Saving Seafood

BOEM says New York Bight offshore wind environment review will focus on regional impact

July 14, 2022 — The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced Wednesday it will move forward with a regional environmental review of six lease areas in the New York Bight.

A February 2022 lease auction by BOEM brought in over $4.3 billion – a record amount for any U.S. offshore renewable or conventional energy lease sale. BOEM officials say this will be the first time the agency has conducted a regional analysis of multiple lease areas for offshore renewable energy.

OEM will publish a Notice of Intent (NOI) to prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) in the Federal Register on July 15, 2022, which will initiate a 30-day public comment scoping period. Comments gathered during this time will help BOEM identify what it should consider as part of the PEIS.

Read the full story at the National Fisherman

OREGON: Offshore wind proposals worry fishing industry

July 11, 2022 — From her home overlooking Yaquina Bay, Kelley Retherford can watch as commercial fishing boats arrive at the nearby Port of Newport, delivering their catch to one of several seafood processors that line the waterfront.

Saltwater is in her family’s blood, she said. Along with her husband, Mike, and their four adult children, they own and operate four fishing trawlers, harvesting everything from Pacific whiting to pink shrimp to Dungeness crab.

That way of life, however, may be disrupted by a growing interest in offshore wind generators to help achieve ambitious government-mandated zero-carbon energy goals.

Earlier this year, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management identified two call areas off the southern Oregon Coast — one near Coos Bay and the other near Brookings — to assess potential wind energy leases in federal waters.

The push to harness wind energy in the Pacific Ocean has raised concerns within Oregon’s $1.2 billion commercial fishing industry, with families such as the Retherfords worried it will limit access to highly productive fisheries and impact the marine ecosystem.

A 60-day comment period ended in June for developers to nominate locations within the two areas that would be best suited for wind projects.

Deep Blue Pacific Wind is a joint venture between Simply Blue Group, an offshore wind developer based in Ireland, and TotalEnergies, a French energy company with U.S. headquarters in Houston. In January, the venture hired Peter Cogswell as director of government and external affairs.
Rather than being fixed to the seabed, turbines in the Pacific would have to be built on floating platforms to capture wind where it blows the hardest. Cogswell estimated it would take between 50 and 60 turbines to generate 1 gigawatt of energy.
John Romero, a spokesman for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said the call areas are meant to identify where offshore wind “may be safely and responsibly developed,” while soliciting feedback from the public.
Losing fishing grounds inside the call areas could be harmful to fishermen along the Oregon Coast, said Heather Mann, the executive director of the Midwater Trawlers Cooperative.
The areas are particularly bountiful due to the California Current, which provides a strong upwelling of water and nutrients for seafood. Mann estimated more than 25% of Pacific whiting harvested in the last decade has come from the two call areas proposed by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

 

The drive for 100% clean energy in Oregon has raised the stakes for building new renewable energy projects statewide — including offshore wind generators.

House Bill 2021, signed into law by Gov. Kate Brown in 2021, requires retail electricity providers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electricity sold to Oregon consumers by 80% by 2030, 90% by 2035 and 100% by 2040.

Several state and federal lawmakers are also urging the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to slow down and fully consider impacts on coastal communities before moving forward with leasing.

Further limiting fishing grounds in the call areas “could spell economic disaster for these towns,” the letter continued.

Kelley Retherford said the fishing industry will continue to push back against the call areas, fighting for their livelihoods.

Read the full story at the Astorian 

The Winds Of War Swirl Around Off-Shore Turbines

March 24, 2017 — As a concept, ocean-based wind-energy harvesting is gaining momentum on Long Island – but don’t expect completely smooth sailing for the increasingly popular alternative-generation movement.

Although wind farms are rising around the globe and contributing ever-larger percentages of the electricity flowing through international energy grids, the “green” projects often face stiff opposition –  ironically, from environmentalists, and often from commercial fishermen who say the ocean-based platforms disrupt natural breeding grounds and threaten their livelihoods.

Long Island anglers, for instance, are paying close attention to a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, aimed at stopping wind-farm developments off the New York and New Jersey coasts.

Despite the rough seas, Stony Brook University’s Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center is jumping in with both feet. The AERTC is hooking the imminent launch of its Advanced Energy Center Symposium Series – a collection of next-generation energy discussions and workshops uniting industry experts, government officials and assorted stakeholders – on a day-long May 5 event focused on offshore wind, slated to be held at the Montauk Yacht Club.

While offshore wind interests have made progress on Long Island – including LIPA’s January approval of what would (at least temporarily) be the nation’s largest offshore wind farm, to be located 30 miles off Montauk by Rhode Island-based Deepwater Wind – the AERTC is clearly wading into disputed waters.

The May 5 conference is akin to Montauk being swallowed into “the belly of the beast,” according to Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, who said placing wind turbines in the middle of “traditional, historically productive fishing grounds” is a “recipe for disaster.”

Read the full story at Innovateli

European firm pitches huge wind farm off Martha’s Vineyard

November 10, 2015 — A major European energy company is proposing what could be North America’s largest offshore wind farm 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, outlining its plans less than a year after the proposed Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound suffered a stunning financial setback.

Denmark-based DONG Energy A/S, the world’s largest developer of offshore wind farms, Monday said it would build up to 100 giant wind turbines, generating as much as 1,000 megawatts of electricity — more than double the output Cape Wind had proposed for its site off Cape Cod. The Danish company recently acquired one of the leases for a stretch of ocean that the US government has designated for wind farms. It has dubbed the local operation Bay State Wind.

Company officials, seeking to distinguish their plans from the controversial Cape Wind project, pointed to DONG Energy’s long track record in building ocean wind farms. They also noted the turbines would be much farther out to sea, potentially drawing less opposition from oceanfront homeowners than Cape Wind.

“We have the experience and we have the expertise,” said Thomas Brostrom, the company’s North American general manager said in an interview Sunday.

DONG Energy faces lengthy Massachusetts and US permitting processes that include environmental reviews and approvals for where its power lines would come ashore. Once those approvals are in hand, DONG Energy said, it would take about three years to build the wind farm, and the first phase could include 30 to 35 turbines and be in service by early next decade.

Other than getting the transfer of the lease approved by the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, DONG Energy has yet to file any applications for the projects with the federal or state government.

The group that battled the Cape Wind project since its inception has adopted a much softer tone for the Danish project and others proposed in the waters south of Martha’s Vineyard.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe