Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSSETS: Nantucket reaches deal on Vineyard Wind transparency, response

December 16, 2025 — After months of pressure from local leaders, Nantucket has won new guarantees from Vineyard Wind, securing an agreement that sets clearer rules for communication, public transparency, and emergency response as the offshore wind project progresses toward full operations.

The agreement was formally announced on Dec. 11.

Town leaders first raised the issue publicly in July, when they called for more consistent and transparent information about the project’s daily activities and a more reliable process for handling emergencies at sea. They said the town had struggled to get quick, detailed answers, and they wanted a system that let both officials and residents track what the project was doing.

Select Board member Brooke Mohr, who led the island delegation in the talks, said the push centered on protecting the island’s natural and economic landscape.

Many issues arose in the aftermath of the catastrophic failure of a blade on turbine AW-38 in July 2024, which sent tons of debris crashing into the ocean and then washing up on Nantucket’s south shore and elsewhere throughout the region. Others are related to the light pollution from the turbine field.

“Transparency and predictability are essential to protect our world-renowned coastline, fisheries, night skies, and heritage tourism economy,” she said.

Nantucket is listed as a national historic landmark.

The company is constructing its 62-turbine, 800- megawatt Vineyard Wind 1 project — a joint venture of Avangrid Renewables LLC and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners — in waters starting about 15 miles southwest of Nantucket. The company earlier this month reported the project is progressing and has a current operational capacity of more than 400 megawatts.

Read the full article at Dredge Wire

MASSACHUSETTS: Nantucket, Vineyard Wind agree to new transparency and emergency response measures

December 12, 2025 — More than a year after a wind turbine off the coast of Nantucket malfunctioned, causing debris to wash ashore, the town and Vineyard Wind have struck a new agreement to improve transparency.

On Thursday, Nantucket officials announced they secured a series of commitments from the wind project coordinators to improve information sharing, communications, along with emergency planning and response.

Read the full article at WCVB

MASSACHUSETTS: Seventeen months on, Vineyard Wind blade break investigation isn’t done

December 4, 2025 — Sixty-two towers. Sixty-two nacelles. One-hundred eighty-six blades.

Those are the pieces that comprise Vineyard Wind, an 800-megawatt offshore wind project nearing completion after more than two years of construction.

By The Light’s accounting, the project has two towers and two nacelles left to ship out from the Port of New Bedford. That leaves the blades — an estimated 33 of which, as of last month, have yet to top some turbines, and an unknown number that may still need to be removed and replaced.

As batches of blades have traveled across the seas, to and from New Bedford, France, and Nova Scotia, and been installed on turbines, the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has continued to investigate what caused one of the blades to fail in July 2024.

In January 2025, the Biden administration ordered Vineyard Wind to remove all blades manufactured at a factory in Gaspé, Quebec, where the broken blade was built. BSEE gave Vineyard Wind permission to finish construction using blades from a different factory in Cherbourg, France.

Read the full article at the The New Bedford Light

Judge grants BOEM request to reconsider key permit for SouthCoast Wind

November 5, 2025 –A judge on Tuesday granted a federal agency’s request to remand a key permit that it had given in January to SouthCoast Wind, an offshore wind project planned off the Massachusetts coast.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Interior Department agency that manages offshore wind development, in September asked a judge for a remand so that it can reconsider its approval, which greenlit project construction for up to 147 turbines south of Nantucket and Vineyard Wind.

BOEM is effectively re-opening the review, which started in 2021 and lasted years, citing President Donald Trump’s day-one wind memo directing the Interior Department to carry out a “comprehensive review of the ecological, economic, and environmental necessity of terminating or amending any existing wind energy leases.”

The agency could ultimately decide to revoke the SouthCoast Wind permit, or require new conditions for the developer to meet to receive approval.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

New Bedford agency, researchers to study commercial fishing within wind farm

November 5, 2025 — In the years leading up to the installation of the first turbine off the coast of Massachusetts, government officials, scientists and fishermen convened in conference rooms and Zoom calls to discuss and debate what the fishing industry’s future could — and would —  look like amid grids of steel towers.

An oft-uttered phrase was “coexistence” — a realistic goal to those backing offshore wind development, but a laughable suggestion to some fishermen. Accepting there would be impacts, other terms like mitigation and financial compensation peppered the conversations — tools to address effects on fishermen who will tow in and around the arrays as they’re erected, and once they’re operational.

Now, with more than 120 towers standing off the New England coast as of this month, the stakeholders involved can finally put their hopes, doubts, and hypotheses to the test.

The New Bedford Port Authority and UMass Dartmouth School of Marine Science & Technology (SMAST) are partnering up for the first of its kind study in the U.S. that will measure how commercial fishing boats and their varied gear — dredges, pots, trawls, and so on — behave and operate within wind farms. The collected data, they say, can answer some unanswered questions, and inform how coexistence between the two industries can be achieved or improved.

“This project gives us the opportunity to address one of the major uncertainties in managing the interaction of offshore wind farms and fisheries,” said Steven Cadrin, professor of fisheries oceanography at SMAST.

The research project is funded by a $420,000 grant from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, and comes at a time when other studies that would have examined offshore wind’s impacts on commercially fished species and other marine interests, like whales, have been terminated by the federal government.

The final details have not been ironed out, but the testing may be conducted within Vineyard Wind or Revolution Wind (both projects have 80% to 90% of their turbines installed).

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

Feds Gamble on Offshore Wind Funding for Future Cleanup

October 30, 2025 — For decades, nuclear power plant owners have been required by law to set aside money for decommissioning at the start of operations, but developers of two New England offshore wind farm projects face no such immediate mandate. The latter, according to a local grassroots organization, puts federal taxpayers at risk of being on the hook.

