Saving Seafood

Offshore Wind Awaits Federal Environmental Reports

December 6, 2019 — The offshore wind industry is rolling out new projects, but a forthcoming federal environmental report may determine how and when they get built.

The latest industry initiative is the expansion of a cable factory in Charleston, S.C., where Paris-based Nexans plans to make some 620 miles of high-voltage power lines for the five wind projects under development by the utility Eversource and Danish energy company Ørsted. The companies declined to say how the five-year contract was granted. Nexans is also building a new cable-laying vessel with a 10,000-ton capacity.

On Oct. 30, Massachusetts awarded a wind-facility lease to a joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell and EDP Renewables for the 804-megawatt Mayflower Wind wind project 20 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard.

The five projects boost state renewable-energy targets, but for the moment their immediate prospects await the outcome of reports by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the Coast Guard.

The Port Access Route Study: The Areas Offshore of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, conducted by the Coast Guard, was prompted by the proposed navigation route changes in U.S. waters.

Read the full story at EcoRI

BOEM offshore wind review may go to late 2020; developers undeterred

December 6, 2019 — The Department of Interior’s review of potential cumulative impact of East Coast offshore wind energy development may continue into late 2020.

But industry advocates say the nascent U.S. industry’s momentum is continuing, with new contracts and commitments, and expectations of new Bureau of Offshore Energy Management offshore lease sales in New York Bight and California waters.

“In 2020 we’ll have additional leases coming on line in New York and California. This will become a bicoastal industry,” Liz Burdock, president and CEO of the Business Network for Offshore Wind, told audiences at the 40th annual International WorkBoat Show in New Orleans Thursday.

While BOEM controls the granting of offshore leases, “the states are feeding the market,” with their ambitious plans to dramatically boost renewable energy supplies, said Burdock. Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and others are seeking offshore wind as a replacement as aging fossil fuel and nuclear power stations are phased out in the Northeast.

The process of permitting as many as 15 federal waters leases is on a pause along with a BOEM environmental impact statement on the Vineyard Wind project off Massachusetts, as the agency examines the potential impact of building those turbine arrays on the environment and other maritime uses.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Offshore Wind May Help The Planet — But Will It Hurt Whales?

December 5, 2019 — Tail! Tail!” shouts Dr. Howard Rosenbaum, a marine biologist, before grabbing his crossbow, as we close in on a humpback whale.

Rosenbaum gets into position on the bow of the boat, stands firmly with legs apart, takes aim, and fires at the 40-foot cetacean. The arrow that he releases doesn’t have a point – it has a hollow 2-inch tip to collect skin and blubber, and a cork-like stopper to prevent it from penetrating too deeply.

“Oh, yeah!” come shouts from the small research crew. The hit looks clean. Sure enough, when they scoop the floating arrow out of the water, its tip is filled with a small white sliver of whale flesh, containing DNA that will help identify the humpback and its pod and potentially say something about its migratory patterns.

This is the sort of research that Rosenbaum, the director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s “Ocean Giants” program, has been doing for decades around the globe. Recently, though, whale monitoring has taken on a new urgency in Rosenbaum’s own native habitat — the Atlantic waters off New York City and Long Island.

As whale populations have grown, the WCS and its collaborator, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, have been monitoring them, with an eye toward mediating conflicts with the ocean’s heaviest users: cargo ships, commercial fishing trawlers and the U.S. military.

Now, the whales are poised to get many new, potentially disruptive neighbors: hundreds of skyscraper-high wind turbines, rising from the ocean floor.

The New York Energy Research and Development Authority has awarded two large contracts for offshore wind and anticipates several more in the coming years. The first phase, expected to be complete by 2024, involves dozens of wind turbines in two different offshore plots, leased by energy companies from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. They would generate 1700 megawatts — enough to power more than one million homes.

Read the full story at NPR

Gov. Sununu signs order on offshore wind development

December 5, 2019 — New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu has signed an executive order preparing the state for future offshore wind development.

The order signed Tuesday establishes four advisory boards focused on fisheries and endangered species, workforce and economic development, offshore industries and infrastructure.

