Saving Seafood

DELAWARE: Carney, DNREC agree to $128M in wind-power benefits

January 10, 2024 — The plot thickens on offshore wind-power generation in Delaware as outgoing Gov. John Carney and the state’s environmental control agency agreed this week to permit offshore wind-power cabling through Delaware state parks, including Delaware Seashore State Park north of Bethany Beach.

Carney and DNREC officials have signed agreements with U.S. Wind to provide renewable energy, community and lease benefits to Delaware and its residents — worth more than $128 million — as the company builds two proposed offshore wind-power projects already approved by the federal government.

The Caesar Rodney Institute (CRI), joining offshore wind-power opponents, has filed an appeal of the decision of DNREC officials to permit U.S. Wind to “bring transmission lines from a proposed offshore wind farm under the Indian River Bay and through wetlands.”

Read the full article at Costal Point

Trump eyes an end to new windmill production under second term, says they are ‘driving the whales crazy’

January 9, 2025 —  President-elect Donald Trump is envisioning a future without new wind energy projects under his administration, arguing that this power source is economically impractical and is causing harm to marine life.

Trump has long criticized using wind farms as a main form of energy production, but his latest remarks suggest that his incoming administration could place major restrictions on the future production of new wind-powered energy projects.

“It’s the most expensive energy there is. It’s many, many times more expensive than clean natural gas,” Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday. “So we’re going to try and have a policy where no windmills are being built.”

The federal government currently offers several different ways to obtain subsidies for windmill production, which Trump pointed to as one of the main issues with the energy source.

Read the full article at Fox News

MASSACHUSETTS: Nantucket plans public webinar on Vineyard Wind turbine failure

January 9, 2025 — The Town of Nantucket and federal officials are set to hold a public information session to address questions about a wind turbine blade failure that happened last summer.

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and the Nantucket Select Board will host a Zoom webinar on Feb. 3, 2025, at 5 p.m. to discuss the July 13, 2024, Vineyard Wind turbine blade incident.

Read the full article at WUN

Trump Again Knocks Wind Energy, Subsidies

January 8, 2025 — It was a little after 11 o’clock Tuesday morning when Gov. Maura Healey said on GBH Radio that she hoped President-elect Donald Trump would not do much that would disrupt Massachusetts’ pursuit of clean energy.

An hour later, Trump put that notion to rest when he doubled down on his intention of setting “a policy where no windmills are being built” and pointed a finger at Massachusetts during a press conference in Florida.

“They’re dangerous. You see what’s happening up in the Massachusetts area with the whales, where they had two whales wash ashore in, I think, a 17-year period and now they had 14 this season. The windmills are driving the whales crazy, obviously,” Trump said as he opposed both onshore and offshore wind generation as costly, polluting, and harmful to the environment.

There has been an “unprecedented” number of whale strandings along the south shore of Massachusetts this year, officials from the Plymouth-based nonprofit Whale and Dolphin Conservation said. A female humpback whale washed up on Rexhame Beach in Marshfield the day after Christmas, the group said — the sixth large whale carcass to wash up between Weymouth and Plymouth since July.

An official from the group Green Oceans told WJAR last week that the juvenile humpback whale that was stranded along Richmond Pond Beach in Westport was “the 13th whale that has washed up dead in the past three weeks from Massachusetts to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.”

Read the full article at the Nantucket Current

President-elect Donald Trump says Massachusetts wind farms are ‘driving whales crazy’

January 8, 2025 — President-elect Donald Trump says wind farms off the Massachusetts coast are “driving the whales crazy,” and his administration will look to enact a policy that halts the development of the “garbage” energy source.

“They are dangerous,” Trump said of wind farms during a lengthy news conference Tuesday, touching on his central priorities. “You see what’s happening up in the Massachusetts area with the whales … The windmills are driving the whales crazy, obviously.”

Throughout his campaign and since winning reelection in November, Trump vowed that his administration would cut down on wind farms. He doubled down on that stance Tuesday, saying no windmills will be built when he regains office on Jan. 20.

The comments came after President Biden’s announcement Monday of a ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling in most U.S. coastal waters, a move looked at as a last-minute effort to block a potential expansion under the incoming administration.

Read the full article at the Boston Herald

Can fishermen fish inside offshore wind farms?

January 7, 2025 — In Europe, where offshore wind turbines have operated for a decade or more, some governments ban fishermen from entering wind farms. Others limit the activity to only “passive” fishing (crab pots, for example). But in the U.S., fishermen will be allowed to fish in the wind farms once they’re up and operating. That doesn’t mean they will.

Fishermen’s decisions will depend on several factors: their type of gear (are they towing a net or deploying fixed gear, like lobster traps?); weather conditions; and where the fish are. In addition to safety risks, some fishermen are concerned that wind farms will impact the distribution and behavior of fish stocks at the turbine or regional scale.

“From the fishing industry perspective, the vast majority of the gear types we work with are not feeling that they would be able to safely operate within a wind farm,” said Lane Johnston, manager at the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA). The organization advocates on behalf of fishermen, and is engaged in a lawsuit against an offshore wind project.

Turbines are spaced about one nautical mile apart. Though that seems far away on a small vessel, Johnston said fishing nets can extend far from the boats and shift in currents. Additionally, the vessel will want to follow where the fish are: “You’re not always fishing in a straight line between turbine A and B.”

