Saving Seafood

Biden pushes for Gulf of Mexico wind power

July 25, 2022 — Nearly 1,150 square miles in the western Gulf of Mexico are proposed for offshore wind energy areas, as President Biden said he would do everything within his executive powers to act on climate issues and developing cleaner energy.

The cumulative effect of climate change “is definitely a clear and present danger,” Biden said at Brayton Point in Somerset, Mass., where the old generating site is being redeveloped to manufacture power cables for wind projects off southern New England.

“We see it in America, in red states and blue states,” said Biden, “seeing 100-year droughts happening every few years” and massive damage from hurricanes. “This is an emergency and I’ll look at it that way.”

“Today Brayton Point is on the frontier of clean energy,” he said. In a speech peppered with references to construction jobs, shipbuilding and new manufacturing, he called the site on example of future economic opportunity.

“When I think clean energy, I think jobs,” said Biden.

Timed with Biden’s address, yesterday the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced it was seeking public input on the identification of two potential WEAs in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM).

Read the full article at National Fisherman

Meet the officials shaping Biden’s offshore energy strategy

July 14, 2022 — A climate activist, mineral economist and former Army Corps regional director are among the officials crafting President Joe Biden’s closely watched strategy for offshore energy, which could shape the direction of renewables and oil drilling for years.

Working in and around the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, they are helping steer the Biden administration’s approach to offshore oil and gas leasing and its ambitious plans to transition the nation’s oceans toward clean energy at a pivotal moment for both.

Previously focused on managing the oil industry’s access to federal stores of crude and natural gas off the nation’s coasts, BOEM is in the throes of an internal transition to meet this political moment. Its current crew of leaders reflects a unique period in the 11-year-old agency’s history and the varied nature of its growing responsibilities.

Interior and the bureau recently released a draft five-year oil program that could lead to 11 offshore oil auctions in the coming years, potentially jettisoning Biden’s lofty campaign promise to end new leasing. But the Biden administration’s proposal also suggested the possibility of going in a different direction, holding zero new lease sales between 2023 and 2028 in what would be an epic shift for the offshore oil sector.

The new bureau took over the leasing responsibility of offshore energy, while other agencies were crafted to handle the money coming from oil royalties and fees and the day-to-day safety and environmental oversight of offshore drilling.

Last month, BOEM announced that James Bennett, its long-standing chief of the office of renewable programs, has moved to a new, ambiguous role within the renewables arena at BOEM that has led to some speculation in the offshore wind industry that the Interior bureaucrat who built BOEM’s renewables approach may soon leave the agency.

Other relative newcomers to the bureau with critical roles include Marissa Knodel, an adviser in a political liaison position that’s long existed at BOEM and operates out of the public eye. She is one of the BOEM cohorts working directly with the White House to align bureau actions with Biden’s political realities.

Another less visible figure critical in BOEM’s direction is Tommy Beaudreau, the Interior deputy secretary who is second in command at the department under Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.

It was during Beaudreau’s tenure that BOEM first got serious about offshore wind and held its first offshore wind auctions in 2013. But it may be his oil and gas bona fides that matter most as the administration navigates its five-year offshore oil plan. He led BOEM in the years leading up to the last five-year plan and was involved in the consideration of shifting from regionwide oil and gas auctions in the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf-wide sales — a flip often associated with the Trump administration.

Read the full story at E&E News

Offshore wind farms could reduce Atlantic City’s surfclam fishery revenue up to 25%, Rutgers study suggests

July 1, 2022 — New research from Rutgers University shows Mid-Atlantic surfclam fisheries could see revenue losses from planned offshore wind farms, at least in the short- to medium-term after the development takes place.

The data is sure to fuel opposition from the fishing industry to the Biden administration’s rapid offshore wind development along the New York, New Jersey, and Delaware coasts. President Joe Biden has a goal of generating 30 gigawatts of wind energy by 2030 as part of his effort to tackle climate change.

Clammers and scallop fishermen fear a shrinking patch of fishable ocean will lead to the collapse of the industry.

Surfclam harvests stretching from Maine to Virginia generate about $30 million in annual revenue. The Rutgers study, “The Atlantic Surfclam Fishery and Offshore Wind Energy Development,” published in the ICES Journal of Marine Science, used a newly-developed model to determine average revenue reductions between 3 and 15% overall.

Read the full story at WHYY

Simulator Helps Researchers Envision Commercial Offshore Wind Farm In Maryland

June 29, 2022 — It won’t be long before offshore wind is powering homes in Maryland, but with so few examples of completed wind farms in the United States, it’s hard to fully imagine what a completed project will look like. 

That’s why Ørsted, a Danish power company, and the Maritime Institute of Technology and Graduate Studies in Linthicum Heights teamed up to create the Mid-Atlantic’s first offshore wind farm simulator, bringing these massive projects to life. 

“This is a brand-new industry here in the United States, said Brady Walker, Ørsted’s Head of Government Relations for Maryland and Delaware, “There is not a commercial-scale wind farm in operation here right now. “ 

That will soon change, as companies like Ørsted continue to develop projects in our own backyard. Skipjack Wind, off the coast of Delaware and Maryland, will generate enough clean renewable energy to power about 300,000 homes and businesses on the Delmarva peninsula. 

“For Maryland’s first offshore wind farm – a really impactful commercial utility-scale offshore wind farm,” Walker said.

