Saving Seafood

BOEM intends to lease more wind farm area off Delaware coast

December 18, 2023 — The U.S. Department of the Interior recently announced a proposal of another offshore wind lease sale, this time in ocean waters about 26 nautical miles from Delaware Bay.

“We are taking action to jumpstart America’s offshore wind industry and using American innovation to deliver reliable, affordable power to homes and businesses, while also addressing the climate crisis,” said Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in a prepared statement.

According to the announcement, the new areas have the potential to power more than 2.2 million homes with clean energy.

Read the full article at the Cape Gazette 

 

Environmentalists Face Off Against Environmentalists Over Offshore Wind Projects

December 2, 2023 — Offshore wind turbines are pitting environmentalists against environmentalists—threatening to impede progress toward an ambitious U.S. goal for such projects.

The Energy Department estimates offshore wind turbines could produce as much as 20% of regional power needs along the densely populated Eastern Seaboard from Florida to Maine by 2050.

To reach that goal, the Biden administration had hoped to green-light 30 gigawatts from utility-scale offshore wind farms by 2030—enough to power nine million homes. That now seems wildly ambitious, as billions of dollars in projects have been canceled amid staggering cost overruns, soaring interest rates and supply-chain delays.

Added to these economic woes are persistent environmental concerns, as attested to by some recent federal lawsuits. In September, for example, Cape May County, N.J., and a coalition of regional environmental, fisheries and tourism groups sought to stop development of two utility-scale projects off the New Jersey coast.

Read the full story at the the Wall Street Journal

MAINE: Maine leaders urge federal government to ban offshore wind in fishing area

November 20, 2023 — Maine leaders are urging federal energy regulators not to pursue offshore wind projects in fertile fishing grounds off the state’s coastline.

In a letter to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Gov. Janet Mills and the state’s congressional delegation members call on the agency to remove a section of state waters — included in the so-called Lobster Management Area 1 — from the federal government’s plans to develop offshore wind.

“Given the importance of these fishing grounds to Maine’s fishing industry, the significant feedback that your agency has already received, and the recently passed Maine law that disincentivizes development in LMA 1, it is clear these areas are inappropriate for inclusion in the final Wind Energy Area,” they wrote.

Read the full article at the Center Square

Could wind turbines affect right whales’ food source? More study needed, says new report

November 16, 2023 — More research is needed to determine whether offshore wind turbines will affect North Atlantic right whales’ food source around the Nantucket Shoals, scientists have concluded in a new report. And it may be challenging to divorce those impacts from those brought by climate change.

Right whales, a critically endangered species, are using the shoals, an area of shallow waters, for breeding and feeding. The shoals lie east of several planned offshore wind projects. Last year, federal scientists expressed concern that wind projects could disrupt right whales’ food supply: dense collections of tiny organisms, called zooplankton.

In response, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the lead agency on offshore wind development, convened an independent committee in April to evaluate what impacts wind turbines might have on the shoals and the whales’ prey.

However, due to knowledge gaps and a lack of research on this side of the Atlantic, the answers remain elusive.

“The studies available about the effects and implications of wind farms on local ecosystems are not sufficient to say with absolute certainty whether the turbines would have effects,” said committee chair Eileen Hofmann, a professor at Old Dominion University and chair of the scientific committee, which worked under the National Academies of Sciences.

Read the full article at the New Bedford Light

Offshore wind power impact on right whales uncertain, says National Academies study

November 13, 2023 — Wind energy projects under construction off southern New England could have effects on the endangered North Atlantic right whale and ocean ecosystem in the Nantucket Shoals region. But it is difficult to determine how those impacts are different from ongoing climate change and other ecosystem trends, according to a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

“The report recommends further study and monitoring of the oceanography and ecology of the Nantucket Shoals region to fully understand the impact of future wind farms,” according to a summary from the academies.

Right whales have increased their use of Nantucket Shoals waters in recent years, and some scientists have recommended setting buffer areas around wind energy development areas to ensure future turbine operations don’t alter the local ocean ecosystem.

The National Academies study was commissioned by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to address those concerns. The resulting 106-page paper released Oct. 13 concludes that much more detailed study and modeling is required to predict how operating massive wind turbines may change wind and water currents, and food available for whales.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Fishing industry in ‘fight of our lives’ over offshore wind

November 10, 2023 — The drive to develop U.S. offshore wind industry is growing along the West Coast, and fishermen should pay close attention to the political and legal battles already ongoing in the Atlantic states, a panel of experienced activists said at the Pacific Marine Expo Thursday in Seattle.

“I’ve been fighting offshore wind since 2003,” said Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association. In those early years, the first proposed projects “died because of the cost,” she said.

Today, “there are a multitude of projects going on,” Brady said, as a screen flashed map graphics showing about 30 proposed wind turbine developments from the Gulf of Maine to the Carolinas, and now more off California and Oregon.

