Saving Seafood

JOE GILBERT: Wind turbine spacing plan inadequate for fishing safety

November 26, 2019 — From the perspective of Connecticut’s commercial fishermen who provide over $53 million to our state’s economy, nearly 1,000 jobs and food on the table of countless consumers, I wanted to respond to the Nov. 19 Day article, “New England Wind Turbine Plan Proposed to Allay Concerns.”

The four developers advancing offshore wind farms off Connecticut’s coast and competing for Connecticut’s energy contracts – Equinor, Mayflower Wind, Orsted/Eversource and Vineyard Wind – released their proposal to the U.S. Coast Guard for how to consistently position turbines across the region in a way that they believe will satisfy safety concerns raised by commercial fishermen and other mariners.

“This uniform layout is consistent with the requests of the region’s fisheries industry and other maritime users,” they said in a press release. It “will allow mariners to safely transit from one end of the New England Wind Energy Area (WEA) to the other without unexpected obstacles.”

It is unclear to me and other fishermen what industry requests these developers are responding to. This proposal certainly does not reflect the position of the Connecticut mobile gear fishermen, i.e., trawlers and scallopers. In fact, the report that this proposal is based on does not even identify Connecticut’s port in Stonington as having a scallop fishery at all. Nor does it mention or account for the needs of the New London commercial fishing fleet. With such an omission, how can the report address the needs of Connecticut’s fishermen? By the report’s own admission, the data used for this analysis may only account for as little as 40% of the total fishing vessels that may transit or fish in the WEA.

Read the full story at The Day

New England fishing groups object to latest offshore wind layout proposal

November 19, 2019 — Groups representing New England fisheries are objecting to a recently released proposal regarding the future spacing of offshore wind turbines.

Five companies that hold leases for offshore wind projects in New England – Equinor, Mayflower Wind, Ørsted/Eversource, and Vineyard Wind – released a joint statement calling for a uniform layout of the wind turbines. The companies are calling for a 1 nautical mile spacing, arranged in east-west rows and north-south columns.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

US fisheries rebuff offshore wind’s project layout rethink

November 19, 2019 — The five developers advancing offshore wind farms off the northeast US – Equinor, Mayflower Wind, Orsted/Eversource and Vineyard Wind – have put forward a proposal to the country’s US Coast Guard (USCG) to use a uniform turbine layout for the projects, in a bid to defuse ongoing objections from the regional fishery industries.

The New England Offshore Wind Leaseholders (NEOWL), advancing more than 7GW between them, said the layout would have rows of turbines spaced one nautical mile apart, and align to the USCG’s requirement for “robust navigational safety and search and rescue capability by providing hundreds of transit corridors to accommodate the region’s vessel traffic”.

“This uniform layout is consistent with the requests of the region’s fisheries industry and other maritime users,” said the NEOWL in a joint statement. The proposed layout specifies that turbines will be spaced one nautical mile apart, arranged in east-west rows and north-south columns, with the rows and columns continuous across all New England lease areas.

Read the full story at ReCharge News

NY spending $2M to study offshore wind impact on waterways, fishing

August 9th, 2019 — New York State said Thursday it will spend more than $2 million for five studies to examine ways to reduce offshore wind farms’ impact on marine environments and commercial fishing.

The studies, awarded by the state Energy Research and Development Authority, or NYSERDA, followed Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s announcement of the first two large offshore wind projects for the state power grid.

The projects will produce 1,700 megawatts of a potential 9,000 megawatts planned by the state by 2040. Hundreds of turbines upward of 800 feet high will spin in waterways off Long Island, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.

Another project by Norway-based Equinor for 816 megawatts will be located as close as 15 miles offshore from Long Beach.

Read the full story at Newsday

New York signs biggest deal yet for offshore wind energy

July 22, 2019 — New York state officials struck deals with two offshore wind energy developers to build 1,700 megawatts of capacity off Long Island, aiming to have turbines in operation by 2024 that could potentially power more than 1 million homes.

