Saving Seafood

Floating Wind Farms are About to Transform the Oceans

November 5, 2021 — Alla Weinstein did not invent the floating wind turbine. This is something she wanted to make clear early in our Zoom call, as if she were worried I’d give her too much credit. “I don’t need to invent. There are plenty of inventions,” she said. “But a lot of inventions die on the grapevine if they aren’t carried through.” What Weinstein does is carry them through.

For that, she does want credit. When I asked if she’d put the idea of floating offshore wind generation in the minds of California’s energy commissioners, she bristled cheerfully. “I would put it more strongly than that,” she said, shaking her auburn curls. “I didn’t give anyone ideas. I basically told them, ‘This is what needs to be done.’” The state needed clean energy, she reasoned, and she knew a couple of inventors with the technology to produce it: a floating platform designed to support a wind turbine on the surface of just about any large water body in the world.

If you haven’t been following the tortured saga of offshore wind power—or even if you have—you may not recognize how completely floating offshore wind technology stands to alter the global energy landscape. Just 10 years ago, installing offshore wind in the Eastern Pacific Ocean was technologically impossible: Conventional wind turbines typically sit atop giant steel cylinders called “monopiles,” which have to be driven into the ocean floor and rarely sink deeper than 100 feet. Other structures, known as “four-legged jackets,” can go as deep as 200 feet. But the continental shelf off California breaks fast and steep, dropping to depths of more than 600 feet not far from shore. Floating platforms, meanwhile, can sit on the surface of oceans thousands of feet deep, and can be assembled onshore and towed to their various destinations—as far out as transmission cables buried in the seafloor can extend back to land.

Read the full story at The Atlantic

 

New guidelines for acoustic monitoring of sea life and wind energy projects

November 3, 2021 — Federal agencies that regulate offshore wind energy development issued a framework for designing and conducting acoustic monitoring of endangered whales and other sea life affected by building and operating wind turbine arrays.

“With a diverse suite of endangered large whale species and a multitude of other protected marine species frequenting these same waters, understanding the potential consequences of construction and operation activities is essential to advancing responsible offshore wind development,” states the paper published Oct. 27 in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, by a team led by experts with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and National Marine Fisheries Service.

Underwater microphones can now operate remotely, over long times and at distance, running non-stop to record and archive sounds of the ocean environment.

Advances in using autonomous unmanned vessels, such as submersible electric gliders and saildrones, mean researchers can set microphones on voyages across study areas, along with acoustic receivers deployed on buoys or anchored to the sea floor.

“Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) represents a newer technology that has become one of several methods of choice for monitoring trends in the presence of species, the soundscape, mitigating risk, and evaluating potential behavioral and distributional changes resulting from offshore wind activities,” the authors wrote.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

Interior takes major steps on offshore wind in Atlantic, Gulf

November 1, 2021 — The Biden administration is planning to extend the fledgling offshore wind sector’s footprint deeper into the southern Atlantic and into the Gulf of Mexico, Interior Department officials announced yesterday.

In addition to taking the first steps to offering lease sales off the coasts of North Carolina, Louisiana and Texas, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) will begin the environmental review of a Massachusetts offshore wind project, the 11th proposed wind array advanced by the administration this year.

“These milestones represent great potential for addressing climate change through a clean, reliable, domestic energy resource while providing good-paying jobs,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in a statement, adding a promise to “responsibly and sustainably” move on the administration’s offshore wind goals.

Read the full story at E&E News

Wind project beginning lengthy environmental review

October 29, 2021 — The federal environmental review process for Mayflower Wind will officially get underway next week, kicking off a two-year period in which regulators and others will scrutinize the plan for up to 147 turbines in a lease area capable of supporting multiple projects.

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said Thursday that it will publish a notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) in the Federal Register on Nov. 1, and will hold public comment meetings on Nov. 10, 15 and 18 to accept input on what BOEM should focus on when reviewing Mayflower’s construction and operations plan.

That comment period will end Dec. 1. Mayflower Wind, the Shell and Ocean Winds North America joint venture, was selected unanimously by Massachusetts utility executives in 2019 to build and operate an 804-megawatt wind farm about 20 nautical miles south of the western end of Nantucket.

