Saving Seafood

Offshore Wind Energy Will Deliver Few U.S. Jobs; Lack of Oversight Means Most Jobs Will Be Overseas

September 15, 2020 — The following was released by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance:

New developments have raised serious questions regarding the economic and job benefits from offshore wind energy projects in U.S. waters. Unsubstantiated claims of significant economic growth and investment have exaggerated the benefits of offshore wind energy, and diminished the economic and cultural importance of sustainable American wild-caught fisheries.

Georgetown Economic Services: Benefits of Offshore Wind ‘Grossly Inflated’

A new study, conducted by Georgetown Economic Services (GES), finds that “[t]he claim that the huge investments in offshore wind would provide significant job and economic benefits in the U.S. has been grossly inflated.” The study also reaches an important conclusion: many of the jobs and benefits would actually go to the foreign-owned companies currently dominating the wind energy landscape, instead of creating local opportunities.

The study examined the potential permanent and temporary jobs that would be created by wind energy development in New England and the Mid-Atlantic, and the Vineyard Wind project in particular. It found that estimates for domestic permanent jobs are 3-4 times lower than those promised by the wind industry, and that companies will need to spend millions importing turbines and other equipment from Europe, as the U.S. lacks the relevant infrastructure.

“A careful investigation of the employment impact shows a surprisingly low number of positions at the more permanent level of actual operation and maintenance of the offshore wind electricity,” the study found.

Astonishingly, GES estimates of temporary employment were actually higher than wind energy industry estimates, indicating that temporary construction jobs are expected to go to skilled international workers rather than be sourced locally. Specifically, it found “the bulk of the jobs will be created overseas rather than here at home, and total domestic employment in manufacturing and construction is small when compared with employment in the manufacture of conventional equipment for power generation.”

Ignoring a Century of Jones Act Precedent

This troubling report arrives in the midst of a murky policy atmosphere. Vessels and crews from Europe constructed the two existing U.S. offshore wind energy projects without documentation of any domestic job creation, and there is no apparent movement toward requiring U.S. labor or materials in future projects.

The Jones Act requires items shipped within the U.S. to be transported on vessels that are built, owned, and operated by American citizens or permanent residents. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), however, has never issued guidance as to how this law applies to offshore wind energy.

In July, CBP issued a “ruling letter” stating that the installation of turbines for the Vineyard Wind project using a non-Jones Act qualified (i.e. foreign-flagged) jack-up vessel would not violate the Jones Act. CBP then abruptly revoked that ruling just a few weeks later, citing uncertainty whether the Jones Act extends to wind energy activities more than 3 miles offshore at all. This appears to create a blanket exemption absent congressional or judicial action, despite the fishing industry’s subjugation to protectionist laws and other industries’ similarly heavy regulation under “Buy America” provisions.

This cannot be the government’s intended consequence. One could make a reasonable argument for the use of European jack-up vessels for limited offshore construction, as occurs in oil and gas, when such vessels do not exist in the U.S. But granting carte blanche to bypass domestic investment in a new heavy industry is economically and politically myopic, particularly given the burgeoning offshore wind energy industry in countries like China that are at the cusp of becoming key competitors in this field.

Manhattan Institute: “The Dismal Economics of Offshore Wind”

The GES study’s findings are consistent with other recent reports finding issues with how offshore wind energy is being promoted and developed. A study recently released by the Manhattan Institute also criticized the long-term economic prospects of offshore wind power, finding that “[a]bsent continued subsidies… it is unlikely that any offshore wind facilities will be developed.” The actual costs to ratepayers are likely far greater than advertised in part because experience from Europe has shown “that the performance of offshore wind turbines degrades rapidly.”

Unions Cast Doubt on Domestic Workforce Benefits

The quality of offshore wind jobs is also in question. A North America’s Building Trades Unions report examining the difference across energy industries found that tradespeople “consider projects in oil and natural gas to have better perceived wages, benefits, and opportunities than renewables projects,” and that those projects have longer durations. Moreover, it found “skilled trade jobs are not highly interchangeable between [the natural gas and renewables] industries.”

