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Revolution Wind Facing Legal Turbulence

April 14, 2024 — As Danish Energy developer Ørsted is preparing to start work on its Revolution Wind offshore energy farm, a lawsuit may create problems before construction can get underway for the 65-turbine project that is expected to power homes in Connecticut and Rhode Island.

The agency that granted Ørsted the permit for the project, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), is being challenged in federal district court by two Rhode Island non-profits, The Preservation Society of Newport County and The Southeast Lighthouse Foundation, who claim the agency is flouting the law and ignoring the rights of historic organizations as well as indigenous tribes. The nonprofits also claim that the turbines will spoil the uncluttered view of the ocean for residents and tourists and as such threaten their communities’ livelihoods.

In November 2023 the law firm Cultural Heritage Partners filed lawsuits against BOEM for both South Fork Wind and Revolution Wind (appeals one and two), alleging that BOEM ignored the National Historic Preservation Act, which was legislation intended to preserve historic and archaeological sites in the United States. The act created the National Register of Historic Places, the list of National Historic Landmarks, and the State Historic Preservation Offices.

The lawsuits also allege that the BOEM ignored The National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to assess the environmental effects of their proposed actions prior to making decisions.

Read the full article at CT News Junkie

Feds Sign Off on New England Wind

April 9, 2024 — The nation’s eighth commercial-scale offshore wind energy project received federal approval earlier this month to move ahead with its plans for 129 turbines off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on April 2 greenlighted New England Wind for an area about 20 nautical miles south of the Island. The company expects it could generate up to 2,600 megawatts, the largest claim from any of the projects in the regulatory pipeline.

New England Wind now joins Vineyard Wind, Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind, South Fork Wind and others off the Mid-Atlantic states in approved projects.

Today, we celebrate the incredible progress being made toward achieving our goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030,” said Deb Haaland, the secretary of the Interior Department. “The New England Wind project will help lower consumer costs, combat climate change, create jobs to support families, and ensure economic opportunities are accessible to all communities.”

Read the full article at the Vineyard Gazette

Dead right whale off Virginia likely hit by ship, calf unlikely to survive

April 6, 2024 — According to a release from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service this week, an endangered North Atlantic right whale found dead off the Virginia Coast late last month was likely killed by a ship strike.

The release states that on April 2, experts conducted a necropsy on the adult female North Atlantic right whale #1950. “Preliminary findings included catastrophic injuries with a dislocation of the whale’s spine and fractures to all vertebrae in the lower back,” the release states. “These findings are consistent with blunt force trauma from a vessel strike prior to death. Additional histological and diagnostic testing of samples is pending. NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement is investigating this incident.”

Experts believe there are fewer than 360 North American right whales alive.

Read the full article at the News-Times

Offshore wind proposals help New Bedford focus its workforce development

April 5, 2024 — All news about offshore wind inevitably leads many in New Bedford back to the same question: So, will this bring more jobs?

That was true once again last week when three major wind developers submitted project bids that include significant investment into New Bedford’s port.

Projects from Vineyard Offshore and Avangrid, two of the developers, proposed New Bedford as the maintenance hub for wind farms that could eventually power hundreds of thousands of homes. Avangrid’s proposal would also bring a crane manufacturing facility to New Bedford, operated by the Danish company Liftra. It would be the first of its kind in the United States.

Though bids are still subject to negotiation and approval, New Bedford’s waterfront celebrated the announcements and signaled optimism for future employment.

“I think it’s incredibly good news for the port of New Bedford,” said Gordon Carr, executive director of the New Bedford Port Authority. “We’re very pleased with the investment into long-underutilized and brownfield properties.”

Carr said long-lasting jobs in manufacturing and in wind-farm operations and maintenance would make the offshore wind industry a sustainable employer in New Bedford. “The supply chain businesses that you see in more mature ports in Europe will start showing up in New Bedford,” he said. He added that new investment and development is going toward currently “underutilized” properties, meaning that “there’s no displacement of commercial fishing or processing along the waterfront.”

Read the full article at the New Bedford Light

Two Mass-based offshore wind farms clear biggest federal hurdle

April 4, 2024 –Two wind farms bidding for a contract in Massachusetts have cleared a major federal hurdle by receiving a favorable Record of Decision, a combined approval by agencies responsible for ocean energy, marine fisheries, and waterways engineering.

The projects are New England Wind 1 and 2, formerly called Park City Wind and Commonwealth Wind. Both are owned by Avangrid and are covered by a single decision.

Although the projects need additional federal permits, the decision announced Tuesday is considered the primary approval from the Biden administration, said Ken Kimmell, Avangrid’s chief development officer for offshore wind.

Read the full article at CAI

NEW JERSEY: Research Funding Addresses Offshore Wind Impact on Marine Ecosystems

April 4, 2024 — State environmental officials and utility regulators announced plans last week for their coordinated Offshore Wind Research and Monitoring Initiative, earmarking nearly $3.7 million in funding for research projects that will help ensure ecologically responsible development of offshore wind.

“As we continue to pursue a 100% clean energy economy by 2035, it’s imperative that we not only protect the interests of our ratepayers but safeguard the vitality of our marine ecosystems as well,” said Christine Guhl-Sadovy, president of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities. “The Research Monitoring Initiative is a crucial piece of our comprehensive efforts to responsibly develop New Jersey’s nation-leading offshore wind industry.”

