Saving Seafood

Biden’s Big Bet On Offshore Wind

April 12, 2021 — The Biden administration recently announced a plan to substantially expand the use of offshore wind power along the East Coast, aiming to tap a huge new source of clean energy that is likely to gain widespread acceptance in the United States.

The bold bet would result in the generation of 30 gigawatts (GW) of wind power by 2030, enough to power over 10 million homes and cut 78 million metrics tons of CO2 emissions. Currently, the United States has only one offshore wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island generating 30 megawatts (MW) — 1,000 MW are in one GW.

Offshore wind farming represents a significant opportunity for the creation of “green-collar” jobs, with maintenance and day-to-day operations requiring regular support. Yet, the more labor-intensive an energy-generating operation is, the more expensive the kilowatt of energy becomes. Offshore wind is currently the most expensive form of mainstream power generation available – more than 3x the cost of a combined cycle natural gas plant on a $/MWh basis – when all factors are considered (see chart below). The so called “levelized cost of electricity” or LCOE for offshore wind is climate and labor-market dependent, but the Energy Information Agency sees the regional weighted average LCOE of new offshore wind projects in 2040 dropping t0 65% of 2020 costs in ideal cases.

Read the full story at Forbes

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford mayor calls offshore wind ‘generational opportunity’

April 12, 2021 — New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell is of two minds about Vineyard Wind, which after lengthy regulatory delays seems poised to finally get underway.

The mayor is excited about the potential for offshore wind farms to transform New Bedford the way they have many older European port cities, but he also worries that Massachusetts may be missing the boat when it comes to capturing the true value of the industry.

“Offshore wind is really a generational opportunity for a city like ours to leverage its competitive advantages in a way that brings in investment, creates jobs, and improves a city’s quality of life,” Mitchell said on The Codcast.

“We’re looking at roughly a $3 billion capital expenditure with this project,” he said. “That means a considerable amount of local procurement here in New Bedford from things as simple as hotel rooms and restaurant food to welders to any number of things. But it also means the more that the industry settles in here, the higher the likelihood that there will be investment in operating facilities and permanent enterprises. That really is, for us, the ultimate goal, to have an industry cluster here like we have with fishing.”

Mitchell said New Bedford, with its fishing port, is well-positioned to support the offshore wind industry, but it is unlikely to snare manufacturing operations because the city’s waterfront is so densely packed already. Even so, New Bedford has been expanding beyond the state-built New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal to provide more space for offshore wind development. The mayor also said he hopes to tap federal infrastructure funds proposed by President Biden to modernize the city’s port facilities.

Read the full story at Commonwealth Magazine

Don’t Forget Fishermen in the Rush To Expand Wind Energy

April 8, 2021 — On April 6th, 1,665 members of fishing communities in every U.S. coastal state submitted a letter to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) requesting a transparent and balanced national planning process for offshore wind development.

Offshore wind development poses direct conflicts with fishing and the current permitting process provides no meaningful opportunity to include the needs of sustainable seafood harvesting and production in strategies to mitigate climate change. Recent interagency announcements to fast-track offshore wind energy production have provided no commitments to address this transgression of the federal government’s public trust duties.

On the eve of the expected Record of Decision for the Vineyard Wind I project, which would be the first commercial-scale offshore wind energy project in U.S. federal waters, the signers request that BOEM adopt reasonable and consistently requested fisheries mitigation measures for the project if it is approved.

Read the full story at OCNJ Daily

RODA says it’s being ignored

March 31, 2021 — With America’s first industrial-scale offshore wind farm poised to receive final approval from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), fishermen continue to have reservations about potential impacts.

Vineyard Wind 1, an 84-turbine wind farm to be situated in the Atlantic 15 miles south of Aquinnah, is expected to get that final approval — a record of decision — from BOEM within a month.

Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), a coalition representing fishing interests, has taken issue with the project from the get-go, notably the transit corridors. These are the lanes between turbine towers vessels would navigate through. Vineyard Wind and other developers that have leased sections of New England ocean for wind development have agreed to 1-nautical-mile transit lanes. RODA has long demanded wider lanes, preferably four miles wide.

That stance hasn’t changed, RODA’s executive director, Annie Hawkins, told The Times. Hawkins said a recommendation for wider lanes could have emerged from the project’s environmental impact statement, but that didn’t happen. Hawkins said the safe passage of fishing vessels, especially those towing any sort of mobile gear, is in question with the current spacing layout. It’s unknown if insurers will allow fishing vessels to travel inside Vineyard Wind 1 or the farms that will follow, Hawkins said.

Read the full story at the MV Times

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

RODA circulating comment letter on offshore wind policy

March 23, 2021 — The undersigned fishing community members submit these requests to National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), noting the unclear decision authority since January’s revocation of the “One Federal Decision” policy that streamlined federal permitting of offshore wind energy (OSW) and other large infrastructure projects.

We stand willing to work with the Administration to use our knowledge about ocean ecosystems to create innovative, effective solutions for climate and environmental change. There are opportunities for mutual wins, however, OSW is an ocean use that directly conflicts with fishing and imposes significant impacts to marine habitats, biodiversity, and physical oceanography. Far more transparency and inclusion must occur when evaluating if OSW is a good use of federal waters.

