Saving Seafood

RHODE ISLAND: Decision delayed on major offshore wind farm as McKee takes closer interest

April 28, 2021 — At the request of Gov. Dan McKee, state coastal regulators are putting off a key decision on the South Fork Wind Farm to give the project developers more time to reach a compensation agreement with the fishing industry.

Pressure is growing for Orsted and Eversource to find common ground with fishermen, as McKee’s office has signaled a closer interest in the talks.

The Coastal Resources Management Council was expected to consider a federal consistency certification at its meeting this week for the wind farm of up to 15 turbines that would be built in Rhode Island Sound and supply power to Long Island. Agency staff were preparing to present a recommendation to the council at the April 29 meeting and a vote could have taken place that night.

But last Friday, with the possibility that staff could recommend a denial of the certification, Orsted, the Danish company developing the project with utility Eversource, agreed to stay the proceedings and extend the deadline for a decision from May 12 to June 1. A vote is now set for May 25, according to Orsted.

“We fully support the CRMC’s new timeline, as it allows for more dialogue and opportunity to work collectively to reach a fair mitigation agreement and advance this important offshore wind project,” said Orsted spokeswoman Meaghan Wims.

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

New Jersey offshore wind to connect at 2 former power plants onshore

April 12, 2021 — A large offshore wind energy project planned off the coast of New Jersey will connect onshore to two former power plants, and cables will run under two of the state’s most popular beaches, officials said Tuesday.

At a virtual public hearing on the Ocean Wind project planned by Orsted, the Danish wind energy developer, and PSEG, a New Jersey utility company, officials revealed that the project would connect to the electric grid at decommissioned power plants in Ocean and Cape May Counties.

The northern connection would be at the former Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey Township; the southern connection would be at the former B.L. England plant in Upper Township.

Cables running from the wind farm, to be located between 15 and 27 miles (24 to 43 kilometers) off the coast of Atlantic City, would come ashore at one of three potential locations in Ocean City: 5th Street, 13th Street or 35th Street. They would then run under the roadway along Roosevelt Boulevard out to Upper Township and the former power plant, which closed in 2019.

Scot Mackey, of the Garden State Seafood Association, said the fishing community’s input was not incorporated into final plans for the project.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC News

Biden administration aims for vast offshore wind expansion

March 30, 2021 — Top Biden administration officials on Monday outlined new goals for building 30,000 megawatts off offshore wind energy generation by 2030, including another wind energy area covering nearly 800,000 acres in the New York Bight.

The Bureau of Offshore Energy Management announced it will initiate its environmental impact statement process for the Ocean Wind project, Ørsted’s planned 1,100 MW array off New Jersey, as the agency recently started an EIS for the South Fork wind development south of Rhode Island and just weeks after finalizing its analysis for the 804 MW Vineyard Wind project in southern New England waters.

Environmental reviews could start for as many as 10 more projects this year, the agency said.

The waters between the New Jersey beaches and Long Island already include federal lease held by developers intending to build the Atlantic Shores turbine array off Atlantic City, and the Empire Wind project close to the New York Harbor approaches. BOEM has been gauging potential developer interest in areas farther offshore and said it will now begin an environmental assessment of those areas.

With 20 million inhabitants in the region, it’s “the largest population center in the United States” with an enormous energy market, said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who spoke of the opportunity for U.S. shipbuilders and other industries in a new energy sector.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

More delays for wind farm off Delaware coast

March 15, 2021 — For the second time in less than a year, and this time for much longer, Ørsted is pushing back the expected commissioning date for its Skipjack Wind Farm off the coast of Delaware.

In an announcement Feb. 26, Brady Walker, Mid-Atlantic market manager for Ørsted, said the Danish company had notified the Maryland Public Service Commission that it now expects Skipjack to achieve commercial operations by the end of the second quarter of 2026.

In April 2020, Ørsted announced it was pushing the anticipated completion date for the 120-megawatt-producing wind farm back one year, from 2022 to 2023. At the time, company officials said the reasons for that delay were because of COVID and the federal government taking longer to analyze the impacts from the build-out of U.S. offshore wind projects.

Read the full story at the Cape Gazette

As Ørsted seeks interconnection site, Skipjack delayed until 2026

March 3, 2021 — Ørsted, the Danish multinational green energy company developing the Skipjack Wind Farm off Delaware’s coast, has delayed plans to bring its wind turbines online until the second quarter of 2026, four years after what it originally proposed.

The delay comes as Ørsted is continuing to search for sites for Skipjack’s transmission cable to make landfall and to build an interconnection site. Ørsted originally planned to do so at Fenwick Island State Park under a memorandum of understanding with the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.

Those plans were ultimately dropped last July, after it became clear that construction would disturb wetlands at the state park.

