Saving Seafood

Wind industry pitching business benefits to Trump

November 8, 2024 — Representatives of the offshore wind industry in public remarks on Wednesday congratulated President-elect Donald Trump, appealing to the former president — who previously vowed to halt offshore development through executive power — with the economic opportunities the nascent industry can offer to the American economy.

At the same time, stocks for several renewable energy companies dropped, with reports companies worry about future tariffs under Trump that could significantly increase project costs.

The Light previously reported that a second Trump administration could slow progress for the industry, which gained momentum under the Biden administration with project installation and several lease sales on both coasts. This potential slowing down could be felt in the Port of New Bedford, which is slated to support several projects in the coming years (and decades) in both the construction of and long-term operations and maintenance of the wind farms.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

4 Offshore Wind Leases Are Sold

November 7, 2024 — Two companies have won leases for four of the eight available wind energy areas that were selected by the Interior Dept.’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) in May.

This is the government’s sixth offshore wind lease sale and the first commercial sale for floating offshore wind on the U.S. Atlantic coast, according to BOEM’s announcement. The leased areas, the agency says, have the potential to power more than 2.3 million homes.

The lease sales, made on Oct. 29, do not authorize the construction or operation of wind energy facilities. Instead, they give the two companies the right to submit plans. They also lay out a number of requirements that will shape any proposals.

Two of the leases went to American-owned Invenergy NE Offshore Wind, LLC and two to Avangrid Renewables, LLC, a partial subsidiary of the Spanish energy giant Iberdrola. Each of the four lease areas was purchased for the minimum bid of $50 per acre, totaling $21,954,800 for just under 440,000 acres.

Read the full article at the The Provincetown Independent 

Feds Expand Passive Acoustic Monitoring for Offshore Wind

November 7, 2024 — The Regional Wildlife Science Collaborative for Offshore Wind and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are teaming up with the federal government to implement its passive acoustic monitoring program for offshore wind observation.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management launched the Partnership for an Offshore Wind Energy Observation Network (POWERON) Oct. 29. RWSC is slated to receive $4 million over the next three years to lead the program.

“Because the construction and operation of offshore wind facilities will occur within protected species habitats, having a robust monitoring program is critical for understanding the potential impacts offshore wind development might have on these species,” said Jill Lewandowski, chief of BOEM’s division of environmental assessment and director of BOEM’s center for marine acoustics. “One effective method for long-term monitoring is passive acoustics, because it allows us to track vocalizing species and changes to marine soundscapes.”

Read the full article at The Sand Paper

Richmond firm to oversee fishermen compensation related to offshore wind farms

November 6, 2024 — Richmond claims resolution firm BrownGreer PLC and London’s The Carbon Trust have been tapped to design and roll out a regional fisheries mitigation program on the East Coast.

The program is aimed at providing financial compensation to the commercial and recreational for-hire fishing industries related to the impacts of new offshore wind farms.

BrownGreer and The Carbon Trust will work with 11 East Coast states and their respective fishing industry communities on the program. The groups have established a design oversight committee and a for-hire committee to provide advice and guidance from respective parties on the program.

The involved states include Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina.

Read the full article at Richmond Inno

Trump reversal looms for offshore wind

November 6, 2024 — Former President Donald Trump’s impending 2025 return to the White House sent shock waves through the U.S. offshore wind industry and was hailed by its foes, who look forward to Trump’s campaign promise to shut down projects “on day one.”

“The incoming administration has a historic opportunity to save American workers from foreign developers, reinvigorate iconic coastal towns, and improve America’s food security,” said Jerry Leeman, CEO of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association, on Wednesday morning.

 Trump’s victory could bring a sharp reversal of the wind industry’s fortunes, as happened immediately after President Joe Biden took office in January 2021.

“They destroy everything, they’re horrible, the most expensive energy there is,” Trump said at a May 11 rally in Wildwood, N.J., where he pledged to halt turbine projects. “They ruin the environment, they kill the birds, they kill the whales.”

Despite Trump’s campaign rhetoric against them, wind power advocates tried to make a case for continuation.

Read the full article at WorkBoat

MASSACHUSETTS: Fishermen, fleet owners hope Trump helps their industry

November 6, 2024 — New Bedford fishermen fly many flags. There is the American flag; the skull and crossbones flag. There are flags expressing resistance to offshore wind development. And there are many — many — flags for former President Donald Trump.

But one flag is rarely hoisted on the New Bedford waterfront.

“I have yet to see a Harris-Walz flag on a fishing vessel,” said Drew Minkiewicz, an attorney representing the industry’s Sustainable Scalloping Fund.

