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 one of 11.

We'll dive into what offshore wind is, what's being proposed in the Gulf of Maine, and why?

Wind turbines are devices that extract kinetic energy out of the wind field and convert it to electricity.

So it's the exact same thing is what you see on on land except for the turbines are offshore.

We're looking at offshore wind, to meet the energy needs because first of all, there needs to be a, diversity of energy coming in to decarbonize or electrify the energy supply.

And it can't all be done with land based wind turbines or with solar energy, entirely, especially in areas like New England where it's very densely populated and there's not enough space.

The Gulf of Maine is just one of many areas in the United States that is being looked at now for the development of offshore wind turbines.

And one of the key things to notice is that the Gulf of Maine is right next to some of the most populated places in the United States.

So, the energy that could be gained from wind turbines placed in the Gulf of Maine could supply a lot of the the electricity needs in the future for those states.

Although this would be new to the Gulf of Maine, offshore wind has been in development for decades.

The first wind farm in the world was built in Denmark in 1991, and there are now offshore wind farms operating in multiple continents.

There are several wind farms under construction or operating off the U.S. East Coast, all of which are fixed to the sea floor.

What's proposed in the Gulf of Maine is different.

There's a new technology that can, accommodate much deeper waters, like the waters we have in the Gulf of Maine.

And that's referred to as floating offshore wind technology.

So the wind turbines are arranged in rows so that they'll be, they'll be able to connect to all the cables together in one place and then bring them to what's called a substation, so that all that power gets gathered into one spot.

And then there's usually, like, 1 or 2 export cables.

That's a big cable about this big in diameter.

And it and it moves the power from the, the wind farm all the way to a point of interconnection that goes right into the land based grid.

Since 2022, a federal agency named the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has led a process to identify areas in the Gulf of Maine that are relatively suitable for offshore wind energy.

This process has involved community engagement and public comment, and a spatial suitability analysis to establish a wind energy area, which is the area that appears to be most suitable for wind energy development.

The wind energy area is then split into areas that may be leased to the highest qualified bidder by the federal agencies calculations, the lease area is identified in August of 2024 have the potential to power 4.5 million homes.

The auction is really the first step in the process.

The the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management manages the NEPA or National Environmental Policy Act process, the permitting process for, authorizing offshore wind development.

And that process includes many public hearings, many permits from multiple agencies, all that have touch points for public comment.

The developers, so there's a formal process.

There's also the informal process, which is, I think even more important, where the developers will be in the communities that they will be touching on in developing these projects and talking to folks on the ground, in city and town halls, on the wharfs within the fishing industry, and really working to understand what their concerns are.

And this is not only something that's just good business.

It's also required by the regulatory process.

Gulf of Maine is my home.

I spend more time in the Gulf of Maine than I have literally in my own backyard.

I know it better.

Just ask my lawn mower.

And I care about it.

I mean, I worked my entire adult life to make sure the fisheries were sustainable in the Gulf of Maine.

We need to know how this cabling will affect habitat, essential fish habitat.

Will the disruption be, you know, more than minimal and more than temporary?

If it is, we're going to have to have discussions around that.

I think there is a responsible way of proceeding, and really that is to study first and then build afterwards.

And and take as an example, start these baseline studies now.

So there are a lot of processes to review potential impacts and changes.

And there's a lot of processes that depending on what areas may potentially be impacted to give you an opportunity to say this area needs to be avoided and to reroute either the cable routes or to exclude an area from wind turbine development once they start looking at it.

If a company is successful in getting all of the required permits and approvals for their proposed wind farm the company would then be allowed to begin construction.

And their lease in the Gulf of Maine would last 35 years.

Unless the lease is reauthorized, the company will be required to remove all the facilities that they constructed.

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.