Saving Seafood

NEW YORK: Long Island’s Offshore Wind Farm Plans Take Root

March 2, 2022 — After years of planning and debate, offshore wind farm developers recently took several big steps forward in a half dozen projects in various stages of development off the coast of Long Island.

A record-setting sale of offshore wind development rights last week saw combined bids for six areas off the coasts of New York and New Jersey stretching to $4.73 billion. The auction came less than two weeks after officials held a groundbreaking — or a seafloor breaking, as it were — ceremony in Wainscott on Feb. 11 to mark construction starting on the 130-megawatt South Fork Wind, the first offshore wind project in New York State.

LOCAL OPPOSITION

The South Fork Wind farm’s developers, Ørsted & Eversource, who plan to build 12 turbines about 30 miles off Montauk’s coast — enough to power 70,000 homes annually — have faced legal challenges from some Wainscott residents opposed to the cable coming ashore in their community.

Citizens for the Preservation of Wainscott filed a motion in the Appellate Division of New York State Supreme Court to block the construction until the court has an opportunity to rule on the group’s appeal of the state Public Service Commission’s decision allowing the cable to run through the community. The appeals court judges rejected that motion last month, but the suit is pending.

“We continue to support the move to renewable energy and celebrate the progress toward that goal,” the group said in a statement following the groundbreaking. “But we continue to have serious reservations regarding an infrastructure project that runs its cable through residential neighborhoods, and next to a PFAS superfund site, particularly when better alternative sites were available. Our focus will continue to be on protecting our community.”

The group isn’t the only one opposed. Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Montauk-based Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, protested the groundbreaking ceremony while playing an audio recording of what she says the construction noise will sound like from on land. As officials left, she reminded them that the turbines will be built in North Atlantic Right Whale territory.

Read the full story at the Long Island Press

Sale of Leases for Wind Farms Off New York Raises More Than $4 Billion

February 28, 2022 — The United States government netted a record $4.37 billion on Friday from the sale of six offshore wind leases off the coasts of New York and New Jersey, a major step in the Biden administration’s goal of ushering in a future powered by renewable energy.

The auction, of more than 488,000 acres in the Atlantic Ocean between Cape May, N.J., and Montauk Point, N.Y., was the Biden administration’s first offshore lease sale.

When turbines are built and start working, the auctioned acres are expected to generate up to 7,000 megawatts, enough to power nearly 2 million homes.

The Interior Department has said between that project and others currently under review, it hopes to see some 2,000 turbines churning from Massachusetts to North Carolina by the end of this decade.

Read the full story at the New York Times

U.S. offshore wind auction bids top $1.5 bln, with more to come

February 24, 2022 — The largest ever U.S. sale of offshore wind development rights – for areas off the coasts of New York and New Jersey – attracted a record $1.5 billion in bids on Wednesday, supporting President Joe Biden’s plan to create a new domestic industry.

The auction, which will continue on Thursday, is the first offshore wind lease sale under Biden, who has made expansion of offshore wind a cornerstone of his plans to tackle global warming and decarbonize the U.S. electricity grid by 2035, while creating tens of thousands of jobs.

After 21 rounds of bidding, combined live bids for the six leases stood at nearly $1.54 billion, according to updates posted on the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) web site.

That easily topped the U.S. offshore wind auction record of $405 million set in 2018. It was also far more than recent oil and gas auctions in U.S. federal waters. A sale of drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico late last year, for instance, attracted $191.7 million in high bids.

Read the full story at Reuters

BOEM looks at fishermen compensation — but not everyone wants it

February 24, 2022 — Recent detailed proposals from the Fisheries Survival Fund and Responsible Offshore Development Alliance – coalitions of the commercial fishing industry – and the American Clean Power Association representing the offshore wind industry, presented the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management priority lists for their industries’ coexistence.

Some of those recommendations distinguish between ‘mitigation’ – avoiding conflicts between wind development and fishing – and ‘compensation’ – paying to make up for fishermen being displaced from longtime fishing grounds.

Fishing advocates say BOEM should be following a “mitigation hierarchy” under the National Environmental Policy Act to “avoid, minimize, mitigate and compensate” for impacts of offshore wind development.

BOEM officials and wind energy advocates say that’s being done. As examples they point to modifications to the South Fork Wind project east of Montauk, N.Y., to preserve critical bottom habitat, and shifts in the New York Bight wind energy lease areas to reduce conflicts with the scallop fleet.

Read the full story at WorkBoat

What to watch in Biden’s first offshore wind auction

February 24, 2022 — The Biden administration will hold a long-awaited offshore wind auction today, with both established players in the developing industry and new competitors expected to vie for a chance to raise turbines in the shallow-water region sandwiched between New Jersey and New York.

Industry has long pushed for a new auction in the New York Bight, where developers haven’t seen a lease sale since 2016, and expectations are high that it could result in a blockbuster sale.

“These leases will, in all likelihood, fetch historically high prices,” said Fred Zalcman, director of New York Offshore Wind Alliance, which advocates for the industry. “I think it’s going to be a very vibrant market.”

The bight offers acreage between two states with some of the most aggressive offshore wind targets in the country.

Read the full story at E&E News

New York breaks ground on 1st offshore wind farm, would be largest in U.S.

February 14, 2022 — The construction of a dozen wind turbines 35 miles off Long Island’s eastern tip has begun, officials said Friday, marking the state’s first offshore wind project launch.

