Saving Seafood

Trump’s pause on offshore wind leasing may have limited impact in New England

January 22, 2025 — A national moratorium on offshore wind leasing and permitting may have only limited effects in Massachusetts and other New England states, according to several wind industry observers.

Their comments came after Trump signed an executive order halting federal approvals for wind energy projects on Monday, his first official day in office.

“We’re obviously not happy to see the Trump administration issuing an order on day one that targets offshore wind,” said Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at the Conservation Law Foundation.  “But the practical import of this executive order on wind energy is not very significant — at least as relates to New England.”

Trump’s order directs the federal government to stop leasing new areas of the outer continental shelf for electricity production, and it effectively hits the pause button on all projects still in the development pipeline. But it stops short of immediately bringing to a standstill the dozen or so projects that are fully permitted in waters up and down the East Coast.

Read the full article at wbur

Trump order targets offshore wind, but stopping projects in progress won’t be easy

January 22, 2025 — President Donald Trump wasted no time in his first day in office Monday, ordering a halt to all new leases of offshore wind projects in federal waters, and a review of all federally leased and permitted wind projects by the Interior Department.

It’s what industry experts expected at minimum, and goes a step further by opening the door for potential termination of existing offshore wind leases or permits. The review could affect several wind projects off the Massachusetts coast at varying levels of completion. The halt in new leases could also delay, for up to four years, a future phase of wind development off the New York and mid-Atlantic coasts — a prospect the fishing industry welcomes.

But experts say undoing projects that have already been approved won’t be an easy task — which makes the Biden administration’s 11th-hour approval of SouthCoast Wind and lifting of Vineyard Wind’s suspension order particularly significant for the state and New Bedford.

Read the full article at the New Bedford Light

BOEM’s compensation framework for fishermen ‘ensures consistency’ but not legally binding

January 22, 2025 — The lead government regulator on offshore wind issued a long-awaited federal framework this week to guide wind developers on how they should mitigate impacts and compensate the fishing industry for any loss incurred due to the turbine arrays.

It includes recommendations on claims processes, fisheries communication programs, and cable burial, and an appendix of complex formulas to calculate compensation — much of what developers have already been doing, albeit in varying ways.

The document is not legally binding, and has been in the works for several years, with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management issuing draft guidelines in 2022. BOEM states its new guidance “ensures consistency and promotes fair treatment of fishermen, regardless of their home or landing port.”

“This guidance focuses on transparency and early engagement with fishing communities, and effective strategies to mitigate potential disruptions,” said Brian Hooker, a BOEM lead biologist who led much of the effort. “Through this initiative, BOEM is working to decrease the impacts of offshore wind projects on commercial and recreational fisheries, and ensure fair treatment for all fishermen.”

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

NORTH CAROLINA: Trump moves to curb wind farms, part of North Carolina’s clean energy plan

January 22, 2025 — The fate of North Carolina’s offshore wind farms, both active and planned, is in question after President Donald Trump took executive action to halt offshore wind energy production on his first day in office.

The order halts offshore wind leasing on the Outer Continental Shelf and prohibits new or renewed permits, leases, and loans for wind energy projects, both onshore and offshore. The sweeping action has drawn sharp criticism from clean energy advocates in North Carolina, where offshore wind was poised to play a significant role in the energy transition.

It was one of dozens of executive orders signed Monday by Trump, a Republican who returned to the White House after a four-year absence. Trump signed other executive orders related to climate, too, removing the U.S. from the Paris Climate treaty and pushing back on Biden-era mandates on electric vehicles.

“We’re not going to do the wind thing,” Trump said during an event at Capital One Arena on Monday hours after being sworn in.

The Biden Administration approved 11 commercial-scale offshore wind projects in the past four years.

Trump is a proponent of expanded drilling for oil and fracking. He said Monday that the U.S. has more oil and gas than any other nation.

Read the full article at WRAL

RHODE ISLAND: Will Trump’s offshore wind executive order halt RI’s projects? What to know.

January 22, 2025 — An executive order signed by President Donald Trump aimed at reining in the expansion of offshore wind may not affect projects that are already in the development pipeline off southern New England.

The sweeping order signed on Monday temporarily halts sales of leases to offshore wind developers in federal waters and pauses permitting for projects, pending a review by the Department of the Interior and other federal government agencies.

But the order doesn’t go so far as trying to put a stop to wind farms that have already gone through the federal permitting process or are under construction.

They include Revolution Wind, the 704-megawatt project that is being built off the Rhode Island coast, or SouthCoast Wind, the proposal for up to 2,400 megawatts of capacity south of Nantucket that last month got the green light from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which is part of the interior department.

