Saving Seafood

NEW YORK: Long Island’s Offshore Wind Farm Plans Take Root

March 2, 2022 — After years of planning and debate, offshore wind farm developers recently took several big steps forward in a half dozen projects in various stages of development off the coast of Long Island.

A record-setting sale of offshore wind development rights last week saw combined bids for six areas off the coasts of New York and New Jersey stretching to $4.73 billion. The auction came less than two weeks after officials held a groundbreaking — or a seafloor breaking, as it were — ceremony in Wainscott on Feb. 11 to mark construction starting on the 130-megawatt South Fork Wind, the first offshore wind project in New York State.

LOCAL OPPOSITION

The South Fork Wind farm’s developers, Ørsted & Eversource, who plan to build 12 turbines about 30 miles off Montauk’s coast — enough to power 70,000 homes annually — have faced legal challenges from some Wainscott residents opposed to the cable coming ashore in their community.

Citizens for the Preservation of Wainscott filed a motion in the Appellate Division of New York State Supreme Court to block the construction until the court has an opportunity to rule on the group’s appeal of the state Public Service Commission’s decision allowing the cable to run through the community. The appeals court judges rejected that motion last month, but the suit is pending.

“We continue to support the move to renewable energy and celebrate the progress toward that goal,” the group said in a statement following the groundbreaking. “But we continue to have serious reservations regarding an infrastructure project that runs its cable through residential neighborhoods, and next to a PFAS superfund site, particularly when better alternative sites were available. Our focus will continue to be on protecting our community.”

The group isn’t the only one opposed. Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Montauk-based Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, protested the groundbreaking ceremony while playing an audio recording of what she says the construction noise will sound like from on land. As officials left, she reminded them that the turbines will be built in North Atlantic Right Whale territory.

Read the full story at the Long Island Press

BOEM Identifies Three Potential Wind Lease Areas Off Oregon

February 28, 2022 — The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has selected three areas off the coast of southern Oregon for potential offshore wind development, and its picks have attracted immediate opposition from fishermens’ advocacy organizations.

According to BOEM, the planning for the three call areas has been under way since late 2019. The initial call for information is a request for comments from stakeholders and the general public, and it is a prelude to the designation of specific lease areas. BOEM’s objective is to identify enough space for three gigawatts of near-term offshore wind power capacity.

The northernmost call area is located just off Coos Bay, Oregon, one of the largest commercial fishing ports in the region. It is also the largest of the three areas – about 1,360 square miles – and the area with the greatest total potential for energy generation. The southernmost call area, near Brookings, has the highest average wind speeds and the lowest levelized cost of energy.

Read the full story at the Maritime Executive

Seafood industry reacts to BOEM offshore call areas in Oregon

February 28, 2022 — The following was released by the West Coast Seafood Processors Association:

Offshore wind energy is coming to Oregon, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, but the seafood industry says it’s an oncoming windstorm.

BOEM plans to announce Friday, Feb. 25, 2022, three proposed “call areas” off Oregon. BOEM identifies these ocean areas with high wind potential as places companies might want to develop to harness the energy of offshore wind. These massive areas, covering 2,181 square miles, already are utilized by the fishermen to harvest nutritious, sustainable seafood proteins.

As part of its process, BOEM will solicit interest from wind energy developers before doing a basic environmental assessment of the areas. Comprehensive environmental studies will be completed later, after leases are already issued and enormous investments are already made.

“The effect of offshore wind development on fisheries, the habitat and the California Current is unknown. Placing giant turbines and anchors in a current system that is largely free-flowing and structure-free could cause irreparable harm to seabirds, marine mammals, fisheries management regimes and more,” Southern Oregon Ocean Resource Coalition (SOORC) Chair Susan Chambers said. “Robust environmental analyses need to be completed before areas are identified and leased, not after. Our productive California Current must be protected.

One area, known to commercial fishermen as “the mud hole” is known to be a highly productive shrimp bed, as well as a key area for sole harvested by groundfish fishermen. It is also recognized as an important feeding area for seabirds.

Fishermen already are questioning the value of placing turbines in areas off Morro Bay and Humboldt Bay, Calif. The early environmental analyses and area identification memos of those areas included very little socio-economic data regarding the potential effects on the seafood industry and no consideration of the cumulative impacts of potential additional wind farms off the U.S. West Coast.

“These turbines are going to blow me off the water,” Fishermen’s Marketing Association President Travis Hunter said. Hunter and his family have fished for years off southern Oregon and northern California and in the Humboldt Wind Energy Area. “These areas will displace hard-working fishermen.”

The seafood industry recognizes the value in renewable energy, but at what cost? Fishermen and processors have their roots in coastal communities. Displacing them in favor of large out-of-town – and frequently out-of-country – companies is a net loss.

“Developers are largely funded by foreign companies. Most of the profits, at Oregon taxpayers’ expense, will be funneled overseas. This is not ‘the Oregon way,’” Shrimp Producers Marketing Cooperative Secretary Nick Edwards said.

The future of several Oregon commercial fisheries, processors, fishery-related businesses, and the economic development coastal communities derive from those industries, hang in the balance.

“This is what results from government agency lip service versus authentic engagement,” said Heather Mann, Director of the Midwater Trawlers Cooperative. She was speaking in response to last night’s revelation that the Bureau of Energy and Management’s Oregon (BOEM) call areas for offshore wind energy development cover more than 2,000 square miles of productive fishing grounds in Southern Oregon. “BOEM has essentially chosen prime fishing areas for turbines threatening not just Oregon harvesting and processing jobs, but food security as well.”

Fishing groups all along the West Coast have been pleading with BOEM to have a seat at the table, not be a mime in the check-the-box outreach that often happens with government agencies.

