Saving Seafood

Against the Wind: Questions About BOEM’s Fisheries Analysis

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced the final sale notice for the Gulf of Maine offshore wind project lease areas on Sept. 16. The agency shrunk the overall area by 120,000 acres, removing significant portions of the two northern leases off the coast of Maine, carving a transit lane between the two farthest-offshore southern areas, and shaving small portions off other southern areas.

In an email to the Independent, BOEM spokeswoman Alison Ferris said her agency made the changes to avoid North Atlantic right whale areas, establish a barrier around Jeffrey’s Bank Habitat Management Area off Maine, and respond to feedback from at least three different fisheries working groups.

This decision did little to satisfy Jerry Leeman, a Harpswell, Maine-based former commercial fisherman and founder of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA), an organization that opposes the Gulf of Maine offshore wind area.

NEFSA “remains steadfast in its opposition,” wrote Leeman in a press release, “despite the shrinking of the original areas.”

Four days earlier, on Sept. 12, Leeman gave a talk he called a “wind energy informational” at the Truro Public Library. Leeman drew on his own experience and described what he sees as BOEM’s lack of good baseline data for the offshore wind project.

“From a sea captain’s perspective, if you don’t know where you are, then surely you don’t know where you’re going,” Leeman told his audience.

Read the full article at The Provincetown Independent 

Gulf of Maine offshore wind leases to be auctioned in October

September 17, 2024 — The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will hold an auction for offshore wind leases in the Gulf of Maine in late October, it announced Monday.

Eight lease areas off the shores of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Maine are up for grabs. These lease areas were reduced by 12% – or more than 116,000 acres – from the proposed sale notice, issued in April, in response to concerns from interests including the fishing industry, BOEM said in its final sale notice set to be published in the Federal Register on Tuesday.

Winning a bid “does not authorize the construction and operations of an offshore wind facility,” BOEM said in a news release Monday. Instead, that bidder can then submit “project-specific plans,” which will be subject to “environmental, technical, and public reviews” before BOEM decides whether to approve it, the bureau said.

Developing offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine has been a political debate in New Hampshire. Republican Gov. Chris Sununu has embraced the energy opportunity, while his pick to replace him, former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, has said she doesn’t think the projects are right for the state. Democratic candidate Joyce Craig, the former Manchester mayor, is for them.

Read the full article at nhpr

Fishers want ‘incredibly important’ Georges Bank protected against offshore wind development

September 17, 2024 — As Nova Scotia rushes to establish an offshore wind industry, some fishers are calling for explicit protection for the rich fishing ground on Georges Bank.

The cabinet minister in charge of developing renewable energy projects says he will keep turbines off the bank, but not by changing a piece of legislation that is now moving through Province House.

Ian McIsaac, president of the Seafood Producers Association of Nova Scotia, brought his concerns to a legislature committee Monday as it reviews a new bill that, if passed into law, would enable offshore wind development.

McIsaac said Bill 471 doesn’t update the Georges Bank moratorium that’s been in place against offshore petroleum development since the 1980s.

“We feel this is a technical error,” he said.

“In the past, whenever the moratorium has come up for consideration, it has been subject to intense study of the environmental and socio-economic impacts of change, to determine if, in fact, such changes are appropriate.”

Read the full article at CBC News

NEW JERSEY: New Jersey’s Wind Farm Future Hits More Road Blocks with Supply Chain and Safety Issues

September 16, 2024 — The Leading Light Wind offshore wind project, planned for development off the coast of Long Beach Island, NJ, has hit a snag.

The project, managed by Invenergy and energyRe, has faced difficulties securing a turbine blade supplier, a critical component for building the wind farm. Initially, the project aimed to use GE Vernova’s 18 MW Haliade-X turbines, but GE unexpectedly withdrew from providing them. This left the developers scrambling to find alternatives​.

Efforts to source turbines from Siemens Gamesa also encountered problems, as the company significantly raised its prices, while Vestas, another major manufacturer, was deemed unsuitable for the project due to technical and financial constraints.

Read the full article at Shore News Network

Biden-Harris Administration Announces First Offshore Wind Lease Sale in the Gulf of Maine

September 16, 2024 — The following was released by BOEM:

The Department of the Interior today announced it will hold an offshore wind energy lease sale on Oct. 29, 2024, for eight areas on the Outer Continental Shelf off Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. If fully developed, these areas have a potential capacity of approximately 13 gigawatts of clean offshore wind energy, which could power more than 4.5 million homes. The announcement follows the Department’s recent announcement that it has approved more than 15 gigawatts of clean energy from offshore wind projects since the start of the Biden-Harris administration—equivalent to half of the capacity needed to achieve President Biden’s goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030.  

Since the start of the Biden-Harris administration, the Department has held five offshore wind lease sales, including a record-breaking sale offshore New York and sales offshore the Pacific, Central Atlantic, and Gulf of Mexico, and approved 10 commercial-scale offshore wind projects. Earlier this year, Secretary Haaland announced a schedule of potential additional lease sales through 2028. 

 

NEW YORK: NYSERDA head gets update on state’s largest offshore wind farm at Port of Coeymans

September 16, 2024 — Officials gathered Thursday at the Port of Coeymans to showcase the significant progress of construction work for New York’s largest offshore wind farm.

Groundbreaking took place in July for Sunrise Wind, a 924-megawatt MW offshore wind farm located roughly 30 miles off the coast of Long Island. The project, first announced in 2019, is piloted by Ørsted, the largest energy company in Denmark.

