Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Nantucket Demands Accountability from Vineyard Wind After “Broken Promises” and Safety Failures

July 30, 2025 — Nantucket delivered a blistering rebuke to Vineyard Wind on Tuesday, accusing the offshore wind developer of a pattern of deception, negligence, and disregard for the island community it promised to protect.

At a press conference, town officials outlined 15 sweeping accountability demands after what they called Vineyard Wind’s “empty pledges and unfulfilled commitments.” Officials said the company has failed on every major front — from basic safety measures to transparent communication — leaving the island vulnerable and eroding public trust.

“Vineyard Wind has left Nantucket, its residents, and its visitors with empty pledges and unfulfilled commitments. We are done waiting for them to do the right thing,” said Select Board member and former chair Brooke Mohr. “We call on Vineyard Wind’s owners, investors, federal regulators, and our elected leaders to stand with us in holding the company to its word.”

The scathing list of failures includes the company’s refusal to communicate critical safety information, its inability to activate light pollution controls in a timely manner, and its failure to create any meaningful emergency response plans despite last year’s high-profile turbine blade failure

Read the full article at The Newport Buzz

NEW YORK: NYS withdraws plan for offshore wind transmission line

July 30, 2025 — New York State’s Public Service Commission is withdrawing plans for a transmission line supporting offshore wind.

The line would have connected New York City with numerous offshore wind farms. But states are now facing federal pushback on developing wind power.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration attempted to stop development of New York’s Empire Wind Farm. Christopher Casey, New York utility regulatory director with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the federal roadblocks make it harder to bolster this industry.

“There are permits and regulatory decisions that need to be made at both the state and the federal level,” said Casey. “If the federal government is putting up roadblocks wherever it can, then it is very difficult to move these projects – and ultimately, nothing can go forward.”

Read the full article at FingerLakes1.com

Trump, Congress further chill offshore wind industry

July 22, 2025 — The budget law Congress passed this month — termed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” — took another swipe at the offshore wind industry, limiting substantial Biden-era tax credits that would allow wind developers to save or recoup hundreds of millions of dollars to build their projects.

Days after its passage, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aiming to further restrict access to these tax credits for renewable energy projects. And last week, the Interior Department issued a memo adding cumbersome review procedures for wind and solar.

Trump’s order directs the Treasury Department to issue guidance and take action next month. Experts are not sure what that will look like, but these recent Congressional and executive actions could imperil two Massachusetts offshore wind projects: New England Wind and SouthCoast Wind.

Much like Trump’s day-one memorandum freezing offshore wind permitting, experts say, the impacts will depend on what stage a project is at relative to construction. For pending projects, they could be enormous.

“The abrupt termination of credits and the additional tangle of rules imposed on these credits could be quite devastating,” said Seth Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Tax Law Center at NYU Law.

Here’s what a rewriting of tax credits means for wind projects

President Joe Biden’s historic 2022 climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, spurred investment and buildout in the offshore wind industry and the wider clean energy sector.

It earmarked more than $360 billion for credits, loans and grants. The Oceantic Network, an industry organization, said the IRA was the “single most important piece of legislation yet passed to accelerate the adoption of offshore wind energy in the U.S.”

The credits were scheduled to phase out in 2032. But the new Trump budget law not only phases the subsidies out completely in 2030, it gives projects a new deadline to begin construction if they want the subsidies: July 4, 2026. If they start later, they face an even tighter deadline to finish: they must be operational by the end of 2027 to get the subsidies.

“Everything was going along swimmingly until this new legislation, which really accelerates the process by which projects have to start construction,” said John C. Crossley, a renewable energy attorney at K&L Gates.

It gets more complicated: the IRS defines the “beginning of construction” in two ways. First, a project can be considered “started” if the developer spends at least 5% of the project’s total cost. The second option is for the developer to undertake physical work of a “significant nature.” That can look like the construction of turbine foundations.

Under the longstanding IRS language, either one counts as starting construction.

But it’s these longtime definitions — these options for developers — that Trump is targeting through his recent executive order seeking to bring “an end to years of subsidies.” He has directed the Treasury Department to revise existing guidelines to “ensure that policies concerning the ‘beginning of construction’ are not circumvented.”

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

MARYLAND: Maryland fires back against EPA claims about its offshore wind permit

July 22, 2025 — The Maryland Department of the Environment is defending the permit it issued to a wind farm proposed off the coast of Ocean City, after a challenge from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Thursday letter from Maryland Secretary of the Environment Serena McIlwain also said the state would not be reissuing the permit, as the EPA requested, because the state had not made a mistake that needed correcting.

The EPA had contended that when Maryland issued the permit to Baltimore-based company US Wind, it identified the wrong process for citizens to file appeals.

Amy Van Blarcom-Lackey, EPA administrator for Region 3, which includes Maryland and other mid-Atlantic states, contended in a July 7 letter that any appeals challenging the air pollution permit issued to US Wind should be filed to the clerk of the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board.

But Maryland argues that its permit would need to be appealed through the state courts, which would involve filing a challenge at the appropriate circuit court — in this case in Worcester County.

Notably, the due date for a state court challenge has already passed. It was set for July 14 — about a month after MDE issued the permit, according to MDE’s website.

Read the full article at WTOP

Trump adds new level of scrutiny to wind and solar projects

July 18, 2025 — The Interior Department said Thursday that it would add additional layers of review for wind and solar energy projects, following President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at ending any “preferential treatment” for renewable energy.

