Saving Seafood

Baker, Vineyard Wind mum on Feds’ project guidance

July 18, 2019 — The federal government has offered new “guidance” on the Vineyard Wind offshore wind project, Gov. Charlie Baker said, but neither the governor’s team nor project officials will talk about it.

The Baker administration chose Vineyard Wind in May 2018 for the state’s first commercial-scale offshore wind effort under a 2016 clean energy law and state officials are counting on the project to produce 800 megawatts of power and touting its importance to the state’s renewable energy portfolio. In April, state regulators approved long-term contracts between Vineyard Wind and the state’s electricity distribution companies.

But project officials announced last week that the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) was not ready, as Vineyard Wind expected it to be, to complete a critical final environmental impact statement.

A long delay could affect project financing, as well as plans to start construction later this year and become operational in 2021, but questions remain about the federal government’s stance on the project.

In Connecticut on Tuesday, Baker said that his team and project officials have been given a clearer understanding of the issues in play, and are working this month to address them.

“We’ve talked to the federal agencies about this,” Baker said. “They’ve made pretty clear to us that the reason they didn’t render a decision and the reason why they didn’t put a date on rendering a decision was because they wanted to continue the dialogue and the discussion with Vineyard Wind around some of the outstanding issues and they gave Vineyard Wind and us a fair amount of guidance with respect to the things we should focus on and people are going to be focusing on those between now and the end of the month.”

On Wednesday, a Baker spokesman declined to comment when asked about the nature of the project guidance.

A Vineyard Wind spokesman also declined to comment when asked what the feds have told project officials.

Baker, who says Vineyard Wind will be the largest offshore wind project in the country and will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, on Wednesday said he thought the federal government treated offshore wind projects as “standalone, fact specific issues.”

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Capacity issues loom for East Coast wind developers

July 17, 2019 — Off the New Jersey coast, the bright red hull of the Fugro Enterprise has become a familiar sight to commercial fishermen who pull shellfish dredges and tend gillnets.

Plodding along at around 4 knots, the 170’x40’x11′ survey vessel is making detailed geotechnical surveys for the Ocean Wind energy project, planned by Ørsted to accommodate towering wind turbines that would supply New Jersey with its first 1,100 megawatts of renewable energy generated by offshore wind.

To New Jersey’s renewable power advocates and Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, the work is a welcome sight. It’s the first step toward building what they hope will be 3,500 MW of offshore power by 2030.

For people in the state’s seafood industry — including the long-established and profitable scallop and surf clam fleets — the big red boat portends a new struggle to stay in business.

“The impact to New Jersey will be devastating if the commercial fishing industry is displaced at all,” warned Brick Wenzel, a captain who fishes out of Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., as state utility regulators prepared measure so Ørsted and other companies could bid for power contracts.

The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and Coast Guard have put wind developers on notice that they will need to plan for wide, safe vessel traffic lanes through future turbine arrays.

Read the full story at WorkBoat

Vineyard Wind Dealt Setbacks By Local, U.S. Regulators

July 15, 2019 — The company hoping to build a planned wind farm off Massachusetts is appealing to the state after the project hit snags with local and federal regulators.

The Edgartown Conservation Commission on Martha’s Vineyard voted this week to deny Vineyard Wind’s application to lay transmission cables that would pass about a mile east of Edgartown.

Separately, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has delayed issuing a final environmental impact statement that would help clear the way for construction of the 84-turbine, 800-megawatt wind farm.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at WBUR

Feds: Vineyard Wind review window ends in 2020

July 12, 2019 — The federal agency evaluating the environmental impact of Vineyard Wind provided no explanation for its decision to extend the time period for review beyond Friday, but noted it has until March 2020 to complete its work, several months after the offshore wind developer had planned to begin construction.

Stephen Boutwell, a spokesman for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, issued a statement Thursday afternoon saying the agency is continuing to evaluate the environmental impact of the project.

“Proposed offshore wind facilities are major infrastructure projects, and BOEM is still within the two-year review window established under Executive Order 13807 to complete its reviews,” the statement said. “When the work has concluded, BOEM will publish its findings and notify all stakeholders.”

The federal agency published a notice of intent to issue an environmental impact statement for Vineyard Wind in the Federal Register on March 30, 2018, which would mean the two-year window would end on the same date in 2020.

The timing is important because Vineyard Wind is operating on a very tight construction schedule calling for work to begin this year and be completed in 2021. A delay of any length could jeopardize that schedule and put the company at risk of missing key milestones in its power-supply contracts with Massachusetts utilities.

Read the full story at The Commonwealth Magazine

Vineyard Wind faces new delay

July 11, 2019 — Offshore wind power developer Vineyard Wind may miss its late 2019 construction start, with a delay in the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s review of the project’s environmental impact statement.

The plan for 84 wind turbines off Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., was poised for a formal start to onshore construction activity in December 2019. But on Tuesday the company announced BOEM would not meet an anticipated July 12 milestone for approving the final EIS for the 800-megawatt project.

“We understand that, as the first commercial scale offshore wind project in the U.S., the Vineyard Wind project will undergo extraordinary review before receiving approvals,” the company said in revealing the delay. “As with any project of this scale and complexity, changes to the schedule are anticipated.”

BOEM and the company are under pressure from Massachusetts and Rhode Island fishermen who fear loss of access to fishing grounds, and dangers navigating turbine arrays. BOEM and Coast Guard officials last year put wind developers on notice that they will be required to plan for safe transit lanes through the wind towers.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Prevailing winds blow toward Virginia’s use of offshore wind projects

July 11, 2019 — In about a year, Dominion Power will begin operating the first offshore wind turbines to be built in federal waters anywhere in the U.S.

Each capable of producing 6 megawatts, the two turbines will stand 600 feet above the ocean surface. The electricity they produce will be fed through an underwater cable to a substation being built in Virginia Beach. From there, it is directed to homes and businesses.

The project is a bold experiment that represents the future of clean energy here in Virginia, even if the turbines standing 27 miles offshore will remain out of sight and likely out of mind for most of us.

Gov. Ralph Northam joined Dominion representatives on July 1 to announce the start of construction on the substation. Work on the turbines is scheduled to begin early next year.

With this project, Virginia joins several other states along the Eastern seaboard that are exploring offshore wind projects.

Five wind turbines are already up and running in Rhode Island’s state waters. Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Delaware and Connecticut also are in the early stages of similar projects.

The turbines are a test of sorts, and Dominion may choose to build more if the results are positive. The utility leases 112,800 acres from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, enough space to host nearly 170 turbines with the capacity to produce as much as 2,000 megawatts.

Read the full story at the Daily Press

Feds throw up uncertainty for Vineyard Wind project

July 11, 2019 — Federal officials are not ready to issue an approval for the Vineyard Wind offshore power project, which may affect the project’s timeline.

Project officials late Wednesday announced that they had been informed by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) that “they are not yet prepared to issue” the final environmental impact statement (EIS) for the 800 megawatt project.

The schedule had called for a decision on the EIS by Friday, July 12. Project officials have long been planning to start construction on the 84-turbine installation in federal waters south of Martha’s Vineyard by the end of 2019, and become operational in 2021.

Asked whether federal officials had offered a new timeline for a decision on the EIS, a project official declined to comment.

“We understand that, as the first commercial scale offshore wind project in the U.S., the Vineyard Wind project will undergo extraordinary review before receiving approvals,” Vineyard Wind said in a statement on its website. “As with any project of this scale and complexity, changes to the schedule are anticipated. Vineyard Wind remains resolutely committed to working with BOEM to deliver the United States’ first utility-scale wind farm and its essential benefits – an abundant supply of cost-effective clean energy combined with enormous economic and job-creation opportunities.”

The Interior Department in April got a new secretary, David Bernhardt of Virginia, who had served in leadership roles at the department for nearly a decade.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard Times

NEW YORK: The Push Is On For More Wind Farms Off the South Fork

June 27, 2019 — Three wind energy development companies have asked the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to make the federally controlled sea floor off the South Fork available for wind farm leases.

The BOEM is currently considering whether to create new lease areas for wind farm development on the sea floor in several large sectors off the shores of Long Island and New Jersey available to would-be wind farm developers.

Last year, the agency put out a “call” to developers for nominations of possible new wind farm locations—effectively asking development companies to point to areas where they would be interested in putting wind farms. The call areas are regions of sea floor where conditions are suitable for the placement of turbines—bounded by depth contours, shipping lanes and legal boundaries that cleaved the space into four sectors.

One of the four sectors that BOEM is considering lies directly south of the entire South Fork. Called “Fairways North” in BOEM documents, the sector starts about 18 miles south of the South Fork and extends out to more than 30 miles from shore in some portions. It stretches from approximately south of Moriches Inlet east to approximately south of Montauk Point.

Read the full story at the Sag Harbor Express

Who Should Build the Coming US Offshore Grid?

June 21, 2019 — New York and New Jersey policymakers have established some of the nation’s most ambitious offshore wind targets. New Jersey plans to deploy 3,500 megawatts (MW) offshore wind capacity by 2030; New York is aiming for 9,000 MW installed by 2035.

With the targets in place, attention is now turning to the question of how best to deliver power from multiple projects comprising hundreds of megawatts each to the onshore grid.

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced this week it would publish a “Request for Competitive Interest” for the development of transmission infrastructure off the coasts of New York and New Jersey.

The move by BOEM is in response to an unsolicited application from Anbaric Development Partners for the right to build an offshore transmission system up to 185 nautical miles long in the area. Anbaric is a Boston-based transmission developer backed by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

Read the full story at Green Tech Media

MAINE: Mills signs wind bill, announces plans to advance offshore energy

June 21, 2019 — Stalled efforts to test a floating wind farm off the Maine coast got back on track Wednesday after Gov. Janet Mills signed legislation directing the Public Utilities Commission to approve the contract for Maine Aqua Ventus, a first-of-its-kind wind project in the United States.

“With the innovative work being done at the University of Maine, our state has the potential to lead the world in floating offshore wind development,” Mills said. “This long-overdue bill will move us in that direction.”

Mills also announced two collaborative efforts to put the state back in the game for offshore wind energy research.

First, Maine has accepted an invitation from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to participate with New Hampshire and Massachusetts in a federally led Gulf of Maine Intergovernmental Regional Task Force on offshore wind. The goal is to identify potential opportunities for renewable energy leasing and development on the outer continental shelf.

Mills also announced that she will create the Maine Offshore Wind Initiative. The state-based program will identify opportunities for offshore wind development in the Gulf of Maine and determine how Maine can best position itself to benefit from future offshore wind projects, including opportunities for job creation, supply chain and port development, and offshore wind’s impact on Maine’s energy future.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald