Offshore wind Archives - Page 129 of 239

California unveils largest U.S. offshore wind target

May 11, 2022 — California energy officials have released a draft of the West Coast’s first road map for offshore wind, calling for more gigawatts of electricity from the resource than any other U.S. state to date.

In a report made public Friday, the California Energy Commission staff recommended building 3 GW of offshore wind by 2030, followed by a larger wave of development in subsequent years. By 2045, staff found, the state should produce anywhere from 10 GW to 15 GW from turbines located off its coast, enough to power roughly 10 million to 15 million homes.

Implementing the state goals also would mean tangling with other ocean users ranging from fishermen and shipping interests to the Department of Defense and marine conservation authorities, acknowledged CEC staff in the report.

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), which represents fishermen, recently sued Interior for approving what would be the first utility-scale offshore wind in the country, off the coast of Massachusetts.

One RODA affiliate in California, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA), said yesterday that the national process for siting offshore projects has been “a failure” and does not bode well for fair treatment of the fishing industry.

Mike Conroy, executive director of the PCFFA, said in an email that he believed California’s explicit goals for offshore wind production, if finalized, “essentially forces Agencies to approve a certain number of projects regardless of their impacts on fisheries, marine ecosystems, the environment, coastal communities, disadvantaged communities, and ratepayers.”

“As a result, there is a huge importance, from a process standpoint, of setting these goals since they dictate the downstream review process,” Conroy wrote.

Read the full story at E&E News

New York: Wind Farm Study Moorings Anger Fishermen

May 6, 2022 — Fishermen on the South Fork are angered by the placement in August of several dozen 500-pound concrete blocks on the ocean floor off Wainscott, moorings for the telemetry devices in use for the South Fork Wind Fisheries Study Work Plan that was a condition for the East Hampton Town Trustees’ lease agreement allowing the South Fork Wind farm’s transmission cable to make landfall on a beach under their jurisdiction.

Researchers with Stony Brook University who are conducting the five-year study required of the wind farm’s developers are at present on a regular visit to the sensor array to collect data, replace batteries, and deploy new, smaller, and retrievable moorings alongside the existing 500-pound blocks. A spokeswoman for the developers, Orsted U.S. Offshore Wind and Eversource Energy, said on Tuesday that the original moorings will be removed.

Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, criticized the deployment of the concrete blocks on the sea floor where dozens of boats fish. She described the area as “a really busy squid, fluke, all-of-it area,” she said on Monday. “Why would academia treat fishermen so poorly when they’ve got a body of knowledge academics can’t begin to?” For trawl fishermen, the concrete blocks are a hazard, Ms. Brady said.

Read the full story at the East Hampton Star

2 areas off Oregon Coast targeted for offshore wind development

April 29, 2022 — The U.S. Department of the Interior announced Wednesday that it’s considering two areas off the Oregon Coast for offshore wind energy production.

The agency has identified locations about 12 nautical miles offshore at Coos Bay and Brookings that could potentially host wind farms. The two areas comprise about 1.1 million acres in total.

The Biden administration is hoping to create 30 gigawatts of electricity-generating capacity through offshore wind by 2030. It’s already approved large projects off the coasts of Massachusetts and New York.

Read the full story at OPB

Orsted will use NJ Wind Port to build offshore wind farm

April 28, 2022 — Orsted, the Danish wind power developer, signed an agreement Thursday with New Jersey officials to use a state-financed manufacturing port to build the components of the state’s first offshore wind farm.

Gov. Phil Murphy announced the agreement during an international wind energy conference in Atlantic City, from whose coast the project’s turbines should be visible on the distant horizon.

Orsted, which is partnering with Newark-based PSEG to build the project, will lease the New Jersey Wind Port in Salem County for two years starting in April 2024. Murphy did not reveal how much the developers will pay for the lease. The parties signed the letter of intent Thursday, but binding agreements are to be submitted to the New Jersey Economic Development Authority by June.

The pact marks the first return on the state’s investment of up to $500 million in the wind port, designed to help the state attract companies interested in building wind power projects here as it seeks to become the East Coast hub of the offshore wind industry.

Read the full story at AP News

Survey conflicts test relations between wind, fishing industries

April 27, 2022 — The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and offshore wind energy developers are pledging to do better by commercial fishermen – with fisheries studies, scout boats to head off survey conflicts with fishing gear, and bringing on highly experienced and respected fishermen as industry liaisons.

Incidents of survey boats towing through fixed gear in Mid-Atlantic waters are putting those processes to the test. Conch and black sea bass trap fishermen who have had gear damaged off the Delmarva coast and New Jersey brought their complaints to the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council.

At an April 5 briefing Amanda Lefton, director of the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and wind developers Ørsted and Atlantic Shores updated the regional fishery management council on plans for two adjacent turbine projects off Atlantic City and Long Beach Island, N.J. – and BOEM’s recent $4.37 billion sale of New York Bight wind leases that could become even bigger arrays farther out on the continental shelf.

Then they heard from fishermen who have seen their conch and black sea bass gear dragged and damaged by survey vessels working on wind leases off New Jersey and the Delmarva peninsula.

New Jersey captain Joe Wagner Jr. told the council how he lost 157 bass traps in 2021 during a survey around the Ørsted Ocean Wind project area.

“The only reason I got somewhat of a payment (compensation) is because I caught their vessel at 3 o’clock in the morning pulling three of my high flyers behind their boat,” said Wagner.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Right whale defenders question energy industry donations

April 27, 2022 — A group opposing wind projects off the coast of Massachusetts released a report Tuesday that documents contributions from wind energy developers to environmental groups in the state, donations that the authors of the report say cast questions on the ability of groups to analyze the impacts that wind projects have on the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale.