Failure to Consider Negative Effects on Seafood Sector Employment

In July, a study from the Science Center for Marine Fisheries found that officials at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) were not giving sufficient attention to the potential negative impact of offshore wind on existing ocean use jobs. Estimates of economic and employment benefits promoted by wind energy advocates also consistently ignore the displacement of jobs and revenue from fishing and existing energy industries.

Preservation of Fisheries Jobs Demands Caution and Oversight

As the federal government deliberates approval of Vineyard Wind—the first such commercial-scale project in the United States—the American public should be highly concerned over misrepresentation of the economic benefits of offshore wind energy. Many state governments and well-funded trade associations are promoting this new industry as a major win for states and ports, providing both jobs and economic growth. However, once permits are issued there is currently no way to monitor or enforce the fulfillment of these promises. Reasoned decisions depend on verification of these claims before jeopardizing the industries that already support our coastal communities.

Vineyard Wind sets up Nantucket benefit fund

September 9, 2020 — The following was released by Vineyard Wind:

Vineyard Wind, the offshore wind farm project moving ahead 14 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, has reached a “Good Neighbor Agreement” with the Town of Nantucket and leading nonprofits on the island to create the Offshore Wind Community Fund. The agreement “makes changes to the wind project to lessen its visual impacts” and establishes a fund “that will support projects that benefit the entire Nantucket community,” wrote legal counsel Greg Werkheiser of Cultural Heritage Partners in the announcement.

According to a joint press release from the two entities, the fund will “will support local initiatives to combat the effects of global climate change, enhance coastal resiliency, and protect, restore, and preserve Nantucket’s cultural and historic resources.” Vineyard Wind has agreed to provide an initial $4 million, when construction financing is obtained for its first project, to seed the fund, which will be administered by the Community Foundation for Nantucket, with additional funds to be added with “subsequent projects” and through accepting contributions from other wind developers and philanthropists. An advisory committee will be overseen by CFNan with representatives from the town, Maria Mitchell Association, Nantucket Preservation Trust, and Vineyard Wind.

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford about to become hub for offshore wind

August 24, 2020 — New Bedford is about to become home to the first port in North America built specifically for the staging and installation of offshore wind projects.

The state has announced lease agreements with Vineyard Wind and Mayflower Wind at the facility from 2023 to 2027, and are worth more than $32.5 million.

“These are the two first projects that Massachusetts is involved in and they’re going to be staged their construction project from New Bedford,” New Bedford Port Authority Director Edward Anthes-Washburn said.

The two 800 megawatt offshore wind projects will be over 15 miles off the East Coast, but the turbines and equipment needed to build them will be set up at the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal, a 9-acre plot of remediated tideland that was filled in for this purpose.

Read the full story at WPRI

SCEMFIS: Federal Offshore Wind Report Paid Lack of Attention to Impacts on Fisheries

July 29, 2020 — Researchers from the Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS) found that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) latest environmental report on offshore wind “paid insufficient attention” to the impact of the practice beyond the Vineyard Wind project.

Last month, BOEM released its supplement to the draft environmental impact statement (SEIS) for the Vineyard Wind project off the Massachusetts coast. The SEIS aimed to analyze the impact of every reasonable offshore wind development on the East Coast in the following years.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Offshore wind arrays will disrupt fisheries assessments, scientists warn

July 29, 2020 — Offshore wind turbine arrays planned off the East Coast will likely impede future fisheries surveys, increasing uncertainty in stock assessments and potentially lowering annual fishing quotas, according to a new critique of the federal government’s Vineyard Wind environmental report.

In a July 22 paper, the Science Center for Marine Fisheries concluded that the Bureau of Offshore Energy Management in its supplemental environmental impact statement directed “insufficient attention… to the impact beyond the Vineyard Wind project, whereas the cumulative impact is the issue of greatest concern.”

