Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Gov. Charlie Baker: Not concerned by Trump’s wind comment

August 29, 2019 — The future of Vineyard Wind is on hold amid a longer-than-expected federal review and President Donald Trump dismissed wind power as costly “dreams” this week, but Gov. Charlie Baker said he is not concerned that the government has any plans to block the offshore wind project.

Federal regulators, who have been auctioning off ocean tracts to wind energy developers, jolted the offshore wind industry this month when they announced that a key environmental impact statement Vineyard Wind needs to advance, originally expected by March 2020 at the latest, would be paused to allow for a broader study of the effects that such turbines would cause.

Baker, who moments earlier touted the implementation of a statewide partnership to enact a climate-resiliency plan, told reporters Wednesday that he remains confident about the project’s future, describing his conversations with Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and officials at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management as productive despite the uncertainty.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

5 East Coast governors push feds on offshore wind power

August 29, 2019 — The governors of five East Coast states are urging federal regulators not to put any additional roadblocks in the way of the country’s nascent offshore wind industry.

The governors of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire and Virginia said in a letter Tuesday to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that offshore wind power will help strengthen America’s energy independence while creating thousands of jobs.

The group, including Republican Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, said they’re disappointed by a recent decision to delay final permitting of the planned 84-turbine Vineyard Wind project south of Martha’s Vineyard.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

NEW JERSEY: Ørsted pitches its Ocean Wind project

August 28, 2019 — Offshore wind energy developer Ørsted is introducing the New Jersey public to its Ocean Wind project – at a planned 1,100 megawatts the largest U.S. waters project to date.

“New Jersey is at the epicenter of offshore wind,” said Kris Ohleth, Ørsted’s senior stakeholder relations manager, as she opened the company’s first meeting in Atlantic City Monday evening. “We can supply the nucleus of the supply chain.”

That’s music to the ears of southern New Jersey political and labor leaders, in a region that never fully recovered from the Atlantic City casino industry’s downturn and construction recession after the 2008 financial meltdown.

Ørsted opened an office in the city last year to prepare for building the Ocean Wind project on a federal lease 15 miles offshore, and it’s expected the company could soon pick a location for its onshore support station and docks on the city waterfront.

That would represent 70 permanent jobs, beyond the 3,000 construction jobs the company predicts for its building cycle through to 2024. The company is already working with the city school system and Richard Stockton University to recruit future workers and plan for training and workforce development.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Bay State Wind submits second proposal for wind farm in Martha’s Vineyard

August 27, 2019 — Bay State Wind, a joint venture between Ørsted and Eversource, has submitted a proposal for offshore wind energy generation in Martha’s Vineyard.

The proposal was submitted on Aug. 23 in response to the commonwealth’s second Request for Proposals.

A previous bid was made by Vineyard Wind, a joint venture by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Avangrid Renewables.

Gov. Charlie Baker had previously shown his support for the project, meeting with the Interior Secretary, David Bernhardt, who oversees the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Read the full story at MassLive

Connecticut offshore wind may face some rough seas

August 27, 2019 — As Connecticut races to get its first offshore wind projects on track for construction, a collision of factors appear to be working against them.

To start with, the timing couldn’t be worse.

The state and its offshore-wind-loving neighbors all face a year-end expiration of a federal tax credit that helps finance these projects – the first major attempts in the U.S. But in Connecticut some problems – including at least one self-inflicted one – could mean forgoing that money.

Most critical are two issues. The first is the controversy at the Connecticut Port Authority (CPA), which has placed the quasi-public agency under audit and so far sent three people to the exits. The CPA runs the state-owned Pier in New London – now angling to be the premier staging area for offshore wind construction in the state, if not the region.

Read the full story at the Hartford Business Journal

Vineyard Wind submits bid No. 2

August 26, 2019 — Vineyard Wind is bidding for another wind farm.

The company submitted a bid Friday for Massachusetts’ second solicitation for commercial offshore wind. Bay State Wind announced a bid earlier in the day.

Both companies made the announcements on their own initiative; the state plans to keep the names of bidders confidential until at least Aug. 30.

Vineyard Wind said it has proposed the required 400-megawatt option, plus two options for an 800-megawatt project.