The safety concern of navigating within the wind arrays is also compounded by potential turbine impacts on vessel radar.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

Fishermen may not like offshore wind, but some work for it

January 6, 2025 — A fishing boat named Saints and Angels sat docked at Leonard’s Wharf after a recent fishing trip. Ice covered some of the deck as a man cut into the boat’s steel side to create a door for scientific buoy deployment. Nearby vessels were being worked on, some with anti-offshore-wind flags whipping in the wind. Just the American flag flew on the Saints as Tony Alvernaz climbed up to the wheelhouse.

The blue-hulled scalloper, built in 1997, started out as a tender boat, transporting loads of fish between vessels and processing facilities. After a few years catching tuna, the vessel brought in over a million pounds of scallops over its life. But times, regulations and fish stocks have changed. The bivalves are still relatively lucrative, but vessels have spent more and more days sitting at the docks while expenses have risen.

So two years ago, Alvernaz, the part-owner of six scallopers, put aside his personal feelings and did something he never thought he’d do: He signed up to work for an offshore wind company.

In about two years, Vineyard Wind has paid about $8 million to local fishermen and vessel owners — many from New Bedford, like Alvernaz — to provide safety and security work during the wind farm’s construction (a figure that includes fuel costs).

About 45 fishing boats have worked as safety vessels, guard vessels, science vessels and scout vessels on the project, which remains under construction 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. This could mean sitting at a site 24/7, guarding scour protection before the monopiles go in, identifying and transmitting locations of fishing gear to be avoided, or moving through the wind area looking out for and alerting other vessels of activity.

It’s an example of collaboration and co-existence amid what has been a contentious relationship between the two industries.

Read the full story at The New Bedford Light

‘Much uncertainty.’ Cape, Mass. leaders see political shifts that may slow offshore wind

January 6, 2025 — The future of offshore wind is at a pivotal point this year, marked by a mix of determination and uncertainty.

On Dec. 20, the Biden-Harris administration granted final approval for SouthCoast Wind, the eleventh offshore wind project it has approved. With up to 141 turbines and the potential to generate 2.4 gigawatts of electricity, the SouthCoast Wind project, in a federal lease area south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, is a key part of the region’s clean energy goals steadfastly promoted by Gov. Maura Healey, and many legislators and environmental advocates.

But the incoming Trump-Vance administration could dramatically alter the regulatory and financial landscape for offshore wind. Their less favorable stance toward the industry raises concerns about the pace of future projects and the viability of less mature proposals. This is especially true for the Gulf of Maine lease areas, where the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has provisionally awarded four of eight lease areas to Avangrid Renewables and Invenergy NE Offshore Wind, including due east of Cape Cod.

Local concerns and political shifts

Those who have voiced concerns about offshore development, meanwhile, say a cooler federal stance on offshore wind would be welcome. Many critics, particularly on Cape Cod, say the offshore wind industry is advancing too quickly without adequate consultation with those who will be most affected — local residents, fishermen, and coastal communities.

Susanne Conley, a Barnstable resident who’s a leader of the Save Greater Dowses Beach citizens group, advocates for a reevaluation of offshore wind policy. While she supports the transition to renewable energy, she believes the Biden-Harris offshore wind program should be halted, particularly in light of what she perceives as insufficient baseline environmental data “to understand the effect of these massive projects on the fisheries, on all ocean life, and on coastal communities.”

Read the full story at The Standard-Times

Vineyard Wind meets one 2024 deadline, misses another

January 3, 2024 — Vineyard Wind made mixed progress on its wind farm at the end of the year, meeting one deadline while missing another. It installed the last of 62 foundations for its wind turbines, a new map shows, pounding the remaining pieces into the seafloor before a New Year deadline, when pile driving is restricted through May. But the project missed its former goal of being fully operational by 2024, and has quite a bit of work ahead in 2025.

With the foundations finished, all but three are now connected to yellow transition pieces, which will allow tower installation to proceed, according to the Dec. 30 map. But the same map shows the project still has to install 30 towers and generators, and about 120 blades. That means dozens more barge transits in and out of the Port of New Bedford with the major turbine components on board.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

2024 in review: Major milestones and epic failures mark offshore wind industry

January 2, 2024 — 2024 was going to be the year when the U.S. made a small but significant dent in reaching its goals of bringing offshore wind power to the nation’s electric grid.

Offshore wind did reach major milestones in 2024, with “steel in the water” at four projects. But due to an unexpected failure at sea off the Massachusetts coast, the country remains under one gigawatt of operating offshore wind power — a long way from its 2030 goal.

The expected 800-megawatt contribution from Vineyard Wind 1 didn’t happen, in large part due to a catastrophic blade failure over the summer that made headlines and brought the 62-turbine project and its partial power generation to a halt.

Despite this incident — and the re-election of Donald Trump, a vocal critic of offshore wind — the industry celebrated breakthroughs and earned significant investments this year, both locally and nationally. In Massachusetts, officials remain bullish.

Vineyard Wind turbine blade fails

Months after celebrating first power, Vineyard Wind 1 came to a halt in July when a blade that was undergoing testing snapped offshore, sending foam and debris to coastal towns.

The federal government for months suspended most construction and operations, significantly stalling construction at the site, which was supposed to be completed in 2024. The Light visited Vineyard Wind by boat on Nov. 20 and found that only a third of the planned turbines were completed. Vineyard Wind removed blades from at least two turbines, but was permitted to install one set of blades in December.

The federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), continues to investigate the incident and has yet to release its findings to the public. It has not yet allowed Vineyard Wind 1 to resume generating power.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light