February 9, 2023 — FOX Business’ Madison Alworth reports from Islip, New York, where fishermen are worried rising fuel prices and wind turbine farm plans put jobs and profits at risk.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
NEW JERSEY: 12 Jersey Shore mayors call for moratorium on offshore wind following whale deaths
January 31, 2023 — A group of Jersey Shore mayors are calling for an “immediate moratorium” on offshore wind energy development until federal and state scientists can assure the public that ocean noise related to underwater seabed mapping, soil borings and other turbine construction activities poses no threat to whales.
The announcement followed news that another humpback whale had died off of the coasts of New Jersey and New York and washed ashore in Lido Beach, Nassau County, New York, according to numerous reports.
“While we are not opposed to clean energy, we are concerned about the impacts these (offshore wind) projects may already be having on our environment,” the 12 New Jersey mayors wrote in a joint letter to Washington officials.
The mayors include six from Ocean and Monmouth counties: Joseph Mancini of Long Beach Township, Samuel Cohen of Deal, Paul M. Kanitra of Point Pleasant Beach, William W. Curtis of Bay Head, Lance White of Mantoloking, and Jennifer Naughton of Spring Lake.
Whale deaths no match for pursuit of East Coast offshore wind farms
January 30, 2023 — A spate of whales washing up along East Coast beaches has exposed a deep rift in the environmental movement between conservationists seeking to stop the construction of massive offshore wind farms and advocates who say renewable energy projects will save the planet from climate change.
A group of environmentalists is calling on New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy to halt work on ocean wind projects after a sudden increase in whale strandings on the region’s seashores.
In a little more than a month, seven dead whales, most of them humpbacks, have washed up on New Jersey and New York beaches. That is a record in a region that typically has a similar number of beached whales in an entire year.
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