Officials prepare regulations for alternative energy

Federal officials are putting the finishing touches on rules that will regulate wind farms and other ocean-based power projects.
Alternative energy developers are eagerly awaiting the final result of the multiyear process, which was set in motion by congressional passage of the 2005 energy bill and will set out a clear path for proposed projects.
Congress has designated the Minerals Management Service (MMS) as the lead agency on most projects, including wind-energy farms, although the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is in charge of permitting hydropower projects.
Most of the time, says Carolyn Elefant, general counsel for the Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group for the marine renewable energy industry, regulations are based on standard practices.
“The reason why regulation is such a struggle for our industry is that there is nothing customary about ocean renewables,” she said last week.
Still, she had praise for the federal bureaucrats who are crafting the rules, saying they have been “incredibly responsive,” and she called on industry officials to offer them more specific guidance.
Representatives of the two federal agencies offered an upbeat progress report on the regulations last week at a conference on ocean energy in New England that was sponsored by the Marine Renewable Energy Center at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth Advanced Technology & Manufacturing Center in Fall River.
Robert LaBelle, deputy associate director for offshore energy and minerals management at the MMS, said his agency expects to release the finished set of regulations for alternative energy projects in December.
From there, the agency plans to put out a request for proposals for commercial-energy projects in the first half of next year, and if all goes as planned, LaBelle said projects could be in the water before the end of 2009.
Grover Fugate, executive director of the R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council, said completion of the MMS regulations will allow the planning process to proceed for ocean-energy projects off Rhode Island. The federal rules will also work in tandem with the new zoning regulations for the state’s coastal waters that his agency is currently developing.
In crafting the new rules, MMS relied in large part on its decades of experience regulating oil and natural gas projects. “We’ve got a lot of lessons learned with our experience with offshore oil and gas,” LaBelle said.
But that reliance led critics in the renewables industry to criticize the draft regulations that the agency released in July as too similar to the rules for oil and gas projects. They called for changes that would make the process less onerous, particularly for small-scale developers.
LaBelle said some of those concerns should be allayed when the revised rules are published. For hydropower projects, FERC has developed a system for granting long-term licenses, as well as short-term preliminary permits, that is now in operation. The agency has also created a streamlined, six-month process through which developers can get a pilot-project license to test their proposal on a limited basis.
There are currently 204 hydropower projects nationwide which have either received or are awaiting preliminary permits from FERC, according to Kristen Murphy, a staff biologist at the commission. Only one license has been issued thus far, in the state of Washington. Most of the permits in the Northeast are for tidal-power projects.
Murphy said FERC is looking to work with individual states in crafting memorandums of understanding (MOUs) to streamline the regulatory process for hydropower projects.
Both Murphy and LaBelle also had tips for would-be ocean-energy developers. The most important requirement, they said, is consultation. Murphy said project proponents should “consult early and often” with residents of the communities near the project, as well as local officials, researchers, and other businesses.
LaBelle added that developers should also consult with the multitude of other agencies which have some jurisdiction over projects, from the Fish and Wildlife Service to the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Noting the concerns surrounding industrial use of the ocean, Elefant, the Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition attorney, warned about the risk of overregulation. “It’s very important to protect the environment,” she said, “but at the same time, when we over-regulate in the name of protecting resources what we’re actually doing in some ways is driving developers to more risky behavior.”
That sort of precautionary approach has held back some projects in Europe, according to Andrew Mill, chief executive of NaREC, an alternative-energy research firm based in London. He said the regulators’ reports made him think the U.S. government is on the right track.
“We’re both going down the same path, we just have a slightly different approach to it,” said Mill, who attended the conference.” &#8226