Saving Seafood

Wind energy efforts in Gulf of Maine pick up steam

February 10, 2023 — Stakeholders across Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, in partnership with the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), are inching closer to developing offshore wind energy in the Gulf of Maine.

In a series of public meetings last month, including one in Portsmouth, BOEM detailed its progress on bringing the renewable energy source to a portion of the 36,000-square-mile gulf area.

Last August, the Department of the Interior released a request seeking “commercial interest in obtaining wind energy leases in the Gulf of Maine consisting of about 13.7 million acres.” Based on input from the request, BOEM joined with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Center for Coastal and Ocean Science to produce a spatial analysis. This led to reducing the potential offshore wind gulf acreage to 9.9 million acres.

Read the full article at NH Business Review

What we know — and don’t know — about offshore wind and whale deaths

February 9, 2023 — Offshore wind development in US East Coast waters has been blamed for a flurry of dead humpback whales off New Jersey and New York. But what do — and don’t — we know?

Since 2016 there has been an unusually high incidence of humpback whale deaths on the US East Coast: a total of 180 animals, of which about 40 percent had evidence of entanglement in fishing gear or being struck by vessels. The US National Marine Fisheries Service works with other organizations to examine dead whales found at sea or beached to determine the cause of death. The other cases remain undiagnosed because of decomposition, the inability to tow the whale ashore, lack of access to the whale, or an indeterminate cause.

Investigations of large whale mortalities can take many months, but NMFS has stated that the recent mortalities show no relation to offshore wind development. So what are the potential risks for whales of offshore wind development?

Marine mammals are sensitive to noise, which can result from weather events, earthquakes, and human sources, such as sonar, bottom drilling and coring, seismic air guns, and explosions. The effects can range from behavioral change to temporary or permanent hearing loss, and occasionally mortality. Most deaths related to acoustic exposure have been in toothed whales and dolphins related to sonar. There has been no recent evidence of humpback or other baleen whales dying from noise exposure.

Read the full article at the Boston Globe

VIRGINIA: Dominion ‘on track’ with $9.8 bln Virginia offshore wind farm

February 9, 2023 — Dominion Energy Inc (D.N) executives said on Wednesday that the electric utility’s $9.8 billion offshore Virginia wind farm is on track and on budget, having recently entered a critical phase of the environmental review process.

The roughly month-long crucial public comment period on the environmental impact study of the 2.6 gigawatt project will end in February, Dominion Chief Executive Officer Robert Blue said on the Richmond, Virginia-based company’s quarterly earnings call.

“As it relates to the project’s execution, it’s very much on track and on budget,” Blue said, adding that Dominion is working with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and other overseers of U.S. offshore wind development.

Read the full article at Reuters

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford Port Authority submits comments in support of offshore wind fisheries mitigation and compensation

February 8, 2023 — The following was released by the New Bedford Port Authority:

On February 7th, 2023, the New Bedford Port Authority (“NBPA”) released remarks aimed at providing in-depth commentary on the (9) State Framework for Establishing a Regional Fisheries Compensation Fund Administrator for Potential Impacts to the Fishing Community from Offshore Wind Energy. 

Nine Atlantic Coast states are working together to advance and ultimately implement a consistent regional approach for administration of financial compensation (Regional Fund Administrator) paid by developers to address adverse effects of offshore wind energy development on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard’s commercial and for-hire recreational fishing industries.

The NBPA underscored that there is no port in the United States that has more interest, or more at stake, than the Port of New Bedford relative to this Regional Fund Administrator. It also emphasized that to have a truly legitimate and sustainable fisheries compensation fund program, any proposed framework, and the corresponding administrative process to distribute the funds, must be codified in federal law through an act of Congress.

The NBPA comments focused on the fact that potential losses to the fishing industry should not be based on geographic proximity to offshore wind projects, but instead should be based on losses incurred at landing ports. Therefore, it is imperative that shoreside income loss determinations be analyzed on a port-by-port basis based upon the actual losses incurred.

The NBPA believes a regional or cumulative approach to mitigation and compensation is essential. Cumulative impacts of multiple offshore wind developments across our entire coastline will produce collective impacts to fishing industries and the communities supporting them. A common set of rules and procedures established by this process will not only minimize the burden of fishermen seeking compensation but will give offshore wind developers clear expectations for their planning and development purposes. 

“We appreciate this opportunity to assist policymakers in better understanding the unique interests of New Bedford as the nation’s leading commercial fishing port,” said New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell. “In our view, the two most important mitigation considerations for a Fund Administrator are ensuring access to mitigation funds for affected shoreside businesses in addition to vessels; and the importance of allocating funds commensurate with the value of the landings associated with respective ports. We look forward to a collaborative effort to establish a fair and equitable policy framework that addresses these concerns.”

As impacts from offshore wind will only grow in scope and intensity as more projects are built out, any framework must include ongoing scientific and economic analyses, technical aspects of fishery management and ecosystems, and socio-economic values, all with direct and substantial participation and collaboration with our fishermen.

