Saving Seafood

Newport, Block Island preservation groups seek relief from wind farms’ anticipated ‘adverse effects’

December 2, 2023 — The Newport Cliff Walk, meandering 3½ miles along the Rhode Island coast, draws more than 1.2 million visitors each year, according to the city of Newport. This scenic trail links the city’s Gilded Age mansions on one side, and on the other, seafaring ships gracefully navigate rows of tall whitecaps.

The spot is perfect for unforgettable snapshots, but those memories could soon include clusters of offshore wind turbines.

On Nov. 22, Cultural Heritage Partners filed four separate federal complaints alleging that the industrialization of the ocean near Newport and Block Island could cost the communities billions of dollars in lost tourism revenue during the wind farms’ 30-year project life.

Read the full article at the Boston Globe

Protecting Newport’s Gilded Age mansions takes a new turn: Suing the feds.

December 2, 2023 — Trudy Coxe relentlessly pursued funding to preserve Newport’s acclaimed mansions. She helped bring the city’s “Gilded Age” icons before a national TV audience through the HBO series by the same name.

Now, she’s turning that single-minded focus to protecting Newport’s cultural and historic identity, including its iconic landmarks, against the perceived threat of offshore wind.

The  25-year leader of the Preservation Society of Newport County is defending the decision to wage a court battle against the federal agency that approved offshore wind farms off Rhode Island’s coastline.

“I would think people would be lauding us for stepping forward,” she said in an interview on Tuesday. “We are the only entity that has stepped forward and said, ‘the law is the law and we should follow the law.’ I can’t believe there isn’t general respect for that.”

The appeal filed the day before Thanksgiving in federal court in the District of Columbia alleges that Newport’s historic coastal landmarks will be ruined by the silhouettes of hundreds of skyscraper-size turbines off the coastline. The lawsuit, along with a nearly identical complaint filed separately by the Southeast Lighthouse Foundation of Block Island, argues that the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) broke federal laws in approving wind farms without properly accounting for or mitigating against the harms to historic sites. U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and the U.S. Department of the Interior are also named as defendants.

Read the full article at Whats Ups Newp

The ocean is a noisy place for sea life. What 2 years of listening tells us about offshore wind.

November 30, 2023 — The ocean can be a loud place — and that’s partly because of boats.

Fishing trawlers traverse the open water for their seasonal catch. Massive cargo ships travel to the ports with a boundless assortment of goods. And take your pick of recreational boats, from lumbering passenger cruises to high-speed motorboats.

Additional noise is expected from vessels building offshore wind farms up and down the Atlantic Coast from Maine to Virginia, as the budding industry seeks to reach a bevy of clean energy goals.

Read the full article at NJ.com

Newport Mansion Owner Sues Federal Government Over Wind Farm It Says Will Block Ocean Views

November 29, 2023 — Two Rhode Island preservation groups have filed lawsuits against the federal government claiming it conducted “sham regulatory reviews” when granting the permits of two offshore wind farm projects they say would block the ocean views of the historic Newport mansions.

Several groups in support of offshore wind signed a letter Monday in response to the lawsuit saying the environmental benefits of clean wind energy outweigh the visual impacts, the Providence Journal reported. Groups like the Green Energy Consumers Alliance and Climate Action Rhode Island accused the plaintiffs of exercising “energy privilege” by valuing views “over the civilization-level threat faced by our region and world from the climate crisis.”

Read the full article at Forbes

 

RI organizations file lawsuits against CT offshore wind projects

November 28, 2023 — Two Rhode Island heritage organizations have filed lawsuits over two offshore wind projects they say will spoil their “viewsheds.”

The Preservation Society of Newport and The Southeast Lighthouse Foundation say the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) ignored the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

Greg Werkheiser is a partner with the law firm Cultural Heritage Partners. He said they are not against clean energy, just the way it’s being done.

Read the full article at WSHU

RHODE ISLAND: Block Island and Newport preservationists fight to protect Rhode Island from massive wind farms

November 28, 2023 — A month ago, after Cape May County, New Jersey, filed a federal lawsuit to stop two immense Ørsted wind farms, the company responded by announcing they were canceling their plans, leaving unfinished construction, citing their inability to predict financial pressures on the project, not widespread community opposition. Two senior staff have left the company, and management is being shifted as one project after another face an insecure future.

Yesterday, Rhode Island took a double-barreled action with federal appeals being filed for both Block Island and Newport to stop two massive offshore wind farms by Ørsted, saying they would “despoil the viewsheds for at least the next 30 years”.

Without intervention, Block Island’s “quaint” set of five wind turbines, the first offshore windfarm in America, could grow to as many as 599 turbines, and of massively increased height – 800 feet tall – taller than an 80-story skyscraper.

In Newport, the group of massive turbines could be built as close as 12 miles from Newport’s coast, visible from the shore.

The Rhode Island actions are being managed by Cultural Heritage Partners, a law firm specializing in historic preservation and cultural heritage law.

Block Island Historic Presesrvation Group’s actions

The Southeast Lighthouse Foundation (SELF), which owns and manages Block Island’s most iconic historic structure and New England’s highest lighthouse, appealed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM)’s permitting decisions for two of the massive offshore wind farms planned by Danish-owned energy behemoth Ørsted on November 22, 2023.

