Saving Seafood

OREGON: Coastal Leaders Push Back Against Location of Wind Energy Plants

May 24, 2022 — There is little doubt that floating offshore wind farms are coming to the southern Oregon coast. The region’s small, ocean-reliant communities are worried about potential damage to sea habitat and the loss of fishing grounds.

In February, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) designated 2,100 square miles of federal water for potential development of floating offshore wind as part of the Biden administration’s goal to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030. On the day of the announcements regional stakeholders started pushing back, asking why BOEM would consider placing hundreds of 980-foot-high wind turbines in a globally productive ecosystem.

On April 7, in a rare display of unity, 27 conservation groups and fishing organizations wrote  BOEM asserting, “Siting of wind energy facilities is the single most important decision that will be made for wind development off Oregon’s Coast.”

The following week, Nick Edwards, a southern Oregon fisherman, addressed Oregon’s U.S. Senator Ron Wyden on behalf of Oregon’s seafood industry during a virtual Town Hall meeting.

“Senator, I’ve been a commercial fisherman for 43 years and a board member of the Oregon Wave Energy Trust in Portland for seven. If there ever was a fisherman involved with ocean renewable energy, I would be that person.

I’m here to tell you the current BOEM (Bureau of Ocean Management) process for siting offshore wind in Oregon waters is extremely flawed. [In January] Governor [Kate] Brown sent a letter to BOEM providing a list of parameters to develop offshore wind in Oregon. She stated, ‘This is an opportune time to move these Wind Energy Areas offshore to 1300 meters (4265 feet) in depth and beyond. This would essentially protect the NW upwellings providing one of the most sustainable ecosystems in the world.’ Instead, BOEM is doing the opposite.

Senator Wyden, for the sake of our ocean resources, are you willing to sit down with a small advisory group to discuss these important issues with sighting OSW (offshore wind) in Oregon waters?”

Representatives of the fishing industry, environmental groups, and civic organizations have stated that offshore wind-energy production should be sited in waters deeper than 1,300 meters to protect the region’s coastal upwelling, which is vital to southern Oregon’s sea habitat.

Susan Chambers, deputy director of West Coast Seafood Processors Association, stated in an interview with me:

“It’s infuriating. Yes, we need to transfer away from fossil fuels to clean energy, but I’m not sure if anyone has thought through the damages this technology could do to our oceans. Everyone has been full steam ahead. Until now. We have no bargaining power except to keep pushing in the media, pushing to our congressmen, to our local legislators, to our governor. We just keep pushing.”

Read the full story at the Daily Yonder

Plans for Delaware, Maryland offshore wind projects questioned at forum

May 23, 2022 — Signs of support for offshore wind power abounded outside of Indian River High School Friday.

Inside, it was just the opposite.

Waves of skepticism and opposition followed presentations by representatives of US Wind and Ørsted, two companies that have obtained leases for proposed offshore wind projects in federal waters off the Delaware/Maryland coast.

Topics of concerns included detrimental impact on marine and migratory bird life, the local fishing industry and numerous natural resources, as well as marine safety and unobstructed viewshed.

The fishing industry – recreational and commercial – would take a huge hit, says Meghan Lapp, a fisheries liaison for Seafreeze Ltd. in Rhode Island. She addressed the panel and audience by Zoom.

“What you are looking for in wind farms from a commercial fishing perspective is essentially a complete loss of fishable areas for the next 30 years, which is going to be the career and the lifetime of the fishermen that are out there right now,” Ms. Lapp said.

Bonnie Brady, executive director of Long Island Commercial Fishing Association in Montauk, New York, said sonar from site surveying and electromagnetic frequency through cables will result in long-term migratory changes that will have a detrimental impact on marine life, including several endangered species of whales.

“It will change the ecosystem of the area,” Ms. Brady said.

Read the full story at Delaware State News

For Offshore Wind, The Magic Numbers Are 30, 30, & 3

May 16, 2022 — Numerologists, sharpen your pencils. Last year President Joe Biden pitched an offshore wind goal of 30 gigawatts by 2030 for the US. Now California has just chimed in with a 3-gigawatt goal of its own. In the meantime, the relatively small nation of Norway has just let slip word of a 30-gigawatt goal, too. Norway might be the most interesting case among the three, considering that it already has 34 gigawatts in hydropower under its belt. So, what gives?

