Saving Seafood

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

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