However, we must be treated as partners, not obstacles. We’ve dutifully come to the table, despite the irony of the “table” being set by newcomers in our own communities employing the finely honed “stakeholder outreach” tactics of their oil and gas parent companies. We’ve diligently commented on the major conflicts and concerns of offshore wind development and taken valuable time off the water for countless one-sided meetings under false hope that our knowledge mattered. Scientific efforts from fishing experts are improving, although they need more funding and time. We can point to few, if any, other true considerations we’ve received.

We need a national strategy before OSW development. This could be modeled off Rhode Island’s Ocean Special Area Management Plan, which created an inclusive state process for holistic OSW planning. OSW decisions must be based on cost-benefit analyses, alternative ways to address carbon emissions, food productivity, and ocean health. BOEM may approve a dozen project plans this year, and new leases appear imminent from Hawaii to California, South Carolina to the New York Bight and Gulf of Maine. New technologies allow OSW deployment in all US waters in the near future, and planning is occurring in the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Northwest. Selling off our oceans with no strategy to protect food security threatens all of us.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Report to policymakers: ‘Remove barriers’ and ‘go big’ on offshore wind off MA coast

March 19, 2021 — Environmental organizations from Massachusetts, Maine and Rhode Island released a report Thursday outlining what they see as the enormous potential for offshore wind power to help the region and the nation reach carbon reduction goals in the energy sector.

“We know we can go big on offshore wind, and we are positioned really uniquely in New England,” said Hannah Read, offshore wind associate for Environment America at a press conference Thursday.

The report, Offshore Wind for America, called for policymakers to remove barriers to industry growth and promote clean energy.

Massachusetts has been a leader in promoting the offshore wind industry as the first to require utilities doing business in the state to include wind energy as a portion of the power they sell to ratepayers. The nation’s first utility-scale offshore wind farm will likely be Vineyard Wind. Located about 14 miles southwest of Martha’s Vineyard, the farm is expected to generate enough electricity to power 400,000 homes and businesses and reduce carbon emissions by 1.6 million tons a year, according to company statements.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

NATIONAL LAW REVIEW: Expectations for Offshore Wind Under the Biden Administration

March 11, 2021 — President Joe Biden’s arrival at the White House in January was, as customary for any new executive branch leader, met by outsized expectations on the part of supporters and detractors alike. Among the countless areas of public policy set to be affected by the new administration, perhaps no one issue is more anticipated to be in play than energy and environmental policy.

The heightened set of expectations around energy policy began with the campaign, when Team Biden consistently placed climate change issues among its leading priorities — a trend that noticeably continued with Cabinet picks, as nominees for agencies from Defense to Transportation to Treasury cited climate considerations as key factors affecting their respective portfolios. On January 27, 2021, shortly after taking office, the Biden administration released a series of executive actions that included a stated goal of reaching a “carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035.”

Perhaps no single industry would be more critical to the realization of this far-reaching carbon-free goal than offshore wind, which has emerged in the United States over the past several years as a potentially game-changing source of clean energy generation, based on its earlier-moving success in Europe and elsewhere. In fact, along the country’s populous coastal areas, where fifty three percent of US residents reside, offshore wind presents the most viable option to build up renewable energy resources in the foreseeable future.

Read the full story at the National Law Review

America’s biggest offshore wind farm is on the verge of federal approval

March 11, 2021 — America’s offshore wind infrastructure is modest: the only turbines in the ocean today power a small community’s worth of homes from a wind farm off Block Island. But within two years, the number of American homes powered by the renewable energy source could grow to nearly half a million.

Vineyard Wind CEO Lars Pedersen says an environmental review released by the federal government this week brings the company closer to its goal of supplying 800 megawatts of electricity to New England’s grid by 2023.

“More than three years of federal review and public comment is nearing its conclusion and 2021 is poised to be a momentous year for our project and the broader offshore wind industry,” Pedersen said.

The much-anticipated study from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management found the only major environmental impact from the turbines would be felt in the region’s commercial fisheries.

Many fishermen fear Vineyard Wind is leaving too narrow a distance between turbines for vessels to safely navigate during bad weather. Annie Hawkins, director of the seafood industry-backed Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, said the federal government has also failed to set guidelines for compensating fishing crews that will lose access to squid and lobsters they once caught in Vineyard Wind’s 118-square-mile lease area.

Read the full story at The Public’s Radio

Offshore Energy Gets a Second Wind Under Biden

March 11, 2021 — The Biden Administration is betting that green energy produced by new offshore wind farms will help slow climate change, but fishers and some scientists say there are too many uncertainties about how the massive structures will affect the ocean and its marine life. The first big test of how the push for wind energy might clash with ocean conservation will likely play out in Massachusetts waters. This week, Department of the Interior officials gave initial approval to the $2.8 billion Vineyard Wind project located about 15 miles south of the island of Martha’s Vineyard.

Once the massive wind turbines begin operating in 2023, the wind farm is expected to generate 800 megawatts of clean electricity. That’s enough to power 400,000 Massachusetts homes and businesses.

Vineyard Wind will be the first big offshore wind farm on the East Coast, although smaller pilot projects are running off Block Island, Rhode Island, and Virginia Beach, Virginia. Officials at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, an office within the Department of the Interior, are reviewing another 12 commercial offshore wind projects between Maryland and Maine. If approved, those wind farms would generate 25 gigawatts of clean energy for the power-hungry Northeast, more than doubling all land-based wind power coming online in 2021.

Read the full story at Wired