Saving Seafood

Trump’s pause on offshore wind leasing may have limited impact in New England

January 22, 2025 — A national moratorium on offshore wind leasing and permitting may have only limited effects in Massachusetts and other New England states, according to several wind industry observers.

Their comments came after Trump signed an executive order halting federal approvals for wind energy projects on Monday, his first official day in office.

“We’re obviously not happy to see the Trump administration issuing an order on day one that targets offshore wind,” said Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at the Conservation Law Foundation.  “But the practical import of this executive order on wind energy is not very significant — at least as relates to New England.”

Trump’s order directs the federal government to stop leasing new areas of the outer continental shelf for electricity production, and it effectively hits the pause button on all projects still in the development pipeline. But it stops short of immediately bringing to a standstill the dozen or so projects that are fully permitted in waters up and down the East Coast.

Read the full article at wbur

Testing time: Trump’s blue-collar voters want quick proof promises will be kept

January 22, 2025 — Daybreak on the Atlantic is a slow, hypnotic explosion of color. Black skies turn ash gray; next, a sideways sliver of orange divides the vast horizon.

A pause, then a breathtaking ocean dawn: Churning deep blue waters collide with the palest of blue skies. Wisps of clouds turn whiter and brighter as the sun climbs.

First light changes everything.

A pod of dolphins emerges to play alongside the “Jillian and Peri” as it motors out to deeper waters. Their squeals as they pass below the hull echo onboard and stir Andrew Konchek from his wooden bunk below deck.

Time for another subfreezing day at the office, fishing 15 miles or so off the Massachusetts coast.

“It’s a little cold,” Konchek said. “It’s definitely hard work. Not for everybody.”

But it defines him.

Read the full article at CNN

MASSACHUSETTS: Two Mass. offshore wind projects postpone contracts until after Trump takes office

January 21, 2025 — The signing of contracts for two new Massachusetts offshore wind farms, previously set for this week, has been postponed until after the presidential inauguration.

The power-purchase agreements between three Massachusetts utilities and the developers of New England Wind 1 and SouthCoast Wind were due to be signed Wednesday.

The parties now say they expect to reach an agreement by March 31, more than two months after the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has vowed to halt offshore wind.

One of the utilities, National Grid, sent a letter to the Healey administration saying the developers, Avangrid and Ocean Winds, “have not yet completed their contract negotiations.”

Read the full article at CAI

Biden Administration approves SouthCoast Wind construction plan

January 21, 2025 — On the last business day of the Biden administration, a federal agency announced its approval of the construction and operations plan for SouthCoast Wind, a big offshore wind project that Massachusetts is counting on.

“We are proud to announce BOEM’s final approval of the SouthCoast Wind project, the nation’s eleventh commercial-scale offshore wind energy project, which will power more than 840,000 homes,” U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Elizabeth Klein said in a Friday statement.

“We are proud to announce BOEM’s final approval of the SouthCoast Wind project, the nation’s eleventh commercial-scale offshore wind energy project, which will power more than 840,000 homes,” U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Elizabeth Klein said in a Friday statement.

Read the full article at the New Bedford Light

MASSACHUSETTS: Dozens protest wind farms and impact on whales in New Bedford

January 21, 2025 — Dozens of protesters gathered in New Bedford Saturday, demanding an end to offshore wind projects immediately.

The protest came one day after final federal approval for the Southcoast Wind Project, 26 nautical miles south of Martha’s Vineyard.

Protesters said they were outraged over potential impacts on the environment, coastal neighborhoods, and the commercial fishing industry.

Read the full article at WJAR

MASSACHUSETTS: Can a $10M wind-energy center in New Bedford withstand opposition from locals and Trump?

January 17, 2025 — A state agency will continue efforts to develop a more than $10 million offshore-wind-based, ocean-energy innovation center in New Bedford in 2025, despite national opposition to offshore wind and local opposition to a proposed site.

Nationally, President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to halt offshore wind development.

Locally, an attorney has compiled 236 signatures in opposition to the center’s “preferred” site, a 17,000-square-foot parking lot abutting the Bourne Counting House off McArthur Drive on Homer’s Wharf, leased through the Port Authority. The center would include the Bourne Counting House building, which would be renovated.

Read the full article at The Herald News

MASSACHUSETTS: Nantucket session with offshore wind regulators moved due to ‘volume of questions’

January 15, 2025 — The volume of questions about an offshore wind turbine blade folding over and sending broken pieces into the ocean, which occurred on July 13 south of the Islands, has led to a rescheduled meeting between Nantucket leaders and federal regulators.

The public information meeting the leaders were planning to host next week with the regulators about the Vineyard Wind 1 project and the blade failure has been moved to Feb. 3.

In December, the Nantucket Select Board invited the public to submit questions they had about the project for representatives of the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. An announcement from the Select Board this week about the meeting date change explained, “due to the volume of questions received by BSEE, more time was needed to process and prepare responses adequately.”

The Zoom meeting, previously slated for Jan. 14, will convene at 5 p.m. on Feb. 3.

Read the full article at Cape Cod Times

MASSACHSUETTS: Lobster group hopes state follows Maine, scraps stricter fishing rules

January 13, 2025 — Maine fishing regulators on Friday scrapped a plan for stricter fishing rules amid concerns about a decline in baby lobsters in the warming waters off New England, and a group representing Massachusetts lobstermen hopes this state follows suit.

The regulators were looking to institute a new federal rule, Addendum 27, that fishermen need to abide by a larger minimum size for the lobsters they trap. The change is only 1/16th of an inch or 1.6 millimeters, but regulators have said it will help preserve the population of the valuable crustaceans, as many small lobsters will need to be tossed back to the ocean.

Read the full article at the Gloucester Daily Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Nantucket plans public webinar on Vineyard Wind turbine failure

January 9, 2025 — The Town of Nantucket and federal officials are set to hold a public information session to address questions about a wind turbine blade failure that happened last summer.

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and the Nantucket Select Board will host a Zoom webinar on Feb. 3, 2025, at 5 p.m. to discuss the July 13, 2024, Vineyard Wind turbine blade incident.

Read the full article at WUN

Trump Again Knocks Wind Energy, Subsidies

January 8, 2025 — It was a little after 11 o’clock Tuesday morning when Gov. Maura Healey said on GBH Radio that she hoped President-elect Donald Trump would not do much that would disrupt Massachusetts’ pursuit of clean energy.

An hour later, Trump put that notion to rest when he doubled down on his intention of setting “a policy where no windmills are being built” and pointed a finger at Massachusetts during a press conference in Florida.

“They’re dangerous. You see what’s happening up in the Massachusetts area with the whales, where they had two whales wash ashore in, I think, a 17-year period and now they had 14 this season. The windmills are driving the whales crazy, obviously,” Trump said as he opposed both onshore and offshore wind generation as costly, polluting, and harmful to the environment.

There has been an “unprecedented” number of whale strandings along the south shore of Massachusetts this year, officials from the Plymouth-based nonprofit Whale and Dolphin Conservation said. A female humpback whale washed up on Rexhame Beach in Marshfield the day after Christmas, the group said — the sixth large whale carcass to wash up between Weymouth and Plymouth since July.

An official from the group Green Oceans told WJAR last week that the juvenile humpback whale that was stranded along Richmond Pond Beach in Westport was “the 13th whale that has washed up dead in the past three weeks from Massachusetts to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.”

Read the full article at the Nantucket Current