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VIRGINIA: After Siemens turbine plant cancellation, can Hampton Roads still be a hub for offshore wind?

November 21, 2023 — Detroit is known for automobile manufacturing. San Francisco is known for technology. Hampton Roads hopes to be known for offshore wind development.

In 2020, the Virginia Clean Economy Act, an ambitious roadmap to decarbonize the state’s electric grid by midcentury, was signed into law with provisions encouraging the development of thousands of megawatts of offshore wind. The landmark legislation paved the way for the approval of Dominion Energy’s 176-turbine Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind farm off Virginia Beach earlier this year. That project in turn raised hopes that the industry would bring economic stimulation to the region. In October 2021, the announcement that the Spanish-German engineering company Siemens Gamesa had chosen Portsmouth for the site of the East Coast’s first turbine manufacturing facility seemed to bear out those hopes.

“Today’s announcement will help position Hampton Roads as the offshore wind development hub for the nation,” said Dominion CEO, President and Chair Bob Blue at the time.

However, on Nov. 10, Siemens Gamesa announced it was canceling those plans, saying that “development milestones to establish the facility could not be met.”

The loss of the turbine manufacturing facility, with its associated jobs and tax revenue, is a blow to Hampton Roads, one that has raised questions about whether the region’s dreams of becoming an offshore wind hub can be realized. But Dominion, local officials and environmental and economic development groups aren’t giving up hope: They say the ongoing work on CVOW, the region’s maritime infrastructure and workforce and burgeoning nationwide calls for a more renewables-focused grid keep them optimistic that Hampton Roads can still be an East Coast

Read the full article at the Virginia Mercury

MASSACHUSETTS: Turbines are in the water – offshore wind has arrived in Massachusetts

November 20, 2023 — After more than two decades of proposing and planning, offshore wind is up and spinning. Fifteen miles off the coast of Matha’s Vineyard, the Vineyard Wind Project is installing 62 massive turbines. They estimate that this $4 billion project will power 400,000 homes and businesses. But some environmentalists believe the project could cause more harm than good.

Offshore wind is making a splash in New England, but it isn’t new to the Bay State. For more than two decades, plans for offshore wind turbines have been under discussion. Nearly 20 years after developers proposed the Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound – a project that was eventually scrapped – offshore wind is up and spinning.

NEW JERSEY: Attentive Energy investing $10.6M in supply chain, startups to help New Jersey offshore wind

November 20, 2023 — A company proposing an offshore wind farm in New Jersey is investing $10.6 million in projects to help grow the industry’s supply chain and support ocean-based technology startup businesses in the state.

Attentive Energy is one of four projects proposed in New Jersey’s most recent round of solicitations for offshore wind projects. It is a collaboration between Houston-based Total Energies, and Corio Generation, with offices in Boston and London.

During an event at Brookdale Community College, Damian Bednarz, the company’s president, said Attentive Energy will invest $6.6 million in SeaAhead. That is a company that supports ocean-related technology firms; it will establish a business incubator program in New Jersey.

Read the full article the Associated Press

MAINE: Maine leaders urge federal government to ban offshore wind in fishing area

November 20, 2023 — Maine leaders are urging federal energy regulators not to pursue offshore wind projects in fertile fishing grounds off the state’s coastline.

In a letter to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Gov. Janet Mills and the state’s congressional delegation members call on the agency to remove a section of state waters — included in the so-called Lobster Management Area 1 — from the federal government’s plans to develop offshore wind.

“Given the importance of these fishing grounds to Maine’s fishing industry, the significant feedback that your agency has already received, and the recently passed Maine law that disincentivizes development in LMA 1, it is clear these areas are inappropriate for inclusion in the final Wind Energy Area,” they wrote.

Read the full article at the Center Square

US Likely To Miss Offshore Wind Energy Goal By 50% As Major Projects Stall

November 20, 2023 — The United States is likely to miss its offshore wind installation targets by nearly 50%, experts estimate, as a string of delays and cancellations in large-scale offshore wind projects continues to grow.

Energy sector analyst Bloomberg NEF’s outlook for U.S. offshore wind capacity by 2030 fell by 29% between its June and November reports, now predicting 16.4 GW of cumulative offshore wind capacity by the end of the decade.

In September, the Biden Administration reiterated its goal of achieving 30 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030.

“President Biden has set an ambitious goal of achieving 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030 – and I am more confident than ever that we will meet it,” Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said in a Department of Energy press release.

In recent weeks, the U.S. wind sector has faced a series of headwinds, namely high interest rates, rising costs for wind turbine components and local opposition to large-scale offshore wind projects.

Read the full article at IBT

Maine governor, congressional delegation want vital fishing area free of offshore wind development

November 18, 2023 — Despite last month’s proposed map for offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine being dubbed a “victory” for the fishing industry, Maine’s congressional delegation and Gov. Janet Mills are calling for more.

Along with Mills, U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King along with Reps. Jared Golden and Chellie Pingree sent a letter urging that all of a vital fishing area be excluded from the project, according to a news release from Golden’s office. The map proposed last month by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management excluded most, but not all, of Lobster Management Area 1.

