Saving Seafood

New Jersey Revives Plan for Wind Farm Off Atlantic City Coast

April 13, 2018 — New Jersey lawmakers have revived a long-stalled plan to build a wind farm off the coast of Atlantic City.

Both houses of the state Legislature approved a bill Thursday allowing the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to reconsider a 24-megawatt project by Fishermen’s Energy LLC that was rejected under Republican Governor Chris Christie. The measure gives regulators 90 days to act on Fishermen’s application, which will be filed in May, the company’s secretary Paul Gallagher said.

While Christie shunned offshore wind, his Democratic successor Governor Phil Murphy has a goal for the state to have 3.5 gigawatts operating by 2030.

Read the full story at Bloomberg

 

Wind energy eyes restart in N.J. with Gov. Phil Murphy in office

March 8, 2018 — ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — After building New Jersey’s only wind-energy complex here in 2005, Paul J. Gallagher teamed up with a group of commercial fishermen on an even more ambitious project: building the nation’s first offshore wind farm within sight of the city’s famous Boardwalk.

Fishermen’s Energy LLC spent millions of dollars to obtain permits to build a demonstration project in state waters three miles off Atlantic City. But Gov. Chris Christie, concerned about the high costs of offshore wind, declined to create the rules needed to get the industry off the ground. Fishermen’s closed its office last year and let go its staff after a $47 million federal grant expired.

“Last year was hard,” said Gallagher, 67, Fishermen’s chief operating officer. “We just slowed to a crawl and cut a lot of expenses.”

The political winds have shifted in New Jersey, and Gov. Murphy’s inauguration in January has dramatically revived prospects for the state’s offshore wind industry, which advocates hope could supply up to a third of the state’s power by 2030.

The new governor signed an executive order directing the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to restart the process to create the rules governing the offshore wind market, which was authorized under the state’s landmark 2010 Offshore Wind Economic Development Act but stalled under Christie.

Gallagher has returned to the public circuit, selling Fishermen’s as the only fully permitted shovel-ready offshore project in New Jersey, though it lost the title as America’s first offshore commercial project to a Rhode Island wind farm in 2016.

“We’re maybe the only offshore project in the United States that can be built in the next 24 months,” Gallagher said.

Read the full story at the Philadelphia Inquirer

 

New Jersey: Gov. Murphy Fills Sails of Fishermen’s Energy Wind Farm

March 1, 2018 — A new governor with a commitment to renewable energy is good for the proponents of off-shore wind energy, but has Gov. Phil Murphy’s tenure come too late for Fishermen’s Energy, which has all the permits to install six Siemens 4-megawatt turbines at a site 4.5 kilometers off the Atlantic City coastline?

Fishermen’s Energy, a consortium of commercial and recreational fishermen, has been trying since 2005 to build a demonstration project of five wind turbines off Atlantic City. Over the years, it has jumped through all the federal and state regulation hoops and received all their permits. However, it became embroiled in a dispute with the N.J. Board of Public Utilities over whether the project was eligible to secure a “power offtake agreement” that would set up a system of Offshore Renewable Energy Certificates that could be sold to power companies to offset their carbon footprint, much as solar power SRECs do today.

The BPU denied the consortium’s OREC application twice. Although the Legislature got involved and passed two bills in 2016 that would have sidestepped the BPU’s negative stance, then-Gov. Chris Christie pocket-vetoed them.

Since then, Fishermen’s Energy’s hopes have been left hanging in the wind, but the project is still alive, according to Barnegat Mayor Kirk Larson, whose Viking Village Seafood company invested in Fishermen’s Energy along with partners Atlantic Cape Fisheries, Cold Spring Fish and Supply Co. out of Cape May, Dock Street Seafood out of Wildwood and Eastern Shore Seafood out of Mappsville, Va.

Larson directed all future calls about Fishermen’s to the company spokesman and COO Paul Gallagher.

On Tuesday, Gallagher said Murphy’s proposals mean things are looking up for Fishermen’s.

Read the full story at the Sand Paper

 

Fishermen’s Energy Wind Farm Has Hope with DOE and Senators’ Backing

June 2, 2016 — The U.S. Department of Energy has announced a no-cost extension until the end of the year for Fishermen’s Energy Atlantic City Wind Farm to secure an agreement to sell its power and continue to receive funding as one of the department’s offshore wind advanced technology demonstration projects.

Fishermen’s Energy is currently in the second of five DOE funding stages, and has met all of the criteria to advance to the next stage once an “offtake” agreement – a plan to sell the energy – is reached. As the project advances, it will be eligible for nearly $50 million in federal funding. The DOE estimates that the offshore wind farm will become operational in 2018, which would make it one of the first commercial offshore wind projects in the U.S.

On Tuesday, Fishermen’s Energy Chief Operating Officer Paul Gallagher said the DOE always intended to have the demonstration project completed by 2018. “It’s within their right to want an offtake agreement,” said Gallagher.

But so far the state’s preferred method of selling energy has been through the powerful Board of Public Utilities and obtaining an offshore renewable energy certificate (OREC) that can be sold to power companies.

Read the full story at The Sand Paper

NEW JERSEY: Fishermen’s Energy Ocean Wind Project Tries Again for Governor’s Approval

March 24, 2016 — Fishermen’s Energy, a consortium of South Jersey commercial fisheries that formed a wind power company in order to influence where such farms on the ocean can locate – away from important fishing and ocean scalloping grounds – has sought for six years to set up a demonstration wind farm 2.8 nautical miles off Atlantic City. Its plan for six wind turbines, producing 24 megawatts of electricity, has the backing of the New Jersey Legislature, environmental groups including the Sierra Club and the federal Department of Energy, and it obtained permits from state and local entities.

The only roadblock has been the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities. The BPU must issue a wind renewable energy certificate, a funding mechanism for the proposed project, before the small wind farm can move forward. The BPU has said in the past that the project would be too costly for ratepayers to support. Fishermen’s Energy has always denied that claim, stating the BPU had come to a faulty conclusion through faulty mathematics.

After a 2015 bill that would have given Fishermen’s Energy Wind Project an expedited pass through the BPU was pocket-vetoed by Gov. Chris Christie, the Legislature recently passed a revised bill that now awaits the governor’s signature.

The revised Senate bill, S-988, passed the Senate, 23-11, in February. The concurrent bill A-3093 was passed by the Assembly on March 14.

The Senate bill was sponsored by Sen. Jim Whelan, with the concurrent bill sponsored by Assemblyman Vince Mazzeo, both of Atlantic County. The revised bill eliminated language that directed the BPU to grant the required permit, and it deleted some language in the previous Assembly bill that would have eliminated a cost-benefit analysis. The cost-benefit analysis has been the bone of contention between the BPU and Fishermen’s Energy for the past two years.

Paul Gallagher, Fishermen’s Energy’s chief operating officer and general counsel, said he has no fears of such an analysis by the BPU now that certain qualifications have changed.

A company from China was originally going to supply the turbines, but now Fishermen’s Energy has decided to purchase turbines from Siemens, the world’s leader in wind turbine technology, with ocean turbines built in Germany and Denmark. On Tuesday, Gallagher said, “In December, Congress passed a five-year extension of the tax benefit project that makes it easier to attract investors. So we have a newly configured project, using Siemens turbines made in Germany and Denmark, traditional Western financing, plus tax incentives to make it even a more cost-effective project then what was rejected before” by the BPU.

“The bill is a relatively benign bill. It tells the BPU to let us come in and submit again. It’s on the governor’s desk, and we hope he signs it.”

Read the full story at The Sand Paper