Saving Seafood

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

Maine offshore wind auction draws a few takers

October 31, 2024 — Two companies have won development rights to construct floating offshore wind turbines off Maine’s coastline, but lackluster interest in the bids highlights the impact of inflation and other economic challenges that have slowed the industry.

On Tuesday, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced that the federal government’s “first-ever” wind energy lease sale resulted in nearly $22 million in lease payments for four parcels off the coast of Maine and Massachusetts.

Connecticut-based Avangrid Renewables submitted winning bids of $4.9 million and $6.2 million for two parcels about 30 miles off the coast of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. In comparison, Invenergy NE Offshore Wind won a $4.9 million bid to develop wind energy more than 46 miles off Maine’s coastline and another project off Cape Cod for $5.8 million. Combined, the companies leased nearly 440,000 acres of federal waters.

However, only half of the areas offered for lease by the federal agency were bid on, far less than offshore wind leases in previous rounds. In 2022, developers bid $4.37 billion on six lease parcels off the coast of New York and another $757 million on areas off California’s shores, according to agency data.

Read the full article at The Center Square

BOEM Announces POWERON Acoustic Monitoring Program for Offshore Wind Projects

October 31, 2024 — The following was released by BOEM:

Today, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced the establishment of the Partnership for an Offshore Wind Energy Regional Observation Network (POWERON), an innovative public-private partnership between BOEM and offshore wind lessees designed to maximize the quality and consistency of scientific data collected in lease areas while conserving and optimizing resources. This partnership is the latest way that the Biden-Harris administration is harnessing technology to responsibly advance offshore wind development in a way that protects biodiversity.

The POWERON initiative expands BOEM’s recently established Passive Acoustic Monitoring Network in the Atlantic Ocean, which the bureau launched with $5.8 million of funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, to study the potential impacts of offshore wind facility operations on baleen whales.

“As we work to meet the Biden-Harris administration’s goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, we know that we can achieve far more working together than we can working alone,” said Elizabeth Klein, BOEM director. “POWERON will maximize the quality and consistency of marine species monitoring data by pooling resources among partners, processing data in a consistent manner, openly sharing information, and contributing to the growing body of scientific knowledge on the marine environment.”

“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 Dr. 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.”

BOEM requires offshore wind lessees to conduct long-term passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) on their lease areas to measure sound levels and monitor for the presence of vocalizing marine species like whales and dolphins. With this new program, lessees can make annual contributions to POWERON to have their long-term PAM requirements fulfilled by an approved third party.

Conducting monitoring through POWERON has multiple benefits, including:

  • Data consistency – Research will use similar instrument types, consistent calibration, and standard methods for data processing, which will lead to more robust results.
  • Conserving/optimizing resources – POWERON can pool resources among partners, such as refurbishing instruments on neighboring lease areas on the same expedition to save on the costs of vessel time.
  • Comprehensive data sets – Data collected from different locations and across multiple areas will be processed together to tell a more complete story about the presence, behavior, and movements of whales through these areas.

Annual POWERON contributions will cover the cost of instrumentation, vessel time, data processing, and analysis conducted by authorized third parties. Contributions will also cover the costs of archiving data at a public passive acoustic data repository hosted by the National Centers for Environmental Information.

BOEM has an interagency agreement with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center to conduct PAM in the Atlantic Ocean off southern New England. In addition, BOEM recently signed a contract with the Regional Wildlife Science Collaborative to conduct other POWERON monitoring along the eastern seaboard.

To date, three offshore wind energy projects have opted-in to POWERON: Revolution Wind and South Fork Wind (both Ørsted projects), and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (a Dominion Energy project).

— BOEM —

The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) manages development of U.S. Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) energy, mineral, and geological resources in an environmentally and economically responsible way.

US Gulf of Maine offshore wind auction attracts scant interest

October 30, 2024 — A U.S. auction of offshore wind development rights in the Gulf of Maine on Tuesday drew bids for only half of the eight offered leases, for a total of just $21.9 million in high bids, in the latest sign of deep industry malaise.

The sale was a stark display of the lack of industry appetite for new investment after a year of high-profile setbacks that include canceled projects, two shelved lease sales in Oregon and the Gulf of Mexico and a construction accident at the nation’s first major offshore wind project.

It also demonstrated a reluctance to bet big money on projects that will require floating wind turbines, an emerging technology required in very deep waters like those of the Gulf of Maine.

After just one round of bidding, four of eight offered leases sold to developers Avangrid (AGR.N), opens new tab and Invenergy, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said. They were among 14 companies that had been qualified to bid at the sale.

Read the full article at Reuters