The South Coast already has the densest concentration of Trump supporters in an otherwise deep blue state. But if a pollster were to survey a specific two-mile stretch of paved riverbank — the Port of New Bedford — they would find an especially vivid shade of red. Among New Bedford fishermen and fleet owners interviewed by The Light, there are three types of voters: those who strongly favor Trump; those who are skeptical but reluctantly favor Trump; and those who didn’t want to share their opinion.

Read the full article at the New Bedford Light

Menhaden Boats vs. Offshore Wind Industry: Omega Pushes for Ocean Buffer Zone

November 5, 2024 — They are two of the most controversial industries in the Chesapeake Bay region: commercial menhaden fishing and offshore wind development. A potential fight for space in the Atlantic Ocean may be brewing between the two.

Ocean Harvesters owns and operates nine large vessels for purse seine fishing, which run a nylon net through the water to scoop up menhaden, a small feeder fish. They also use spotter planes to follow the schools of menhaden up and down the mid-Atlantic coast. The menhaden are harvested exclusively for Omega Protein, a Canadian-owned seafood company running out of Reedville, Virginia. Omega processes the menhaden for fish oil, supplements, and animal feed.

As the federal government continues to expand the offshore wind industry off the mid-Atlantic coast, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has proposed a second offshore wind energy sale in the Central Atlantic Ocean region—in many of the places Ocean Harvesters operates. BOEM asked for public feedback on a 13,476,805-acre possible commercial wind energy site off the coast of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. It’s all part of the Biden-Harris administration’s goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030.

Read the full article at Chesapeake Bay Magazine 

US offshore wind developers look to higher prices amid election uncertainty

November 5, 2024 — Offshore wind energy developers already invested heavily in U.S. Atlantic waters are looking for new power purchase agreements with Northeast states, a quest complicated by uncertainty over the presidential election, the wind industry group Oceantic says in a new report.

“This slowdown comes at a critical time: states have reorganized their project portfolios after rising costs scrambled industry economics and are pushing hard for new offtake agreements,” Oceantic says in its recently published 2024 third quarter report. But the group says “the federal government has hit its stride in permitting advancements and has begun releasing Inflation Reduction Act funding. The market is primed for impressive growth.”

With support from the Biden administration, Northeast state governments and a determined permitting drive by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, BOEM has issued permits in various stages for 10 projects, according to the Oceantic report.

The group’s optimistic outlook came out just before a lackluster BOEM lease auction in the deepwater Gulf of Maine that drew $21.9 million in bids for four out of nine tracts offered. The prospects for developing arrays of floating wind turbines in the Northeast U.S. still depend on future development of suitable ports, infrastructure and technology.

Read the full article at WorkBoat

VIRGINIA: Dominion pauses offshore turbine installation for whale migration

November 5, 2024 — Dominion Energy has halted some construction on its massive offshore wind project off the coast of Virginia to allow endangered whales to migrate through the area in the winter.

The 176-turbine project will be the largest offshore wind farm in U.S. waters if completed on schedule in 2026, at a cost of nearly $10 billion. So far, Dominion Energy has installed 78 steel turbine foundations and four offshore substation foundations in its federal lease area, which is located 27 miles off the Virginia coast.

The Richmond utility has paused further foundation installation — which requires hammering steel structures into the seafloor — until May 1 to allow endangered North Atlantic right whales to migrate through the area with less noise disturbance.

Read the full article at E&E News

Ocean City expects BOEM lawsuit to cost up to $400K

November 1, 2024 — The Town of Ocean City and several local agencies and businesses are suing a federal agency over its approval process for the US Wind project off Maryland’s coast.

On Oct. 25, the Town of Ocean City announced it has retained Marzulla Law, LLC to file a lawsuit against the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). The lawsuit, which lists several co-plaintiffs, challenges the agency’s process for approving the US Wind project, which will involve the construction of 114, 938-foot-tall wind turbines roughly 10 miles off the coast of Ocean City.

“We have a responsibility to protect our ecosystem, our economy, view shed and our future,” Mayor Rick Meehan said in a news release. “For the past seven and half years we have been trying to work with the State of Maryland and the federal government to address our concerns with this project. All of our concerns were either ignored or considered insignificant. It is unfortunate that it has come to this, but the Town was left with no choice but to file suit against BOEM and challenge their favorable record of decision on the US Wind project.”

In September, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management released a favorable record of decision for the commercial-scale Maryland offshore wind project. The agency’s approval concluded a two-year National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process and set US Wind on a path to securing all of its remaining federal permits by the end of 2024.

Read the full article at The Dispatch