Read the full story at CBS Baltimore

 

Study: Offshore wind development could reduce surf clam catch revenue by as much as 15%

June 28, 2022 — Offshore wind farms could reduce the catch of Atlantic surf clams in the mid-Atlantic, according to a new study from Rutgers University.

The research published last week was funded by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. Rutgers associate professor Daphne Munroe found that the leases for wind projects could reduce surf clam revenue by 3-15% in the area from Virginia to Massachusetts. The fishery is worth more than $30 million annually.

The study did not include Maine, but adds to a sparse but growing body of research about potential conflicts between offshore wind and fishing.

Read the full story at Maine Public

 

New York wind developers, environmental groups sign agreement on right whales

June 28, 2022 — Offshore wind developers Ørsted and Eversource say they have struck an agreement with environmental groups to improve protection of endangered north Atlantic right whales during construction and operation of the South Fork Wind project.

The companies say they will adopt monitoring measures to make sure right whales are not nearby during construction activity, and use mitigation steps to reduce underwater noise during pile driving.

They will also evaluate other new monitoring technologies, including thermal cameras, acoustic sensors, and data integration software. Developers say the findings from South Fork will be used in future projects.

A 10-knot vessel speed limit will be in place for all boats working on the project, “unless an effective adaptive speed management plan is in place,” according to the developers.

Such 10-knot limits are commonly sought by the National Marine Fisheries Service when its monitoring detects right whale movements off the East Coast, triggering announcements of special management areas to reduce the danger of ship strikes. Accidental encounters in the shipping lanes are a major cause of death for right whales, now estimated to number only around 340 animals.

NMFS whale monitoring has shown substantial overlap between right whale movements and offshore wind development areas off southern New England.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Fishing Industry Wants More Funding for U.S. Offshore Wind Studies

June 27, 2022 — The commercial fishing industry in the U.S. is calling for more federal funding for studies on the impact of offshore wind development on marine fisheries.

In an open letter, the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance and Seafood Harvesters of America contend that the $46 million that the administration is asking Congress to allocate in the 2023 financial year to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to conduct surveys and research activities related to offshore wind is too low, given the rapid pace of offshore wind energy leasing.

The letter, addressed to key House and Senate leaders, represents the interests of 75 fishing associations and businesses in the U.S commercial fishing industry. These groups are asking Congress to increase research funding to a total of $73.7 million, including $43.7 million allocated for scientific survey mitigation and $30 million for cooperative research projects that address the impacts of offshore wind.

Read the full story at The Maritime Executive

 

New England wind farm, environmentalists agree on ways to protect whales

June 27, 2022 — The developers of an offshore wind farm and three environmental organizations announced Monday that they have reached an agreement to further protect rare North Atlantic right whales during construction and operation of the energy-generating project.

The agreement involving Orsted and Eversource — developers of South Fork Wind off the coast of New England and New York — was signed by the National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Conservation Law Foundation, the groups said in a joint statement.

The agreement promotes the development of sustainable energy while protecting wildlife, said Alison Chase, a senior policy analyst at the NRDC.

“We don’t need to choose between clean energy development and wildlife protection, and this agreement shows how we can do both,” she said.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Surf clam fleet could take big hit from offshore wind

June 24, 2022 — Offshore wind projects off the East Coast could take up to a 15 percent bite out of the surf clam industry’s $30 million annual revenue, according to two new studies from Rutgers University researchers.

The biggest loss could be up to 25 percent for boats based in Atlantic City, N.J., a historic center for the fishery.

The paired studies, published in the ICES Journal of Marine Science, show how total fleet revenue may range from 3 percent to 15 percent, “depending on the scale of offshore wind development and response of the fishing fleet.”

The researchers developed a complex computer model to predict how the surf clam fishery may change in response to large-scale wind turbine arrays – such as the 1,100-megawatt Ocean Wind 1 project planned off Atlantic City.

“Understanding the impacts of fishery exclusion and fishing effort displacement from development of offshore wind energy is critical to the sustainability of the Atlantic surf clam fishing industry,” according to co-author Daphne Munroe, an associate professor in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences. Munroe and the research team worked closely with fishermen and the clam industry in developing the model.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

As feds eye more wind leases off Virginia, fishing industries fear losses

June 23, 2022 — Today, two wind turbines turn off Virginia’s coast. But by the middle of the next decade, hundreds more may have joined them.

With a major push underway by President Joe Biden’s administration to develop 30 gigawatts of offshore wind as a way to reduce U.S. reliance on fossil fuels, federal officials are looking to dramatically expand the areas where wind farms can be built in U.S. waters.

Virginia is an epicenter of interest: Of 4 million acres of ocean identified as potential wind energy areas in a new Central Atlantic call area, most lie off the Virginia coast.

For the commonwealth’s fishing industries, already wary of what their business will look like once Dominion Energy’s 176-turbine Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project is constructed, the prospect of a much more expansive buildout of wind power throughout the rich fishing grounds off Virginia is sparking fears that the new industry will drive out the old.

“We know that when these lease areas are built out, it is going to be displacing fishermen, who are then going to be working smaller and smaller areas with more and more boats, which is going to lead to localized depletion,” said Tom Dameron, government relations and fisheries science liaison for Surfside Foods, a New Jersey-based commercial clam fishing company that last year landed roughly 10 percent of the East Coast’s entire surf clam harvest in Cape Charles.

Read the full story at the Virginia Mercury