about the development of the next project which is a few years away from construction and we're thinking about where will the technology be what size machine will we be using we're using a 6 megawatt machine for the Block Island we certainly won't be using a 6 megawatt machine for the next project is it a 7, 8, 10 megawatt machine something that's 700 feet tall that has not a 50% capacity factor but 55 who knows where that's the principal place of real step change in the cost is really on the turbine technology there are a number of other things in the supply chain more efficient foundations and better electrical systems that can improve at increments but certainly the technological change in turbines is really what drives the most partners we also have to recognize that it's not just the cost of the hard equipment in the process of building a facility there's also the cost of finance and one of the things we've seen in the solar sector in the US is that the actual price of the PV panels is an increasingly small part of the total product project cost and it's the cost of the guys to go out there and do it and the cost of getting the money together and interest rates and all that behind the project so you see companies like SolarCity becoming very innovative not in the PV panel getting PV panels on roofs and paperwork