Environmentalist group Green Oceans has called for a federal and state moratorium on all offshore wind development in the wake of the incident regarding the damaged blade on the Vineyard Wind farm off Nantucket. The organisation, with a mission to “preserve Rhode Island’s bays, beaches, and ocean from environmental harm”, is also suing to block the Revolution Wind and South Fork Wind offshore projects in addition to its call for a complete moratorium on such projects. The incident that prompted all this happened on July 13. No one was hurt but the island beaches were strewn with fibreglass shards and green and white foam. Even more debris was found later as the blade was deteriorating further. Six Nantucket beaches were closed while crews worked to clean up large floating debris and fibreglass shards from the broken blade. The wind farm was also shut down until further notice. The manufacturer of the damaged blade, GE Vernova, claimed that there was no indication of an engineering design flaw stating that the issue occurred due to faulty manufacturing. This was not the end of the fibreglass and foam contamination, according to Green Oceans, as more fell into the ocean last week with the possibility of more falling into the ocean due to high winds. “Blade failures are not rare. WindPower Monthly reports that wind turbine rotor blades are failing at a rate of around 3,800 a year, globally, including failures at Dogger Bank only a few months ago,” said Green Oceans President Lisa Quattrocki. At that rate, the organisation claims that over 1,000 tonnes of epoxy, fibreglass, and foam could contaminate Rhode Island beaches every year if all planned offshore wind projects were completed. Rhode Island, if all goes according to plan will have the Block Island, Revolution Wind, South Fork Wind, Bay State Wind, Vineyard Wind, Sunrise Wind, SouthCoast Wind, and New England Wind offshore wind farms. Revolution Wind, for example, is scheduled to install the first towers and blades on top of the existing monopiles just 24 km off the coast of Rhode Island this week. Apart from Green Oceans, organisations like the ACK4Whales and the Aquinnah Tribe have called for a moratorium on offshore wind development as well. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1_95_0_1_2'); }); TagsOffshore Wind United States