The projects would also bring 1,600 jobs and $3.2 billion in economic activity, according to state energy planners. Ørsted,one of the winners in the New York power agreement bidding, says its investments in the state will include training programs for new workers – seen as a critical need for the budding U.S. wind industry.

Ørsted also plans a new operations and maintenance center near Port Jefferson, N.Y., to include dockage for a 250’ service operation vessel.

Building a Jones Act-compliant vessel of that size for the U.S. market would be a jump up from a first generation of U.S.-built crew transfer vessels now under construction for Ørsted, and could be a signal for other offshore operators to take on the risk of investing in a first U.S.-flag wind turbine installation vessel (WTIV) ahead of an anticipated tight global market for those specialized assets.

“Sunrise Wind will bring renewable energy and new economic development to New York,” said Lee Olivier, executive vice president of enterprise energy strategy at Eversource, Ørsted’s partner in that 880 MW project on a federal lease 30 miles east of Long Island. “We look forward to partnering with New York State as a clean energy leader in the Northeast as well as with the local communities and businesses on Long Island and throughout the state.”

The other contract winner is Equinor, one of the early arrivals in the New York Bight when it acquired a 79,350-acre federal lease, tucked between two traffic separation lanes in and out of New York Harbor. Dubbed Empire Wind, that 816 MW project together with Sunrise Wind will total almost 1,700 MW capacity, according to the New York State Energy Research and Development Agency that manages the state’s renewable energy planning.

Read the full story at WorkBoat

Equinor Steps Up to Enhance Dialogue with Fisheries

February 27, 2019 — WASHINGTON — The following was released by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance:

In an increased effort to promote the coexistence and collaboration between offshore wind development and the U.S. fishing industry, the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) would like to announce that Equinor Wind US has joined its Joint Industry Task Force. The purpose of the task force is to develop recommendations for maximizing the compatibility of offshore wind development with the established fishing industry in the region.

The Joint Industry Task Force allows both industries to remain autonomous while facilitating conversations, utilizing the best available science, and providing a space for direct input to be discussed and generating novel solutions, as offshore development continues to move forward. In particular, the task force will focus on improving communications regarding operational and design elements of offshore wind energy development projects and commercial fishing practices.

This innovative partnership was created earlier this year. In order to ensure a productive and collaborative discussion, the vision of a complete joint industry task force will have fully inclusive representation from the region’s diverse fisheries and offshore wind energy developers. RODA invites any interested wind energy developers and commercial fishermen, or fishing industry businesses, to join in this endeavor.

BOEM requires transit corridors for offshore wind energy areas

October 22, 2018 — The federal Bureau of Offshore Energy Management is requiring offshore wind energy developers to set aside vessel transit corridors, amid intense discussions with the commercial fishing industry.

In a notice published Friday in the Federal Register, the agency announced it would offer an additional 390,000 acres south of Massachusetts for lease on Dec. 13. That would extend large areas already leased from Block Island, R.I., to south of Martha’s Vineyard.

The BOEM notice includes a new requirement for planning safe transit lanes through future arrays of turbine towers on the shallow continental shelf.

“The fishing industry has raised concerns with the ability to safely transit the existing and offered leases, particularly with their ability to quickly and safely return to port during inclement weather,” agency officials wrote.

At a Sept. 20 meeting in Massachusetts, Coast Guard officials and fishing industry groups proposed transit lanes through the leases to BOEM and wind developers Baystate Wind, Vineyard Wind and Deepwater Wind (since merged with Norwegian energy company Equinor, formerly known as Statoil).

“Representatives from the squid, groundfish, scallop, and other fisheries agreed that the two nautical-mile-wide transit corridors through the existing leases would provide the ability to safely transit to and from the fishing grounds. BOEM expects these, or similar, transit corridors to be finalized in the near future, and future lessees will be required to incorporate them into their plans,” the lease sale notice states.

Read the full story at Work Boat