Read the full article at the The Providence Journal

VIRGINIA: Dominion says offshore wind farm moving forward, despite executive order

January 22, 2025 — President Donald Trump started his second term Monday with a flurry of executive orders, including one that temporarily ceases all federal wind leases under consideration and calls for an “immediate review” of the policies before resuming.

So, what does that mean for Virginia and Dominion Power, which is midway through constructing its $9.8 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind farm off the coast of Virginia Beach and has purchased two other wind farm leases in the Atlantic Ocean?

The Richmond-based Fortune 500 utility said in a statement Tuesday that it is “confident CVOW will be completed on time, and that Virginia’s clean energy transition will continue with bipartisan support for many years to come.”

Read the full article at Virginia Business

SouthCoast Wind deal deadline pushed to end of March

January 22, 2025 — Gov. Dan McKee’s newly unveiled fiscal 2026 budget touts Rhode Island as a “key player” in the offshore wind sector, citing the state’s intent to buy 200 megawatts of wind-powered electricity from a wind farm planned off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.

But Rhode Island’s utility company hasn’t actually inked the deal with the SouthCoast Wind developers. In fact, the deadline to sign the contract has been pushed back again, with negotiations between Rhode Island Energy and the wind project developer now expected to wrap up by March 31, according to an updated timeline posted on the state’s offshore wind procurement website.

When Rhode Island Energy unveiled its tentative power purchase agreement with SouthCoast Wind developers in September, it pegged Dec. 31 as the deadline to seal the deal. Then, the deadline was moved to Jan. 15.

On Thursday, Jan. 16, Rhode Island Energy again announced a delay in the contract signing.

“The revised schedule aligns with the negotiations SouthCoast Wind is concurrently having with the Massachusetts electric distribution companies,” the company stated in a post on the wind procurement website.

Read the full article at the Rhode Island Current

Vineyard Wind suspension order lifted ahead of Trump term

January 22, 2025 — Just days before an offshore-wind-averse Trump Administration takes office, the lead safety regulator for offshore wind has lifted its suspension order on the Vineyard Wind project. Construction and power generation can now resume with new safety requirements, including the mandated removal of all blades manufactured in Gaspé, Quebec.

Under the revised construction and operations plan, approved Friday by the Biden Administration, Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova must remove blades from “a maximum of 22 wind turbine generators … that were installed prior” to the July blade failure — more than a third of all turbine locations.

“Effective Jan. 17, 2025, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) lifted the December 19, 2024, Suspension Order, based on revisions Vineyard Wind made to its construction and operations plan,” a BSEE spokesperson told The Light on Saturday.

The companies must complete a “study that evaluates the environmental harm and other damage from the blade failure,” the spokesperson continued.

The Light previously reported that the manufacturing defect from the failed blade in July was traced to the Quebec factory, where managers may have falsified quality testing data, leading to suspensions and layoffs. The blade failed due to “insufficient bonding” — an adhesive that holds the composite together.

“After reprocessing of the manufacturing data from the installed blades, additional blades with insufficient bonding were identified, leading to GE Vernova’s decision and BSEE’s direction to remove all installed blades manufactured at the Gaspé, Canada plant,” the new plan states.

Over the past few months, vessels have removed several installed blades from the site, and received shipments of blades from GE Vernova’s other manufacturing plant in Cherbourg, France. The plan, submitted in December but approved this week, notes much of the blade removal activity will happen in 2025.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

World’s largest offshore wind farm maker Orsted takes fresh $1.7 billion write-down in the U.S. as its Trump nightmare begins

January 21, 2025 — Danish offshore wind giant Orsted faced a fresh stock market hammering on Tuesday after the group announced a new billion-dollar impairment charge on the same day its foe Donald Trump ascended to the White House.

Shares plunged as much as 17% in early morning trading after the group disclosed an impairment of 12.1 billion Danish kroner ($1.69 billion) in the fourth quarter of 2024 as rising interest rates and falling wind farm valuations hit the company’s portfolio.

Orsted’s Sunrise Wind project, a 924-megawatt offshore wind farm in New York meant to power 600,000 homes, is expected to take longer than expected after the group took supply chain lessons from its previous Revolution Wind project installation in the U.S.

Mads Nipper, group president and CEO of Orsted, described the impairment and construction challenges as “very disappointing” but doubled down on his company’s commitment to the U.S.

“We remain committed to the US market in the long term with its potential for renewables to meet the growing electricity demand and create thousands of industrial jobs across the US,” said Nipper in a statement.

Read the full article at Fortune

Concerns swirl over impact of offshore wind farms on fishing industry

January 21, 2025 — With the growth of offshore wind farms there are many questions surrounding their impact. In the second of two stories about what researchers are finding, science correspondent Miles O’Brien takes us to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where local officials are trying to strike a balance between greener, renewable energy and a potential impact on the critical fishing industry in that region.

Read the full article at PBS