Saving Seafood

Trump’s EPA flags a problem with offshore wind permit issued by Maryland

July 16, 2025 — Federal officials are calling on the state to reissue a permit for a wind farm planned off the Ocean City coast, to correct what they say is an error in the original document.

In a July 7 letter to the Maryland Department of the Environment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took issue with the process that MDE laid out to appeal the final construction permit awarded to US Wind.

The state said any challenge to the state permit would have to go through state courts, but EPA Region 3 Administrator Amy Van Blarcom-Lackey said that any appeal would have to be filed with the clerk of the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board.

“Failure to rectify this error could result in invalidation of the permit on appeal and confusion among relevant stakeholders with respect to where to bring such an appeal,” Blarcom-Lackey wrote.

MDE spokesperson Jay Apperson said in a statement that the agency is reviewing Blarcom-Lackey’s letter and is “committed to ensuring all our permit processes are transparent and in accordance with the law.” An official with US Wind said the company is “confident that all of our project’s permits were validly issued.”

Read the full article at Maryland Matters

MASSACHSUETTS: Maker of broken Vineyard Wind blade will pay Nantucket $10.5 million

July 15, 2025 — GE Vernova, the manufacturer of the faulty Vineyard Wind turbine blade that broke and washed onto Massachusetts shores one year ago, has agreed to pay the Town of Nantucket $10.5 million to compensate for impacts to the town and local businesses during what was peak summer tourist season.

In the days after the blade broke on July 13, 2024, the town closed beaches to swimming out of safety concerns over fiberglass shards. A local surfing business told town officials in meetings that followed about cancelled lessons. Local officials, eventually with the assistance of company officials, engaged in beach cleanups.

Under the agreement, the town will establish a “Community Claims Fund” to be administered by a third party, which will review claims submitted for cleanups, property damage and lost profit, and dole out compensation.

“We are pleased to have reached a final settlement agreement with the Town of Nantucket to provide compensation for any impacted local businesses,” said a GE Vernova spokesperson in an email Friday.

Nantucket may use any funds not dispensed through the claims process “at its discretion in the public’s interest,” per the 17-page settlement.

The multi-million dollar settlement “finally and forever” releases GE Vernova, Vineyard Wind and the town from “any and all” claims and suits related to the 2024 blade incident. It also binds the Town of Nantucket in an agreement to not sue GE Vernova over the incident.

Notably, the town stated it “would not accept” Vineyard Wind as a signatory to the settlement, though Vineyard Wind still benefits from it.

“The Town has found Vineyard Wind wanting in terms of its leadership, accountability, transparency, and stewardship in the aftermath of the blade failure,” reads the town’s FAQ page. Vineyard Wind is constructing the offshore wind farm about 15 miles south of Nantucket, using turbines built by GE Vernova.

The Light contacted both Vineyard Wind and the town Friday morning for clarification on whether Vineyard Wind requested to be a signatory on the settlement.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

MASSACHUSETTS: Vineyard Wind Blade Break Reverberates One Year Later

July 11, 2025 — One year ago Sunday, the U.S. Coast Guard got a report it had never received before.

At 7:01 p.m., about 20 miles off the Vineyard’s southern shore, large pieces of debris were scattered in the water near the Vineyard Wind wind farm.

Green and white bits of fiberglass and foam, some the size of kitchen tables, were floating in the water, and eventually, with the help of wind and tides, would make their way onto Nantucket beaches.

Nantucket charter fishing Capt. Carl Bois was one of the first people to see the bobbing detritus off the outer continental shelf when he was out on his boat the next day.

“I’ve never seen anything on the water quite like that,” he said at the time.

Not long after, Vineyarders, Nantucketers, state lawmakers and some of the highest ranking officials in Washington, D.C. learned all too well what Mr. Bois was seeing: pieces of a broken Vineyard Wind turbine blade.

On July 13, 2024, the 107-meter GE Vernova Haliade-X turbine blade on the offshore wind energy farm’s southernmost turbine snapped unexpectedly and dumped thousands of pieces of fiberglass into the ocean. Broken about 20 meters from its base, a large portion of the blade would later drop into the water, sinking to the bottom.

Read the full article at the Vineyard Gazette

Fulton Fish Market joins lawsuit against Empire Wind

July 11, 2025 — The Fulton Fish Market Cooperative in New York, the nation’s largest seafood market, has signed onto a federal lawsuit brought by commercial fishermen and coastal activists opposing Equinor’s ongoing Empire Wind offshore energy project.

Operators of the Fulton market, including 23 member companies that move more than 5 million tons of seafood through their Bronx location weekly, are the newest plaintiffs in an amended complaint filed July 4 with the U.S. District Court for New Jersey.

With the Trump administration allowing Equinor to proceed with construction, it’s clear “that this administration is aware offshore wind is nothing but a greenwashing shell game that will industrialize our oceans and kill longstanding American port communities and economies,” Fulton CEO Nicole Ackerina said in a joint statement July 9 with other plaintiffs.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

VIRGINIA: Virginia’s massive offshore wind project lives on

July 10, 2025 — Virginia’s massive wind farm is still under construction, despite the federal rollback on green energy programs.

The future is still blowing in the wind off of Virginia Beach, where Dominion Energy is building a massive wind farm that will power more than 600,000 homes at peak output. The budget reconciliation package recently passed by Congress and signed by the president rolled back many Biden-era environmental initiatives, but not Virginia’s wind farm.