The center is a cooperative research group, including representatives of universities and the fishing industry, organized under the National Science Foundation to pursue fisheries science questions. Its review of BOEM’s environmental assessment raises eight key issues, saying that much more research is needed to clarify the potential impacts of up to 15 Atlantic wind energy projects.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Latest Federal Report on Offshore Wind Pays ‘Insufficient Attention’ to Overall Impacts, SCEMFIS Researchers Find

July 28, 2020 — The following was releasd by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries:

A new report released last week by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS) found that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) “paid insufficient attention” to the total impact of offshore wind beyond the proposed Vineyard Wind project in its latest environmental report. SCEMFIS researchers also found that BOEM failed to address the scope and scale of offshore wind’s impacts on fisheries surveys beyond categorizing them as “major.”

BOEM released its supplement to the draft environmental impact statement (SEIS) last month for the Vineyard Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts. The SEIS sought to analyze the cumulative impacts of every reasonably foreseeable offshore wind development on the U.S. East Coast in the coming years.

“In the case of the present SEIS, one cannot evaluate the total impact of the proposed development of the Mid-Atlantic Bight as insufficient attention is paid to the impact beyond the Vineyard Wind project, whereas the cumulative impact is the issue of greatest concern,” the SCEMFIS team wrote. While the SEIS analysis is “extensive across potentially affected resources,” its frequent “lack of detail” is a weakness, they wrote.

The most important direct economic impact of offshore wind on fisheries could be the impact of turbine placement on stock assessments, the SCEMFIS report found. Surveys are unlikely to be conducted in wind areas, in which case it is assumed that no stock exists there. This would likely lead to quota reductions, especially due to increased uncertainty in the assessments, and the resulting long-term effects would not be able to be resolved by a single-year compensation plan.

While the SEIS correctly categorized such impacts as “major,” the SCEMFIS team wrote, “it does not address the scale and scope of these impacts.” The SEIS also seemed to overlook potential changes in vessel transit routes that make certain areas no longer profitable to fish, the team wrote.

The biggest indirect threat to fisheries is a likely increase in marine mammal entanglements in and near wind areas, according to the SCEMFIS report. This could result from an increased density of fishing gear due to a reduction in available fishing areas and a new source of entanglements from offshore wind construction and operations that could be mistakenly attributed to fisheries. Greater threats to marine mammals would lead to greater limitations on fishermen, and the SEIS should have classified these impacts as “major” instead of “moderate,” the researchers wrote.

There are also several potential environmental impacts from offshore wind that the SEIS did not adequately explore, the SCEMFIS team found. For instance, the SEIS considered impacts on the ecologically important “cold pool” of water that extends seasonally off the U.S. East Coast, but only focused on impacts during some parts of the year. Seasonally, this region experiences one of the largest transitions in ocean stratification of anywhere in the world. Weakening the cold pool could help generate “the most catastrophic ecological event on the continental shelf the world has ever seen,” the researchers wrote, so great care must be taken to show the chance of an impact from offshore wind is “vanishingly small.” Such science is not present in the SEIS, they wrote.

Additionally, the SEIS mentioned climate change “without coming to grips with the seriousness of the problem,” according to the SCEMFIS team. While the SEIS considered the current state of resources in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, it failed to adequately consider changes in species and fishing distribution that are likely to continue as a result of climate change, the team wrote.

In total, the SCEMFIS report found the Vineyard Wind SEIS needed further work on eight key issues: the totality of impact across the Mid-Atlantic, physical oceanographic processes, climate change, adequacy of the database on finfish and benthic invertebrates, long-lived biota, fishing/surveys/stock assessments, marine mammals, and economics.

The report was written by Eric Powell (University of Southern Mississippi), Andrew Scheld (Virginia Institute of Marine Science), Pat Sullivan (Cornell University), Josh Kohut (Rutgers University), Thomas Grothues (Rutgers University), Daphne Munroe (Rutgers University), Paula Moreno (EcoMarine Integrated Analytics, LLC), and Gavin Fay (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth). The scientific results and conclusions of this report, as well as any views or opinions expressed, are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the SCEMFIS Industry Advisory Board, member companies, VIMS, USM, NOAA, or the Department of Commerce. The report can be found on the SCEMFIS website here.

