March 16, 2021 — A proposed offshore wind farm continues to draw opposition from New Jersey’s southern coastal communities.
Ørsted’s proposed project aims to construct 99 wind turbines about 15 miles off the coast from Atlantic City to Cape May. The wind turbines are expected to produce enough energy to power half a million homes by 2024, according to Ørsted officials.
March 15, 2021 — For the second time in less than a year, and this time for much longer, Ørsted is pushing back the expected commissioning date for its Skipjack Wind Farm off the coast of Delaware.
In an announcement Feb. 26, Brady Walker, Mid-Atlantic market manager for Ørsted, said the Danish company had notified the Maryland Public Service Commission that it now expects Skipjack to achieve commercial operations by the end of the second quarter of 2026.
In April 2020, Ørsted announced it was pushing the anticipated completion date for the 120-megawatt-producing wind farm back one year, from 2022 to 2023. At the time, company officials said the reasons for that delay were because of COVID and the federal government taking longer to analyze the impacts from the build-out of U.S. offshore wind projects.
March 12, 2021 — There’s no denying that renewable energy technology has become increasingly popular. It’s more common for households and businesses to choose solar, geothermal, and other options for power. These clean, never-ending resources hold real promise for a healthier planet.
However, we can’t ignore that some of these solutions come with implications. The world’s offshore wind farms are just one example. Take a look.
This specific renewable energy source has various financial and environmental advantages, such as job creation, reduced emissions, and industry growth. It’s more typical to see wind farms on land, where several wind turbines spin continuously to generate energy. But offshore wind farms have become an alternative.
If you install wind turbines at sea, you don’t have to sacrifice any land. This point helps negate complaints about how “unsightly” wind turbines can appear. Plus, you don’t have to disrupt neighborhoods. It’s true that winds blow stronger across the water, which means we can produce more power from offshore wind farms, too.
March 11, 2021 — President Joe Biden’s arrival at the White House in January was, as customary for any new executive branch leader, met by outsized expectations on the part of supporters and detractors alike. Among the countless areas of public policy set to be affected by the new administration, perhaps no one issue is more anticipated to be in play than energy and environmental policy.
The heightened set of expectations around energy policy began with the campaign, when Team Biden consistently placed climate change issues among its leading priorities — a trend that noticeably continued with Cabinet picks, as nominees for agencies from Defense to Transportation to Treasury cited climate considerations as key factors affecting their respective portfolios. On January 27, 2021, shortly after taking office, the Biden administration released a series of executive actions that included a stated goal of reaching a “carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035.”
Perhaps no single industry would be more critical to the realization of this far-reaching carbon-free goal than offshore wind, which has emerged in the United States over the past several years as a potentially game-changing source of clean energy generation, based on its earlier-moving success in Europe and elsewhere. In fact, along the country’s populous coastal areas, where fifty three percent of US residents reside, offshore wind presents the most viable option to build up renewable energy resources in the foreseeable future.
March 11, 2021 — America’s offshore wind infrastructure is modest: the only turbines in the ocean today power a small community’s worth of homes from a wind farm off Block Island. But within two years, the number of American homes powered by the renewable energy source could grow to nearly half a million.
Vineyard Wind CEO Lars Pedersen says an environmental review released by the federal government this week brings the company closer to its goal of supplying 800 megawatts of electricity to New England’s grid by 2023.
“More than three years of federal review and public comment is nearing its conclusion and 2021 is poised to be a momentous year for our project and the broader offshore wind industry,” Pedersen said.
The much-anticipated study from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management found the only major environmental impact from the turbines would be felt in the region’s commercial fisheries.
Many fishermen fear Vineyard Wind is leaving too narrow a distance between turbines for vessels to safely navigate during bad weather. Annie Hawkins, director of the seafood industry-backed Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, said the federal government has also failed to set guidelines for compensating fishing crews that will lose access to squid and lobsters they once caught in Vineyard Wind’s 118-square-mile lease area.
March 11, 2021 — The Biden Administration is betting that green energy produced by new offshore wind farms will help slow climate change, but fishers and some scientists say there are too many uncertainties about how the massive structures will affect the ocean and its marine life. The first big test of how the push for wind energy might clash with ocean conservation will likely play out in Massachusetts waters. This week, Department of the Interior officials gave initial approval to the $2.8 billion Vineyard Wind project located about 15 miles south of the island of Martha’s Vineyard.