The new requirement threatens to trip up the approval process as wind and solar projects race to begin construction by a deadline next July to qualify for tax credits, which have been gutted by Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill that Congress approved this month. The department’s policies apply to projects on federal lands and waters, but generally not to those on private property.

Also on Thursday, Trump issued a proclamation exempting several coal plants in Ohio, Colorado and Illinois from stricter Biden-era rules limiting mercury and other toxic emissions through 2029.

“The Federal Government plays a pivotal role in ensuring that the Nation’s power supply remains secure and reliable,” the proclamation said. “Forcing energy producers to comply with unattainable emissions controls jeopardizes this mission.”

Separate proclamations gave exemptions from toxic emissions rules to 25 chemical manufacturers including Shell Chemical and to certain iron ore processing facilities, including two operated by the U.S. Steel Corporation.

Read the full article at The Washington Post

Fulton Fish Market Cooperative rallies to urge Trump to halt Empire Wind project

July 18, 2025 — Bronx, New York City, USA-based Fulton Fish Market Cooperative held an emergency rally on 16 July to urge U.S. President Donald Trump to halt the Empire Wind offshore wind project that seafood industry stakeholders claim will put their livelihoods at risk.

Seafood industry stakeholders gathered at the event – many of whom were unionized employees of the market – said the project threatens their livelihoods and those in New York’s seafood industry. Fulton Fish Market Cooperative CEO Nicole Ackerina said the project will heavily damage the industry and push it out of the region.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

EPA Seeks to Assert Authority Over Maryland’s Offshore Wind Project Appeals

July 17, 2025 — The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) attempted to assert its authority “at the eleventh hour” over the final approvals for Maryland’s first offshore wind project. The deadline was on July 14 for appeals on the final approval for the project, and according to media reports, the EPA sent a letter last week asserting the appeal was under its jurisdiction and not the state’s authority.

In a letter from the region EPA administrator to Maryland’s Department of the Environment posted online by Maryland Matters, the EPA asserts that it has “identified an error” in the state’s final permit decision, which it asserts could “result in invalidation of the permit on appeal and confusion among relevant stakeholders.” The letter contends that the authority to issue to permit was under federal authority delegated to the state, and as such, the appeal is under the EPA’s oversight.

The EPA was calling for Maryland to reissue the final permit decision for US Wind. Maryland, however, on its website for the process added a footnote saying “A previous version of this webpage also described a separate permit appeals process through the U.S. EPA. The appeals process for this permit is through the State of Maryland only, and the language describing the U.S. EPA appeals process has been removed.” It also reissued the public notice in early June, a month before the EPA’s letter.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

MASSACHUSETTS: One Year Later, Vineyard Wind Blade Failure Still Unfolding

July 16, 2025 — One year ago today, Nantucket residents awoke to reports that green debris was littering the south shore beaches from Madaket out to Tom Nevers. It quickly became clear that the thousands of pieces of fiberglass and foam had floated to the island from the Vineyard Wind farm 15 miles to the southwest following a blade failure.

After failing to notify the town about the incident for 48 hours, Vineyard Wind finally acknowledged the situation following the initial reports of debris washing up and dispatched a team to the island to begin the assessment and cleanup. But in those first few hours, it was the island’s lifeguards – some of them just teenagers – who collected the largest and most dangerous pieces of debris from the surf. Despite warnings not to, residents took it upon themselves to gather and dispose of the blade pieces.

The incident rapidly became a regional and then national news story as the town announced that all of Nantucket’s south shore beaches were closed to swimmers “due to large floating debris and sharp fiberglass shards.”

Within hours, the federal government agency responsible for monitoring the Vineyard Wind project – the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) – shut down the multi-billion-dollar project. The story of Vineyard Wind’s blade failure and the revelations that followed – including manufacturing deviations and allegations of a safety data falsification scheme at a wind turbine blade plant in Canada – would become the biggest news story of the past year.

Twelve months later, while some parts of the story have concluded, others are still unfolding and remain unresolved.

Read the full article at the Nantucket Current

Seafood workers, supporters rally at Fulton market against Empire Wind

July 16, 2025 — The Fulton Fish Market Cooperative hosted a July 15 rally at its Hunts Point facility in the Bronx to protest the Empire Wind energy project, now under construction around traditional fishing grounds off New York.

“Offshore wind is not a supplement to our industry, it is a direct replacement,” Nicole Ackerina, CEO of the Fulton cooperative, said in a joint statement after the rally with union workers, commercial fishermen from New York and New Jersey, and coastal advocates.

“These projects will eliminate access to vital fishing grounds, destabilize our seafood infrastructure, and trade American jobs for short-term foreign-backed construction contracts.”

Fulton employs 1,200 full-time workers, including 500 Bronx residents, most of them union members, said Ackerina.

“Our industry feeds America. NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) reported that in 2022, New York’s seafood industry supported nearly 70,000 jobs and over $9.2 billion in sales. New Jersey supported more than 72,000 jobs and $12.9 billion in sales. This is not expendable.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

NEW YORK: NYC fishermen beg Trump to rethink offshore windfarm that could devastate marine life

July 16, 2025 — Commercial fishing workers pleaded with President Trump to again maroon a wind project off the Long Island shore – arguing Tuesday the green energy initiative could throw the industry into disarray.

Business and environmental organizations gathered at the Fulton Fish Market Cooperative in the Bronx early Tuesday to emphasize the devastating effects the Empire Wind One project could have on fishermen’s jobs and marine life.

The Trump administration temporarily paused the project in April while it was already under construction, launching a review of the permits issued during former President Joe Biden’s administration. The stop was lifted a month later.

Read the full article at The New York Post