“Vineyard Wind is very excited to submit these proposals, which offer significant job creation and port infrastructure investment opportunity for the region, while ensuring an attractive, fixed price for electric ratepayers,” Vineyard Wind CEO Lars Pedersen said in a news release. “We look forward to announcing additional details on this exciting project in the weeks ahead.”

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

VINEYARD WIND: Notice to Mariners and Fishermen No. 16

August 23, 2019 — The following was released by Vineyard Wind:

We wanted to let you know that the School for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST) and the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) are coordinating a lobster ventless trap survey in the northern section of the Vineyard Wind lease area as well as a control area to the east.

The survey is ongoing through October 2019.

View the full notice here.

Trawls are set in East/West direction and are configured in 8 pot strings approximately 1,200 feet long marked with double highflyers and double large Go Deep buoys labeled MLA/SMAST, DA19-017.

We encourage fishermen who may be working in the survey area to contact the captains directly or contact the following:

Beth Casoni – MA Lobstermen’s Association, Phone: 508-738-1245

Crista Bank – FL Vineyard Wind, Phone: 508-525-0421

Vineyard Wind is committed to communicating and working with the local fishermen in the region during all stages of development of the proposed offshore wind farm.

Read the full release here

Ørsted hires Coast Guard waterways chief

August 23, 2019 — The former Coast Guard waterways management chief for New England has joined offshore wind energy company Ørsted, as the emerging U.S. industry comes to grips with pushback from commercial fishermen and other interests.

Ed LeBlanc, a former Coast Guard officer and most recently chief of the Waterways Management Division for Coast Guard Sector Southeastern New England, will be manager of marine affairs for Ørsted U.S. Offshore Wind, the Denmark-based energy company’s American division.

In his last position of 16 years with the Coast Guard First District, LeBlanc was in the forefront of planning to how the newly arriving offshore wind industry could coexist with commercial fishing and maritime transportation traffic in the Northeast. An element of that will be safe vessel transit lanes through planned wind turbine arrays off Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.

Read the full story at WorkBoat

Troubling questions, concerns raised about off-shore wind farms

August 22, 2019 — Oceanographer Jon Hare listed the effects of offshore wind development on the marine environment.

There’s disturbance to the sea floor during installation of turbine platforms. Noise from pile-driving and other activities. Increases in boat traffic. Lighting of the project site. Dredging for electric cables.

The impacts can be far-reaching.

“Putting a pile into the sediment in essence is habitat alteration,” said Hare, a science and research director with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center. “You’re taking relatively smooth, unconsolidated sediments and converting it to hard structure, converting that habitat into something else.”

Although Hare didn’t name Vineyard Wind during a seminar on Wednesday, or talk about the company’s 84-turbine wind farm proposed in waters south of Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts, the potential impacts he detailed speak to some of the reasons why NOAA has raised concerns about the project, which has led to further scrutiny of the application by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

Wind turbines and radar mix poorly

August 22, 2019 — As budding offshore wind development brings the U.S. to the brink of a new chapter in energy production, questions remain as to how radar interference caused by wind turbines will be diminished or eliminated.

Vineyard Wind’s 84-turbine wind farm, slated for an Atlantic lease area about 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, effectively had the rug pulled out from underneath it August 9, when the Department of the Interior announced the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) would hold off signing a Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) and re-examine potential impacts posed by the project. Radar was not specifically cited as something the feds would take a second look at. However, weather and aeronautical radar are all well-documented as being adversely affected by wind turbines, and a handful of studies show marine radar is also hampered by wind turbines. Fishermen who spoke with The Times said they already work in an inherently dangerous industry, and offshore radar interference has the potential to exacerbate that danger.

Technological measures to lessen radar interference from turbines are being researched and slowly implemented in the U.S. and Europe. However, none appear to be folded into the construction plans for Vineyard Wind. In its Revised Navigation Risk Assessment, Vineyard Wind borrowed from a 2009 U.S. Coast Guard review for the never-realized Cape Wind project, and stated for its own project, “impacts to radar should not negatively impact a mariner’s ability to safely navigate in the [wind development area]; even so, Vineyard Wind will work with stakeholders to identify potential mitigation measures, as necessary.”

Read the full story at the MV Times