Saving Seafood

Trump signs executive order halting wind power leases. What it means

January 23, 2025 — President Donald Trump’s executive order to halt new federal offshore wind leasing will likely not stop the ongoing developments off the coast of Massachusetts, but may prevent any new projects.

The executive order suspends the sale of offshore wind leases and the permitting for such projects from all areas of the U.S. outer continental shelf, pending an environmental and economic review.

But the order does not put a stop to wind farms that have already gone through the federal permitting process.

Read the full article at Cape Cod Times

Nantucket community and offshore wind regulator meeting cancelled. Volume of emails cited.

January 23, 2025 — Amid a backdrop of the Trump administration’s attacks on wind and solar power, federal regulators have once again put off a public meeting with Nantucket leaders focused on the Vineyard Wind 1 project, this time indefinitely.

Select Board Chairwoman Brooke Mohr in an email acknowledged that “it’s not hard to imagine” that the changeover from the Biden Administration to the Trump Administration could be at play but emphasized “that is purely speculation on my part.”

The postponed meeting comes at a time that President Trump has ordered a halt to new wind projects pending “immediate review of federal wind leasing and permitting practices.” The moratorium applies only to “any new or renewed wind energy leasing” on the Outer Continental Shelf, but the order also notes that the secretary of the interior, in consultation with the attorney general, will “conduct a comprehensive review of the ecological, economic, and environmental necessity of terminating or amending any existing wind energy leases, identifying any legal bases for such removal, and submit a report with recommendations to the president.”

Read the full article at Cape Cod Times

Golden, Van Drew introduce bill to guarantee critical Gulf of Maine fishing waters are protected from offshore wind development

January 23, 2025 — Congressmen Jared Golden (ME-02) and Jeff Van Drew (NJ-02) today introduced the bipartisan Northern Fisheries Heritage Protection Act of 2025. The bill would prohibit commercial offshore wind energy development in Lobster Management Area 1 (LMA1), which includes nearly 14,000 square miles of nearshore fishing waters from the U.S.-Canada maritime border to the north shore of Cape Cod in Massachusetts.

“Maine’s fishermen deserve to know that waters critical to our historic, high-value industry are protected — not by promises, but by federal law,” Golden said. “Protecting the bountiful natural resources of LMA1 from development will preserve our way of life, local economies and communities. President Trump’s recent Executive Order provides some measure of reprieve, but we need a more permanent solution.”

Earlier this week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order temporarily halting all leasing of federal waters for offshore wind development — a reversal of former President Joseph Biden’s pro-offshore wind regime. The Northern Heritage Fisheries Protection Act of 2025 would take protections for Maine’s fisheries out of the discretion of the chief executive and codify it into law.

“Offshore wind projects are a direct threat to our fisheries, marine ecosystems, and coastal communities,” said Van Drew, the lead Republican co-sponsor of the bill. “They are expensive, destructive and outright unwanted. I am proud to be a co-lead on this bill to permanently protect these vital waters and ensure they are never sacrificed to these reckless developments.”

Read the full article at WAGM

The limits to Trump’s offshore energy plans

January 22, 2025 — Donald Trump has been president for little more than a day, but his vision for the federal coastline is already clear: less wind, more oil.

One of Trump’s first actions after his inauguration Monday was to halt all new leases and permits for offshore wind projects and to direct the incoming Interior secretary to review existing permits to determine if they warrant “terminating or amending.”

He also issued an executive order that aims to revoke an eleventh-hour bid by the Biden administration to block offshore oil and gas drilling within 625 million acres of federal waters, including in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic, the Pacific and most of the Bering Sea in Alaska.

But what Trump can and can’t do offshore could be limited by legal challenges — and political realities.

Questions remain about whether Trump can legally rescind Biden’s withdrawal of federal waters from oil and gas leasing, for example. At least one federal court has found that Congress would have to act to restore areas that a president has withdrawn under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.

Read the full article at Politico 

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