“You cannot discount the political influence of monopoly utilities,” says Tim Cywinski at the Sierra Club. “Dominion is a very rich and politically connected company, and they give a lot of political contributions. This project is also something that has bipartisan support. So, it really doesn’t seem like a political win to cancel something that’s really been lifted off the ground and been promised and hailed as a success story for both political parties.”

Read the full article at WVTF

Businesses, environmentalists join forces to stop NY offshore wind project they fear will harm fishing, sea life

July 9, 2025 — They’re in uncharted waters.

In a rare move, businesses and environmentalists have joined forces in court to furiously fight New York’s Empire Wind One offshore project, saying that it will devastate both the commercial fishing industry and marine life in local waters.

“A decade ago, we said it would affect fishermen, fisheries, and guess what? The state didn’t care,” said Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association.

“We are collateral damage — even though we feed people.”

The decade-long planned energy initiative, which began construction last April off the coasts of New York and New Jersey, faces a growing lawsuit from stakeholders in the tri-state area.

The Bronx’s massive Fulton Fish Market Cooperative, which employs around 1,200, and Nassau County’s Point Lookout Fishing Club, and the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association are some of the groups joining a legal action brought by environmentalists in the area.

Read the full article at The New York Post

 

Trump moves to restrict wind power tax credits

July 8, 2025 — Days after the Republican majority in Congress sharply reduced incentives for wind and solar energy projects, President Trump issued a new executive order to set new timeline limits for developers to qualify for tax credits.

“For too long, the Federal Government has forced American taxpayers to subsidize expensive and unreliable energy sources like wind and solar,” states the order issued late Monday. “Reliance on so-called ‘green’ subsidies threatens national security by making the United States dependent on supply chains controlled by foreign adversaries.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Senate budget vote set mixed prospects for offshore wind

July 3, 2025 — The U.S. Senate’s squeaker 51-50 vote to approve the Trump administration’s program agenda appeared to strike a huge blow against offshore wind energy and other renewable energy development.

But opponents of offshore wind insist the legislation does not go far enough. The final version pulled back a proposed excise tax that would have penalized wind energy developers, after Iowa Sens. Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley, both R-Iowa, opposed it for their state’s wind energy generation and manufacturing industry.

“The Senate bill looks like it has a 2027 ‘placed in service’ cutoff for new solar/wind subsidies,” wrote Alex Epstein, a prominent activist and fossil fuels advocate, in a fiery July 1 social media post widely shared among offshore wind opponents. “But one last-minute paragraph makes it worthless – because projects making a recoverable 5% investment in the next 12 months are exempt!”

President Trump pledged to stop all projects in U.S. waters “on day one” of his second presidency and issued an order hours after his Jan. 20 inauguration to implement that ban. In mid-April, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ordered a halt to work on Equinor’s Empire Wind 814-megawatt project off New York, thrilling project opponents.

But a month later, the Trump administration relented, after making a deal with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul for permitting new natural gas pipelines from the Marcellus gas fields in Pennsylvania through New York State.

With the July 1 Senate vote, offshore oil and gas interests appeared to be clear winners. With final passage still required in the House – and continued criticism by the hardline Republican conservatives’ caucus – industry advocates pushed for support.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Offshore Wind Projects Continue to Add to U.S.-Flagged Fleet

July 2, 2025 — The next offshore service operation vessel (SOV), ECO Liberty, was christened to officially enter the U.S. fleet in support of the offshore wind sector. The vessel, which was completed in May, has been in jeopardy after the Trump administration suspended work on the Empire Wind project, but with work back underway, the vessel was named in New Orleans, Louisiana on June 28 by Louisiana’s First Lady Sharon Landry.

The 262-foot (80-meter) hybrid-powered ECO Liberty will be homeported at New York’s South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, where more than 2,000 workers are constructing the staging facility, O&M base, and control center for Empire Wind. The ECO Liberty will be deployed to support ongoing marine construction in the lease area and eventually serve as the floating home for Empire Wind’s skilled workers when stationed offshore.

The vessel is 5,700 GT. It provides accommodations for up to 60 workers and is designed to remain offshore at the site to support the construction and later maintenance operations.

The vessel was built by Edison Chouset Offshore, which continues to own the vessel through its offshore division. It will be operating on a long-term charter to Empire Wind, which is being developed by Equinor. Empire Wind is located 15 to 30 miles southeast of New York’s Long Island and spans 80,000 acres, with water depths of between approximately 75 and 135 feet. Offshore work started this spring for the project, which will have a capacity for 810 MW when completed.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

MASSACHUSETTS: Offshore wind power contracts delayed, again, to 2026

July 1, 2025 — The next round of offshore wind power projects for Massachusetts moved even further out of reach Monday when state officials got word that project developers and utilities will not meet Monday’s already-delayed target for finalizing contracts and likely won’t submit contracts for state approval until 2026.

The delays affect two projects proposed off Massachusetts, SouthCoast Wind and New England Wind, both of which have plans to use the Port of New Bedford to support construction or long-term operations.

The latest delays are due to “federal level activities,” a letter to the state says — a reference to the Trump administration’s freeze of new offshore wind permits.

Massachusetts selected 2,678 megawatts of offshore wind power, spread across three projects, in September 2024, kicking off contract negotiations. One of those projects, Vineyard Wind 2, has since removed itself from consideration. Another, SouthCoast Wind, has announced a delay of at least two years. Massachusetts gets no meaningful energy from offshore wind, almost nine years after a clean energy law set the state on a path of decarbonization.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light