Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Nantucket session with offshore wind regulators moved due to ‘volume of questions’

January 15, 2025 — The volume of questions about an offshore wind turbine blade folding over and sending broken pieces into the ocean, which occurred on July 13 south of the Islands, has led to a rescheduled meeting between Nantucket leaders and federal regulators.

The public information meeting the leaders were planning to host next week with the regulators about the Vineyard Wind 1 project and the blade failure has been moved to Feb. 3.

In December, the Nantucket Select Board invited the public to submit questions they had about the project for representatives of the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. An announcement from the Select Board this week about the meeting date change explained, “due to the volume of questions received by BSEE, more time was needed to process and prepare responses adequately.”

The Zoom meeting, previously slated for Jan. 14, will convene at 5 p.m. on Feb. 3.

Read the full article at Cape Cod Times

Republican drafting anti-offshore wind order with Trump

January 14, 2025 — New Jersey Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew, one of Congress’ most vocal foes of offshore wind development, is working on an executive order with President-elect Donald Trump to stop the practice.

The order would halt federal work on offshore wind along the East Coast. Van Drew and other critics have accused the industry of harming whales and fishing. NJ Spotlight News was first to report the development.

“The Biden administration’s reckless green agenda put politics over people, and that ends now,” Van Drew said in a statement. “President Trump is committed to stopping these harmful projects and is taking decisive action.”

Read the full article at E&E News

How a Maryland county tried to sway a Delaware vote on offshore wind

January 14, 2025 — In early December, a new website appeared online urging Sussex County, Delaware, residents to contact their council members and tell them to deny a permit for a proposed offshore wind farm.

The website – StopOffshoreWind.com – materialized days before the Sussex County Council’s vote on the permit, which would allow for construction of an electrical substation needed by US Wind Inc. to build its massive ocean-based power plant.

StopOffshoreWind.com included the names and contact information for council members, as well as an online message form under the phrase, “Write a Letter to your Sussex County Councilmembers.”

“Tell the Sussex County Council to DENY this permit,” it said.

What it did not show were the names of the people or companies that had created and funded it.

Spotlight Delaware has since learned that the website was the creation of a coalition of Maryland wind farm opponents, funded and led by the government of Worcester County, home to Ocean City, a summer beach hotspot that is the primary driver of the county’s tourism-centered economy.

And, many of the local business owners there believe the sight of windmills 15 miles offshore would make the beaches less attractive to tourists.

Zach Bankert, executive director of the Ocean City Development Corp., said his group had led local opposition to offshore wind development in past years. But, with a staff of just two employees, he said the operation was too small to be effective, which is why the county’s Office of Tourism and Economic Development recently took it over.

Read the full article at Maryland Matters

Ill wind: Trump 2.0 reverses course on offshore turbines

January 14, 2025 — Facing the existential threat of a new Trump administration, offshore wind power advocates are mounting their own post-election campaign to win critical support from Republican and Democratic lawmakers and governors.

President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign promise to make sure offshore wind development “ends on day one” of his new administration has cast a pall over the fledgling U.S. wind industry – raising the prospect of the incoming administration cutting off environmental and construction permits and blocking any future offshore wind lease sales by the Bureau of Offshore Energy Management (BOEM).

Wind industry advocates are scrambling to make their case that offshore wind is good for Trump’s stated goals of rebuilding U.S. industry and jobs. Since 2016, wind power companies have invested in purpose-built, U.S.-flagged vessels and have helped promote the use of hybrid power over traditional diesel propulsion – a shift that is being adopted by ferry and passenger vessel operators too.

Pitching U.S. offshore wind power as a bipartisan success story, Liz Burdock, president and CEO of the industry group Oceantic Network, credits Trump’s first administration for helping to get the industry off the ground.

“When President-elect Donald Trump takes office, he will re-inherit an industry he kickstarted. Eight years ago, the first Trump administration began implementing the fundamental framework for our modern offshore wind industry and oversaw three federal lease sales that netted $456 million for the federal treasury,” Burdock wrote in the Nov. 22 issue of Recharge.

Read the full article at WorkBoat

BOEM Begins Environmental Review of Proposed Vineyard Mid-Atlantic Offshore Wind Energy Project

January 14, 2025 — Today, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced it will initiate an environmental review of Vineyard Mid-Atlantic’s proposed offshore wind energy project, located in the federal waters offshore New York and New Jersey.

The Vineyard Mid-Atlantic Offshore Wind project is in one of the six lease areas within the New York Bight Wind Energy Area, and as proposed would generate over 2,000 megawatts of electricity from up to 117 wind turbines, enough to power more than 700,000 homes. The proposal includes up to two potential export cable corridors that would make landfall at Rockaway Beach, Atlantic Beach, or Jones Beach, New York.

On January 15, BOEM will publish a Notice of Intent (NOI) to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Construction and Operations Plan (COP) submitted by Vineyard Mid-Atlantic, LLC. This is the 14th COP review initiated under the Biden-Harris administration.

“Our environmental reviews are essential for helping us identify, evaluate, and address the possible impacts of our renewable energy efforts on other uses of the offshore environment and marine ecosystems,” said Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Elizabeth Klein. “Continued engagement with Tribes, local communities, ocean users, and others is critical for ensuring future decisions are well-informed.”

The 43,056-acre lease area is located in federal waters approximately, 20 miles offshore New York and 36 miles offshore New Jersey. See BOEM’s website for a map of the lease area.

Read the full article at BOEM

Supreme Court Declines To Hear Challenge Of Vineyard Wind

January 13, 2025 — The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the challenge of Vineyard Wind brought by the Nantucket-based nonprofit ACK For Whales, effectively ending the group’s legal effort to stop or delay the wind farm under construction southwest of the island.

The effort to bring its case to the nation’s highest court was a long shot – as the U.S. Supreme Court accepts only 2 percent of the 7,000 cases brought to it each year – and on Monday the court informed ACK For Whales that it had declined to hear its petition for certiorari.

ACK For Whales had alleged that the federal agencies that permitted the Vineyard Wind project violated the Endangered Species Act by concluding that the project’s construction likely would not jeopardize the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. The group also asserted that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management had violated the National Environmental Policy Act by relying on a “flawed analysis” from the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Two lower courts had previously dismissed the case, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Monday brings ACK For Whales’ legal challenge of the Vineyard Wind project to an end.

Read the full article at the Nantucket Current

‘Driving whales crazy.’ Mixed reactions as Trump links wind energy to whale deaths

January 10, 2025 — Debate surrounding the recent deaths of several large whales that have washed up on New England shores ramped up this week after President-elect Donald Trump linked the fatalities to offshore wind development.

During a Jan. 7 press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump called wind energy “the most expensive energy ever” and likened wind turbines to “dropping garbage in a field.” He specifically pointed to the Massachusetts area, and said, “the windmills are driving the whales crazy, obviously.” Trump vowed to halt offshore wind development.

His comments have drawn mixed reactions. Scientists and environmental organizations emphasized that there is no current evidence linking wind farms to whale deaths, while some activists welcomed Trump’s support for halting offshore wind development amid ongoing concerns about its impact on marine life.

“Offshore wind is dangerous to marine life, very costly to build (and) maintain, and will harm the critically endangered North Atlantic right whales,” Vallorie Oliver, president of ACK for Whales, a Nantucket-based grassroots group, said.

Read the full article at Cape Cod Times

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