“New Hampshire recognizes the tremendous potential that offshore wind power has to offer,” Sununu said in a statement. “With today’s executive order, New Hampshire will ensure that this is an open and transparent process involving diverse stakeholders to balance existing offshore uses with a new source of clean energy.”

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Network could deliver wind power across southern New England

November 25, 2019 — The company that is turning the site of a former coal-burning power plant in Somerset into a green energy center has filed a federal application to develop a single transmission network that could deliver power from offshore wind farms to Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

Anbaric, a Wakefield-based company that focuses exclusively on transmission, said it filed its application with the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for “non-exclusive rights-of-way to develop the Southern New England OceanGrid,” which it described as an “independent, open-access” offshore wind transmission system.

If approved, the company said its plan would be to link existing wind lease areas to one common transmission network and then deliver as much as 16,000 megawatts of clean power to the three southern New England states. The project’s benefits, according to Anbaric, would include greater efficiency, improved reliability, and limited environmental impacts.

“As offshore wind’s potential gains momentum, it’s time to think big and plan rationally. It becomes clearer every day that transmission must lead the way towards greater scale, reliability, and efficiency, just as it has in Europe,” Anbaric CEO Edward Krapels said. “Individual wind farm developers have gotten the industry off to a good start, but we now need a networked grid to minimize conflict and create a truly reliable offshore transmission system that will substantially de-risk wind projects.”

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

First Public Meeting For Offshore Wind Task Force Will Take Place In N.H.

November 19, 2019 — New Hampshire will host the kick-off meeting of a federal offshore wind task force for the Gulf of Maine. The meeting is set for Dec. 12 at the University of New Hampshire.

It will be open to the public, with time for public input.

The task force will include state, local and tribal government officials from New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine, and from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Read the full story at New Hampshire Public Radio

Top climate hawk bashes first big offshore wind project

November 15, 2019 — For the past seven years, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has given a weekly address about the dangers of climate change. Increasingly, some greens wonder if he is full of hot air.

The Rhode Island Democrat, one of the Senate’s top climate hawks, has emerged as a leading critic of Vineyard Wind, an 84-turbine offshore wind project proposed in federal waters 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. Whitehouse has questioned the federal government’s review of the project, the first large-scale development of its kind in the United States, and criticized Vineyard Wind for failing to adequately consult fishermen.

His barbs have raised eyebrows in climate circles and in Massachusetts, where Vineyard Wind has the enthusiastic backing of the state’s political establishment, and comes as the Trump administration weighs the future of the project.

In August, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt called for an additional round of environmental review of the project (Climatewire, Aug. 12). A division of Interior, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, is currently conducting a cumulative impact study of other offshore wind projects proposed for the area.

In an interview, Whitehouse said he was simply pushing for improvements to BOEM’s permitting process to better accommodate the concerns of fishermen and other ocean users.

He argued that Vineyard Wind had already settled on the design of its project with investors before taking input from fishermen. And he cited the Block Island wind farm, a five-turbine project built by Rhode Island-based Deepwater Wind, as an example of how wind developers should approach fishermen’s concerns.

Keating said he appreciates the difficulty Whitehouse faces in balancing the concerns of fishermen next to the economic potential of offshore wind. He represents New Bedford, Mass., America’s largest commercial fishing port, and has heard similar concerns about offshore wind from some constituents. But he added: “I really feel an urgency and I feel an imperative that we have to go forward on this. This is gonna be great for our economy.”

Read the full story at E&E News

Sign up for Mid-Atlantic Offshore Wind Updates

October 31, 2019 — The following was released by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council:

U.S. offshore wind energy development is moving at a fast pace. The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council has created a new offshore wind updates email list to distribute updates on offshore wind energy developments that may affect Mid-Atlantic Council-managed fisheries.

These email updates will be sent about once per month and will contain relevant updates from the previous month; however, the Council makes no guarantees that they will contain the most current information or all potentially relevant updates.

