A worker loads a service vessel from a wind turbine run by Germany’s biggest power supplier Eon at the offshore wind farm ‘Amrumbank West’ near the North Sea Island of Helgoland, November 4, 2015. (Photo credit TOBIAS SCHWARZ/AFP/Getty Images)

The Block Island Wind farm’s launch late last year signified the United States’ official entry into the offshore wind industry. And while European countries have been generating electricity by spinning turbines offshore since 1991, the US is eager to catch up. The federal government has issued 11 commercial wind energy leases offshore and competitive lease sales are planned offshore the East, West and Hawaiian coasts this year. Offshore wind is attractive to many because it has the potential to generate considerable volumes of carbon-free energy that can help mitigate humanity’s climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions profile. And while generating clean power using offshore wind resources creates a net emissions reduction compared to burning fossil fuels for power generation, constructing, operating and maintaining offshore wind farms requires fleets of vessels that are powered by marine fuel. To be sure, wind power is a cleaner source of electricity generation than fossil-fueled power plants. With existing technology however, there is no way to construct offshore wind farms without petroleum.

Given the US is new to offshore wind, we need to look to Europe for fuel use estimates. Block Island Wind is comparatively small – only 30 megawatts (MW) of capacity. European wind farms are typically on the order of 500 MW and the Hornsea One Project being constructed offshore the UK – dubbed the world’s largest – will have over 1,200 MW of capacity.


In addition to driving the foundations into the seabed, offshore wind farm construction and maintenance activities include laying export and array cables; port construction; offshore substation installation; turbine installation; and crew transfer for the 20-year lifespans of these installations. These activities are completed using vessels, that for the most part, run on marine fuel. New vessels are often being built with duel-fuel capability, meaning they can run on marine fuel or Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). A total of 80 LNG-fueled ships are expected to be constructed over the next three years. This is good news from an emissions perspective because LNG burns much cleaner than marine fuel, but it’s still a fossil fuel derived from oil and gas drilling.



This presents new opportunities for US companies that provide offshore wind project services like Gulf Island Fabrication and Montco Offshore that helped build Block Island Wind.

The extent to which offshore wind development impacts distillate and residual fuel demand depends on the pace at which the industry scales up. At the local level, however, offshore wind development will increase fuel demand at individual ports used as operations bases during construction of these projects. Fuel demand associated with offshore wind projects will likely remain marginal over the short to medium term, but gain significance under more aggressive US offshore wind development scenarios.

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