Once the massive wind turbines begin operating in 2023, the wind farm is expected to generate 800 megawatts of clean electricity. That’s enough to power 400,000 Massachusetts homes and businesses.
Vineyard Wind will be the first big offshore wind farm on the East Coast, although smaller pilot projects are running off Block Island, Rhode Island, and Virginia Beach, Virginia. Officials at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, an office within the Department of the Interior, are reviewing another 12 commercial offshore wind projects between Maryland and Maine. If approved, those wind farms would generate 25 gigawatts of clean energy for the power-hungry Northeast, more than doubling all land-based wind power coming online in 2021.
March 11, 2021 — Opposition to New Jersey’s coming surge in offshore wind farms is growing at the Jersey Shore.
The hundreds of wind turbines due to be built up to 20 miles off New Jersey in the next five years or so will spoil ocean views, undermine local economies and hurt wildlife while boosting the profits of overseas developers, critics say.
These opponents reject claims by wind farm builders and their enthusiastic supporters, including Gov. Phil Murphy, that the clusters of turbines are emissions-free. The manufacture and maintenance of the massive steel structures will require huge amounts of fossil fuel-powered energy, they argue.
They also say they fear that the tourism-dependent economies of many Shore towns will be damaged if visitors flee because they don’t want to look at an array of wind turbines on the horizon, or if the new structures disrupt marine life so much that recreational and commercial fishermen stay away.
And if fewer people want to spend time at the Shore, real estate values of coastal properties will drop, the critics predict.
“If people decide they don’t want any part of coming here, they will go elsewhere,” said Suzanne Hornick, administrator of SaveourshorelineNJ, a Facebook page that’s dedicated to opposing the industry, and has about 3,100 members.
March 10, 2021 — In a major boost for Vineyard Wind, the U.S. Department of Interior announced Monday that a long-awaited environmental analysis of the plan to build the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm 12 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard is complete.
The announcement signals a sea change in the outlook for the emerging offshore wind industry under the Biden administration, and it puts the $2 billion Vineyard Wind I project solidly back on track to be first in the race to harness hundreds of square miles of ocean for the development of renewable energy.
“The United States is poised to become a global clean energy leader,” said Laura Daniel Davis, principal deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management, in a press release Monday.
Completed by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the final environmental impact statement is due to be published in the Federal Register later this week, the announcement said.
March 10, 2021 — When the Interior Department released an environmental study for Vineyard Wind this week, it established a template for permitting additional offshore wind facilities in the United States.
Now it will be put to the test.
Vineyard Wind is one of 12 projects proposed along the Eastern Seaboard. Together, they have the potential to reshape Eastern power markets and bolster U.S. climate efforts.
Initial reaction to the environmental study, the first for an offshore wind facility, split sharply between supporters and detractors. The fishing industry said the study confirmed its fears that it would be pushed aside in a gold rush for renewable energy.
Wind interests and state officials said the final study was more robust than a draft version released in 2018, and they said projects in the pipeline would learn from Vineyard Wind’s turbulent approval.
“This project, in addition to having to go first in terms of setting a price and other factors, has established a template for figuring out the thornier issues in terms of siting, permitting and pipeline supply chain,” said Kathleen Theoharides, the Massachusetts secretary of energy and environmental affairs.
Massachusetts is one of several East Coast states that have contracted for large amounts of offshore wind. It has committed to purchasing 3,200 megawatts by 2035, with Vineyard Wind providing the first 800 MW.
New Jersey is seeking 7,500 MW of offshore wind power by 2035, and New York has plans for 9,000 MW.
March 10, 2021 — The following is an excerpt from a segment that ran on NBC Boston:
On Monday, the U.S. Department of the Interior completed Vineyard Wind’s environmental impact assessment. With the completion of this assessment, Vineyard Wind has edged closer to completion. Groups representing the seafood industry from across the Atlantic coast have expressed concern that it may lead to restrictions on large portions of valuable fishing grounds.
“There’s proposals all up and down the East Coast to occupy massive acreage of ocean bottom. So, that’s going to be a problem for fishermen,” said Eric Hansen, a local scallop fisherman from New Bedford.
New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell expressed that “it will take a lot of communication over the next several months to make sure that the wind farm and the fishermen can safely co-exist.”