Saving Seafood

Cape May County, fishermen challenge approval of Ørsted wind project

October 18, 2023 — Led by Cape May County, N.J., elected officials, a coalition of fishermen, tourism businesses and environmental activists filed a lawsuit Tuesday in the Federal District Court for the District of New Jersey challenging federal government approvals for Ørsted’s Ocean Wind 1 project.

The court action is aimed “against multiple federal agencies and the leadership of those agencies, alleging that federal regulators have abandoned their obligations to protect the environment and Atlantic coastal marine life in favor of an inappropriate collusion with Big Wind interests,” according to a statement issued by county officials.

Plaintiffs on the complaint include the Cape May County Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Wildwood Hotel Motel Association, the environmental group Clean Ocean Action, the Garden State Seafood Association, LaMonica Fine Foods, Lund’s Fisheries, and Surfside Seafood Products.

Cape May officials and seaside communities like Ocean City, N.J., have opposed the planned 1,100-megawatt turbine array as a threat to their tourism economy, while Clean Ocean Action activists see New Jersey’s wind power ambitions as a threat to the marine environment.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Cape chamber, Board of Commissioners sue federal government over offshore wind approval

October 17, 2023 — A group of plaintiffs that includes the Cape May County Board of Commissioners and the county Chamber of Commerce is suing the federal government over claims it failed to factor in impacts to the county’s $7.4 billion tourism industry when it granted approvals for offshore wind development.

The suit names the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Department of the Interior and the National Marine Fisheries Service, a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It was filed Tuesday in Camden federal court, records show.

BOEM declined to comment on pending litigation. NOAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit follows Ørsted, the Danish energy company building wind turbines off the coast, putting down a $100 million guarantee that the first windmills of its 161,000-acre Ocean Wind I project will begin generating power by December 2025.

Read the full article at The Press of Atlantic City

NEW JERSEY: Orsted puts up $100M guarantee that it will build New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm by 2025

October 15, 2023 — The Danish wind energy company Orsted has put up a $100 million guarantee that it will build New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm.

But it will lose that money if the project is not operating by Dec. 2025 — a year after the deadline approved by state utility regulators.

New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities approved an agreement Wednesday with Orsted under which the company would forfeit the money if the project is not up and running within 12 months of a series of deadlines previously ordered by the board.

Those deadlines call for the project to reach commercial operation in stages by May 1, Sept. 1 and Dec. 1, 2024. But it would forfeit the guarantee money if the project is not operational by December 2025.

Read the full article at the Associated Press 

Lund’s Fisheries, PAFCO cease business with Chinese processors named in Outlaw Ocean report

October 15, 2023 — Cape May, New Jersey, U.S.A.-based Lund’s Fisheries has ceased its business relationship with a Chinese supplier in the wake of a report by the Outlaw Ocean Project on the use of Uyghur laborers at seafood companies in China.

Lund’s Fisheries, in a statement released on 13 October, said that upon hearing questions and criticisms about Rongcheng Haibo – one of several Chinese companies named by the Outlaw Ocean Project in its report – it initiated an internal investigation and “resolved not to renew existing contracts with Rongcheng Haibo until that work was complete.” Now, although the company said it did not find any evidence of illegal activity or forced labor at Rongcheng Haibo, the company will continue to maintain the cessation of new business “pending further investigation.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Construction for N.J.’s 1st ocean wind farm begins onshore. Here’s what to expect.

October 10, 2023 — Onshore construction for New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm kicked off in Lacey Township on Monday, with more work slated for Island Beach State Park next week.

The Oct. 10 construction includes work to ultimately install copper and aluminum cables meant to connect with the electric grid at substations located at former power plants in Ocean and Cape May Counties.

Work at the state park will run from this month to May 2024 before resuming next September so as to not disturb summer tourism, according to officials with Danish energy developer, Ørsted.

Read the full article at NJ.com

 

The headwinds and tailwinds affecting offshore wind in the Northeast, explained

October 5, 2023 — There’s a lot happening in the offshore wind world right now, especially in the Northeast. And depending on what articles you read, the industry is booming or teetering on financial failure.

The reality is probably somewhere in between. There are headwinds and tailwinds, producing what one person in the industry described as “whiplash in headlines.”

Making sense of it all can be tough. But the stakes are high: Climate change is happening and electricity demand in the region is projected to rise precipitously over the next decade as people buy electric vehicles and heat pumps.

Several New England states, plus New York and New Jersey, are counting on offshore wind to help meet their decarbonization and electrification goals — not to mention banking on the industry to create clean energy jobs and revitalize once-thriving port cities like New Bedford and New London.

A year and a half ago, things looked rosy for offshore wind. States signed 20-year contracts for cheap electricity. Companies announced or started to build manufacturing facilities to help create a domestic supply chain for the industry. Even the Cape Wind controversy of the 2010s seemed more and more like a hiccup in the story of the American offshore wind revolution.

But then came a global inflation crisis, new supply chain disruptions and a growing movement of people calling for a pause on offshore wind development as dead humpback whales washed up on beaches.

Read the full article at wbur

NEW JERSEY: Public opinion in NJ is turning fast on clean energy question

October 5, 2023 — Most New Jersey residents agree that climate change is a real concern, but fewer people today believe that offshore wind farms are a good idea for the Garden State.

The latest poll out of Stockton University recorded a 30-point drop in support for New Jersey’s plans to build wind turbines at sea to generate electricity, compared to four years ago.

Fifty percent of New Jersey adults are in favor of offshore wind for the state, compared to 80% in 2019, the poll finds. Thirty-three percent of adults in the latest poll say they oppose offshore wind farms, compared to 15% in 2019.

“When the concept of wind farms moved from abstract policy considerations to preparing for actual construction, many residents, said, ‘Not in my backyard, or at least not off my beach,” said John Froonjian, director of the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at Stockton.

Read the full article at SOJO

TotalEnergies, Macquarie’s Corio bet on U.S. offshore wind as sector wobbles

October 3, 2023 — A wind energy developer owned by France’s TotalEnergies (TTEF.PA) and a unit of Macquarie (MQG.AX) said on Monday it is bidding to build a wind farm off New Jersey’s coast, expressing confidence in the sector after a series of U.S. setbacks.

Spinning power from coastal wind turbines is central to President Joe Biden’s plan to decarbonise the U.S. economy by 2050, but his installation targets are slipping out of reach due to soaring costs, high interest rates and supply chain delays

Bucking that trend, developer Attentive Energy has now proposed to build a site with up to 1.34 gigawatts (GW), capable of powering more than 600,000 homes. Corio Generation, a dedicated offshore wind developer owned by the green investment unit of Australian conglomerate Macquarie, joined TotalEnergies in Attentive Energy last month.

“We are confident in the long-term outlook and fundamentals for U.S. offshore wind,” said Corio Generation Chief Executive Jonathan Cole.

Read the full article at Reuters

Wind power project in New Jersey would be among farthest off East Coast, company says

October 2, 2023 — A proposed wind energy project off New Jersey would be among the farthest from land on the East Coast, the New York-based development company said Monday.

Attentive Energy released new information on the project, which will be 42 miles (67 kilometers) off Seaside Heights and provide enough energy to power 600,000 homes. State regulators did not identify the company when bids were received in August — one of four received as the state pushes to become the East Coast hub of the nascent offshore wind industry.

Wind power developers have struggled to make progress, however, due to supply chain issues, higher interest rates, and a failure so far to garner enough tax credits from the federal government.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

NEW JERSEY: Another New Jersey survey shows sharp plunge in support for offshore wind

September 29, 2023 — A new Stockton University Poll shows New Jersey public support for building offshore wind turbines took a steep dive over the past four years, especially among residents in areas along the ocean and bays – where the plans for wind power once enjoyed 77 percent support.

Today that support has plunged to 33 percent among the latest poll respondents in coastal areas, the Stockton pollsters reported this week.

The findings follow months of intense news coverage about whale strandings on Jersey Shore beaches, and furious campaigning from offshore wind project opponents who say construction will damage the fishing industry. Another big worry is how visual impact of turbines seen from the beach could hurt property values and the summer tourism economy.

Overall support among New Jersey residents still favors offshore wind energy development, with 50 percent in favor of the state’s plans to for building turbines arrays and 33 percent opposed, leaving 16 percent were unsure.

Yet statewide, “the results reflect a drop of 30 percentage points from the findings of a September 2019 Stockton Poll that asked an identical question,” noted pollsters with the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at Stockton. “In 2019, 80 percent of adult New Jersey residents supported offshore wind farms.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman