Saving Seafood

Biden administration gives boost to offshore wind

February 5, 2021 — The Biden administration’s announcement this week of a plan to resume an environmental review of a wind farm off the Massachusetts coast and accelerate green-energy development was welcomed by developers and proponents of projects for Long Island.

Biden on Jan. 27 signed an executive order calling for the Interior Department to “identify steps to accelerate responsible development of renewable energy on public lands and waters,” a stark change from the Trump administration, which had slowed federal approvals. Trump himself was a vocal opponent of wind energy, saying it killed birds, was unreliable and even caused cancer.

The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on Wednesday released a statement saying it would restart the environmental review and work to develop a final environmental impact statement needed to approve the project’s construction and operations plan. The project, called Vineyard Wind, a company based in New Bedford, Massachusetts, had withdrawn its application for the construction plan for the 800-megawatt project, one of the first expected to come online, to review the prospect of using larger turbines.

Read the full story at Newsday

Biden administration puts Vineyard Wind energy project back on track

February 4, 2021 — The long-delayed Vineyard Wind offshore project has been put back on track by the Biden administration.

In one of her first actions as the new director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Amanda Lefton pledged on Wednesday to conduct a “robust and timely” review of Vineyard Wind and essentially resume the permitting process where it left off in December. That’s when the developers of Vineyard Wind withdrew their proposal for a wind farm that could generate 800 megawatts of electricity, enough power for more than 400,000 homes, to be built about 12 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. Soon after Joe Biden became president last month, the developers rescinded their withdrawal and requested that BOEM resume its review.

Vineyard Wind, a joint venture of Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, was to be the first major offshore wind farm in the United States. It would be financed through contracts with three major Massachusetts electric utilities. But the project ran into delays under the Trump administration, after commercial fishermen raised concerns that the giant turbines would be hazardous to their work.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Biden administration to restart permitting for major U.S. offshore wind project

February 4, 2021 — The Biden administration said on Wednesday it would restart permitting for the first major U.S. offshore wind farm, reversing a Trump administration decision that canceled the process late last year.

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) said in a statement it would resume an environmental review of the Vineyard Wind project as part of the administration’s broad plan to speed renewable energy development on federal lands and waters.

“BOEM is committed to conducting a robust and timely review of the proposed project,” Director Amanda Lefton said in the statement.

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a fishing industry group, said it hoped the resumption of the permitting process would provide new opportunities for the public to weigh in on the project.

Read the full story at Reuters

Biden calls for doubling offshore wind power generation by 2030

February 3, 2021 — The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden aims to accelerate development of offshore wind energy, with a new goal to double planned renewable energy production at sea by 2030. The announcement came on the heels of a Biden executive order requiring the U.S. Department of Interior to pause new leasing for oil and gas on public lands.

“The Department will immediately begin a review of processes and procedures to date as it reinvests in a rigorous renewable energy program,” according to a Biden statement issued Wednesday, 27 January.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Major U.S. offshore wind project asks Biden administration to restart permitting

January 26, 2021 — Vineyard Wind, the developer of the first major U.S. offshore wind farm, said on Monday it has asked the Biden administration to restart its permitting process after former President Donald Trump’s government abruptly canceled it last month.

The company said in a statement it had notified the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management that the project would not need to change its construction plan as a result of switching to a new turbine supplier, General Electric Co.

Last month, Vineyard Wind had requested a pause in the federal permitting process while it determined whether changes to its design were necessary, prompting the BOEM to terminate its entire review.

Read the full story at Reuters

MAINE: Offshore wind project raises questions for lobstermen

January 19, 2021 — A Gulf of Maine offshore wind power initiative Maine Governor Janet Mills rolled out late last year has raised concern in the lobster fishing community, with Maine Lobstermen’s Association Executive Director Patrice McCarron telling The American that “the area identified by the state of Maine for a potential offshore wind farm is prime fishing bottom for Maine fishermen.”

Mills first announced plans to explore offshore wind development last June, when she signed a bill requiring the Public Utilities Commission to approve a floating offshore wind demonstration project, the first of its kind in the United States. The program, Aqua Ventus, is run through the University of Maine and is funded through $39.9 million in federal grants from the U.S. Department of Energy.

