Saving Seafood

RHODE ISLAND: Climate change and other offshore wind farms are already hurting R.I. fishermen

July 18, 2023 — Rhode Island fishermen warned for years that offshore wind farms will hurt their livelihoods. In the case of one project planned off Rhode Island’s coast, they might be right.

Indeed, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management concluded in a report published Monday that the Revolution Wind Farm will have a “major adverse impact” on some commercial and for-hire recreational fishing activities.

The caveat: The same consequences are likely even if the wind farm planned off Rhode Island Sound never gets built, thanks to climate change and other offshore wind projects that are already causing major disruptions to species’ survival, boat traffic and more.

Any major environmental impacts resulting from the Revolution Wind Farm would have happened anyway, according to the 2,800-page environmental assessment. For project partners and advocates, the assessment was cause for celebration, marking what many consider to be the clearance of a major hurdle in the long and complicated federal approval process for ocean development.

“Revolution Wind is now one huge step closer to delivering renewable energy and significant economic benefits to Rhode Island and Connecticut,” David Hardy, group executive vice president and CEO of Orsted Americas, said in a statement. “This major milestone keeps Revolution Wind on-track to complete environmental review and obtain approval by later this summer, with construction activities ramping up soon after. We’re ready to get to work to help Rhode Island and Connecticut expand their blue economies and meet their ambitious clean energy goals.”

Gov. Dan McKee also touted the significance of the report in the context of the state’s aggressive decarbonization mandates, which rely heavily on wind-powered energy to achieve.

Read the full article at Rhode Island Current

BOEM Completes Environmental Analysis for Fourth U.S. Offshore Wind Farm

July 18, 2023 — The United States is accelerating its offshore wind development with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) reporting it has completed its environmental analysis for the next offshore wind farm, coming less than two weeks after it published the Record of Decision for another wind farm.

The proposed Revolution Wind Farm Project to be located offshore Rhode Island would become the fourth, large-scale, commercial wind farm approved in the United States. Proposed by a partnership of Ørsted and Eversource, the plan for Revolution Wind calls for constructing an offshore wind energy project of up to 100 wind turbines, capable of generating up to 880 megawatts. It will be located approximately 15 nautical miles southeast of Point Judith, Rhode Island.

“This milestone represents another important step forward in building a new clean energy economy here in the United States,” said BOEM Director Elizabeth Klein. The process, she noted was informed by feedback from industry, ocean users, communities, Tribal Nations, and other stakeholders.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

Rhode Island fishermen ask Supreme Court to hear challenge to observer fees

June 20, 2023 — Encouraged by New Jersey herring fishermen’s application to the U.S. Supreme Court, lawyers for Rhode Island captains are likewise asking the high court to consider what they say is “an unconstitutional rule requiring fishing companies to pay for at-sea government monitoring of their herring catch.”

The legal activist group New Civil Liberties Alliance petitioned the court June 14 for a “writ of certiorari” in its case representing Point Judith, R.I. companies Relentless Inc., Huntress Inc. and Seafreeze Fleet LLC.

Their case challenges a 2020 rule imposed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that required vessel operators to pay for observers on their vessels at sea, at a cost that owners say can exceed $700 daily and sometimes exceed the money they make from landing low-priced herring.

The Supreme Court could soon hear arguments in a case called Loper Bright, named for one of several Cape May, N.J. fishing companies fighting the observer requirement that lost their initial case in court but appealed. NOAA waived the rule earlier this year as it ran short of money to administer the program. But fishermen want to make sure the observer requirement is not renewed, and conservative advocacy groups see their cause as a chance to overturn a long-standing precedent called the “Chevron deference.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Renegotiating choice: Protect ratepayers or push clean energy?

June 14, 2023 –A top regulator in Rhode Island is raising concerns about the way offshore wind developers are seeking to renegotiate the financial terms of their projects, saying policymakers are facing a harsh choice between protecting the interests of ratepayers and promoting the generation of electricity considered vital in the battle against climate change.

Ronald Gerwatowski, the chair of the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission and the state’s Energy Facilities Siting Board, made his comments at the end of a 2½-hour hearing on Monday dealing with SouthCoast Wind, a project that secured a power purchase agreement in Massachusetts that the developer is now seeking to terminate so it can rebid the project at much higher prices in a procurement slated for next year. The project is before Rhode Island regulators because it seeks to run a transmission line connecting the wind farm to Massachusetts via Rhode Island.

Read the full article at the New Bedford Light

RHODE ISLAND: R.I. offshore wind proponents optimistic despite SouthCoast financing troubles

June 12, 2023 — A second Massachusetts wind farm developer has hit economic headwinds and decided to renege on its contracts. Could Rhode Island’s projects be next to fall?

State officials and offshore wind proponents say no.

Instead, they have brushed off the news that Massachusetts wind farm developer Southcoast Wind Energy LLC (formerly known as Mayflower Wind) wants to scrap its agreements to sell 1,200 megawatts of electricity to the Commonwealth amid rising project costs.

“It’s just part of the regular business cycle we’re dealing with,” said Patrick Crowley, a union organizer and co-chairman of Climate Jobs Rhode Island. “Construction projects are always trying to negotiate their contracts. It’s just part of the business.”

Indeed, the SouthCoast Wind farm – a joint venture by Shell and Spanish company Ocean Wind –  is hardly the only development project hurt by inflationary cost hikes and supply chain slowdowns. Another Massachusetts wind farm developer, Avangrid Renewables, ended its existing contracts with state utility companies for the Commonwealth Wind project in 2022 for similar cost concerns.