To sign up for this list, go to http://www.mafmc.org/email-list, enter your email address and check the box for “Offshore Wind Updates.” If you are already subscribed to any other Council email lists, this will not affect your other subscriptions.

The first offshore wind update for October 31, 2019 is included below. If you do not sign up for the offshore wind updates list at the link above, you will not receive future updates on this topic.

Updates for October 31, 2019

1. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is seeking public comments on draft guidelines for lighting and marking of structures supporting renewable energy projects, including offshore wind projects. More information is available here.

2. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) finalized contracts with Equinor Wind US LLC for the Empire Wind project in the New York Bight and with Sunrise Wind LLC (a joint venture of Ørsted A/S and Eversource Energy) for the Sunrise Wind project south of Rhode Island.

  • Click here for the Fisheries Mitigation Plan for the Empire Wind Project.
  • Click here for the Fisheries Mitigation Plan for the Sunrise Wind Project.

3. NYSERDA published a report titled Launching New York’s Offshore Wind Industry: Phase 1.

4. Equinor Wind created a brochure describing feedback they have received from the fishing industry to date on the layout of offshore wind turbine arrays for their Empire and Boardwalk Wind projects off New York/northern New Jersey.

5. A graduate student at the University of Rhode Island is conducting an online survey of members of the commercial fishing industry on their preferences for offshore wind farm layouts. Click here to take the survey.

More Information

For information on specific projects, please see the individual developer webpages linked at: http://www.mafmc.org/northeast-offshore-wind.

All recent notices to mariners (e.g., notices of survey activities) received by the Council are posted at: http://www.mafmc.org/offshore-wind-notices.

If you wish to suggest an item for inclusion in the next month’s update, please email wind@mafmc.org.

Wind updates from the New England Fishery Management Council are included in their periodic news roundups. To sign up for New England Fishery Management Council updates, please email Janice Plante at jplante@nefmc.org.

Two Months Later, Vineyard Wind’s Delay Still Clouds US Offshore Picture

October 24, 2019 — Two months after the U.S. government abruptly delayed Vineyard Wind’s 800-megawatt offshore wind project, the industry is still looking for answers.

It’s not exactly clear when Vineyard will get its final go-ahead, let alone what effect the government’s unexpected “cumulative impacts analysis” will have on the pathbreaking $2.8 billion project or the broader American offshore wind market.

If anything, the timeline for a resolution has slipped. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management initially said it anticipated completing Vineyard’s supplemental environmental impact statement (EIS) in late 2019 or early 2020, delaying the project by about six months. But BOEM Acting Director Walter Cruickshank said this week that the Interior Department agency now expects to have the supplemental draft EIS “out for public comment early next year.”

Read the full story at Green Tech Media

EnBW North America Appoints Fisheries Liaison

October 23, 2019 — Highlighting the critical connection between early and effective engagement with the fishing industry and successful offshore wind development, EnBW North America today has welcomed long-time fishing advocate Beth Casoni as the company’s fisheries liaison. The company has also announced its new membership in the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance’s (RODA) joint industry task force, devoted to addressing issues of mutual interest to commercial fisheries and offshore wind.

While federal Bureau of Offshore Energy Management (BOEM) rules require offshore wind area leaseholders to employ a fisheries liaison, EnBW North America says it made the decision to retain Casoni before obtaining site control in order to fully engage with the fishing community before project design and development. The company’s immediate attention is on the New York Bight – an area off the coasts of New York and New Jersey, where BOEM is expected to auction wind lease areas in late 2020.

Casoni, a Marshfield, Mass., resident, has worked at the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association since 2007 and has served as its executive director since 2014. Her experience includes serving on the Massachusetts Ocean Advisory Commission, which contributed to the development of the Massachusetts Ocean Management Plan. She serves also on the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team and several fisheries and seafood marketing boards, including the New England Marine Fisheries Herring and Habitat Advisory Panel and Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission Herring Advisory Panel. A fishing community native whose family includes commercial fishermen, Casoni is also a former reserve intermittent police officer with the Cohasset (Massachusetts) Police Department.

Read the full story at North American Wind Power