“BOEM (Bureau of Ocean Energy Management) abdicated its responsibility to the American people by relying heavily on the ‘financial strength’ of the project instead of upholding its duty to protect the environment, public health, and safety,” Thomas Stavola, attorney for Save LBI, said last week.

The group is taking BOEM to task over its 15-year deferral of financial responsibility for the owners of Rhode Island’s Revolution Wind and Massachusetts’ Vineyard Wind.

Stavola called the approvals “patently absurd.”

In an Oct. 16 letter, Save LBI, which has swelled to more than 10,000 supporters, urged the U.S. Department of the Interior “to end the egregious practice of letting operators of offshore wind farms postpone providing financial assurance earmarked for the future decommissioning and removal of turbines and related infrastructure.”

The group said the postponement provides the developers with an exorbitant amount of time to establish the necessary decommissioning funds it will take to remove the planned 127 turbines off the New England coast. Stavola and Bob Stern, Save LBI president and co-founder, signed the letter.

“BOEM authorized a deferral for Revolution Wind on the basis that ‘providing the full amount of its decommissioning financial assurance prior to receiving any revenue under its power purchase agreements would be an unnecessary and unreasonable financial burden on the company.’ However, such revenues are received by the company well before the 15-year deferral given,” according to the letter.

Save LBI is asking BOEM to revoke prior financial deferrals and require future approvals to fully fall in line with the Code of Federal Requirements.

In a statement released earlier this month, Save LBI said BOEM’s action does not take into consideration use of funding for unplanned events, such as Vineyard Wind’s blade failure last year, and heightens the chance developers would not be able to finance the removal of aging turbines from the ocean floor 15 years from now.

Read the full article at The Sand Paper

Offshore wind labor force hoping for work that might not continue

September 26, 2025 — On a warm September day, Sonia Brito stood on a platform more than 200 feet high, securing a “gripper” atop a wind turbine tower with the help of a few of her millwright and ironworker brothers. It’s something they’ve done dozens of times to ready the towers to be grabbed by a crane, placed onto barges and shipped to sea.

The staging terminal, previously packed with blades, nacelles and towers for Vineyard Wind, has grown sparse, a result of a steady workflow during summer’s prime seafaring conditions — and a slowdown, workers say, of international shipments amid the Trump administration’s tariffs.

A Portuguese immigrant who grew up in New Bedford, Brito, 22, says she feels lucky to have happened upon an opportunity like Vineyard Wind. It has allowed her to work in her hometown and build a project that she thinks will have positive impacts for her city and the country’s climate future.

But since the federal government abruptly halted construction at Empire Wind for one month in the spring, and then Revolution Wind in August, workers supporting the buildout of offshore wind in New England have grown worried about the industry’s future — and theirs.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

Ørsted and Iberdrola Are Trying to Save U.S. Offshore Wind Investments

September 9, 2025 — Two major offshore wind developers,  Ørsted and Iberdrola, have efforts underway to save their offshore wind projects in the United States. The companies are reportedly trying to win over the Trump administration, which opposes offshore wind energy, by emphasizing the larger investments in the United States.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Bloomberg reports, confirmed that the administration is “actively engaged in discussions” with Ørsted over the future of the Revolution Wind project off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut. According to the reports, Wright, during a presentation at the Council of Foreign Relations, confirmed that there is “a very active dialogue,” saying the issues of the wind farm were being “worked and discussed.”

Last month, the Trump administration issued a stop work order for the project, which Ørsted said is 80 percent installed. The company highlighted its large investment, saying that all of the foundations for the 704 MW wind farm are installed and that 45 out of the 65 wind turbines have also been installed. The export cabling and the onshore power substation are nearly complete.

Ørsted filed a lawsuit challenging the legal authority to suspend the project, calling it a necessary step. The company, however, also said it was continuing to seek a resolution with the administration.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

Trump Strikes Blow To New England Wind Project With Cancellation Of Federal Funding For Salem Port

September 3, 2025 — President Donald Trump’s administration cancelled almost $34 million intended to develop a vacant industrial facility in Salem into an offshore wind terminal, striking another blow against the already beleaguered New England Wind project slated for installation southwest of Nantucket and the struggling U.S. offshore wind industry at large.

Avangrid, the offshore wind developer behind both New England Wind and Vineyard Wind, planned to use Salem to stage the former project. It’s unclear how the loss of federal funding for the port project will impact New England Wind, or if the developers can complete the project under Trump’s regulatory regime.

New England Wind has already been substantially delayed as a result of previous federal efforts to curtail offshore wind development, which have held up power purchase agreements with Massachusetts’ utilities.

The lease areas for New England 1 and New England 2, located west of Vineyard Wind, would include 129 wind turbines that the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimates could power more than 900,000 homes each year.

Read the full article at the Nantucket Current

Westport will wait and see following wind farm halt

September 2, 2025 — Westport officials are waiting and watching, but so far have heard no news on whether Vineyard Wind is next on a list of threatened projects following news late last week that work on Revolution Wind, a 65-turbine off the coast of Rhode Island that is 80 percent complete, has been halted by the Trump administration.

“Nothing yet,” Jake McGuigan, a select board member and chairman of the Offshore Wind Advisory Committee, said Monday.

The advisory committee has no regulatory authority but was formed last year to monitor the potential impacts of offshore wind on Westport. It was established after residents raised concerns that Vineyard Offshore had listed Westport as one of two possible landing sites for offshore cables from a wind farm it is proposing south of Nantucket. But in late February, company representatives appeared before the advisory committee and said there are no plans to route any cables through Westport, and they are instead focusing on New London, Ct. as a potential landing zone.

Since then, the board has reduced its meeting frequency to quarterly; McGuigan said the next will be held in October, and he suspects any potential regulatory news will be on the agenda.

Read the full article at East Bay RI