Read the full story at WHDH 7 News Boston

 

Coalition intends to sue feds over offshore Massachusetts wind project

October 29, 2021 — Massachusetts fishermen worried for their livelihoods and the ocean’s ecology are suing the federal government over an offshore wind project called Vineyard Wind.

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), a coalition of fishing industry associations and fishing companies, recently filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the federal government, according to a news release. This follows a petition for review filed in the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals last month, which is pending.

The notice gives the government 60 days to address statutory and regulatory violations RODA asserts the wind project will cause, including violating the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act, the press release said.

RODA Executive Director Annie Hawkins said the government has not done enough investigation into the effects of offshore wind projects.

Read the full story at The Center Square

 

NC fishing industry takes wait-and-see approach on coastal wind projects

October 29, 2021 — There has been a lot of recent discussion on major wind-energy projects along the North Carolina coast, and the state’s fishing industry has been watching closely to see how any announcements may affect their fisheries.

This year has had a lot of big headlines about wind-power on the N.C. coast. On June 9, Gov. Roy Cooper signed an executive order saying that the state would strive for development of 2.8 gigawatts of offshore wind-power generation by 2030, ramping up to 8 GW by 2040.

Then on Oct.13, there were two separate major developments. At the Governor’s Mansion, Cooper signed a compromise clean-energy bill, which will lean heavily on renewable energy, likely including offshore wind projects. That same day, President Joe Biden’s administration announced a major wind-power plan that would span much of the country’s seaboard, with one of the seven proposed sites being off the Wilmington coast. Biden wants to have 30 GW of wind-energy production in place by 2030, in large part using these sites.

Currently, the projects being proposed do not affect areas of the North Carolina coast that fishermen rely on, but representatives of the state’s fishing industry say they are taking a wait-and-see approach to the impact of any future plans.

“The things that are being proposed right now off the coast of North Carolina, those windmills would not be in an area that we actively participate in fishing,” said Jerry Schill, former executive director and current government relations director for the North Carolina Fisheries Association, a trade organization representing the state’s commercial fishermen. “There might be some transit interest, boats going back and forth, but off North Carolina, it would not negatively affect our fisherman in terms of where they fish.”

Read the full story at the North State Journal

 

New Passive Acoustic Monitoring Framework to Help Safeguard Marine Resources During Offshore Wind Development

October 28, 2021 — NOAA Fisheries and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) have developed a new framework for monitoring underwater sounds. Published today in Frontiers in Marine Science, the guidelines are designed to help safeguard marine resources as wind energy development expands in U.S. waters.

The framework provides holistic recommendations for offshore wind stakeholders nationwide to effectively monitor and reduce the impact of wind energy projects on marine animals using passive acoustic monitoring.

Why is Passive Acoustic Monitoring Important?

Passive acoustic monitoring in aquatic environments refers to the use of underwater microphones to detect sounds from animals and the environment. These microphones can be deployed for months at a time, run non-stop, and gather data in difficult weather and light conditions. This makes them a great complement to more traditional survey methods. Scientists can also use groups of recorders to track animals as they move throughout an area.

For wind developers, passive acoustic monitoring is a valuable tool. They can use it to identify the animals in a project area and understand how a population is distributed and behaves. They can observe potential behavioral responses to construction activities and turbine operations. Monitoring systems can also be used to make real-time decisions like delaying construction or warning vessels to reduce their speed to protect nearby endangered whales and other animals.

Because of the critical information it provides, NOAA Fisheries and BOEM may require wind developers to use passive acoustic monitoring as part of project-specific permits and approvals. The data collected can be particularly useful in NOAA Fisheries’ work to safeguard protected species under the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act.

“Passive acoustic monitoring has become an effective and extensively used tool for evaluating the effects of human activities in marine environments,” said Sofie Van Parijs, passive acoustic program lead at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center and lead author of the paper. “As wind energy development expands in U.S. waters, this publication aims to address the need for recommendations and best practices to help industry develop robust and consistent passive acoustic mitigation plans and long-term baseline monitoring programs.”

Read the full story from NOAA Fisheries

$200 million wind turbine facility planned for Virginia

October 26, 2021 — Gov. Ralph Northam (D) and executives from Dominion Energy and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy on Monday announced a $200 million project to finish building turbine blades that would harness offshore wind on 80 acres of the Portsmouth Marine Terminal.

