Saving Seafood

OREGON: Defying Governor, BOEM Moves Ahead With Offshore Wind Areas off Oregon

August 16, 2023 — The Department of the Interior has identified its first two Wind Energy Areas off the coast of Oregon, the latest frontier in an expanding offshore wind permitting campaign.

The Biden administration hopes to foster installation of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, a goal that appears increasingly remote given supply chain cost hikes and a growing number of abandoned or canceled power purchase agreements on the U.S. East Coast. Any future projects will be even costlier to develop on the West Coast, where platform-based floating wind farms and new power transmission infrastructure will be required.

According to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), Oregon has big opportunities for offshore wind deployment. The draft WEAs announced Tuesday would allow development of up to 2.6 GW of wind power.

The areas cover about 220,000 acres off Brookings and Coos Bay, and they are far smaller than the “call areas” previously outlined for expressions of industry interest.

Read the full article at the Maritime Executive

More Offshore Wind Turbines Could be on the Way to Ocean City

August 4, 2023 — The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has identified three new Wind Energy Areas or WEAs. They lie off the coasts of Delaware, Virginia and Maryland.

For Ocean City leaders, this new proposal does not seem to be as controversial as US Winds, and it is all about the distance. The new site would be 23.5 nautical miles Southeast of Ocean City’s coastline. Essentially running parallel to Assateague.

“That’s a lot better than 11.9 miles, as is currently being proposed in the lease area for US Wind,” said Rick Meehan, Ocean City’s mayor.

Back in July the town hired an outside firm to look at US Wind’s proposal and deem if it is responsible. The end goal would be getting US Wind to move its turbines back. And now, the town can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Read the full article at WBOC

Biden administration blasted for ‘hypocrisy’ on offshore wind as it scrambles to probe whale deaths

August 2, 2023 — The Biden administration appears to be scrambling for research on the conflict between wind turbines and a highly endangered whale species on the East Coast following reports of “unprecedented” whale deaths.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), a regulatory body from the Department of Interior that leases offshore areas for energy development, posted a grant notice in May targeted at “addressing key information gaps in acoustic ecology of the North Atlantic Right Whales,” one of the most endangered whale species in the world.

The problem is the government has already approved offshore wind projects, and some experts are saying the attention to the whales is too little too late.

Fisherman in the region are calling the government “hypocritical” after the same federal agencies almost “regulated [them] completely out of business” in an effort to protect the endangered species without any data showing fishermem bring any harm to the right whale.

Read the full article at Fox News

LOUISIANA: Louisiana poised to spearhead offshore wind in Gulf of Mexico

July 26, 2023 — Last week, the White House announced the first offshore wind power auction in the Gulf of Mexico will take place next month.

The Biden administration will allocate leases for a 102,480-acre area of federal waters off the coast of Lake Charles in Louisiana and two areas offshore Galveston, Texas totalling around 200,000 acres.

In May, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) found no significant environmental impact from offshore wind leasing on a 30-million-acre area, paving the way for the first lease sales that could host 3.6 GW of capacity.

A number of companies have prequalified for the sale, including oil and gas groups Shell, Equinor and TotalEnergies, but the first turbines could in fact be installed in Louisiana state waters.

Louisiana aims to install 5 GW of offshore wind by 2035 and the state’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is in talks with two offshore wind developers for projects in state waters, DNR confirmed to Reuters Events.

Read the full article at Reuters

BOEM to seek fisheries funds for Gulf of Mexico wind leases

July 25, 2023 — The first offshore wind power lease auction in the Gulf of Mexico will offer a 10 percent credit to developers who contribute of a fisheries compensation fund for commercial and charter fishermen.

The Aug. 29 auction by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will offer a 102,480-acre area offshore Lake Charles, La., and two areas off Galveston, Texas – one comprising 102,480 acres and the other 96,786 acres.

If developed to full potential, the lease areas could hold turbine arrays with nameplate ratings totaling 3.7 gigawatts of electricity, according to BOEM.

In planning the Gulf wind energy areas, BOEM excluded highly productive fishing areas after consultations with the Southern Shrimp Alliance and other fishing interests. With stipulations that BOEM has set for the bidding process, the “inclusion of a compensatory mitigation fund is a sound strategy,” the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance said Monday.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Fishing industry reps raise concerns about wind energy areas

July 20, 2023 — A recent webinar on the impacts of offshore wind energy had some members of the Gloucester fishing community sounding off on their concerns to officials of the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).

