Saving Seafood

NEW JERSEY: Ørsted pitches its Ocean Wind project

August 28, 2019 — Offshore wind energy developer Ørsted is introducing the New Jersey public to its Ocean Wind project – at a planned 1,100 megawatts the largest U.S. waters project to date.

“New Jersey is at the epicenter of offshore wind,” said Kris Ohleth, Ørsted’s senior stakeholder relations manager, as she opened the company’s first meeting in Atlantic City Monday evening. “We can supply the nucleus of the supply chain.”

That’s music to the ears of southern New Jersey political and labor leaders, in a region that never fully recovered from the Atlantic City casino industry’s downturn and construction recession after the 2008 financial meltdown.

Ørsted opened an office in the city last year to prepare for building the Ocean Wind project on a federal lease 15 miles offshore, and it’s expected the company could soon pick a location for its onshore support station and docks on the city waterfront.

That would represent 70 permanent jobs, beyond the 3,000 construction jobs the company predicts for its building cycle through to 2024. The company is already working with the city school system and Richard Stockton University to recruit future workers and plan for training and workforce development.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Offshore wind, fishing industries work to co-exist

August 23, 2018 — Offshore wind farm developer Orsted worked with the fishing community in designing its proposed 800 megawatt Bay State Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts, and intends to do the same thing with its Ocean Wind project planned for off Atlantic City, a company biologist said Wednesday.

The company scrapped plans to scatter its 180 turbines to be most efficient in capturing wind, adopting instead a grid pattern at the request of fishermen. The patterned layout would be easier for fishing vessels to maneuver through and fish in, said Laura Morse.

Morse gave a presentation at a symposium on Fisheries and Offshore Energy at the American Fisheries Society’s annual meeting, which opened at the Convention Center here on Sunday and runs through Thursday.

Developers have acknowledged that the construction phase can disrupt fisheries with noise, heavy ship traffic, sediment increases in the water, and other factors. But the operational phase is much less disruptive to fishing, they have said.

Orsted also added two transit lanes, each a mile in width, for vessels to use to get into and out of the busy fishing port of New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Morse declined to say how much less efficient the new design will be for generating electricity, calling the information proprietary.

Norway-based Equinor, which is proposing to develop Empire Wind in the New York Bight off North Jersey, has used ‘statements of common ground’ when negotiating with fishermen in the United Kingdom, said its representative Martin Goff.

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City

Spending a year at sea to find best spots for wind turbines

July 17, 2018 — It’s a little reminiscent of the Beatles’ yellow submarine, but it doesn’t go underwater.

Instead, the bright yellow, boat-like buoy that floated off a dock Monday at Gardner’s Basin will use high-tech instrumentation on deck to help Danish offshore wind company Orsted place wind turbines for its Ocean Wind project, planned for 10 miles off Atlantic City.

If built, Ocean Wind would be New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm, and only the second in the nation after the five-turbine, 30-megawatt Block Island Wind Farm off Rhode Island.

Company officials have said they could have the wind farm operational by 2025, but only if it is soon awarded state offshore wind energy credits to finance construction. The program to do that is still being created by the state Board of Public Utilities.

Gov. Phil Murphy has committed New Jersey to quickly generate 1,100 megawatts of electricity through offshore wind, 3,500 megawatts from offshore wind by 2030, and 100 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2050.

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City

Murphy restarts big offshore wind plan for New Jersey

February 1, 2018 — ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Governor Phil Murphy signed an executive order Wednesday to return the state to national leadership in offshore wind energy.

New Jersey will finally implement the Offshore Wind Economic Development Act of 2010, which languished under Gov. Chris Christie, Murphy said at a press conference at the Atlantic County Utilities Authority’s wind farm and wastewater treatment plant.

The law creates ratepayer-financing of wind field development through an Offshore Wind Renewable Energy Credit program. But Christie’s administration never finalized regulations to implement it, and developers have not received the approvals from the Board of Public Utilities to move forward, Murphy said.

The order commits the state to quickly generate 1,100 megawatts annually of offshore wind energy, and 3,500 megawatts of generation by the year 2030 — enough to power 1.5 million homes, according to Murphy.

“Thirty-five hundred megawatts would make us, I think, the number one aspirational wind field in the world,” Murphy said. Scale, reliability and predictability will make it possible to attract manufacturing, the governor said.

Environment New Jersey Director Doug O’Malley said New York and Massachusetts have goals of 2,400 and 1,600 megawatts, respectively.

State Senate President Steve Sweeney, a co-sponsor of OWEDA, said the plan is not just to place windmills in the ocean, but to jump-start a wind-energy manufacturing industry.

Murphy’s executive order directs the BPU to begin the rulemaking process and to work with the Department of Environmental Protection to establish an Offshore Wind Strategic Plan.

The BPU must implement a renewable energy credit program and solicit for projects to generate 1,100 megawatts of electric power.

“This is great news for the people of New Jersey and a positive step forward in bringing offshore wind to the state,” said Thomas Brostrom, president of Orsted North America. The company holds a lease to develop Ocean Wind, a project with the potential to generate 1,000 megawatts of offshore wind about 10 miles off Atlantic City.

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City