Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO REGULATING
THE U.S. OFFSHORE WIND INDUSTRY
U.S. offshore wind regulations could take one of the following forms:
a. A comprehensive set of prescriptive regulations that explicitly describe
design characteristics, design methodologies, materials, manufacturing
standards, and installation procedures;
b. A set of regulations relying on existing national and international stan-
dards that are generally prescriptive in nature, with gaps in these regu-
lations filled by a supplementary set of prescriptive regulations;
c. Goal-based standards that describe the overarching expectations for pro-
tection of life, environmental performance, and system reliability; or
d. Goal-based standards combined with functional requirements that
establish high-level expectations for performance while providing a
greater level of specificity on environmental conditions to be consid-
ered, design performance metrics, service life expectations, and so
forth.
There are advantages and disadvantages associated with each of these
options. The following are some of the advantages of a comprehensive pre-
scriptive set of regulations (Option
a
):
•
Prescriptive regulations are simpler and easier to implement and typ-
ically lead to lower engineering, testing, and design development
costs.
•
Compliance oversight is more straightforward, placing less reliance
on the level of expertise and competence of the regulatory authorities
and third-party reviewers.
•
Prescriptive regulations are distillations of experience and are gener-
ally effective in reducing the risk of the types of accidents that have
occurred in the past.
Disadvantages of prescriptive regulations include the following:
•
By their nature, prescriptive regulations make suppositions about the
design approach and analytical techniques to be applied and can limit
the application of innovative approaches that do not suit the assump-
tions implicit in the regulations.
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