For SouthCoast, the payments from utility companies it negotiated in 2019 just don’t work anymore. A third-party analysis shows construction and operation costs have spiked more than 20%, according to Southcoast Wind Energy CEO Francis Slingsby.

“The existing PPAs will not attract the financing necessary to construct the Clean Energy Resource and Project because they are low-priced, have no indexation and thus offer no way to overcome the significant and unforeseen economic challenges,” Slingsby wrote in June 2 testimony to Rhode Island regulators.

Both Southcoast and Avangrid plan to rebid for new power purchase agreements in Massachusetts in the hopes of getting more money from the utility companies.

Read the full article at the Rhode Island Current

R.I. fishermen file lawsuit notice over South Fork Wind Farm

May 14, 2023 — A group of Rhode Island fishermen are preparing to sue state and federal agencies and a private wind developer over the construction of a 12-turbine offshore wind farm southeast of Block Island.

Marisa Desautel, an attorney representing the Fisherman’s Advisory Board and individual local fishermen, sent legal notice on Wednesday of her clients’ intentions to sue the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Orsted Offshore North America and the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council.

The notice, which was shared with Rhode Island Current, alleges that construction work for the 132-megawatt South Fork Wind Farm has not followed the agreed-upon plans, therefore violating federal law governing offshore development. Preliminary work laying the cables that will eventually connect the turbines to the mainland electric grid on Long Island, east of Montauk, started last fall. The project is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year.

Local fishermen say that Orsted, which is co-developing the project with Eversource Energy LLC, illegally expanded the no-fishing and no-travel zone in Rhode Island Sound around the area where it was laying cables last month. The approved construction and operations plan for the project calls for a 500-meter buffer on either side of the cables, but on April 20, fishermen in the area were told, allegedly by an Orsted vessel, that they needed to stay 1.5 miles away from either side of the cable.

Read the full article at Rhode Island Current

R.I. fishermen threaten legal action over South Fork wind farm

May 14, 2023 — A group of fishermen in Rhode Island is threatening to sue the state’s coastal agency, the federal government, and developer Ørsted over the under-development of the South Fork wind farm in federal waters off Rhode Island.

The Fishermen’s Advisory Board and the individual fishers it represents said in a letter Wednesday that the deal to approve the South Fork wind farm did not adequately compensate them for their losses. Making matters worse, they say, a fishing vessel working on the project broadcast over a radio channel used for emergency and distress calls in April that nobody was allowed within a mile and a half of either side of recent work to construct the project’s cable.

Read the full article at the Boston Globe

RHODE ISLAND: Revolution Wind offshore wind project clears CRMC hurdle. What’s next for the project?

May 11, 2023 — A large offshore wind farm aimed at helping Rhode Island meet its climate goals cleared a major hurdle late Tuesday night when state coastal regulators approved a key certification for the 704-megawatt project.

The vote by the Coastal Resources Management Council moved Revolution Wind one step closer to becoming the third utility-scale offshore wind farm to be cleared for construction in America. Onshore cable work for the 65-turbine project proposed by Danish offshore wind company Ørsted and New England electric supplier Eversource could begin as soon as this summer, when a record of decision is expected from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Read the full article at the The Providence Journal

Work has started on major offshore wind farm that would power Rhode Island. What to know.

May 2, 2023 — The developers of Rhode Island’s first utility-scale offshore wind farm are still waiting on approvals for the 704-megawatt project, but that’s not stopping them from starting work on pieces of it.

Ørsted and Eversource welcomed Gov. Dan McKee, the Rhode Island congressional delegation and other officials to the Port of Providence on Monday to mark the beginning of fabrication of some of the key components of the towering wind turbines that will be installed in the waters between Block Island and Martha’s Vineyard as part of Revolution Wind.

The companies set up shop a year and a half ago in the port, where they built a regional hub that is supplying parts to a host of wind farms planned off southern New England.

‘Jobs of the 21st century’

First up for the facility was the South Fork Wind Farm, a 130-megawatt, 12-turbine array already under construction that will help power Long Island. Now comes Revolution, the 65-turbine project that would deliver energy to Rhode Island and Connecticut. Sunrise Wind, an 880-megawatt proposal to also supply New York, is expected to follow. And, if all goes as planned, a second, even bigger phase of Revolution would come.

It’s all part of a long-term vision to not only generate cleaner sources of power to help meet the nation’s climate goals, but also position Rhode Island as a manufacturing base for offshore wind development.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Grow Blue Partnership offers an action plan to spark growth in R.I.’s blue economy

April 27, 2023 — Last year, Rhode Island’s effort to get a $78 million federal grant to support the blue economy – things like offshore wind power, defense, and aquaculture – came up short.

But a lot of work had gone into applying for it. The University of Rhode Island-led effort was a finalist out of hundreds of applicants, and had gotten a $500,000 federal grant just to apply for the final round. Even after Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s department didn’t pick Rhode Island in the end, the people who were involved in applying decided not to take their ball and go home.

The result is now starting to emerge. This week it got a name, and a new report: The Grow Blue Partnership, which released what it’s calling “Rhode Island’s 2030 Blue Economy Action Plan.” (An executive summary of the report is available online and embedded below.)

At its core, the Grow Blue Partnership is an effort to better position the state to get federal money to support the blue economy for initiatives like training the next generation of workers and research ambitions like a full digital replica of Narragansett Bay, called a “Smart Bay.”

“There’s a tremendous amount of federal funding that’s yet to be released,” said Christian Cowan, the executive director of the URI Research Foundation. “We think there’s an opportunity for Rhode Island to leverage that federal funding.”

Read the full story at The Boston Globe