Overcoming Drone Threats, UK Crown Estate Offshore

This episode covers the UK's Crown Estate's offshore wind
investments, drone threats to wind turbines, and Nordex's 40th
anniversary. It also highlights TotalEnergies winning a German
offshore wind auction and Pemamek's advanced welding capabilities.
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today. Now, here's your hosts. Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro,
and Rosemary Barnes.  Allen Hall: Well, we're back with
another edition of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I got Rosemary
Barnes in Australia, Phil Totaro in Warm and sunny California, and
Joel Saxon in practically hell in temperature in Austin, Texas. I
was just down in Dallas, Texas a day ago, and man, is that hot.
There's just like a, a certain kind of heat, you know, you need to
get indoors pretty quick. Texas heat is really bad right now. Joel
Saxum: You know, one thing I didn't know about this area out
here west of Austin, like in the Hill country, it's actually really
windy out here. Like there's a steady wind all the time that, and
you don't hit [00:01:00] wind farms for another like
three hours when you had West, like the first ones. But it's like,
I lived in Houston and Texas and it was pretty dormant most of the
time, but it, there's constant wind here as the temperatures change
throughout the day. All the time explains all the wind
turbines.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, you sound like me when
I moved to Denmark and I'm like, why do I have to live in this
windy place?  Allen Hall: So we have a birthday to
celebrate and no, it's not Rosie's birthday. It's Nord Deck's
birthday and it's celebrating their 40th anniversary and they've
been around since 1985. And some facts about Nordex that they
published really interesting. They have developed 46 different
onshore turbine types. Across the two companies, which was Nordex,
SE, and Acciona. And That's amazing. So in 40 years, did those two
companies now merge together A couple of years ago? Uh, is they
have 46 different onshore term designs from 250 kilowatts up to
seven megawatt machines. Now Rosemary, I think this kind of
high, [00:02:00] and congratulations to Nordex by the
way. That's quite an achievement. It does highlight the rate of
pace. For wind turbines from the mid eighties up till now. One new
turbine a year is a lot.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. And it's
not the hugest company, right. It's not like they've got a hundred
thousand employees developing those, uh, that one new turbine every
year. So, yeah. Um. Nobody's been sitting around on their hands at
that company.  Joel Saxum: They made it past the, is it,
isn't it the rule of thumb, Alan? We talk about businesses like in
the states, like if you make it past five years, you're, you're
good  Allen Hall: al almost right? So most companies fail
within the first year to three years. It's, it's hard to make it to
three, then five, then 10. If you can make it across 10, you have
something worthwhile. It's gonna stick around for a little bit.
And, and Nordics has.  Rosemary Barnes: What's weather
guard at?  Allen Hall: Uh, we're at. Almost 2020. 
Rosemary Barnes: Whew. An institution.  Allen
Hall: An institution. Yeah. We need to beat an institution at
this point. And over in the uk, uh, the [00:03:00] UK's
Crown Estate. Now this is an important story everyone. The UK's
Crown Estate is making major investment commitments, uh, to
offshore wind with a 400 million pound. Funding Boost. And that's
due to new legislation allowing, uh, the crown of state to borrow
from the Treasury for the first time. And so now the crown of
State, which has its own money, used to be spending its own money
on some of these projects. And of course there's some money coming
into the crown of state for the plots of ocean where they're
developing offshore winds. So there's money coming in, money coming
out, uh, but. This is a big driver, right? If the crowd of state
can help fund some of these, uh, what they're talking about funding
is some of the ports and infrastructure and making sure that the
country is ready to develop, uh, offshore wind even faster than
they are right now. Uh, it because they're really headed towards 20
to 30 additional gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030, right? So
their thinking was they could power, what,
28 [00:04:00] million roughly UK homes. That is a
enormous effort that in the United States you hear discussions
about sovereign wealth funds and, uh, we mostly, and I were talking
before the podcast, the United States doesn't have a sovereign,
doesn't have wealth and surely doesn't have any funding to do that.
