Saving Seafood

Fishing for Scallops When the Scallops Are Nearly All Dead

January 16, 2024 — Mike Tehan pilots a fishing boat called Nibbles out of Shelter Island. An hour before sunrise on the first day of scallop season in November, as he unwound the ropes, started the outboard motor and piloted the 25-foot fiberglass boat from an island cove into the open waters of Peconic Bay, Mr. Tehan knew just what he’d find.

“I didn’t come out here with big plans to get rich today,” he said. “You can’t say it’s depressing, because you already know. But you hope.”

He bashed north against the waves, toward the protected bay off Orient, at the far northeast corner of Long Island. He dropped four rusty dredges into the water, just as the bay turned pink with sunrise. He let the outboard rumble the boat around for five minutes. Then he pulled the dredges back up and dumped the contents into a sorting tray.

Read the full article at the New York Times

Developers cancel offshore wind power contract off Long Island due to costs

January 7, 2024 — Developers behind a proposed offshore wind farm off the coast of Long Island have terminated their contract on the project. Energy firms Equinor and BP said it is no longer financially feasible.

The project was expected to generate more than one gigawatt of electricity, or enough to power at least 800,000 homes. The state is now expected to reopen the bidding process for the project at the end of the month.

Pete Sikora, the climate campaigns director for the advocacy group, New York Communities for Change joined Errol Louis on “Inside City Hall” to talk about the project and more. “Offshore wind is not moving forward as fast as it should…These offshore wind projects are absolutely necessary, they need to be put into place and they need to be done fast under the governor,” Sikora said.

Read the full article at Spectrum News

Equinor, BP cancel contract to sell offshore wind power to New York

January 4, 2024 — European energy firms Equinor (EQNR.OL) and BP (BP.L) terminated their agreement to sell power to New York state from their proposed Empire Wind 2 offshore wind farm, citing rising inflation, higher borrowing costs, and supply chain issues.

“This agreement reflects changed economic circumstances on an industry-wide scale and repositions an already mature project to continue development in anticipation of new offtake opportunities,” Equinor said in a statement on Wednesday, in an apparent reference to a new offshore wind solicitation launched by New York in November.

The solicitation allows companies to exit old contracts and re-offer projects at higher prices. The winners of an expedited solicitation for offshore wind will be announced in February.

An Equinor spokesperson declined to comment on the bid strategy for the 1,260-megawatt (MW) Empire Wind 2 project, but said it was “carefully assessing” the solicitation and was “encouraged by the state’s commitment to offshore wind.”

Read the full article at Reuters

Decades after Europe, turning blades send first commercial offshore wind power onto US grid

December 7, 2023 — Despite some recent financial setbacks, U.S. offshore windpower has hit a milestone. An 800-foot tall turbine is now sending electricity onto the grid from a commercial-scale offshore wind farm on pace to be the country’s first.

The moment is years in the making and at the same time a modest advance in what experts say needs to be a major buildout of this type of clean electricity to address climate change.

Danish wind energy developer Ørsted and the utility Eversource announced Wednesday the first electricity from what will be a 12-turbine wind farm called South Fork Wind 35 miles (56 kilometers) east of Montauk Point, New York. It will be New York’s first offshore wind farm.

Read the full story at the AP

NEW YORK: Huge Turbines Will Soon Bring First Offshore Wind Power to New Yorkers

November 28, 2023 — The pier on the Connecticut coast is filled with so many massive oddities that it could be mistaken for the set of a sci-fi movie. Sword-shaped blades as long as a football field lie stacked along one edge, while towering yellow and green cranes hoist giant steel cylinders to stand like rockets on a launchpad.

It is a launching point, not for spacecraft, but for the first wind turbines being built to turn ocean wind into electricity for New Yorkers. Crews of union workers in New London, Conn., are preparing parts of 12 of the gargantuan fans before shipping them out for final assembly 15 miles offshore.

“They’re sort of space-stationesque,” said Christine Cohen, a Democratic state senator who toured the assembly site last week. “Seeing the components up close, it’s just breathtaking how immense they are.”

Read the full article at the New York Times

NEW YORK: New Jersey’s offshore wind loss is New York’s burden to save Biden’s climate agenda

November 6, 2023 — In the long-running sibling rivalry between New Jersey and New York, the Garden State finally thought it had the upper hand.

The state, led by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, decided it could become one of the greenest in the country with offshore wind as its main pillar. But Murphy’s ambitious plans to make New Jersey’s power supply carbon-free by 2035 collapsed days ago when the developer Ørsted canceled two of the state’s three offshore wind projects.

