offshore energy Archives - Saving Seafood

Biden admin begins review of first N.C. offshore wind farm

July 30, 2021 — The Biden administration is beginning its environmental review of the first offshore wind project proposed off North Carolina, which is in a race to jump-start the industry before a Trump-era moratorium kicks in next year.

The Kitty Hawk offshore wind farm, developed by Avangrid Renewables, would be a 69-turbine wind array off the coast of the state’s Outer Banks. It could power up to 700,000 homes.

The 800-megawatt project would sit roughly 27 miles from North Carolina shores and more than 40 miles from Virginia Beach, where two transmission cables would land to connect with PJM Interconnection’s onshore grid.

An Avangrid analysis of the project forecasts a $2 billion economic impact from the project, much of that in Hampton Roads, the port region in Virginia that will serve as a home base to stand up the project.

The offshore wind farm would serve both Virginia and North Carolina renewable energy targets but is particularly important for North Carolina, where the Trump administration ordered a moratorium on offshore energy leasing shortly before leaving office. That moratorium begins in mid-2022 and lasts for 10 years.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) last month signed an executive order to stand up 8 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2040 in the state.

Read the full story at E&E News

Right Whale Use of Southern New England Wind Energy Areas Increasing

July 30, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Right whales are increasing their use of southern New England waters, including regions slated for offshore wind energy development, according to aerial survey data collected during the last decade. Offshore wind energy installations are proposed in waters off the south coasts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Understanding and minimizing the potential impacts from construction noise, increased vessel traffic, and habitat alteration will be crucial to protecting and conserving this endangered species. This research supports the Administration’s goal of deploying offshore wind while protecting biodiversity and promoting ocean co-use.

The study was published July 29 in Endangered Species Research. Marine mammal researchers from NOAA Fisheries and colleagues at the New England Aquarium and the Center for Coastal Studies examined aerial survey data collected between 2011–2015 and 2017–2019. The data was collected in offshore waters including the Massachusetts and Rhode Island Wind Energy Area. The data from these two time periods were used to quantify right whale distribution, residency, demographics, and movements in the region.

“We found that right whale use of the region increased during the last decade, and since 2017 whales have been sighted there nearly every month, with large aggregations occurring during the winter and spring,” said Tim Cole, lead of the whale aerial survey team at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center and a co-author of the study.

Read the full release here

Floating wind turbines could rise to great heights

July 30, 2021 — On July 16th Royal Dutch Shell, an oil and gas company, and Scottish Power, a subsidiary of Iberdrola, a Spanish electricity utility, made an announcement. They were, they said, jointly submitting proposals to the British authorities to build, off the coast of Scotland, the first large-scale set of floating wind farms in the world. At the moment, the largest floating farm is a six-turbine, 50mw array which is due for completion next month in the North Sea, 15km from Aberdeen. The consortium, by contrast, has said it is thinking in gigawatts (gw).

Offshore wind farms with foundations in the seabed are now part of the energy mix in several places. In the past four years their capacity has nearly doubled, from 19gw to 35gw, and amortised costs have dropped by a third, from $120 per mw-hour to $80. They are, however, of limited deployability, being restricted to waters shallower than about 60 metres.

Read the full story at The Economist

BOEM, states discuss compensation for fishing lost to offshore wind

July 29, 2021 — The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is working with coastal states to come up with plans for potentially compensating fishermen for lost fishing grounds and other negative effects of developing offshore wind turbine arrays.

But details are murky, according to one fisheries advocacy group that says fishermen should already be involved in that planning.

Reuters reported July 27 that officials in the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management who are driving offshore wind planning are talking about compensatory payments for displaced fishermen.

That was news to Annie Hawkins, executive director of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a coalition of fishing groups and coastal communities.

The only direct knowledge her group’s executive committee got was in an informal conference call with BOEM administrator Amanda Lefton and her staff, Hawkins said Wednesday. Lefton mentioned that her agency would be working with state government officials to explore “compensatory mitigation” for fishermen forced out of work by wind farm development, and would begin scheduling meetings for that effort.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Commercial Fishing Could Receive Subsidies for Losses Due to Offshore Wind

July 29, 2021 — Nine states along the East Coast that are frontrunners for American offshore wind farms over the next decade are in talks with the federal government about ways to mitigate revenue losses for commercial fishing once the farms are built out.

Commercial fishing industries in the Mid-Atlantic have long been opposed to offshore wind farms, which coastal states and the Biden administration are pushing as a necessary component of a greener power grid. The fishing interests, which argue that the wind farms will interfere with their operations, are seen as the last major holdout to hundreds of wind turbines in the ocean from North Carolina to Massachusetts.

Commercial fisheries say the wind farms, which would be spread over hundreds of nautical miles, could displace wildlife, and shorten the amount of time spent fishing while at sea.

The nine states initially proposed providing some sort of subsidy to commercial fishing in a June 4 letter to President Joe Biden. Reuters first reported Wednesday that talks have begun between the federal government and states in how to offset fishing revenue losses.

Read the full story at NBC Philadelphia

Feds Consider Compensating Fishermen For Wind Energy Effects On Harvests

July 29, 2021 — The Mills administration is partnering with a commercial wind energy company, New England Aqua Ventus, to seek a lease of 16-square miles of federal waters south of for a wind farm of up to 12 wind turbines tens of miles south of Bremen, with a goal of researching novel “floating platform” technology and its effects on ecosystems and fisheries.