“The importance of where these gigantic, floating wind farms are placed cannot be under-emphasized. If we do not get this decision absolutely correct, the fallout could have a dire domino economic effect on all Oregon commercial fisheries, including the vitally important Oregon Dungeness crab fishery,” Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission Executive Director Hugh Link said.

Read the release here

Sale of Leases for Wind Farms Off New York Raises More Than $4 Billion

February 28, 2022 — The United States government netted a record $4.37 billion on Friday from the sale of six offshore wind leases off the coasts of New York and New Jersey, a major step in the Biden administration’s goal of ushering in a future powered by renewable energy.

The auction, of more than 488,000 acres in the Atlantic Ocean between Cape May, N.J., and Montauk Point, N.Y., was the Biden administration’s first offshore lease sale.

When turbines are built and start working, the auctioned acres are expected to generate up to 7,000 megawatts, enough to power nearly 2 million homes.

The Interior Department has said between that project and others currently under review, it hopes to see some 2,000 turbines churning from Massachusetts to North Carolina by the end of this decade.

Read the full story at the New York Times

Oregon fishing advocates organize to pressure BOEM on offshore wind

February 28, 2022 — Solicitation by U.S. federal energy planners of wind-energy developer interest offshore of the U.S. state of Oregon has the state’s commercial fishing advocates organizing to push for major environmental analysis before any decision-making takes place.

“The effect of offshore wind development on fisheries, the habitat and the California Current is unknown. Placing giant turbines and anchors in a current system that is largely free-flowing and structure-free could cause irreparable harm to seabirds, marine mammals, fisheries management regimes and more,” Southern Oregon Ocean Resource Coalition Chair Susan Chambers said in a joint statement with other groups. “Robust environmental analyses need to be completed before areas are identified and leased, not after. Our productive California Current must be protected.”

Read the full story from SeafoodSource

 

Bidding tops $3.3 billion in New York Bight wind lease sale

February 25, 2022 — The biggest U.S. offshore wind energy lease sale ever will continue Friday, after two days of steadily escalating bids that topped at $3.3 billion with no clear winners at 6 p.m. Thursday.

After 46 rounds of bidding that began at 9 a.m. Feb. 23, the most-sought of six lease tracts – dubbed OCS-0539, east-southeast of Barnegat Light, N.J. – attracted up to five bidders at a time who pushed offers to $900 million.

After running the bids at 20-minute intervals, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management officials said they will resume at 9 a.m. Friday. The agency will announce provisional winners of the online auction.

Covering 488,201 acres, the sale is the largest of the Biden administration and the first wind auction since 2018. Farther east from areas already leased to developers off New Jersey, the new leases roughly double the New York Bight acreage available for building wind turbine arrays.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

U.S. offshore wind auction bids top $1.5 bln, with more to come

February 24, 2022 — The largest ever U.S. sale of offshore wind development rights – for areas off the coasts of New York and New Jersey – attracted a record $1.5 billion in bids on Wednesday, supporting President Joe Biden’s plan to create a new domestic industry.

The auction, which will continue on Thursday, is the first offshore wind lease sale under Biden, who has made expansion of offshore wind a cornerstone of his plans to tackle global warming and decarbonize the U.S. electricity grid by 2035, while creating tens of thousands of jobs.

After 21 rounds of bidding, combined live bids for the six leases stood at nearly $1.54 billion, according to updates posted on the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) web site.

That easily topped the U.S. offshore wind auction record of $405 million set in 2018. It was also far more than recent oil and gas auctions in U.S. federal waters. A sale of drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico late last year, for instance, attracted $191.7 million in high bids.

Read the full story at Reuters

BOEM looks at fishermen compensation — but not everyone wants it

February 24, 2022 — Recent detailed proposals from the Fisheries Survival Fund and Responsible Offshore Development Alliance – coalitions of the commercial fishing industry – and the American Clean Power Association representing the offshore wind industry, presented the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management priority lists for their industries’ coexistence.

Some of those recommendations distinguish between ‘mitigation’ – avoiding conflicts between wind development and fishing – and ‘compensation’ – paying to make up for fishermen being displaced from longtime fishing grounds.

Fishing advocates say BOEM should be following a “mitigation hierarchy” under the National Environmental Policy Act to “avoid, minimize, mitigate and compensate” for impacts of offshore wind development.

BOEM officials and wind energy advocates say that’s being done. As examples they point to modifications to the South Fork Wind project east of Montauk, N.Y., to preserve critical bottom habitat, and shifts in the New York Bight wind energy lease areas to reduce conflicts with the scallop fleet.

Read the full story at WorkBoat

What to watch in Biden’s first offshore wind auction

February 24, 2022 — The Biden administration will hold a long-awaited offshore wind auction today, with both established players in the developing industry and new competitors expected to vie for a chance to raise turbines in the shallow-water region sandwiched between New Jersey and New York.

Industry has long pushed for a new auction in the New York Bight, where developers haven’t seen a lease sale since 2016, and expectations are high that it could result in a blockbuster sale.

“These leases will, in all likelihood, fetch historically high prices,” said Fred Zalcman, director of New York Offshore Wind Alliance, which advocates for the industry. “I think it’s going to be a very vibrant market.”

The bight offers acreage between two states with some of the most aggressive offshore wind targets in the country.

Read the full story at E&E News

Rep. Pingree, New England lawmakers urge Biden administration to study sustainable offshore wind development

February 22, 2022 — Rep. Chellie Pingree and other New England lawmakers are pressuring federal ocean regulators charged with siting offshore wind energy projects to pay close attention to the health of Gulf of Maine ecosystems and fishermen.

Pingree chairs a House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s budget, and she’s concerned that with the Biden administration’s push to open up new offshore leases as soon as 2024, the gulf’s ecosystems and economies might get overlooked.

Read the full story at Maine Public