The report, released by the Save Right Whales Coalition, catalogs $4.2 million between wind developers like Vineyard Wind, Bay State Wind, and Orsted to environmental groups in Massachusetts such as the Environmental League of Massachusetts, New England Aquarium, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

The flow of money, coalition member Lisa Linowes said, raised a “red flag” for potential conflicts of interest when it comes to investigating the environmental impacts of offshore wind development in places where the North Atlantic Right Whale resides. The whale is one of the most endangered large whale species in the world, according to NOAA Fisheries.

“The public has come to trust the word of these organizations, that when they say wind turbines can be safely sited within and near the waters where the right whale lives, breeds, feeds, that they will be safe,” Linowes said. “Based on their public statements and based on the donations … we should question the priorities of these organizations.”

These whales are on the brink. Now comes climate change — and wind power.

April 22, 2022 — About 17 nautical miles south of Nantucket, a half-dozen New England Aquarium researchers scrambled across this vessel’s icy deck. Clutching binoculars, clipboards and cameras, they strained to catch a glimpse and scribble notes about a pair of creatures they fear are disappearing from this world.

After nine hours on the water, Amy Warren’s team had found two animals it knew by name. As the pair arched their heads above the water, the research scientist urged her colleagues with cameras to capture them.

“Get it, get it, get it, get it!”

With only about 300 left, the North Atlantic right whale ranks as one of the world’s most endangered marine mammals. Nearly annihilated centuries ago by whalers, the slow-swimming species is said to have earned its name because it was the “right” whale to hunt.

Old-fashioned harpoons have yielded to other threats. Humans are still killing right whales at startlingly high numbers — but by accident. Waters free from whalers now brim with ships that strike them, and ropes that entangle them.

The latest challenges come in a changing climate. Rising temperatures are driving them to new seas. And soon, dozens of offshore wind turbines — part of President Biden’s clean energy agenda — will encroach their habitat as the administration tries to balance tackling global warming with protecting wildlife.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Do Offshore Wind Turbines Impact Fishing?

April 20, 2022 — Offshore wind seems poised to set sail on U.S. coasts. According to the Department of Energy, the burgeoning electricity source has the potential to generate more than 2,000 gigawatts (GW) of capacity per year—nearly double the nation’s current electricity use. Last fall, the Interior Department announced the commencement of construction on the nation’s first commercial scale wind farm, 15 miles off Martha’s Vineyard, and approved a deal for the second off Rhode Island. The Biden administration aspires to launch 16 such sites by 2025 and generate 30 GW of energy by 2030. But what impact will all the construction have on wildlife and fishing? A 10-year, $11 million U.S. Wind and University of Maryland study aims to find out.

Wind is the fastest growing energy source in the U.S., providing 42 percent of the country’s new energy in 2020. So far, most of that has come from land-based wind turbines. But, faster and steadier offshore wind speeds offer more potential. And as the cost of efficiently harnessing offshore wind has plummeted, that potential has soared.

But not everyone is pleased. A lone standoff last fall between a fishing boat and one of U.S. Winds’ giant research vessels symbolized the grievances of a key constituency: the ocean fishing community. Fishermen expressed concerns about damage to their equipment, disruption of the fishing grounds, and even the loss of their way of life. Annie Hawkins, the executive director of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a trade association representing commercial fishermen, told the Guardian, “The fishing industry feels very strongly that they still do not have a meaningful voice in the process nor an authentic seat at the table.”

Read the full story at Field & Stream

NEW JERSEY: Fishermen say Ørsted boats destroying traps

April 11, 2022 — Several commercial fishermen claim survey boats hired by wind turbine developer Ørsted inadvertently cut their lines causing their lobster and conch traps to be lost in the ocean. At issue: being reimbursed from Ørsted for the lost gear and income

Lobster fisherman Joe Wagner, a second-generation fisherman of lobster, sea bass and conch, said last year he lost 157 lobster traps to Ørsted, which is partnering with PSEG on the Ocean Wind 1 project that aims to bring up to 99 massive wind turbines to an area 15 miles off the coast of Cape May and Atlantic counties.

“They only paid me for a handful of them because they say it wasn’t their boats,” he said.

Wagner said Ørsted made that claim based on tracking data of the survey boats. He said he caught the survey boats frequently turning off their tracking devices.

Last year his father lost 100 lobster pots to Ørsted survey boats, Wagner asserted, again with Ørsted claiming their boats were not to blame. The cost of lobster pots is $180 to $220 each with a possible two-year delay to receive all the replacements due to supply chain issues, he said.

He said Ørsted sends a weekly email to fishermen with a photo of their leased areas stating “our vessels might be in your area” but doesn’t give exact coordinates.

Read the full story at Ocean City Sentinel

BOEM issues first California offshore wind impact statement

April 8, 2022 — The first draft environmental assessment for a California offshore wind energy area is out from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, starting a 30-day public review and comment period on the 178-page document.

The 276-square mile Morro Bay Wind Energy Area about 20 miles off the state’s central coast could be developed to a potential 3 gigawatt generation potential, roughly enough to power 1 million homes, according to BOEM.

It lies close to busy sea lanes between California ports, fishing and recreational industries and migration routes for protected marine mammals and other wildlife. The draft assessment includes all those issues and BOEM’s present thinking on how they can be addressed.

“The WEA was designated after extensive collaboration with other Federal agencies and the State of California, as well as engagement with ocean users, Tribes, local communities and the public,” according to BOEM’s announcement of the document. “Designation of the Morro Bay WEA underscores BOEM’s commitment to an all-of-government approach to achieve the (Biden) Administration’s ambitious offshore wind energy goals while conserving and restoring ocean and coastal habitats.”

The draft assessment analyzes potential impacts from future commercial leasing by wind energy developers and related site characterization and assessment activities.

Read the full story at National Fisherman