A lineup of local, state and federal leaders said the project, the largest in the United States, positioned Virginia at the forefront of developing wind energy. “This puts us a vital step closer to being the leader in offshore wind,” Northam said, adding that in a few short years the state had pivoted from exploring offshore drilling, which would harm the environment, to offshore wind. “Virginia,” he said, “is all in for offshore wind.”

The facility, combined with its operations and maintenance activities, will create 310 new jobs, including 50 service positions to support Dominion’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project 27 miles off the coast. Dominion says the wind farm will generate enough electricity to power up to 660,000 homes at peak and avoid as much as 5 million tons of carbon dioxide being dumped into the atmosphere annually.

Read the full story at the Washington Post

NEW JERSEY: Atlantic Shores Wind scoping evokes Hurricane Sandy trauma

October 22, 2021 — Some Jersey Shore people who recovered and rebuilt their homes after Hurricane Sandy say projects like Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind must be part of the renewable-energy answer to climate change and rising sea levels. The storm legacy loomed large in this week’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management scoping sessions.

The New Jersey shoreline “is in critical danger of being destroyed by climate change,” said marine science teacher Amy Williams of the New Jersey Organizing Project, a community group that arose after Sandy struck in October 2012.

For others, the prospect of 800-foot turbine towers on the horizon 10 miles off Long Beach Island presages another kind of disaster.

The location is “completely inappropriate” said Wendy Kouba of the LBI Coalition for Wind Without Impact, a group calling for BOEM to include its Hudson South wind energy area – 30 to 57 miles offshore – as an alternate site in the environmental impact study for Atlantic Shores.

With two major offshore wind projects – the Atlantic Shores joint venture by Shell New Energies US LLC and EDF Renewables North America, and Ørsted’s Ocean Wind on a neighboring lease to the south off Atlantic City – New Jersey has become a battleground for the wind industry’s fiercest critics and supporters.

Commercial fishing conflicts are one major issue for the New Jersey projects. Barnegat Light and Cape May are ports for the thriving sea scallop fishery, while large volumes of surf clams are landed in Atlantic City, Wildwood and Point Pleasant Beach.

Both fleets have engaged with BOEM and wind developers for years, foreseeing their dredge boats could be effectively excluded from future turbine arrays with their towers and buried power cables.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

Wind farms blew jobs to the heartland. Will offshore wind do the same in Massachusetts?

October 21, 2021 — Before he worked for American Clean Power, Jeff Danielson was an Iowa state senator for 15 years, representing Black Hawk County, the state’s fourth most populous region, and a Democratic stronghold. But most of Iowa is rural and Republican. In 2020 residents voted wholesale for former President Donald Trump, an outspoken opponent of clean energy.

So it was a surprise, Danielson said, that in a 2017 vote on a redesign of the state license plate, the public chose to include an increasingly familiar feature on Iowa’s rural landscape.

“The license plate that won was a landscaped picture with silos, smokestacks — traditional manufacturing strength and farming — right alongside a wind turbine,” Danielson said. “If you drive around Iowa today, that is the license plate you see.”

What was once controversial has now become an accepted feature in the heartland. In 2019, wind energy generated more electricity than coal-fired plants for the first time in Iowa state history and now accounts for 57% of the state’s electric power generation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

It is the highest percentage of electrical production by wind power of any state and it happened fast. Five years ago coal-fired plants generated 53% of the state’s electricity, according to EIA, but as of 2020 only accounted for 24%.

It’s a matter of economics, wind power advocates say, not politics.

The U.S. is second only to China in terms of installed wind power. China has 288 gigawatts compared to the U.S., which has 122. But China is way ahead of the U.S. when it comes to offshore wind installations. This year, China displaced the U.K. as the top offshore wind country with 11.1 gigawatts of power installed. The U.S. has only one, a 55-megawatt, five-turbine offshore wind installation off Block Island, Rhode Island. 

Last year, the Biden administration set a goal of generating 30 gigawatts of offshore power along the East Coast by 2030 as part of its strategy to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the energy sector. Massachusetts’ recent update of its climate change plan set a goal of 5.6 gigawatts of offshore wind as an integral part of its plan to achieve a 50% emissions reduction target by 2030, and net-zero emissions from the energy sector by 2050.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times