Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Ed Anthes-Washburn Leaving Port of New Bedford for Private Sector

January 15, 2021 — Ed Anthes-Washburn is leaving his job as director of the the New Bedford Port Authority for a position in the private sector.

Washburn is joining Crowley Maritime as director of business development for the Northeast and for the company’s work in the offshore wind space. Crowley is a U.S.-owned and operated logistics, government, marine and energy solutions company headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, the firm’s website states.

“I’m incredibly excited,” Washburn said. “Crowley’s maritime knowledge and shipping capacity is second-to-none.” He said he won’t be moving, and can work for Crowley from New Bedford.

Washburn has been with the port authority for 11 years, six of those years as director. He said moving on is “bittersweet” but that he’s convinced his new position will help him continue to support the city and the port.

Washburn said Crowley already operates vessels within the Jones Act trade in the Gulf Coast and the Northwest. He said in the Northeast, Crowley will develop business relationship as it grows its shipping and logistics presence within the maritime economy.

Read the full story at WBSM

‘You can fish’ our turbines wind energy developer Atlantic Shores tells N.J. fishermen

January 15, 2021 — There are many details to be worked out regarding the Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind’s lease site, which lies 10 to 20 miles off the coast between Barnegat Light and Atlantic City, but the wind energy developer has a message to fisherman: They are welcome to try their luck there.

The clean energy developer assured fisherman Wednesday they won’t be excluded from the roughly 183,000-acre wind farm.

“You’re welcome to fish by the structures; we just ask that you don’t tie up to them,” Doug Copeland, Atlantic Shores’ development manager, told about 75 people who attended a webinar hosted by the developer.

Atlantic Shores, a partnership between Shell New Energies US LLC and EDF Renewables North America, is six years from getting its wind farm up and running, according to its own timeline.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press

Giant turbines will generate power at New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm

January 7, 2021 — New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm will also be among the first in the world to be powered by the biggest and most powerful turbines ever built, the project’s developer said.

Ocean Wind, a planned farm about 15 miles off Atlantic City, is due to start operating in 2024, using as many as 99 Haliade-X turbines — giant machines that will tower 853 feet (260 meters) above the ocean’s surface, using blades that are 351 feet (107 meters) long, and can each generate enough electricity to power 16,000 homes.

The technology, built by GE, has a working prototype near the Port of Rotterdam in The Netherlands, but it hasn’t yet been commercially deployed. The turbines are also scheduled to be used for the planned Skipjack wind farm — much smaller than the New Jersey project — off the coast of Maryland, that is expected to start operating by the end of 2023.

GE says each of the turbines, each with a 12-megawatt (MW) capacity, can generate emissions-free electricity that equates to taking 10,000 cars off the road annually.

Read the full story at the New Jersey Spotlight

Wind Power In Louisiana: High Potential, A Long Way Off

December 29, 2020 — Gov. John Bel Edwards has set a goal for Louisiana to be carbon neutral by 2050, but so far, the state is behind its neighbors. Now, Edwards wants to develop offshore wind power in the Gulf.

It’s something that’s already happening in other parts of the country — with help from a Louisiana company, even.

Just off the rocky coast of Rhode Island, five giant white wind turbines turn in the wind. It’s the first commercial offshore wind farm in the U.S., partially built by Gulf Island Fabrication, a Houma-based steel fabricator. The company used its expertise in old-school oil platforms to build the bases for the nearly 600-foot tall wind turbines.

Edwards is asking the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to launch a task force to figure out what it would take to build those here.

“This is not some ‘pie in the sky’ promise of economic opportunity,” Edwards said in a statement. “We already have an emerging offshore wind energy industry, and Louisiana’s offshore oil and gas industry has played a key role in the early development of U.S. offshore wind energy in the Atlantic Ocean.”

Read the full story at WRKF

MAINE: Fishing industry grapples with state’s offshore wind array plan

December 18, 2020 — The state’s plan to install an array of wind-energy turbines off Maine’s southern coast for research purposes has prompted concerns among fishermen.

“You’re shutting down habitat that we fish now so you’ll be displacing a lot of guys who are fishing out there,” said Portland lobster fisherman John Bisnette.