Offshore wind advocates, fishermen push last arguments for BOEM study

July 27, 2020 — With the public comment period closing near midnight, advocacy groups for the offshore wind and commercial fishing industries marshaled their supporters for a last push to influence federal regulators on the future of the new power supply.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is closing the 45-day comment period on its supplemental environmental impact statement for the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind project proposed off southern New England.

With the clock ticking to 11:59 p.m. Monday, a coalition of East Coast fishermen and seafood businesses called for a five-year moratorium on all offshore wind power development, until an array of issues raised by the fishermen’s coalition is addressed.

“All energy, including ‘clean energy,’ has environmental impacts that must be fully understood and weighed in the context of an overall power strategy. While protecting our air and climate is important, so is protecting marine ecosystems and biodiversity,”  declared a preamble to an online petition circulating in recent days.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

MASSACHUSETTS: Two Cape Lawmakers Call For Vineyard Wind Proposal Approval

July 23, 2020 — State legislators teamed up earlier this month to advocate for the Vineyard Wind project and the broader implementation of offshore wind technology.

In a letter, the lawmakers called upon the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to approve the Vineyard Wind 1 proposal and move forward in the permitting process.

Falmouth State Representative Dylan Fernandes and Cape and Islands State Senator Julian Cyr led the efforts.

“Massachusetts has no fossil fuels and survivors of our winters know that the sun is not our strongest resource,” said Fernandes.

“We do have wind, and a lot of it, and to transition to a clean energy future and energy independence we must move forward with deep-water offshore wind, the future of our planet is at stake and it’s beyond time to move this project forward.”

“Offshore wind projects present a cutting-edge opportunity for both economic growth in our region and long-term sustainability in our energy production,” said Cyr.

“Representative Fernandes and I would like to thank the large, bipartisan coalition of legislators who lent us their support in urging the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to approve the first utility-scale wind farm in our nation with the urgency that it deserves.”

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

US Interior Secretary Bernhardt meets fishing leaders to discuss offshore wind project solutions

July 22, 2020 — U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary David Bernhardt sat down with a number of fishing industry leaders on 21 July to discuss the industry’s concerns related to a number of offshore wind energy projects.

The projects are located off the coast of New England, and groups representing fishing industry interests in the area have repeatedly objected to the proposed layouts of the projects, particularly Vineyard Wind, one of the largest proposed projects. The groups have called for greater inclusion in the decision-making on the project, which they said has been lacking.

“Ultimately, I need to have a development program that’s done in a way that’s sustainable for everybody,” Bernhardt said in a press conference after the meeting. “You don’t start with a lot of conflict. That’s not the recipe for success, and the consequences of these are significant. They’re significant to families, they’re significant to people, they’re significant for safety issues. We need to do everything right. That’s our obligation.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Bernhardt eager for offshore wind ‘that works’

July 21, 2020 — Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt flew into Boston on Tuesday where he defended putting Vineyard Wind, the nation’s first large-scale wind farm, on hold for more than a year and promised a key permitting decision on the project in December that will work for both wind developers and fishing interests.

Bernhardt, whose boss, President Trump, has shown little interest in offshore wind, said he is eager to launch the offshore wind industry. “I am very eager to do it, but I am eager to do it in a way that works,” he said. “Let me give you an example. In the West we do wind. You know where we don’t put a windmill? In the middle of a highway. You can drive all the roads in the west and you’re not going to drive into a windmill.”

His comment appeared to be a reference to concerns of fishing groups that wind turbines would block access to fishing grounds and hamper navigation.

“We don’t whack people with an unnecessary burden if we can avoid it and do things sustainably,” he said. “I need a development program that is done in a way that’s sustainable for everybody.”

Read the full story at Commonwealth Magazine