The webinar, hosted by the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association and the UMass Amherst Gloucester Marine Station, drew about 50 participants to listen to BOEM Project Coordinator Seth Theuerkauf and BOEM Fisheries Biologist Brandon Jensen outline the planning process for siting offshore wind energy in the Gulf of Maine.

Commercial fisherman Al Cottone, executive director of the Gloucester Fisheries Commission, and Angela Sanfilippo, executive director of the Massachusetts Fishermen’s Partnership and president of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association, outlined the fishing industry’s concerns with offshore wind development.

“First of all the construction process, the areas that are going to be used will probably be lost forever for commercial fishing,” Cottone said. “We are going through that right now locally with the LNG terminals that were put in that are going to be decommissioned.” He worried the bottom where the liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals are located might be lost to fishing when these facilities are decommissioned.

“This is going to be on a much larger scale and it’s going to be a vast area of bottom that’s going to be lost forever to commercial fishing, basically,” he said.

Read the full article at the Gloucester Times

Environmental review puts Revolution Wind on the verge of federal approval

July 18, 2023 — A 4,928-page federal environmental review published Monday identifies the commercial fishing industry as a major stakeholder that would be affected by the construction of the proposed Revolution Wind offshore wind farm.

The report by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management states that, on average, about 290 commercial fishing boats visit the site of the proposed project each year, catching about $1 million worth of seafood there. By revenue, the area’s most lucrative species are lobsters, scallops, monkfish and squid. By poundage, the most prevalent species are skates and herring.

The proposed path of the undersea electric cable that would deliver power onshore could also impact fishermen on a smaller scale, according to the environmental review. The statement estimates about $360,000 of seafood is caught annually by commercial fishermen along the cable’s path.

In a press release announcing the release of the report, BOEM said it plans to issue a final decision on whether to approve Revolution Wind this summer.

Connecticut and Rhode Island have already inked power purchase agreements with the project’s developer, Orsted, a multinational energy company headquartered in Denmark. Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee called the completion of Revolution Wind’s environmental review a “major milestone” that brings the state closer to achieving its clean energy goals.

Read the full article at The Publics Radio

BOEM Completes Environmental Analysis for Fourth U.S. Offshore Wind Farm

July 18, 2023 — The United States is accelerating its offshore wind development with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) reporting it has completed its environmental analysis for the next offshore wind farm, coming less than two weeks after it published the Record of Decision for another wind farm.

The proposed Revolution Wind Farm Project to be located offshore Rhode Island would become the fourth, large-scale, commercial wind farm approved in the United States. Proposed by a partnership of Ørsted and Eversource, the plan for Revolution Wind calls for constructing an offshore wind energy project of up to 100 wind turbines, capable of generating up to 880 megawatts. It will be located approximately 15 nautical miles southeast of Point Judith, Rhode Island.

“This milestone represents another important step forward in building a new clean energy economy here in the United States,” said BOEM Director Elizabeth Klein. The process, she noted was informed by feedback from industry, ocean users, communities, Tribal Nations, and other stakeholders.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

Budding U.S. offshore wind industry facing rough seas

July 17, 2023 — Just as the U.S. is plunging into the deep end of offshore wind energy development, the nascent domestic industry is facing major supply chain problems, surging costs, permitting delays, and other headwinds that could affect the aggressive installation timelines state and federal governments have targeted.

Those obstacles, chiefly triggered by the pandemic, inflation, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, should prompt states to more closely collaborate on workforce development, transmission planning, building a domestic supply chain, and other areas where they can work together to help keep costs down, said several panelists at an industry conference in Boston this week.

“It’s challenging,” said Tristan Grimbert, president and CEO of EDF Renewables, which is part of a joint venture with Shell New Energies to develop an offshore wind lease area off the coast of New Jersey. “It requires a lot of things to go right. It does create some costs because you have to build a supply chain from zero. … It’s a pretty ambitious thing that the U.S. is doing. Five years ago there was no offshore at all. Now you’re talking about dozens of projects that are ongoing.”

Read the full article at the New Hampshire Bulletin