NSF Engines Development Award: Accelerating A Just Energy Transition Through Innovative Nature-Inclusive Offshore Wind Farms (CT,DE,MA,MD,NJ,RI,VA)

This Regional Innovation Engines Development Award is focused on advancing the science, engineering, economic models, industrial capacity, decision-making process, and regulations needed for the design and operation of nature-inclusive Offshore Wind (OW) underwater infrastructure (e.g. foundations and associated scour protection). Over the next ten years, about 2000 OW turbines are expected to be constructed off our nation’s eastern coastline from Massachusetts to Virginia at a cost of about $100 Billion.

This brings great challenges and opportunities for the shared-use of our coastal waters. The marine ecosystem in this region is already under great stress due to climate change which has reduced biodiversity and fishing stocks; thereby, communities in this region are very concerned about additional stresses on the marine ecosystem that offshore wind may bring.

MOCEAN (Mission is the OCEAN) is the lead for this NSF project, and it aims to: (i) make OW farm development a win for all (OW industry, fishers, coastal communities, ocean habitats); (ii) drive large-scale sustainable OW energy that will contribute greatly to achieving U.S. climate goals and ocean health; and (iii) catalyze the investment required to build and operate OW farms to address societal inequities. This project will engage industry, stakeholders, public officials, affected communities, and public and private decision makers to develop an effective strategic plan and innovation community to achieve MOCEAN’s mission.

MOCEAN’s strategic plan and innovation community will be developed to support making significant advancements in science and technology; engineering, economic, and educational models; and associated policy drivers; the region of this community will include coastline areas from Massachusetts to Virginia. If the project succeeds in becoming an NSF Engine, then the advancements in science will range from the micro-to-macro scale, and these will include the formation of marine communities, marine biology, impact of stressors on habitats, the effect of different materials and coatings on marine growths, local ecosystems, as well as regional ecosystems.

The advancements in technologies will include new sensing systems (e.g. eDNA, acoustic, image-based), robotics, coating systems, more durable materials, intelligent nature-inclusive scour protection, artificial reefs, and future-proof foundations. The advancements in engineering models will account for important factors that are presently ignored or insufficiently considered in practice (e.g. soil-foundation structure interaction, impact of cathodic protection on design life and the environment).

For economics, the advancements will quantify the effect of local labor, environmental impact, and new blue technology within economic models that can be used in the decision-making process for the design and operation of offshore wind farms. In education, advancements will create new methods of engagement, support, and learning that lead to much greater participation of students and workers from marginalized communities in the New Blue Economy within MOCEAN’s region of service.

The composition of the MOCEAN team was designed to make intellectual progress at the intersections between different fields, and to create system-of-system models. This Development Award will enable the team to engage in a regional, collaborative planning process to prepare a future Engine to meet these goals.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.