Glauconite

 Sadly, glauconite is found in some of the areas where offshore wind turbine installations have been planned in the northeastern US. It turns out the substance makes it impossible to correctly install the pilings that support the giant wind turbines that are to eventually supply the renewable energy for portions of New England. The presence of the mineral has made some parts of existing leases unusable for that purpose. Three of the 19 leases, Empire Wind, Sunrise Wind and Beacon Wind. all contain areas of glauconite. Equinor, a state-owned international energy firm headquartered in Stavanger, Norway, holds the leases on Empire Wind and Beacon Wind. Sunrise Wind is a project of Ørsted, the world's largest developer of offshore wind turbine installations in terms of numbers. They are located in Denmark.

Fisherman's associations and government agencies have had reservations about turbine siting in the area for a number of reasons. The glauconite issue has led to a smaller number of proposed turbines in the known affected areas but the details of the investigations made by the companies themselves have not been released.

Originally, Empire Wind was to supply 2.1 GW of power from 130 turbines and supply electricity to a million homes. Beacon Wind's production was planned to be 1230 MW and Sunrise 924 MW. Of course that's when the wind is blowing with sufficient intensity.