It’s expected to come online in 2026. Officials say once in operation, Sunrise Wind will represent the largest infusion of renewable offshore wind energy from a single project in U.S. history.

President and CEO of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority Doreen Harris says every resident will benefit from the wind farm project. She adds that 84 platforms comprising more than half of the so- called advanced foundation components for Sunrise Wind are being built at the Coeymans offshore wind hub.

Read the full article at WAMC

MAINE: What Maine hopes to learn from its offshore wind research array

September 13, 2024 — Maine has big goals for adding offshore wind to its energy repertoire with hopes that it will not only be a friendlier option for the planet, but help revitalize communities through its economic and labor opportunities. But before those benefits can be realized, there are still a number of outstanding questions.

Last month, the state and the federal government reached an agreement on a lease for an offshore wind research array that will sit about 30 miles southeast of Portland. It will take up about 15 square miles in federal waters and include up to 12 floating turbines that will help inform how floating offshore wind operates and interacts with ecosystems in the water.

Just last week, the Federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management released its final environmental assessment that showed leasing activities such as surveys and installing meteorological buoys in the Gulf of Maine won’t harm the surrounding environment.

And while that assessment did not look at the impact of the offshore turbines, the goal of the research array is to better understand how they will interact with the Gulf of Maine ecosystems.

“The only way we really can answer those questions is to have this type of a program and this kind of a unique in-water opportunity to actually answer those questions,” said Stephanie Watson, offshore wind program manager for the state.

Research has been a throughline of Maine’s offshore wind efforts, Watson said, especially when thinking about the pioneering research and development from the University of Maine for semi-submersible floating turbines.

The next step in that process is to understand how to responsibly deploy the budding industry and actually transmit the energy back to shore, all while reducing impacts to the fisheries that are vital to the economy and culture of Maine, Watson said.

Read the full article at Maine Morning Star

TEXAS: BOEM To Close TX Offshore Wind Public Comment

September 13, 2024 — Stakeholders and much of the Lone Star State’s fishing industry are holding their breath Thursday as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management closes the public comment period at midnight on some contentious potential offshore wind projects.

About 10 parties have commented on the federal BOEM registry as of Thursday afternoon.

In its comments, the Southern Shrimping Alliance (SSA) appeared alarmed at the danger it believes this offshore wind project could pose to a major Texas industry. Over 34 meticulously cited pages, it made its case, concluding, “We are regrettably compelled to call on BOEM to reject Hecate’s unsolicited request for [Wind Energy Area] D to be considered for leasing and development due, among other reasons, to an unacceptably high degree of conflict with shrimp fishing operations.”

SSA then enumerated three concerns, which include fragile wind turbines breaking up into the environment after a level 5 hurricane, a “lack of sufficient scientific research to correctly understand a range of potentially irreversible ecological impacts of offshore wind energy development and operations,” and concerns about turbines disturbing marine radar.

SSA explained its concern in a previous email exchange with The Dallas Express.

“SSA collaborates constructively with BOEM and [National Centers for Coastal Science] to deconflict offshore wind energy development in the Gulf with the shrimp industry, but the unsolicited Hecate project would rob the shrimp fleet of access to valuable fishing grounds at a time when the industry is facing an existential crisis due to shrimp imports,” said John Williams, executive director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance.

Read the full article at The Dallas Express

Broken Blades, Angry Fishermen and Rising Costs Slow Offshore Wind

September 12, 2024 — The collapse of a giant wind turbine blade off the Massachusetts coast confirmed Peter Kaizer’s worst fears about the dangers a new clean energy business could pose to fishermen like him.

Jagged pieces of fiberglass and other materials from the shattered blade drifted with the tide, forcing officials to close beaches on Nantucket and leaving Mr. Kaizer worried about the threat the fragments might pose to his vessel and other fishing boats, especially at night when the debris would be harder to avoid.

“All these small boats could be subject to damage,” Mr. Kaizer said. “Everyone wants this green legacy, but at the cost of what?”

The blade, which was more than 300 feet long, failed in July, but the repercussions are still unfolding at the $4 billion project that it came from — Vineyard Wind 1. Developers had hoped to finish the project this summer, making it the first large-scale wind farm completed in U.S. waters, but now that goal will take a lot longer than expected.

The blade failure is the latest problem slowing the fledgling U.S. offshore wind industry, which the Biden administration and East Coast states are counting on to deliver emission-free energy to millions of people from Virginia to Maine. President Biden and governors of those states had hoped to follow the examples of European countries like Britain and Denmark, which have plunked down thousands of wind turbines around the North Sea.

But the American offshore wind business has struggled to get going because of cost overruns, delays in issuing permits, and opposition from local residents and fishing groups. Several large projects were canceled or postponed even before the blade failure in Massachusetts because their costs increased sharply and developers did not anticipate supply chain problems and higher interest rates.

Read the full article at The New York Times

Offshore oil braces as Francine approaches Gulf Coast

September 11, 2024 — Roughly a quarter of the nation’s offshore oil production in the Gulf of Mexico is shut down Tuesday as Tropical Storm Francine approaches the Gulf Coast, according to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.

Francine, which is barreling northeast in the western Gulf of Mexico, is predicted to become a hurricane by landfall in Louisiana on Wednesday, with heavy rain and storm surges, according to NOAA. But the storm has already driven oil and gas workers out of its path, according to BSEE.

As of Tuesday, offshore oil and gas workers have been evacuated from 130 production platforms, or about 35 percent of the manned platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, where most U.S. offshore oil and gas is produced, according to BSEE.

Read the full article at E&E News