But it, it is a unique perspective that the crown of state can. Do
this kind of effort and the impact it will have on the future of
the uk.  Rosemary Barnes: Why don't you have one? You've
got lots of natural resources. That's usually how these sovereign
wealth funds get stacked. Like Norway's is famous, even Australia's
got a, a small one. Not as big as it should be considering, um, how
many resources we've got. Um, yeah, no. You know, the oil producing
countries across the Middle East have them. Uh, yeah. The US is a
net exporter of. Of, um, energy resources. So what are you doing
with the royalties from that or,
or [00:05:00] whatever.  Joel Saxum: We spend
all of our other money too quickly, so we don't even get, we burn
through it too fast. Rosemary Barnes: Do you even get, um,
royalties from that? 'cause isn't it in the case, like, you know,
based on my research I've done from watching say like Beverly
Hillbillies, that's, you know, I understand the issue pretty,
pretty deeply and on a, a serious, um, serious level, but. If you
discover oil on your land, you own that oil, right? It's not that
like in Australia, if you were to discover oil on your land that
you like, you, if you own land, you own from the surface up kind
of. Um, whereas in. The, uh, yeah. And yeah, Australia owns
everything, everything below it, so it wouldn't, you'd never be,
you'd never get the, the Beverly Hill Billies couldn't have been
set in Australia because they wouldn't have gotten that rich. Joel
Saxum: So the, the diff the diff like difference in the states
is we, we treat mineral rights, which as we call 'em, as fee simple
property. So you can, you can sell, like if I own this piece of
land I sit on, I can sell the land, but I can also
retain [00:06:00] the mineral rights as my property. Now
the diff the difference is, is like, so in Canada the crown owns
the, the subsurface. So you would go through them to do things. But
in the states, the only caveat to that is if it is actual federal
land. So if it's bureau of land management owned land, or federally
owned land and you're drilling on it, or you somehow got permission
to drill on it then or stuff out off the continental shelf, like
off offshore, right? Then the government will get a percentage of
it. But that stuff, I don't know where it goes, to be honest. It
might go in the general fund, but there's a couple of, like the
state of Alaska has its own sovereign fund. They have a thing
called the permanent fund, and all of the oil and gas that gets
done, work gets gun in Alaska. It gets put into that permanent
fund. And if you're a resident, then every tax season, the
residents, depending on how that fund is doing, get a draw. And
sometimes that draw is like. Man, it can be two to $6,000 a
person.  Rosemary Barnes: Your life's probably pretty,
pretty [00:07:00] tough up there. They can probably use
the help with their energy bills and stuff. Transport  Allen
Hall: the latest numbers I've heard about the federal property
or what, what the valuation of all this land is and what could be
mined and drilled out of it is a hundred to $200 trillion. Does
everybody hear similar numbers to that? It's a lot of money.
That's, that's, that's a lot of money. So when the national debt
comes up, you hear this discussion of, well, the US could sell a
hundred trillion dollars worth of mineral rights and Sure.
Possibly, but it, it is, uh, a different proposition that if the US
is gonna remain competitive with the world, things like what the UK
are doing, gonna pull a lot of investment over there and. The UK is
only second to China right now on offshore wind. That is
remarkable.  Rosemary Barnes: Well, they were first until
recently, right? It was China. China caught, caught up to them, not
the other way around.  Joel Saxum: And, and these
investments like the crown investment here, that's not going
like [00:08:00] into a wind farm that's going into supply
chain build out, correct.  Allen Hall: Right. It's going
to do the infrastructure.  Joel Saxum: Yeah. Is it grants
or is it like a loan program or do we know that, or is it just
kinda like, Hey, we have this fund available? Phil
Totaro: Well, so just, just to also clarify how the Crown
Estate works, basically, they, they normally get money from, um,
you know, they, as you said, they own, you know, seabed and, and
certain rights in, throughout the uk. But what happens is the money
that anybody gets, anybody pays for the leasing of that goes into a
trust effectively. The Crown estate and the government together
kind of coadminister this trust. And then the crown estate, um,
which is basically, you know, the royal family gets paid out of
that trust fund on an annual basis. They get, they get a stipend.