VIRGINIA: Senate advances Dominion bill with amendment underscoring tie to wind project

February 7, 2023 — After the House Commerce and Energy Committee last week gutted Dominion Energy’s sweeping proposal for changing the way it is regulated, the state Senate on Monday trimmed a key section of the same measure.

The issue is the profit rate the electric monopoly is allowed to earn — an important element when the State Corporation Commission reviews its rates.

But in the background, as the Senate action made clear, is Dominion’s concern about financing its $9 billion offshore wind farm.

The clue comes in an amendment to the Dominion bill proposed by Senate Minority Leader Tommy Norment, R-James City: a time limit on the bill’s directive that the SCC must use the average profit rate of large southeastern utilities as the profit rate it allows for Dominion.

Revolution Wind Turbines’ Effects on Life in the Sea and on the Seafloor Remain Unclear

February 7, 2023 — Distant cousins of the machines that dotted the Dutch countryside to pump the ocean back into its bed, sentimentalized in art for 500 years, that have been slimmed down and redesigned in the 21st century to fight global warming, will be hammered into the seafloor in glacial rock laid down 2.8 million years ago during the Pleistocene epoch.

Standing at a weird intersection of natural forces, human intervention, and climate disaster, windmills are now hip, and controversial.

But can wind turbines — what used to be windmills — off the coast of Rhode Island live up to their renewable energy promise? And what effects will they have on life in the sea?

Hundreds of experts from the U.S. Department of the Interior down to local fishermen and town planners are puzzling over these questions, especially now, during the permitting and approval process of the Revolution Wind project, in which developers Ørsted and Eversource hope to install up to 100 wind turbines on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) about 18 miles southeast of Point Judith. Cables to transmit power to the grid would make landfall in North Kingstown, and the project is expected to be online by 2025. The Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the project was published last fall.

Among the experts looking at the question of known and unknown impacts of an offshore wind facility on the OCS are marine biologists intimately familiar with the seafloor where the turbines would be. Sending cameras and other sophisticated monitoring machines 80 to 160 feet below the surface, these scientists examine the vast sand flats, some covered with sand dollars and northern star coral; the complex regions of cobbles and boulders; the lives of tiny, burrowing invertebrates; and the spawning habits of important commercial species such as cod and long-finned squid. They puzzle over the effects a wind project would have on the migration patterns of whales and other marine mammals.

Read the full article at ecoRI News

An unusually high number of whales are washing up on U.S. beaches

February 6, 2023 — Researchers are trying to figure out a mystery: Why are so many humpback whales, right whales, and other large mammals dying along the U.S. East Coast? One possible explanation is a shift in food habits. And while theories are circulating that blame the growing offshore wind industry, scientists say there’s no proof to support that idea.

Since Dec. 1, at least 18 reports have come in about large whales being washed ashore along the Atlantic Coast, according to the Marine Mammal Stranding Network. The losses are hitting populations that were already under watch, due to ongoing rises in unexpected deaths.

“Unfortunately, it’s been a period of several years where we have had elevated strandings of large whales, but we are still concerned about this pulse” in deaths that’s now been going on for weeks, as Sarah Wilkin, the coordinator for the Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program, said on a recent call with journalists.

Read the full article NPR

Offshore wind energy plans in the Gulf take a back seat to oil drilling under new law

February 6, 2023 — President Joe Biden’s administration is tapping the brakes on offshore wind energy development in the Gulf of Mexico to make way for a new fast-tracked effort to open more federal waters to oil and gas drilling.

The move, which runs counter to Biden’s ambitious goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and speeding the growth of renewable energy, will delay the first-ever auction of wind energy lease areas in the Gulf by at least six months.

Wind energy companies had been lining up to bid on a 174,000-acre area south of Lake Charles and a 508,000-acre area near Galveston, Texas in late December. The two lease areas have the potential to generate enough power for almost 3 million homes, according to the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. But Biden’s signing of the Inflation Reduction Act put those plans on hold, likely until sometime this summer, federal regulators confirmed this week.

Read the full article at nola.com

The Shift to Renewable Energy Is Speeding Up. Here’s How.

February 1, 2023 — Wars have unintended consequences.

Russia’s war in Ukraine seems to have sped up the global energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables.

This is a big deal. Most of us take for granted that we will enter a dark room and flick on the lights, that our homes will be warm in winter, that we will look out the window of a car and watch the world go by.

But what powers our lives is undergoing a huge change.

Consider three recent developments.

First, according to the International Energy Agency, an estimated $1.4 trillion poured into “clean energy” projects in 2022, a category that includes solar farms, batteries and electric vehicle charging stations. That’s more than ever before, and more than the money that poured into new oil and gas projects. Fatih Birol, the head of the agency, described the energy crisis spurred by the Russian invasion as “an accelerator for clean energy transitions.”

Second, BloombergNEF, a research firm, described this direction of change in a report published last week. Investments in low-carbon energy “reached parity” with capital aimed at expanding fossil fuels, it said.

Read the full article at The New York Times