“Ørsted is using the additional time created to further investigate, evaluate, and optimize critical components of the project like cable landfall and interconnection,” said Brady Walker, Ørsted’s Mid-Atlantic market manager. “We are committed to a transparent process in making this important decision and will engage stakeholders at all levels before any final decisions are made.”

Read the full story at the Delaware Business Times

Offshore Wind Developer Signs Job Training Agreement with 6 NJ Labor Unions

February 24, 2021 — One of the prospective developers of offshore wind farms miles from the New Jersey coast said it would train members of local labor unions to aid in the construction of its clean energy project.

The agreement between the wind developer Atlantic Shores and the six unions in New Jersey was described as the first of its kind in the United States, where a nascent offshore wind industry is hopeful for groundbreakings in the next few years of the Biden administration.

The developer, which is a joint venture between two foreign energy companies Shell New Energies and EDF Renewables, would train the members of the New Jersey unions in order to have the workers construct what would be dozens of wind turbines between 10-20 miles off the shore between Atlantic City and Long Beach Island.

Joris Veldhoven, commercial director for Atlantic Shores, said in an interview Tuesday that the developer plans to begin training union members so they will be ready for a construction phase that hopefully begins in 2024. Atlantic Shores has yet to receive formal approval from the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities. That could come in June when the state will announce a second approval for an offshore wind farm. Another developer, Ørsted, won the first approval late in 2018.

Read the full story at NBC Philadelphia

Traffic lane, habitat alternatives for South Fork offshore wind project

February 18, 2021 — A draft environmental impact statement for the South Fork Wind Farm project off southern New England includes alternatives for a fishing vessel traffic lane and protecting ocean bottom habitat for fisheries.

Both could potentially displace preferred locations for up to 15 wind turbines of 6 to 12 megawatt capacity planned by project partners Ørsted and Eversource. The federal Bureau of Offshore Energy Management is considering the companies’ construction and operations plan for the project 19 miles southeast of Block Island, R.I., and 35 miles east of Montauk, N.Y.

The developers propose to lay out the array with one nautical mile spacing between turbine towers, consistent with plans for adjacent wind power developments south of Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

A series of three virtual public hearings online followed BOEM’s January release of the draft environmental statement. The last proceeding Feb. 16 attracted project supporters from New York State labor, industry and environmental groups, and skeptics of its potential effects on the region’s fisheries, which the impact statement broadly summarizes as “negligible to moderate.”

A public comment period on the document is open until Feb. 22. Agency officials say they anticipate publishing a final version in August 2021, followed by a record of decision in October that could clear the way toward construction.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Some worry N.J. offshore wind project will affect views, fishing, and tourism

February 16, 2021 — A half-dozen people stood on an oceanfront deck with a million-dollar view, asking a hundred questions about what’s on the horizon. On this clear, winter afternoon, it was the Atlantic as far as the eye can see.

By 2024, nearly 100 of the world’s largest, most powerful wind turbines could be spinning 15 miles off the coast. With blades attached, the windmills could reach as high and wide as 850 feet, and simulations created by Orsted, the Danish-based power company behind the Ocean Wind project, show the turbines are visible, faintly, from beaches in Brigantine, Avalon, Stone Harbor, and Joe and Tricia Conte’s deck in Ocean City.

“Some of those pictures are deceptive, though, because they were taken on a cloudy day,” Joe Conte said. “The pictures they have of a clear day give you a much more vivid view of what it’s really going to look like.”

The project will power a half-million homes in New Jersey and, according to Orsted, create thousands of jobs, both offshore and on during the initial construction process, which could begin this year. It has the support of both Gov. Phil Murphy, who has actively pushed for alternative energy in the state, and President Joe Biden.

Murphy’s office did not return a request for comment for this story, but Jeff Tittel, director of the Sierra Club’s New Jersey chapter, said there was talk of offshore oil wells under past administrations.

Read the full story at The Philadelphia Inquirer

NEW YORK: Cable Landing Simmers While Federal Wind Farm Review Is Just Heating Up

February 11, 2021 — While the public debate over the South Fork Wind Farm cable landing in Wainscott has shifted to court filings and the village incorporation effort, the public stage of the federal application for the wind farm itself is just getting started — and advocates for local fishermen say that the most important aspects of the project have yet to be settled.

Whether turbine foundations will be hammered into the heart of one of the most fabled fishing regions off Montauk and whether commercial fishermen will be compensated for lost fishing time or damaged fishing gear are both still up in the air as the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and a dozen other federal agencies continue their examination of the project as proposed by Danish wind farm developer Ørsted and it’s American domestic partner, Eversource.

The federal regulators on Tuesday held the first of three public comment sessions on the project’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement, the 800-plus-page main outline of the project and the various considerations for its design. The will be additional comment sessions on February 11 and 16. The meetings are being held via Zoom and registration and the full details of the project are available at www.boem.gov/renewable-energy/south-fork-wind-farm-virtual-meetings.

Read the full story at the Sag Harbor Express