His observations came during an informational webinar hosted Tuesday by the Governor’s Energy Office and the Maine Department of Marine Resources. The Governor’s Energy Office is the lead agency in the array’s development. The webinar was one of three the agency was holding this week and next to get input from the fishing industry about potential siting and impacts of the array.

“The state has initiated a collaborative process that gives fishermen and other stakeholders direct influence in the development of the proposed project,” according to the meeting announcement.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

Offshore wind in its sails

December 18, 2020 — The Biden administration takes over on Jan. 20, and when it does, it’s expected that offshore wind energy’s prospects in the U.S. will improve greatly.

As Kirk Moore writes in the January issue of WorkBoat, offshore wind occupied a curious position in the Trump administration — often mocked and belittled by the president in public even as his own former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) forged ahead enabling plans for 15 East Coast offshore projects and studying prospects off California.

But in the new administration, expect to see more of 2010, when then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar predicted offshore wind would become a major U.S. energy source. Also, expect Biden to revive the Obama administration’s “all of the above” energy strategy.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Dutch Group Expands Support of U.S. Offshore Wind

December 17, 2020 — A European company considered a leader in the offshore wind sector has signed on to help develop a major project off the Massachusetts coast. Ventolines, a Dutch company that worked on the first commercial U.S. offshore wind project, on Dec. 16 announced it has opened a U.S. office and will support construction of the Mayflower Wind installation.

Mayflower Wind is a planned 804-MW offshore wind project about 30 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, and 23 miles south of Nantucket. The project, expected to come online in 2025, already has power purchase agreements with Massachusetts utilities. The installation is a joint venture of Shell New Energies and Ocean Winds, which is the global offshore wind collaboration between ENGIE and EDP Renewables.

“We are proud to be part of the team bringing more wind farms and sustainable energy to the U.S.,” said Thibaut de Groen, Ventolines’ Director of Contracting and Construction, on Wednesday. Ventolines supervised the installation of wind turbines and advised on asset management for the 30-MW Block Island wind farm (Figure 1) off the Rhode Island coast, which came online in 2017 and was the first U.S. offshore wind project.

Read the full story at Power Magazine

Canadian Government Invests in Research Assessing Impact of Oil on Pacific Salmon

December 17, 2020 — The Government of Canada announced on Tuesday $349,948 in funding will be provided to the University of Guelph for a “two-year research project to evaluate how Coho salmon, in the early stages of life, are impacted when exposed to diluted bitumen (dilbit) – a crude oil found in natural oil sands deposits that is mixed with a lighter diluent.”

The Honourable Bernadette Jordan, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard announced the funding and explained that the research builds on previous University of Guelph projects looking at impacts dilbit exposure has on salmon.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Keel laid for ship that will build major Virginia offshore wind project

December 17, 2020 — The keel has been laid for the vessel that will help create an $8 billion offshore wind farm off the Virginia coast, which will be the largest offshore wind project in the United States.

Dominion Energy made the announcement on Wednesday, calling it a “monumental step for the offshore wind industry in America.” The keel is the bottom-most central steel structural beam on a vessel.

The 472-foot ship, which will be the first Jones Act compliant offshore wind turbine installation vessel, is being constructed by the global marine shipbuilding firm Keppel AmFELS at its Brownsville, Texas shipyard. Officials have lauded its domestic-focused supply chain, which will use more than 14,000 tons of U.S. steel, most from Alabama and West Virginia.

Read the full story at WAVY

Vineyard wind project officially taken off the table for now

December 17, 2020 — As far as the Trump administration is concerned, Vineyard Wind is no longer in line to be the first utility-scale offshore wind development in the United State.

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management officially declared Vineyard Wind’s federal permitting process “terminated” with a posting published in the federal register Wednesday.

Precisely what that means is unclear for the fate of a project that is supposed to deliver renewable energy to Massachusetts and had been in line to be the first major offshore wind farm in America.

On Dec. 1, Vineyard Wind announced that it had temporarily withdrawn its construction and operations plan from further review by BOEM, referring to it as a “pause [in] the ongoing process” that would not delay the planned start of clean power generation in 2023. But based on BOEM’s posting Wednesday, the federal government is treating the withdrawal as the end of the road, at least for now, for Vineyard Wind.

Read the full story at WWLP