The South Fork Wind Farm is planned to sit south of Rhode Island and send power to East Hampton. It could also put New York into rare air: Gov. Hochul has said the state will boast the largest offshore wind farm in the Western Hemisphere after the project’s completion.

The farm is projected to power up to 70,000 homes. New York is also whipping up several larger offshore wind plants that the government estimated will collectively power more than 2 million homes and create thousands of jobs.

“If you ask what the energy future looks like, I say: The answer my friends is blowing in the wind,” Gov. Hochul said in a rhetorical nod to Bob Dylan at the Friday groundbreaking ceremony. “This is just the beginning.”

Read the full story at the New York Daily News

Final approval for South Fork Wind project

January 21, 2022 — The South Fork Wind energy project 35 miles east of Montauk, N.Y., won final approval Jan. 19 to begin construction, lining it up to be the second offshore wind turbine array in federal waters.

The federal Bureau of Offshore Energy Management signed off on the construction and operations plan for South Fork, setting out a 1-nautical mile spacing between a dozen 11-megawatt Siemens-Gamesa turbines and some areas set aside in the federal lease area to preserve bottom habitat for marine species.

Installing monopile foundations and turbines is scheduled for summer 2023. The 132 MW project by developers Ørsted and Eversource is seen as a keystone by New York State energy planners for bringing future power to Long Island – potentially for 70,000 homes by the end of 2023 – as they look to even bigger projects offshore to feed the New York City metro area.

“This milestone underscores the tremendous opportunity we have to create a new industry from the ground up to drive our green energy economy, deliver clean power to millions of homes and create good jobs across the state,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement after the BOEM approval. “As we tackle climate change head on and transition to a clean economy, these are the projects that will power our future.”

BOEM and wind developers continue to face fierce resistance from the Northeast commercial fishing industry. In December the Texas Public Policy Institute filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of fishermen in New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, charging that BOEM bypassed requirements for environmental review when it approved the construction and operations plan for Vineyard Wind, the first wind project in federal waters to be built east of the South Fork tract.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Construction to begin soon on new US offshore wind farm

January 20, 2022 — Construction will soon begin on the second commercial-scale, offshore wind energy project to gain approval in the United States, the developers said.

The U.S. Department of the Interior approved it in November, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management issued its approval letter for the constructions and operations plan Tuesday, a major step in the federal process before construction can start.

Orsted, a Danish energy company, is developing the South Fork Wind project with utility Eversource off the coasts of New York and Rhode Island. They now expect the work onshore to begin by early February and offshore next year for as many as 12 turbines.

President Joe Biden has set a goal to install 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030, generating enough electricity to power more than 10 million homes. In November, work began on the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm in the United States, the Vineyard Wind 1 project off the coast of Massachusetts.

Read the full story from the AP at ABC News

BOEM to offer six New York Bight wind leases in Feb. 23 auction

January 13, 2022 — The Biden administration announced plans Wednesday to auction more than 480,000 acres in the New York Bight for six new offshore wind energy leases, the administration’s first wind sale and the largest lease area ever offered, with a potential build-out capacity up to 7 gigawatts.

In a joint announcement with governors of New York and New Jersey, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said the “administration has made tackling the climate crisis a centerpiece of our agenda, and offshore wind opportunities like the New York Bight present a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fight climate change and create good-paying, union jobs in the United States. We are at an inflection point for domestic offshore wind energy development. We must seize this moment – and we must do it together.”

Commercial fishing advocates stressed that BOEM needs to make a priority of avoiding and mitigating negative impacts their industry and the nation’s seafood supply.

The waters between New York and New Jersey are some of the most productive on the East Coast and account for much of the sea scallop harvest, valued at $746 million in 2019, according to the Fisheries Survival Fund.

In comments submitted to the agency, the group called on BOEM “to create an ‘adaptive and proactive mitigation plan’ that will allow both fisheries and offshore wind to prosper.”

“It is unquestionable that the proliferation of new turbine arrays will have detrimental impacts on the scallop fishery and other fisheries,” according to a statement from the Fisheries Survival Fund. “Windfarms will and demonstrably do change ocean ecosystems. The goal of mitigation should be to strike a balance that ensures mutual prosperity, not merely an uneasy, zero-sum co-existence.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Biden Clean Power Push Hits New York With Offshore Wind Sale

January 12, 2022 — The Biden administration is preparing to sell offshore wind rights near New Jersey and New York, a down-payment on its bid to decarbonize the U.S. power grid and generate renewable electricity from nearly all U.S. coasts.

Under the auction, which could be announced as soon as Wednesday, the U.S. government aims to sell leases to install wind turbines in shallow Atlantic waters between New Jersey and New York’s Long Island, with the potential to generate some 7 gigawatts of carbon-free electricity.

As a sign of the opposition, a conservation group on Monday sued the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, asking a federal court to reverse the agency’s March 2021 decision to recommend five areas for offshore wind projects in the New York Bight.

Save Long Beach Island told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that the bureau failed to study the effects the projects would have on the environment. The group also faulted the agency for failing to consult with the National Marine Fisheries Service to determine if any wind project would affect North Atlantic right whales or other protected species.

Separately Tuesday, groups representing fishing interests, including the Responsible Offshore Development Association, urged the bureau to take more steps to limit the impacts of offshore wind development, including by developing formal benchmarks to assess projects.

Read the full story at Bloomberg