“It’s positive that the Biden Administration is examining these questions, and we look forward to learning more about their thinking,” said NEAV spokesman David Wilby. “While the process in Maine has already benefited from many participating voices – which is why the preferred site for the Research Array is as far from shore as it is – a standardized federal program for compensation holds promise.”

As the Biden administration and Gov. Janet Mills push the development of offshore wind energy projects, new efforts are emerging to look at compensation for commercial fishermen whose harvests might be hurt.

Last month the governors of nine Atlantic coast states, from Maine to Virginia, called on Biden to lead a regional approach to offshore wind development, including a plan for mitigating negative effects on fisheries.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Offshore Wind Fight Shifts to New York Bight as Scallop Industry Calls for Changes

July 28, 2021 — Saying the proposed offshore wind lease areas in the New York Bight need to be reconsidered to reduce the impact to scallops and scallop fishermen, industry advocates and scallop fishermen called for change during an online call with federal officials July 20.

“The Atlantic sea scallop fishery is the most valuable federally managed fishery in the United States, worth more than $570 million in ex vessel value and $746 million in total processed value in 2019,” according to the Fisheries Survival Fund.

Barnegat Light and Long Beach, N.Y. combined for a total of $19.4 million in the value of scallops landed, according to data from New England Fishery Management Council’s scallop framework adjustment between 2010 and 2017. For 2021, the NEFMC’s scallop update found Atlantic scallops make up the vast majority of landed value in eight of the largest East Coast fishing ports and over 40 percent in four other areas.

During the July 20 call with officials from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, industry representatives highlighted the need for a buffer zone to protect the “most valuable scallop area in the Mid-Atlantic and expressed concern over the environmental and fisheries impacts of offshore wind development,” according to a Fisheries Survival Fund press release issued July 26.

“Damage to the scallop industry will have far reaching consequences for working families in ports through the Atlantic Coast. The harm will extend beyond fishermen and processing plant employees – many of whom are recent immigrants – to fuel docks, marine equipment suppliers, restaurants and markets,” the Fisheries Survival Fund statement reads, noting throughout the entire coast, scallops were valued over $500 million, or half a billion dollars, in processed value in 2019. “This does not include the additional economic value added by the remainder of the supply chain until the product ultimately reaches consumers in markets and restaurants.”

Read the full story at The Sand Paper

U.S. studies plan to pay fishing industry for offshore wind impacts

July 28, 2021 — The Biden administration is considering ways to ensure the U.S. commercial fishing industry is paid for any losses it incurs from the planned expansion of offshore wind power in the Atlantic Ocean, according to state and federal officials involved in the matter.

Discussions between state and federal officials, which participants described as being at a very early stage, are aimed at addressing the top threat to President Joe Biden’s efforts to grow offshore wind – a centerpiece of his clean energy agenda to fight climate change.

Commercial fishing fleets have vehemently opposed offshore wind projects, labeling them a significant threat to catches of crucial stocks including scallops, clams, squid and lobsters, by interfering with navigation and altering ecosystems.

That opposition has contributed to delays in permitting the nation’s first commercial-scale projects and is among the reasons the U.S. has lagged Europe in offshore wind development. Minimizing those conflicts could speed the lengthy federal permitting process as Biden seeks to add 30 gigawatts of offshore wind to the nation’s waters in just nine years.

Read the full story at Reuters

Scallop fishermen seek buffer zone around New York Bight wind power areas

July 27, 2021 — Plans to open more of the New York Bight to offshore wind development will threaten the East Coast scallop fishing industry that brings in more than $425 million in dockside value annually and much more to the larger U.S. economy, fishing advocates say.

They say one immediate step should be creating a 5-nautical mile buffer zone between the southeastern edge of the Hudson South Lease Area that’s been proposed by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and the Hudson Canyon Access Area, highly productive scallop grounds that have supported the industry’s immense success over the last 20 years.

In the late 1990s, fishing pressure, declining scallop numbers and fishermen catching smaller scallops brought the fishery to crisis. But fishermen, scientists and regulators regrouped, creating a system of rotational scallop area management that federal scientists say has added more than $1 billion in revenue to coastal communities.

The Biden administration drive to develop more offshore wind, avidly supported by state governments in New York and New Jersey, will threaten that progress, representatives of the Fisheries Survival Fund and the port of New Bedford, Mass., told BOEM officials in a July 20 online conference, the group said.

“Proposed lease areas need to be thoroughly re-evaluated to reduce impacts to scallops and scallop fishermen, who operate in the most valuable federally managed fishery,” according to a statement issued by the group this week.

The proposed buffer zone would create a 5-nautical-mile strip inside BOEM’s mapped Hudson South wind energy area, standing off any future turbine construction from the southeastern edge that borders the Hudson Canyon scallop access area, said David Frulla, a lawyer with the Washington, D.C., firm Kelley Drye & Warren, which has represented the fund and other fishing groups.

“The buffer zone’s purpose is to make sure there is not a wind farm hard up against an access area,” said Frulla.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Fishermen Push BOEM for Changes to New York Bight Wind Lease Areas

July 27, 2021 — Last week, scallop fishermen and industry advocates urged the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to adjust the proposed New York Bight offshore wind lease areas.

The Fisheries Survival Fund, a group representing the Atlantic sea scallop fishery, explained that the industry officials asked BOEM officials on an online call to create a buffer zone to protect the valuable scallop fishery in the region.

Read the full story at Seafood News