US Goes From (Practically) Zero To Thirty

The Atlantic coast alone has a 22-gigawatt potential, but so far just a few turbines are currently operating off the coast of only two Atlantic states, Rhode Island and Virginia. All together they add up to a handful of megawatts, while other nations are piling on the gigawatts.

The Obama administration did try to coordinate offshore wind development along the Atlantic coast, only to be stymied by coastal state governors, among other objectors. Then, the Trump administration dug in its heels against the US offshore wind industry, which is no surprise considering the former President’s notorious distaste for wind turbines, especially those located out at sea.

Actually, there was a surprise. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which is a branch of the US Department of the Interior, apparently did not get the Trump administration’s offshore wind memo. BOEM continued to work on offshore lease auctions throughout the Trump administration. BOEM also put the finishing touches on a first-of-its-kind process aimed at speeding up the offshore permitting process.

Read the full story at CleanTechnica

N.J. offshore wind developer faces fishing industry opposition

May 16, 2022 — New Jersey offshore wind developer Orsted recently inked a deal to use all union labor for its projects along the East Coast.

Biden Administration officials helped broker the agreement between Orsted and North America’s Building Trades Unions, as part of its goal to generate 30 gigawatts of wind energy by 2030, while simultaneously developing green energy jobs.

Opposition by fishing industry

The group Ocean City Flooding opposes Orsted’s project off the coast of South Jersey and says the labor deal doesn’t take into account potential job losses in the fisheries industry.

“We support jobs for Americans, however, it should be noted that here in Cape May County Orsted has not committed to one job and in fact there will be a loss of jobs in the commercial fishing industry at the Cape May/Wildwood port,” said Suzanne Hornick, one of the group’s founders.

She says while the deal focuses on labor, other issues remain such as threats to marine life, migrating birds, the endangered Atlantic right whale, along with potential rate hikes and declining property values.

Read the full story at the Allegheny Front

2nd Interior lease sale boosts N.C. offshore wind

May 13, 2022 — Developers bet big on the prospect of offshore wind in North Carolina yesterday in an auction that accelerates the momentum of the Biden administration’s offshore wind thrust — and proves the industry aims to grow its footprint in the southern Atlantic.

After an all-day bidding war, French oil giant TotalEnergies SE and southern utility Duke Energy Corp. pledged a combined $315 million for the right to raise turbines in the sea off the state’s coast.

The two lease areas sold yesterday by the Interior Department could support an estimated 1.3 gigawatts of wind power between them and total 110,000 acres in federal waters roughly 20 miles south of North Carolina’s Bald Head Island. That’s enough to potentially power a half-million homes (Energywire, March 25).

The sale is part of the Biden administration’s push to raise hundreds of offshore wind turbines — 30 gigawatts of clean energy — on the outer continental shelf by 2030. Offshore wind is a critical lever in the White House’s larger climate ambitions, to decarbonize the nation’s grid by 2035 and zero out emissions economywide by midcentury.

But the robust sale that closed after 17 rounds of bidding was widely seen also as a success for the industry’s regional prospects and the sector’s growing potential footprint in the U.S. energy mix.

Read the full story at E&E News

Commercial fish and seafood workers rally against wind farms on the Oregon coast

May 12, 2022 — Commercial fish and seafood workers rallied along the Coos Bay boardwalk on Tuesday taking a stand against proposed wind farms that are slated for the Southern Oregon coast.

The rally was hosted on the second day of an “Offshore Wind Industry Fly-In” held just down the street at the Mill Casino. The industry conference, hosted by three non-profits with missions dedicated to developing energy along the pacific and Oregon coast, is described as an event that “will bring leadership from the floating offshore wind industry to the coast of Oregon for direct engagement with state and local leadership,” with the goal of “charting the course for Oregon’s first 3 gigawatts of offshore energy.”

This comes less than two weeks after the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced its call areas in Brookings and Coos Bay for offshore energy projects it has been in talks with Oregon about. Tickets for the five-day fly-in event were sold for between $1000 and $1500.

One of the rally’s organizers, Lori Steele, executive director of the West Coast Seafood Processors Association said the event was, at least in part, held as a way to show energy companies and leaders at the conference that “there’s already a very, very big industry here for seafood and fishing,” and that “we are here to stay.”

Read the full story at KMTR

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