January 19, 2023 — Orsted, the Danish wind energy developer, will become the sole owner of the first offshore wind farm planned for New Jersey.
The company said Wednesday that it has signed an agreement to buy the remaining 25% ownership stake in Ocean Wind 1 from New Jersey-based Public Service Enterprise Group.
No dollar amount was given for the transaction and Orsted did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
January 19, 2023 — Fishing communities are looking to the federal government to determine the best way to compensate them for potential threats to their livelihoods from the offshore wind industry.
Massachusetts and eight other Atlantic Coast states proposed the establishment of a regional fisheries compensatory mitigation fund administrator.
In June, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) issued a draft framework for mitigating impacts to commercial and recreational fisheries. Stakeholders have until Jan. 31 to submit comments to a Request for Information released by the states on Dec. 12 to guide the process.
New Bedford Port Authority Executive Director Gordon Carr said the initiative and leadership of the nine states and the extensive work involved in issuing the scoping document for a regional fisheries mitigation fund administrator and seeking stakeholder input through the RFI process is greatly appreciated.
January 17, 2023 — Another dead humpback whale washed ashore on a New Jersey beach – apparently struck by a vessel – brought renewed demands from local critics of offshore wind projects to halt survey work.
Meanwhile an entangled right whale spotted off North Carolina – and the discovery of a dead right whale calf near shore – added pressure for the federal government to do more to protect that highly endangered species.
The ongoing protests from wind project opponents did not sway New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat whose administration strongly backs offshore wind development. Murphy said Friday he did not think work on the state’s Ocean Wind 1 and Atlantic Shores projects should be suspended as critics demanded.
Two days earlier, Murphy announced that Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind LLC had signed a letter of intent with the state Economic Development Authority to lease and develop 35 acres of land at the New Jersey Wind Port, to be a construction base for its 1.5-gigawatt project planned off Long Beach Island.
The nearly 33-foot long humpback whale was reported late in the afternoon Thursday, Jan. 12 at Brigantine, N.J., a few miles north from where two dead humpbacks beached at Atlantic City two weeks apart in December.
January 17, 2023 — A leading wind turbine maker is imploring Washington and state governments for more policy support only months after Congress passed hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies for green energy, arguing the new law alone is insufficient to help the industry reckon with high inflation.
The ask from Spanish manufacturer Siemens Gamesa illustrates how the persistence of inflation poses a threat to the decarbonization goals of President Joe Biden, who is now ill-equipped to pass new policy to supplement the new Democratic climate law with Republicans in control of the House of Representatives.
Siemens Gamesa said the Inflation Reduction Act, which the unified Democratic government passed in August, provided strong incentives and sends positive signals to the industry but is not a “silver bullet” due to the lasting and limiting effects that inflation is having on new investment.
January 17, 2023 — Lawmakers, fishermen and marine activists are calling for an investigation into whether offshore wind projects are killing marine life after a recent spate of dead whales washing up along the New Jersey-New York coastline.
Seafreeze fisheries liaison Meghan Lapp told Fox News that the Biden administration’s initiative to build wind farms to combat climate change could be threatening the lives of whales as an increasing number have turned up dead in various states across the country.
“I can’t authoritatively say that all off the whales that are washing up are because of offshore wind farms. But what I can tell you is that the seven whales that washed up off New Jersey in the past month have all washed up during intense geotechnical surveying of wind farm leases off of New Jersey,” Lapp said Friday on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
January 17, 2023 — New Jersey’s governor said Friday he does not think undersea preparations for offshore wind farms should be halted in response to a recent spate of whale deaths in New Jersey and New York.
Democrat Phil Murphy spoke after lawmakers at the local, state and federal levels called for a temporary pause in ocean floor preparation work for offshore wind projects in New Jersey and New York after another dead whale washed ashore in the area.
Also on Friday, most of New Jersey’s environmental groups warned against linking offshore wind work and whale deaths, calling such associations “unfounded and premature.”
The death was the seventh in a little over a month. The spate of fatalities prompted an environmental group and some citizens groups opposed to offshore wind to ask President Biden earlier this week for a federal investigation into the deaths.
The latest death Thursday was that of a 20- to 25-foot-long (6- to 7.6-meter-long) humpback whale. Its remains washed ashore in Brigantine, just north of Atlantic City, which itself has seen two dead whales on its beaches in recent weeks.
January 13, 2023 — The seventh dead whale in just over a month has washed up on the New York-New Jersey coastline, a local photographer and a climate group told NJ Advance Media on Friday.
The humpback whale, the resident said, washed up at a beach in Brigantine.
“This was at the far north end of Brigantine,” said Connie Pyatt, who noted that the whale was dead.
The dead whale washed up just miles from where another whale was found in Atlantic City on Saturday — which itself washed up blocks away from where another humpback whale was found in December.
The Marine Mammal Stranding Center, a non-profit organization which is authorized by the state to rescue marine mammals and respond to whale strandings, did not immediately provide comment Friday.
January 13, 2023 — Less than a year after the record-setting auctions for leases in the New York Bight, initial survey work is beginning for the U.S.’s next large offshore wind farms. Coinciding with the start of the offshore survey work, however, a group of environmentalists is calling for a suspension of the efforts after whales recently beached on the New Jersey shoreline.
Community Offshore Wind, a joint venture between RWE Renewables and National Grid, which won one of the leases in the middle of the area off the New Jersey shore reported that it would be kicking off its survey work. The company highlighted the depth of its efforts to coordinate with the local fishing community to limit disruptions with the survey which will be continuing through summer 2023 with two vessels from Furgo. Community Offshore Wind said it has collaborated with Fugro on the project phasing to accelerate the overall development process.
The geophysical survey campaign will study seabed conditions within the project lease area and potential export cable corridors in the New York Bight. According to Community Wind, the data collected will help inform the project design and engineering, identifying potential geohazards and obstructions, as well as benthic habitats and archaeological resources.
“The start of the site survey is an important milestone for the project,” said Doug Perkins, President and Project Director of Community Offshore Wind. “The technical data collected will help us develop a more responsible and cost-effective project design. Our success relies on communication, safety, and collaboration with other parties out on the water.”
January 11, 2023 — The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on Tuesday announced a series of meetings to get feedback on offshore wind energy in the Gulf of Maine.
December 15, 2022 — Initial tensions between Rhode Island fishermen and an offshore wind developer over the project’s cable burial plan have dissipated, eased by a $3.5 million compensation package.
The payment, as well as other mitigation efforts such as extra studies on how undersea cables impact native fish species, was incorporated into state coastal regulators’ Tuesday approval of the Revolution Wind cable burial plan. The R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council’s unanimous decision concludes a more than year-long saga of public hearings and private negotiations, focused largely on fishing industry concerns with the project.
Conflict between fishermen and offshore wind developers is not new; the groups have butted heads repeatedly as the massive wind farms work their way through federal and state reviews. That includes in Rhode Island, where the CRMC in 2021 signed off on another wind farm, South Fork Wind, over objections from fishing industry representatives.