It should be a time for celebration for the clean energy industry. After decades of false starts and legal wrangling, the first industrial-scale wind farm in the United States began spinning off the coast of Nantucket in January, a major step in the transition away from relying on fossil fuels not just here, but nationwide.
But in an unsettling setback, the wind farm, as well as beaches on Nantucket, had to be shut down after a section of a 350-foot-long blade was damaged over the weekend, with fiberglass chunks washing ashore. Then on Thursday morning, a significant part of what remained of the damaged turbine blade detached and fell into the ocean.
Now there are questions that are both immediate — is it safe for swimmers and ocean-dependent businesses? — and long term: Can it happen again? And what does it mean, big picture, in a state and a country that have staked a large part of their clean energy future on the success of offshore wind?
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“It’s really concerning what vision of wind power this is going to give to people,” said 19-year-old Sarah Swenson, who grew up on Nantucket and favors offshore wind production.
The damaged turbine, which was manufactured by GE Vernova, is part of the Vineyard Wind project, a joint venture between Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners that has 24 windmills installed. It’s still not clear what happened, though GE Vernova is leading an investigation and Governor Maura Healey’s office said it is monitoring the situation.
Brooke Mohr, chair of the Nantucket Select Board, said Thursday evening that Vineyard Wind reported the remaining section of blade, about 300 feet in length, had sunk to the sea floor and the wind farm developer was making plans to retrieve it.
“The way they described it is like it’s pieces of a banana peel coming off the outer shell,” she said.
Mohr said the town didn’t learn of the damaged turbine until about 5 p.m. Monday. She said Vineyard Wind followed its notification protocol Saturday night but communication broke down somewhere along the way and the report didn’t reach Nantucket’s town manager until Monday.
After that stumble, Mohr said, communication between Vineyard Wind and the town has improved since the weekend.
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The weather Saturday when the incident happened appears to be have been mild, with a nearby buoy recording 16 to 22 mile-per-hour gusts, according to Globe meteorologist Ken Mahan. There were some storms in the area, with the strongest part of one appearing to pass near the turbines, but “nothing points to ‘severe’ weather,” Mahan said.
According to reporting from Reuters, this isn’t the first time one of the turbines has broken; at least one other GE Vernova turbine broke at the Dogger Bank A project off the coast of the United Kingdom earlier this year.
Neither GE Vernova nor Vineyard Wind responded to requests for interviews.
For John Fee, 68, who was born and raised on Nantucket, the news didn’t come as a great shock. When the wind turbines started going up, he said, his first thought was, “What happens when they start falling apart?”
”They’re not even finished with the project yet and the problem is already happening,” Fee said.
Amy DiSibio, a longtime anti-wind activist and member of ACK for Whales, a Nantucket group that has tried to stop Vineyard Wind, said she worried about the damage that’s less apparent. “We’re just seeing what’s on the beach . . . . I can’t imagine what else is out there.”
Supporters of offshore wind are looking for answers, too. “This is a moment to really dive into what the core problem is,” said Kelt Wilska, offshore wind director for the Environmental League of Massachusetts. “We need to get to the bottom of this now so that we can pivot back to just getting these things built.”
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And there are a lot more to build. Offshore wind makes up a cornerstone of how both Massachusetts and the United States more broadly plan to green the electrical supply. To get to net-zero emissions by 2050, as state law requires, Massachusetts will need at least 23 gigawatts of installed offshore wind capacity, more than 1,000 turbines, according to a state report released in 2022. (For context, once completed, the Vineyard Wind project will have 62 turbines and a total generating capacity of 806 megawatts, enough to power about 400,000 homes.)
Jason Ryan, spokesperson for the American Clean Power Association, said it’s important to remember such incidents are rare. “Wind power is one of the safest forms of energy generation, and millions of people around the world live and work near wind farms without issue,” he said. There are more than 12,000 offshore wind turbines operating globally, Ryan said.
But that doesn’t change the frustration in Nantucket, or the concern among clean energy advocates that any setback — especially now, in the early days of building industrial offshore wind farms — could have broader implications.
“We’ve seen on social media that folks from the opposition have picked up on this and are using it as further evidence that offshore wind shouldn’t proceed or should pause for more research,” said Wilska.
Offshore wind has been opposed for decades by people who thought the windmills would ruin their sight lines or harm marine life and by those with ties to the fossil fuel industry who wanted to stop the march of renewable energy. Some of the information fueling those groups, according to research from Brown University, has come from a network of groups connected to conservative and libertarian think tanks that oppose clean energy.
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An event like what happened at Vineyard Wind that leaves even supporters of offshore wind worried can be ripe for misinformation and disinformation, said Wilska.
DiSibio’s group, ACK for Whales, has tried for years to stop Vineyard Wind by filing lawsuits that argued the project was risky for endangered North Atlantic right whales. She said her group’s fight isn’t over and ACK will be petitioning the Supreme Court to take up its case.
But clean energy advocates are hoping that once the cause of this incident has been determined, cooler heads will prevail.
“We need to base our decisions on good information, not single data points or single incidents,” said John Rogers, a senior energy analyst with the Union for Concerned Scientists. “Offshore wind is too important and too powerful a resource for us not to be doing it right.”
Sabrina Shankman can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @shankman. Natalie La Roche Pietri can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @natalaroche. Nick Stoico can be reached at [email protected].