The bulk of the monies awarded is to expand the bat and bird tracking system, according to N.J. Department of Environmental Protection and Board of Public Utilities officials. The collaborative effort is being led by the American Bird Conservancy with $1.3 million to grow the existing regional network, which tracks radio-tagged birds and bats, officials said.

“This funding will result in the deployment and maintenance of 10 new land based Motus receiver stations and 10 ocean buoy stations as part of the Motus Wildlife Tracking System in strategic locations throughout New Jersey and offshore,” state officials said. “The expansion will improve regional network coverage and provide baseline data to aid researchers in assessing species migration routes to and through New Jersey airspace and offshore wind lease areas.”

Read the full article at The Sand Paper

BOEM Approves Eighth Offshore Wind Farm Surpassing Third of U.S. Goal

April 3, 2024 — Regulatory efforts continue to accelerate pushing forward with the plans to develop the U.S. offshore wind energy sector. The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management approved the eighth large offshore wind farm for the U.S. surpassing 10 GW of approved capacity and the ability to power nearly 4 million homes.

The federal Record of Decision was issued to Avangrid, a member of the Iberdrola Group, for its two-phase New England Wind project. The decision comes a little over a month after BOEM completed the final Environmental Impact Statement for the project. The final step in the federal process is anticipated for July 2024 with the approval of its Construction and Operations Plan.

The proposal calls for the development of a project comprising 129 wind turbines, with up to five offshore export cables. They are proposing to bring the power ashore in Barnstable and Bristol County, Massachusetts. Last week, Avangrid submitted proposals in the coordinated wind solicitation between Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. The states plan to announce the selected projects in August with Avangrid highlighting that New England Wind is an advanced project and “shovel-ready” set to proceed quickly once the approvals are in place

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

Biden administration approves eighth US offshore wind project

April 2, 2024 — The U.S. Interior Department on Tuesday approved the country’s eighth commercial-scale offshore wind project, which will be built off the coast of Massachusetts, bringing online electricity to power more than 900,000 homes.

WHY IT IS IMPORTANT

The New England Wind Project approval brings the U.S. one-third of the way to President Joe Biden’s goal of permitting 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030 – a key part of the president’s climate change agenda.

Read the full article at Reuters

MASSACHUSETTS: The complicated truths about offshore wind and right whales

April 1, 2024 — By the time researchers found the dead whale on a Martha’s Vineyard beach, her jet-black skin was pockmarked by hungry seagulls, her baleen had been dislodged from her mouth, and thin rope was wrapped tightly—as it had been for 17 months—around the most narrow part of her tail.

Researchers quickly learned this was a 12-ton, 3-year-old female known as 5120, and that she was a North Atlantic right whale, a species with just about 360 members left.

A few weeks later, NOAA Fisheries announced that the entangling rope came from lobster fishing gear set in Maine state waters. The pain and discomfort of the entanglement likely affected 5120’s ability to swim and eat until finally, experts say, exhaustion or starvation probably killed her. A final cause of death is still pending.

The death of 5120 was devastating to right whale advocates, who know that losing a female doesn’t just mean losing one whale, but dozens of others that could have come from her future calves. For them, a death is often followed by a period of grief, and a renewed commitment to their work. And that might have been the end of 5120’s story.

But then came the online comments. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, across social media blamed offshore wind farms—the noise, electricity generated, and the mere presence of turbines. Along the way, the truth about 5120 became a non-concern.

In many cases, the rumors about offshore wind hurting and killing right whales are quite possibly spread from a place of concern, mistrust, or fear by well-meaning people who want to know our oceans are safe for marine mammals. But few people want that more than right whale scientists, who have dedicated their careers to saving a species that appears to be just a few decades from extinction. For many of them, talking about offshore wind has its own challenges, both because of the unknowns that come with a nascent industry and the knee-jerk reactions from people on all sides of the issue. So they say that yes, they’re uneasy about the potential threats of wind farms. But they agonize over the prospect of climate change destroying right whales’ shot at survival via their food web and ecosystem.

Read the full article at CAI

Offshore energy projects in New England will need years to power up

March 30, 2024 — Following more than a year of tumult in the industry that called into question the future of offshore wind in New England, Massachusetts and its southern neighbors on Wednesday got the menu of options for the next phase of clean energy development.

Massachusetts is seeking as much as 3,600 megawatts of offshore wind capacity in its fourth procurement round, its biggest procurement ever. And through a tri-state partnership with Rhode Island and Connecticut, Massachusetts and its neighbors are planning to coordinate their selections for a combined 6,000 MW of offshore wind energy capacity, leading to the possibility of multi-state projects although the newly submitted bids in the aggregate fall short of reaching that 6,000 MW threshold.

The latest round of bids comes after Massachusetts and other states in the Northeast went backwards on offshore wind over the last year and a half. Both projects selected in Massachusetts’ last procurement became much more expensive as inflation took off and the war in Ukraine snarled supply chains, and the developers behind them paid multi-million dollar fines to back out of the contracts they had agreed to. Both projects were re-bid in some form Wednesday, are are expected to come with a higher price to ratepayers.

By Wednesday’s noon deadline, Massachusetts received proposals from three developers who also submitted their proposals for the multi-state solicitation: Vineyard Offshore, Avangrid Renewables and SouthCoast Wind. At their maximum, the projects that were bid to Massachusetts on Wednesday would represent a cumulative 4,270 MW of capacity. The developer Orsted also bid a 1,184 MW project to Rhode Island and Connecticut, making approximately 5,454 MW available for the multi-state effort.

Read the full article at New England Public Media