“We want to ensure that any areas leased in the Gulf of Maine avoid and at the very least minimize impacts to the fishing industry whenever possible,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter.

Read the full article at Rhode Island Current

Could wind turbines affect right whales’ food source? More study needed, says new report

November 16, 2023 — More research is needed to determine whether offshore wind turbines will affect North Atlantic right whales’ food source around the Nantucket Shoals, scientists have concluded in a new report. And it may be challenging to divorce those impacts from those brought by climate change.

Right whales, a critically endangered species, are using the shoals, an area of shallow waters, for breeding and feeding. The shoals lie east of several planned offshore wind projects. Last year, federal scientists expressed concern that wind projects could disrupt right whales’ food supply: dense collections of tiny organisms, called zooplankton.

In response, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the lead agency on offshore wind development, convened an independent committee in April to evaluate what impacts wind turbines might have on the shoals and the whales’ prey.

However, due to knowledge gaps and a lack of research on this side of the Atlantic, the answers remain elusive.

“The studies available about the effects and implications of wind farms on local ecosystems are not sufficient to say with absolute certainty whether the turbines would have effects,” said committee chair Eileen Hofmann, a professor at Old Dominion University and chair of the scientific committee, which worked under the National Academies of Sciences.

Read the full article at the New Bedford Light

As the US begins to build offshore wind farms, scientists say many questions remain about impacts on the oceans and marine life

November 16, 2023 — As renewable energy production expands across the U.S., the environmental impacts of these new sources are receiving increased attention. In a recent report, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine examined whether and how constructing offshore wind farms in the Nantucket Shoals region, southeast of Massachusetts, could affect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. The Conversation asked marine scientists Erin L. Meyer-Gutbrod, Douglas Nowacek, Eileen E. Hofmann and Josh Kohut, all of whom served on the study committee, to explain the report’s key findings.

Why did this study focus on such a specific site?

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which is part of the U.S. Department of the Interior and regulates offshore energy production, asked the National Academies to conduct this study. Regulators wanted to better understand how installing and operating offshore, fixed-bottom wind turbine generators would affect physical oceanographic processes, such as tides, waves and currents, and in turn how those changes could affect the ecosystem.

For example, offshore wind turbines decrease wind speeds behind them, and the presence of their structures makes the water more turbulent. These changes could affect ocean currents, surface wind speeds and other factors that influence hydrodynamics – the structure and movement of the water around the turbines.

The Nantucket Shoals region is a large, shallow area in the Atlantic that extends south of Cape Cod. Our report focused on it because this is the first large-scale offshore wind farm area in the U.S., and the region has been included in several recent hydrodynamic modeling studies.

Why are North Atlantic right whales of special concern?

North Atlantic right whales are critically endangered. Scientists estimate that the population is down to just 356 animals.

This species was almost driven to extinction after centuries of commercial whaling. Even though the whales have been protected from whaling for almost 100 years, they are still accidentally killed when they are hit by vessels or become entangled in fishing gear. These two sources of mortality are responsible for most documented juvenile and adult right whale deaths over the past 25 years.

There are options for protecting them, such as slowing or rerouting boats, shortening the fishing season or even modifying fishing gear to make it more whale-safe. However, regulators need to know where the whales are going to be and when they’ll be there, so they can put those protections in place.

It’s usually hard to figure out where whales are – they have a large habitat and spend most of their time below the surface of the water, where observers can’t see them. Recently it’s gotten even harder, because climate change is causing whales to shift where and when they feed.

Currently, right whales are spending more time around the Nantucket Shoals region. This means scientists and managers need to make sure that wind energy development in the area is happening safely and that threats to whales in the area are reduced.

Read the full article at The Conversation

VIRGINIA: Siemens Gamesa scraps plans to build blades for offshore wind turbines on Virginia’s coast

November 13, 2023 — A European company has canceled plans to build blades for offshore wind turbines in coastal Virginia, the latest sign of struggle within the U.S.’s nascent industry.

Siemens Gamesa confirmed the cancellation in a statement Friday. The company’s proposed $200 million factory at the Port of Virginia in Portsmouth would have created more than 300 jobs and aided the state in its aspirations to become a hub for offshore wind projects as part of the nation’s efforts to tackle climate change.

The change in plans by the Spain-based firm comes at a time when inflation, raised interest rates and supply chain issues have cut into the profitability — and even the viability — of some offshore wind projects in the U.S.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

NEW JERSEY: With Ørsted’s offshore wind farms stopped, what will happen to $300M in guarantees?

November 13, 2023 — An offshore wind developer that is backing out of deals to build windfarms off New Jersey is under new criticism as the company attempts to pull out of paying millions of dollars in performance guarantees.

Denmark-based Ørsted announced last month it would not build two wind energy farms off the southern New Jersey coastline, despite initial approvals from New Jersey and federal officials.

This month, the company sent a letter to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities stating it withdrawing a Compliance Filing on its Ocean Wind 1 project. The company had deposited $200 million into escrow for the project, which would be put toward manufacturing facilities for turbine monopiles in Paulsboro, Gloucester County, according to board documents.

Read the full article at app.