At the same time, Mills formed the Maine Offshore Wind Initiative, a state-based initiative “to identify opportunities for offshore wind development in the Gulf of Maine and to determine how Maine can best position itself to benefit from future offshore wind projects,” according to a press release.

More information was released in November. The offshore wind research array would be sited 20 to 40 miles offshore into the Gulf of Maine at a yet-to-be-determined site, where the dozen or fewer floating wind turbines would cover about 16 square miles of ocean. Maine is filing an application with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, as the array will be farther than 3 miles off the coast in federal waters. According to a Nov. 20 press release, the technology for floating arrays is still being developed, and their effect on marine life and fisheries requires further study.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

RHODE ISLAND: As Commerce Secretary, Raimondo to play key role in offshore wind

January 19, 2021 — In the selection of Gina Raimondo as the next U.S. Secretary of Commerce, the offshore wind industry would get a champion in Washington.

What influence she could bring to bear for the emerging energy sector remains to be seen, but if confirmed to her new position in the Biden cabinet, Raimondo would oversee federal fisheries regulators who have raised some of the concerns about potential negative impacts of erecting what could be many hundreds of wind turbines in the ocean waters off southern New England.

It’s those concerns that have played a major role in delaying the approval process for the first set of large wind farms proposed in the nation.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, an arm of the Department of the Interior, has permitting authority over the multibillion-dollar projects, which are all planned for the Atlantic Ocean waters off Rhode Island and Massachusetts. But both federal fisheries management and coastal zone management are under the aegis of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is part of the Department of Commerce.

“I think it’s fantastic to have someone that does have experience with offshore wind and knows the extent of the conflicts,” said Annie Hawkins, executive director of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a group representing fishing interests in the development of offshore wind. “She understands coastal communities and their concerns. I think there is a real opportunity here.”

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

Wind Power In Louisiana: High Potential, A Long Way Off

December 29, 2020 — Gov. John Bel Edwards has set a goal for Louisiana to be carbon neutral by 2050, but so far, the state is behind its neighbors. Now, Edwards wants to develop offshore wind power in the Gulf.

It’s something that’s already happening in other parts of the country — with help from a Louisiana company, even.

Just off the rocky coast of Rhode Island, five giant white wind turbines turn in the wind. It’s the first commercial offshore wind farm in the U.S., partially built by Gulf Island Fabrication, a Houma-based steel fabricator. The company used its expertise in old-school oil platforms to build the bases for the nearly 600-foot tall wind turbines.

Edwards is asking the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to launch a task force to figure out what it would take to build those here.

“This is not some ‘pie in the sky’ promise of economic opportunity,” Edwards said in a statement. “We already have an emerging offshore wind energy industry, and Louisiana’s offshore oil and gas industry has played a key role in the early development of U.S. offshore wind energy in the Atlantic Ocean.”

Read the full story at WRKF

Offshore wind in its sails

December 18, 2020 — The Biden administration takes over on Jan. 20, and when it does, it’s expected that offshore wind energy’s prospects in the U.S. will improve greatly.

As Kirk Moore writes in the January issue of WorkBoat, offshore wind occupied a curious position in the Trump administration — often mocked and belittled by the president in public even as his own former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) forged ahead enabling plans for 15 East Coast offshore projects and studying prospects off California.

But in the new administration, expect to see more of 2010, when then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar predicted offshore wind would become a major U.S. energy source. Also, expect Biden to revive the Obama administration’s “all of the above” energy strategy.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Vineyard wind project officially taken off the table for now

December 17, 2020 — As far as the Trump administration is concerned, Vineyard Wind is no longer in line to be the first utility-scale offshore wind development in the United State.

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management officially declared Vineyard Wind’s federal permitting process “terminated” with a posting published in the federal register Wednesday.

Precisely what that means is unclear for the fate of a project that is supposed to deliver renewable energy to Massachusetts and had been in line to be the first major offshore wind farm in America.

On Dec. 1, Vineyard Wind announced that it had temporarily withdrawn its construction and operations plan from further review by BOEM, referring to it as a “pause [in] the ongoing process” that would not delay the planned start of clean power generation in 2023. But based on BOEM’s posting Wednesday, the federal government is treating the withdrawal as the end of the road, at least for now, for Vineyard Wind.

Read the full story at WWLP