Now, if President Joe Biden ever wants to meet his energy goals for the nation, New York and other Northeastern states are going to have to pick up New Jersey’s slack. And New York — the bigger sibling, the one with more money, more power and more attention — is poised to snatch away factories and jobs that New Jersey hoped for.

“We’re certainly the state with the greatest ambition at this point,” said Fred Zalcman, director of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance, which advocates for the industry.

New York has a lot riding on the success of offshore wind too. New efforts to save or replace at-risk projects the state has already approved are even more important after the New Jersey projects evaporated.

Offshore wind has long been seen as an essential power source for densely populated coastal states to meet ambitious climate targets. Wind farms don’t have to compete with people for land and send power to waterfront cities.

Approving new wind farms became a sometimes-competitive cause célèbre for Democratic leaders who wanted to expand maritime ports, open new factories and create union jobs. It also became something of a zero sum game, even though they share the same coastal waters.

Read the full article at Politico

America’s Offshore Wind Ambitions Are Coming With Bigger Price Tags

November 1, 2023 — Soaring costs are pushing up the price of big wind-power projects, challenging the country’s shift to renewable energy and potentially leading to larger-than-expected bills for residents.

New York state officials in recent days unveiled a slate of wind-farm proposals that would result in higher electricity rates for residents than previously approved plans. That has firms behind older bids rushing to see if they can resubmit their plans at or near the new rate.

The projects are among the country’s biggest and are being closely watched because they show how a nascent industry that is key to the U.S. energy transition will work through the upheaval of escalating costs. The struggles are threatening delays in the current pipeline of projects, which analysts say could hamper the Biden administration’s offshore wind ambitions.

Read the full article at the Wall Street Journal

NEW YORK: NY tentatively approves 3 offshore wind farms, including Ravenswood project

October 25, 2023 — Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration gave a tentative green light Tuesday to three new wind farms off New York City’s shores, including one project that would shift the hulking Ravenswood Generating Station in Long Island City to 100% renewable energy.

The long-awaited announcement marks a major step in New York state’s continuing shift to clean energy, as it works to meet its legally mandated goal of generatng 70% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. But it also comes after Hochul vetoed a bill last week that would have fast-tracked a similar wind farm off of Long Island, and took another action in recent weeks that drew condemnation from wind-power advocates.

Once they come online in 2030, the new wind farms are expected to generate about 4 gigawatts of power, according to the state. That number jumps to 6.4 gigawatts when combined with 22 additional land-based projects also approved on Tuesday, which the Hochul administration says is enough to account for about 12% of the state’s energy needs.

“This industry continues to just blossom, and we’re continuing to make sure that we make the investments now,” Hochul told reporters after making the announcement in Long Island City.

Read the full article at the Gothamist

NEW YORK: Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoes bill that would expedite planned wind farm off Long Island

October 24, 2023 — A major renewable energy project off Long Island suffered a big blow on Friday when Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoed a controversial bill that would’ve expedited a planned wind farm off Long Beach.

Residents concerned about electromagnetic fields and construction won a victory against landing an offshore wind transmission line there.

“They’ve never done this on a community like this. We were the first one, and we were essentially gonna be the guinea pig of this process going forward and we weren’t having it,” said Tim Kramer, a member of Protect Our Coast LINY.

Read the full article at CBS

NEW YORK: New York Refuses Revisions to Offshore Wind Power Agreements Creating Doubt

October 16, 2023 — New York State has put its ambitious plans for offshore wind energy in jeopardy after it declined requests from larger developers to renegotiate their power purchase agreements increasing rates to reflect current market conditions. The decision follows similar situations that have emerged in both Massachusetts and more recently Connecticut which are also threatening projects, while New York and New Jersey officials also continue to seek to push forward with the plans for offshore wind energy.

The decision of the New York State Public Service Commission on Thursday has set off a new round of industry fears. The price of the stocks of developers Ørsted and Equinor both were driven sharply lower on the news while the companies only said they would be forced to re-examine several projects. Ørsted’s stock price is now down by more than half from its 52-week high, falling nearly an additional nine percent for its U.S.-based depository receipts on Friday. While many other stocks in the sector were down today, Equinor rebounded closing the day up more than two percent.

The NYSPSC set off the concerns by announcing it had denied petitions from Empire Offshore Wind and Beacon Wind, being developed by Equinor and BP, and Sunrise Wind, being developed by Ørsted. Each of the petitions had requested an order from the commission that would have directed the New York power regulator New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to incorporate an adjustment mechanism into existing Renewable Energy Credit and the offshore wind power purchase agreements. The companies cited the impact of inflation and cost increases due to supply chain and other issues, which they say have combined to change the financial viability of the projects.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive