The Des Moines County Board of Supervisors held a work session Tuesday evening to allow for public comment on the county’s commercial wind energy conversion system (wind turbine) ordinance.

Empire Offshore Wind, a subsidiary of Equinor, has been notified by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) of the US Department of the Interior that the stop-work order for its Empire Wind project has been lifted.

The nation’s older wind farms, which are on land, will experience a first peak of decommissioning this year, with over 1.2 GW of turbines expected to be retired. The decommissioning of offshore turbines will be further down the line, as it was not until 2010 that China’s first offshore wind farm was connected to the grid.

Federal orders issued under the Trump administration halted construction of New York’s Empire Wind Project, triggering legal challenges and raising concerns about the impacts on New York’s energy supply going forward.

Northern Turbine Services, a specialist provider of installation, repair, and maintenance for onshore wind turbines, has secured £300,000 in funding from the Royal Bank of Scotland to purchase its leased premises in Orkney.