California fishermen were later observers to what is now a concerted push by federal and state governments, but now they too are alarmed, said Jeremiah O’Brien, vice president of the Morro Bay Commercial Fishermen’s Association.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

BOEM Seeks Input to Inform Environmental Analysis for Additional Site Assessment Activities on Proposed Wind Energy Project Offshore Massachusetts

November 7, 2023 — The following was released by the BOEM:

On Nov. 7, BOEM will publish a Notice of Intent (NOI) to prepare an Environmental Assessment (EA) to consider additional site assessment activities submitted via an amendment by Beacon Wind in March 2023 that were not covered under its Site Assessment Plan (SAP) for its lease (OCS-A 0520) that BOEM approved on Sept. 24, 2021. The original SAP and EA can be found on BOEM’s webpage.

The EA will analyze the environmental impacts of site assessment and foundation testing activities in the lease area, as described by Beacon Wind’s amendment.

The publication of the NOI in the Federal Register on Nov. 7, 2023, opens a 30-day public comment period that ends at 11:59 p.m. ET on Dec. 7, 2023.

BOEM seeks public input on important environmental issues and the identification of reasonable alternatives that should be considered in the EA.

You may submit comments by either of the following methods:

  • Through the regulations.gov web portal: Navigate to http://www.regulations.gov and search for Docket No. BOEM-2023-062 to submit public comments and view supporting and related materials available for this notice.  Click on the “Comment” button below the document link.  Enter your information and comment, then click “Submit Comment”; or
  • By U.S. Postal Service or other delivery service: Send your comments and information to the following address: Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Office of Renewable Energy Programs, 45600 Woodland Road, Mail Stop VAM-OREP, Sterling, VA 20166.

The public comment period for the NOI will help identify what BOEM may consider as part of its environmental assessment of Beacon Wind’s SAP. The comments received will help BOEM determine the important resources and issues, impact-producing factors, reasonable alternatives, and potential mitigating measures that should be analyzed in the EA. Following the comment period, BOEM will review the comments to include information for consideration in the Beacon Wind Draft EA.

See more on BOEM’s website.

 

‘Planet Money’: Why offshore wind is facing headwinds

November 3, 2023 — The Gulf of Mexico this summer saw the first-ever opening of an auction of leases for offshore wind production. But the expectations for robust bidding haven’t been realized.

The Biden administration this week announced what it called the largest offshore wind project in the nation. The government says the opening of a fifth offshore wind operation, this one off the Virginia coast, comes with the potential to power 900,000 homes. But the wind appears to have gone out of the sails for this summer’s inaugural round of bidding for wind leases in the Gulf of Mexico. Our colleagues over at The Indicator From Planet Money, Wailin Wong and Darian Woods, looked into why.

DARIAN WOODS, BYLINE: So this year, in the late summer, Mike Celata was in his New Orleans office early. While there was a hurricane that happened to be brewing in the Gulf of Mexico, Mike was fixated on his screen for another big event for the Gulf.

WAILIN WONG, BYLINE: Mike had helped set up the first ever auction for offshore wind farms in the region. He works for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. That’s a government agency that manages how the sea owned by the government is used for things like drilling oil or gas.

MIKE CELATA: It was a lot of anticipation. We were just waiting to see what those first bids would be. A lot of excitement.

WONG: This auction could mean pretty high bids. A similar patch of ocean near New York had gone for over $1 billion.

WOODS: But the sea patches did not go for anywhere near $1 billion. One of the three sites sold for 5.5 million. And two didn’t even get any offers.

MARK REPSHER: It was a little deflating.

WOODS: Mark Repsher, a partner at PA Consulting, which is a clean energy advisory that worked with some of the energy companies that were considering bidding for the auction.

WONG: Mark says there are some downsides to the area. If you think about what other kinds of electricity you could generate in the region, like in Texas, there are cheaper options than to drill giant windmills into the Gulf floor, like solar power.

Read the full transcript at NPR

MARYLAND: BOEM Hosts Offshore Wind Meeting; Public Comments Accepted Through Nov. 20

October 26, 2023 — Community members came out in droves this week to share their comments regarding an offshore wind project near Ocean City.

On Tuesday evening, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) hosted the first of two in-person public meetings regarding a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) on US Wind’s offshore wind project. Lorena Edenfield, environmental protection specialist for BOEM, said the federal agency will continue to collect comments through Nov. 20.

“Tonight, we really are here because we want to hear what we need to be including in the EIS,” she said. “We did do some scoping last year to determine what we needed to include in the draft EIS, and that really informed the process. So now we want to know how we did.”

Read the full article at the Dispatch

 

MAINE: ‘Crucial’ fishing grounds excluded from federal offshore wind energy draft plan for Maine

October 23, 2023 — As Maine moves forward with future goals of offshore wind energy development, multiple stakeholders are praising the decision by a federal agency to exclude the majority of Gulf of Maine fishing grounds, known as Lobster Management Area 1, from its development proposal.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) released the draft on Thursday and the plan is now open for public review and comment. The draft of the Wind Energy Area covers more than 3.5 million acres off the shore of Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, according to an agency release. The areas included range from 23 to 120 miles off the coast.

Read the full article at New Center Maine