Offshore wind farms are becoming part of America and the world's renewable energy landscape.

And now the Gulf of Maine is being considered a possible site for offshore wind development.

In this series of stories, you'll learn about this emerging technology and what it might mean for you, our coastal communities, and the Gulf of Maine's natural environment.

In this story, part 11 of 11, we consider how to balance the various trade offs we heard about in this series.

As the offshore wind energy development process continues, the challenge for everyone is to consider how we think about and consider the trade offs related to its development.

That's a huge topic.

And that risk you're talking about that balance between human needs and marine life and healthy marine ecosystems.

I think it comes down to sustainability and good environmental stewardship.

Human society requires energy.

Using energy that is renewable, such as wind energy is much greener than other types of energy.

But they all come with pros and cons and to start harvesting that energy takes effort and impact and activity on our oceans.

There's certainly the national importance of having a secure power grid and making sure that we have enough energy.

And energy demands are constantly increasing, and we have to figure out where to get the energy from.

It has to come from somewhere.

Now, this might be a benefit to a large number of people, but there are certain smaller number of people who have to pay the costs for that very directly.

So there's a lot of trade offs that have that happen here.

And the trade offs are always complicated because some people are going to benefit more than others.

And the people who benefit are not necessarily the people who will be experiencing the negative side of the trade off.

In other words, the harms and the benefits end up accruing to different people.

So energy security is important, but so is sustaining our commercial fisheries.

So is sustaining healthy ecosystems.

And I think that it's tricky and it's a hard problem to take all that into account and come up with an optimal strategy.

And, I'm proud of being part of that, working with the industry, working with our federal government in different agencies together to achieve that.

And when we're thinking about trade offs, we have to think about trade offs not only in terms of who's winning and losing right now, but who's winning and losing in the future also.

Is there some way that we can really take into account the harms and the benefits that future generations will be experiencing?

And this phenomenon has a name.

It's called intergenerational Justice.

There's no such thing as clean energy.

There's cleaner energy.

And these offshore winds are cleaner.

But at what cost?

I'm not opposed to clean energy.

I'm not opposed to offshore wind.

I'm not opposed.

I just want to do the research and due diligence to ensure that you're doing it in a responsible way.

And you're not affecting my relatives.

You know, the marine species that are out there in the North Atlantic.

Right Whale, critically endangered.

You're trying to do this so fast.

I don't have confidence you're doing it right.

And so because of that, nothing is done well when you're rushing.

And so I don't your development process and procedures and all these things because you're rushing it and you're doing it too fast.

I think that that's going to be the really interesting part of this is those trade offs is really understanding those trade offs and really making sure that the people of New Hampshire are not impacted in a way that would be detrimental trying to make this a win win for New Hampshire.

Throughout the development process, there are opportunities for people to voice their concerns, ask questions and begin to think about trade offs.

One of the most important things about talking to people and asking them how they feel about a particular, situation or a project that's ongoing, is that you show respect by asking them what they think.

By asking a person for their perspective, for their opinion on a certain, you know, issue, then you're showing that you respect them, that their opinion matters.

And then hopefully you're not just asking, you're actually taking that opinion into account.

Just looking for folks to do the right thing.

Because it's very complex.

There's a lot that goes into it.

Do your homework, you know, be prepared and, keep up the good fight.

This series of stories provides further insight about this emerging technology and what it might mean for you, our coastal communities, and the Gulf of Maine's natural environment.

To learn more about offshore wind and watch more videos in this series, visit nhpbs.org/wind.

The Winds of Change in the Gulf of Maine series is a co-production of New Hampshire, PBS and New Hampshire Sea Grant with support from the University of New Hampshire.

Production funding was provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.