Block Island is awakening to the reality that the number of visible turbines off its coast will soon grow from five to as many as 599 and despoil the Island’s treasured views for the next thirty years. The historic Southeast Lighthouse is a National Historic Landmark–honored by the Nation’s highest designation of historic importance reserved for the likes of the Lincoln Memorial and the Golden Gate Bridge. A world-renowned symbol of Block Island’s rich cultural heritage, the Southeast Light is among numerous historic resources that the government has failed to protect from what BOEM itself concedes are significant negative impacts of the industrialization of the seascape.

Read the full article at

‘Maybe we were too optimistic’: Ørsted executive talks about offshore wind struggles

November 28, 2023 — It has been a hard year for Ørsted. High interest rates and supply chain bottlenecks have rocked the world’s largest offshore wind developer.

Earlier this month, Ørsted wrote down the value of its U.S. portfolio by $4 billion after canceling two projects off New Jersey. The company’s stock price has lost more than half its value since the start of the year, and it recently announced a reshuffling of its management team, with the departure of the company’s chief financial officer and chief operations officer.

David Hardy is one executive who has weathered the storm. He has led the Danish-based company’s operations in the U.S. since 2020. Hardy sat down for an interview Monday with E&E News at a critical time for the company.

Ørsted is preparing to submit a new bid for Sunrise Wind in New York after regulators there rejected the company’s request to charge consumers more for the 924-megawatt project’s electricity. In New Jersey, the company is bracing for a fight over $300 million in performance guarantees related to its Ocean Wind I project. And its partner, Eversource Energy, is looking to sell its stake in three offshore wind projects.

If that wasn’t enough, Ørsted has also been in talks with the White House over implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act. Hardy has called on the administration to revise its rules governing a domestic content bonus in a bid to make it easier for offshore wind developers to qualify for tax credits.

Last week, Ørsted announced the installation of the first turbine for South Fork Wind, a 132-MW project serving New York. Hardy said it could begin generating power by the end of this week. Ørsted has also begun work for Revolution Wind, a 704-MW project serving Connecticut and Rhode Island.

The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

It’s obviously been a difficult year. What lessons do you take from South Fork and Revolution moving forward — not just for Ørsted but for offshore wind in the U.S.?

Well, first off, these to me are bright spots in the industry right now. It’s easy to kind of be focused on the negatives. But here’s two projects that are in construction and moving along and, between the two of them, are over 800 megawatts of offshore wind, which will be powering over 400,000 homes in New England and New York with clean power. They’re also projects that are the foundation for the supply chain, the foundation for the operation and maintenance hub, the foundation for current and future union jobs, and all kinds of other things that the industry promised. And so I think our perseverance and commitment to getting these projects built says a lot. They’re still not amazing financial return projects, but we’ve been able to work through all the challenges in the industry … to take a positive final investment decision and progress these projects.

Read the full article at E&E News

NEW YORK: Huge Turbines Will Soon Bring First Offshore Wind Power to New Yorkers

November 28, 2023 — The pier on the Connecticut coast is filled with so many massive oddities that it could be mistaken for the set of a sci-fi movie. Sword-shaped blades as long as a football field lie stacked along one edge, while towering yellow and green cranes hoist giant steel cylinders to stand like rockets on a launchpad.

It is a launching point, not for spacecraft, but for the first wind turbines being built to turn ocean wind into electricity for New Yorkers. Crews of union workers in New London, Conn., are preparing parts of 12 of the gargantuan fans before shipping them out for final assembly 15 miles offshore.

“They’re sort of space-stationesque,” said Christine Cohen, a Democratic state senator who toured the assembly site last week. “Seeing the components up close, it’s just breathtaking how immense they are.”

Read the full article at the New York Times

Can electronic tags fill knowledge gaps between offshore wind and fisheries?

November 28, 2023 — The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will be assisting a first-of-its-kind study investigating fish behavior in response to offshore wind turbine installation and related construction activities in the Atlantic Ocean.

Using fine-scale positioning technology, the study will be conducted at the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) research site, approximately 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia. Developed and operated by Dominion Energy, CVOW is the second offshore wind farm operating in the United States with two existing turbines and 176 in the works.

Read the full article at Global Seafood Alliance

NOAA experts: Listen early for whales before wind project work

November 28, 2023 — Astudy by scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recommends at least 24 hours of acoustic monitoring for detecting endangered North Atlantic right whales before construction work at offshore wind energy construction sites, to reduce danger to the marine mammals from the loud undersea noise of pile driving.

Visual monitoring around work sites – with trained observers on vessels watching for whales – is one protocol with wind power companies and government regulators. Another is passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) which uses sensors to pick up and record whales’ vocalizations underwater.

Federal monitoring requirements now call for 1 hour of acoustic monitoring for whale activity before pile driving for turbine foundations. It is an “intense, impulsive noise that radiates into the surrounding environment as turbines are hammered into the sea floor,” the paper notes.

The study by a team at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center, published Nov. 3 in the ICES Journal of Marine Science, calls for pushing out acoustic monitoring at least 24 hours ahead of construction schedules. Wind power turbines are now being erected on the Vineyard Wind and South Fork project sites off southern New England.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman